I feel like there’s a key step that happens when I MC AW. In my experience it usually occurs in the second or third session, though there’s no reason it couldn’t happen earlier or later.
It’s when I decide/realize what the maelstrom wants. Often, I’ve come up with a motive for the maelstrom before even deciding what the maelstrom is.
This is similar to determining a threat type, but I think it’s subtly different.
Why does what the maelstrom wants have to stay consistent?
it doesn’t, i guess.
this is what i find works for me 🙂
it mainly helps me figure out what information to show the characters when they open their brains. like, a maelstrom who wants to rebuild a lost civilization will probably show very different information from one whose goal is to destroy all life.
Yup.
I guess, I only think of the maelstrom as a living thing under certain kinds of … apocalypses? apocalyptum? apocalii?
it doesn’t have to be a living thing to have a motivation 🙂
i guess a less cryptic way of stating the same thing is:
i like it when i, the MC, figure out what i want the maelstrom to represent–what sort of havoc i want to wreak, using the maelstrom as my tool.
Part of me worries that I jump too quickly to anthropomorphizing the maelstrom, giving it motivations and desires… it’s an awesome idea, don’t get me wrong, but also don’t forget that there are a lot of interesting threat moves associated with afflictions, too. It’s something that impacts almost everybody’s life, and it’s those lives that are interesting, at least as much as the maelstrom itself. Making it an affliction threat helps with that, because that’s what all the affliction moves are based around.
affliction threats are my favorite!
oh man now i just want to start a new thread and gush about afflictions.
i guess i’ve always had the maelstrom be an entire Front. with its own dark future or whatever that it’s working towards, you know? have an aspect of it be an affliction, have an aspect be a grotesque, etc.
i’d be interested to see what the effects of a sort of smaller-scale maelstrom would be–a maelstrom that was a single threat, maybe on the home front, maybe even as a part of some other front.