Wherein I Drink Kool-Aid

I just came back from a session of Apocalypse World, Vincent Baker's new game. For those who don't know, Vincent Baker is the guy who came up with the games Dogs in the Vineyard, In a Wicked Age, Poison'd, and Kill Puppies for Satan, all of which have variously caused some level of controversy or other on the interclick, particularly at thepuritansite.com, and all of which are probably best put into the "aren't we hip?" story game category. I haven't played anything of Baker's before, except for Dogs...which I enjoyed but felt was rather power-trippy; his other games seemed specifically designed to court controversy, which I always find irksome, and that put me off.

But blimey if Apocalypse World isn't a fun game. I think this was the first session of a "story game" I've ever played in which it all fell into place for me and I actually realised that, yes, that thing where people at The Forge say stuff like "the mechanics support play" does sometimes make sense. There were only two players, and I think that hindered us in some respects (because interpersonal conflict/cooperation seems to be one of the keys to making the system really hum), but nevertheless the two of us were able to riff on our characters and their relationship in a genuinely intriguing and fun way, building something up that you don't normally get in a traditional game without some serious effort and time spent. And for once I felt that, as a player, having narrative control really added something: my decisions not only had the immediate effects that you might have in traditional gaming (I get more gold, I don't die, I kill the orc), they had world-building and narrative effects that seemed genuinely far-reaching. (Not that you can't do those things with old school D&D, or really any game, but it takes longer and requires a lot more effort.)

Once again I'm forced into the proposition that the "OSR" and "hip story games that cool kids play", both of which are faddish and somewhat exclusionary currents within the hobby, are attempts to achieve almost exactly the same things: basically, it boils down to giving players agency. In "old school" D&D, this comes from having a sandbox and letting the players loose in it and having them live with their decisions and their own tactical nous. In story games, it comes from creating mechanics in which the players can actually force the narrative in a certain direction through dice rolls. Both of these things are really very similar. The players generate whatever "plot" there is in an emergent fashion, from the ground up, with the GM as neutral arbiter. This puts them in direct opposition to the RPG mainstream (games such as D&D 4e, WoD, etc.) where plot comes from the top down, imposed by a GM who is at best a court jester and at worst an autocrat dick.

Ancient stick-in-the-mud fatbeards and horrible skinny kids in skinny jeans who listen to Arcade Fire should be friends, not foes. We dream the same dream, we want the same thing, people.