I’ve talk about this a bit on the blog already, but a fundamental feature of most Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games is “to do it, do it”. I have historically been bad at explaining this, and have had at least one player drop from the game because I handled it poorly. So, bear with this inartful explanation, but it’s important.

A Move in a PbtA game is a specific mechanical guide to what happens when a player wants their character to do a thing, triggered by a specific action. “Specific mechanical” usually means dice. But even when it doesn’t mean dice, your character does the thing, the Move triggers, and you look to the text of the Move to see what happens next. There are a couple of upsides to this approach, not least it gives the players some idea of what to expect before they do the thing.

The list of basic, advanced, and playbook moves are not the only things your character can do. This sentence sounds stupid, but again bear with me: your character can do anything your character can do. But for a pretty short list of incredibly common activities that involve an element of risk; we’ve pre-defined what doing those things look like.
Here’s an example. There’s a Bang! move for when you want to shoot folks. It’s a basic move, so any player character can do it if they meet the conditions. Like, a ranged weapon, ammo, and their character taking aim and shooting an enemy at range.

Best case scenario: “Simo Munndy draws down on the industrial security bot with his signature weapon, and fills it full of lead”. “Sounds like a Bang! Move. Go ahead and roll +DEX, and let me know what the tags are on your Signature Weapon”

Average case scenario: “Simo wants to shoot the bot.” “Sounds like it might be a Bang! Move. Which bot specifically, and what are you attacking with?” “The one in the middle, and I’m attacking with my rifle.” “Your signature weapon, or another rifle? What are the tags on the rifle?” “It’s the only rifle I’ve got, so yes. Near/Far, +1 Damage, 2 Piercing, Loud, 1 weight, two-handed”. “OK, roll +DEX”

Brute force scenario: “Simo attacks the bot. I rolled an 11 on my +DEX for Bang!” “Sigh. OK. So, the bot is approximately 23 metras away, so that definitely sounds like a Bang! Alright. What is Simo attacking with?” “His rifle”. “OK, so the industrial security bot is at near range, and rifles default to far range.” “Yeah, but it’s my signature weapon” “OK, what the range on your signature weapon, and how much ammo do you have left?” “It’s near/far, and I filled up on ammo on my last trip to town with Restock.” “Did you announce the Restock Move the last time you were in town?” “No, but it’s automatic.” “Hrm, let me take a look” time passes “No, it doesn’t look like it is automatic, and even if it was automatic, you’d still need to ‘do the thing to do the thing’.” “I wouldn’t have come this far with no ammo for my gun!” “Aaaaaaaargh!”

Applicable lessons include:
1) Focus on describing what your character is doing, and the Move practically takes care of itself. Focus on just clicking a button next to the name of the Move, and you’re missing the point of the game (and more than likely the Move). Plus, then you get to play 20 questions anyway.
2) If you’ve got a move that doesn’t even involve rolling dice at all (passive mutations, I’m looking at you), you don’t just get to keep it activated in the background at all times without mentioning it. The story isn’t going to notice, and I’m not going to remember. You don’t need to start every session with “I’ve got a partial carapace good for +1 armor” and repeat it at the beginning of every combat and at the top of every hour. But if you take damage, and you reduce that damage by 1 point because of your partial carapace, you absolutely owe it to the story, the GM, and the other players to say at least the first time it happens in a session “Ok, 4 points of damage, less the protection of my leather armor and partial carapace, I take two points of damage”. You’ve burned a valuable playbook slot for that mutation. Make it a part of the story.
This applies to other things like a hypothetical “treat your INT as +3 while this mutation is active, and you can automatically detect lies told in your presence.” Not if you haven’t announced beforehand that you’re using the mutation, it doesn’t. That’s a straight out “oh, you must not have been paying attention”.

Also, note to self: change the current active/passive terminology to “risky” for mutations that require rolling dice, it’s just confusing now.

Long story short, the players and the GM need to be on the same page about what the characters are doing, and how they’re interacting with the world. If you still have questions about “to do it, do it”, those questions are a lot more helpful before we get the story wedged in an uncomfortable place than afterwards. Folks are new to me and the system, so I don’t (well, I try not to) expect perfection, but this is an unobvious thing with obvious repercussions, so I wanted to try and get ahead of it as much as possible.