So, how do you go about making a good setting for Apocalypse World? For me, there’s two big steps to getting to good apocalyptica. First, figure out a basic state of the world. Dry and cold and grey? Moldy and hot and damp? Over-run lush, with broken stuff sticking through? Then I layer something everyday onto that, like say, clothes on a line.
Dry etc: There’s a clothesline with the usual shapeless drab garments, but on the end is a little girl’s party dress dancing in the wind, so bright a blue your eyes nearly weep with relief. Or: It’s too cold to wash anything, and there’s no water to spare anyway, but there are some people beating clothes against a pole. Little clouds of dirt billow around them. Some of the specks are florescent and seem to float away instead of fall to the ground
Moldy etc: Nothing’s ever really dry, but people keep trying. If it’s wet and you don’t need to wear it at the moment, you hang your clothes on pegs over the smoke-pits to try to get the wet out, or at least the stink out. If you wear wet stuff too long, red goo starts to form in the creases. The goo eats through clothes, and maybe through skin, too?
Over-run: The vines have started to creep along the clothesline already, even though the holders cut them down a week ago. The flowers have violet centers and smell like fruit three days past ripe. They drip gobs of sticky sap on everything. It sounds like a thousand leaky pipes all out of sync.
That just put the image of a durian-smelling apocalypse into my head. Ew.
Cold, dark and in sharp contrast
In the inter the only colors are black and white, and the only roses you see are blood spattered on snow. Yet there is life, magnificent and powerful life. Yet, it only a few calories, a few layers of cry clothes or a few degrees away from dying from cold. Everything is battle to keep warm, clothes, food, and homes. It a siege, you against the cold.
Really cool technique. It made those settings pop to life in my mind.
For me, take three strong setting elements or stories you’d like to tell, break them down into their component pieces, and then mix them up. Go into play with all those pieces and slowly start building something out of them. Use your ideas like Lego sets.
Watching
For my next campaign, I want to try the Islands of Manhattan, settlements atop the skyscrapers that remain standing since the ocean levels rose two hundred feet.
Michael Bay, I just posted about that setting else-thread! 🙂 It’s such a cool idea.
That’s a great technique Meguey. It really makes it feel like you are right there in the middle of things.
Thanks Stuart McDermid. The cool thing is, once you have your basic state, you can just keep layering different things on and spew forth all the apocalyptica you like!
As a visually thinking person, I have gathered a huge collection of press photos of disaster aftermath, warzones and abandoned places, all without people. I grab a random evocative pic and extrapolate to who might be living there or what would be going on.
is this not in the book? it’s very familiar to me
Adam McConnaughey – If you were on the ApW forums back in 2010 you may have seen my original post about layering.
ok that’s probably it. i certainly know i’ve used this advice when creating worlds for this game!
To me, AW is really about scarcity and need. There was a world that was, and the something made that need, and now people have had to adapt. Frequently when I watch movies, or when I read books, I think to myself ‘that’s an AW setting’ and I store the tidbit away for later. So when it’s time to barf forth I reach into my storage and pick up unserted handfuls which usually generates something interesting.
Something wrecked the world and society. It could be climate change. A war. We’ve had a few stories where there was an external unfeeling force. Alien invasion (think Xenomorph more than V) where the storm was their hivemind interacting with the minds of all the people that died. Old gods and monsters returning. We’ve played on a generational ship in space (where mutations occurred, and the ship was stalled and stripped for parts). There was a game locally that went a little more Akira.
One of my favorites was a take on Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind.
I think I agree with some of the thoughts above though: some sort of clear image that you lay down as a canvas that the players can dance around on works pretty well in my groups.