The Apocalypse World first session worksheet has eight Fundamental Scarcities marked on it. To wit:
Hunger
Thirst
Ignorance
Fear
Decay
Despair
Envy
Ambition
The book doesn’t explain what the point of this theme list is, but I can see how the first six, at least, a clear themes of the game. Post-apocalyptic settings get a lot of their emotional power from those things.
There are other things not on the list that could motivate threats – bad blood, tradition, war (on a larger scale), lust… but they’re not there. That implies a selectivity – things not on that list are not so important. They don’t drive towards the themes that the game is about.
So… with that in mind, does anyone have any good ideas for how we might adapt this idea to Dungeon World, or to any similar kitchen-sink fantasy game?
Alignments wheel using alignments in the old school, “alignments are political allegiances” way ?
I think that list already works. Those are the underlying motivations for things, but not how they’re expressed. War is an expression of many of those scarcities.
Why is a horde or orcs rolling down from the hills? A hunger for destruction. A thirst for vengeance. Fear of the “something” behind them. Envy of the fertile lands their enemy holds. An ambition to return orckind to it’s rightful place.
I think the list works just fine as is. You just need to express these motivations in a way that make sense for a fantasy setting.
My first thoughts at a possible set of themes for such a game:
Bad Magic
Bad Gods
Empires & War
Older than Man
Cults & Infestations
Deep Underground
Exploration
Wonder
Chaos & Corruption
There’s quite a strong overlap here with the front and threat types, which isn’t ideal – AW has that too, so the scarcities contribute something more. (There’s also a bit overlap with the monster settings, too)
“Exploration” and “Wonder” are a bit awkward fit (they’re not obvious sources of threat), but they are definitely examples of themes that are important in fantasy gaming. They’re a reminder that we probably want to include them.
Possibly my emphasis on threats, alone, is misguided. DW can have, and encourages by the way it is written, a rather different feel to AW. The book talks a lot about threats and dangers, yes, but it’s more optimistic in tone.
Grégory Pogorzelski yeah, that could work.
Christopher Stone-Bush I saw your comment as I was writing my previous post, and it inspired the last para of that. It would be interesting to see how that worked out, but I’m concerned that it would push the game towards a bleaker, uglier feel than I’m looking for. (That’s one reason Vincent wrote that list in the first place, I suspect – to help AW always be an ugly, desperate place).
Rob Alexander now I must admit that AW scarcities are far more evocative and down-to-earth than abstract alignments like “chaos” ou “loyal good”. So yeah in principle it can work but it’s not gonna be as straightforward.
Because they can be taken literally or figuratively, these basic scarcities can actually be applied to a surprising number of non-postapoc situations. “Hunger” could be for drugs or for control of land/support/transport lines, “Thirst” could be for blood, booze or some problem involving water; “Decay” could be spiritual or political corruption, etc.
That said, if you’re looking for a more broadly-applicable set of fundamental human needs, you could do worse than Dr. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
-Physiological (sustenance, survival)
-Safety (security, surplus, health, housing, resources, technology)
-Belongingness and Love (familial, social & personal connections)
-Esteem (competence, experience, respect, recognition, autonomy)
-Self-Actualization (dedication to mastery of one’s calling or pursuit)
Note: The predictions of Maslow’s model are still supported by scientific research today, although the hierarchical ordering of the needs has been called into question. In addition, the model is seen by some as ethnocentric to capitalist and individualist societies (such as those encountered in the typical modern/Hollywood take on medieval adventure worlds)
I look at them as drive that express in different ways.
It seems like those things would be abundances. A scarcity of hunger would be just fine.
Rob Alexander if it helps, look at your First Session chapter of Apocalypse World — that is where it explains what is up with this list.
Oh! I just remembered that I did this for the 4e game I was running back when AW first came out. The “fundamental scarcities” were:
– The Unquiet Past
– War
– Mortal Ambition
– Civilization
– Religion
– The Gods/Primordials
– The Planes
– The Wilderness
I then tried to put all the existing ongoing threats onto a sheet. Here’s what it ended up looking like:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0lFq3ECDQDQOTF6U2JWU1RrVTQ/edit?usp=sharing
I recall it not working very well, but I think that was mostly because it was 4e and an existing campaign. But it could have been a flawed design, too.
Jeremy Strandberg I’m am TOTALLY yanking this. This is good stuff.
Jeremy Strandberg that is indeed the kind of thing I was thinking of. I’d probably swap out “The Planes” in favour of “Chaos & Corruption” (my background is in WFRP, Fighting Fantasy etc more than D&D; the British tradition), and maybe shorten “The Wilderness” to “The Wilds”, but other than that it looks great.
I particularly like how your example takes the Howardesque route of having everything under “Civilisation” be decadent and depraved.
I think I should not computer more today, but I may get a chance tomorrow to sketch something in this vein.
I like that it’s sort of a wheel, with mortals at one end ansd gods at the other.
Right, I’ve taken Jeremy Strandberg’s one and expanded it a little to be more like the AW one. It’s here – https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/737926/Dungeon%20World%20first%20session%20worksheet%20v1.pdf
Names are mostly from the Story Games names book, and assume a crude late-Roman-Britain setting. ODG-format source file is here so you can change them – https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/737926/Dungeon%20World%20first%20session%20worksheet%20v1.odg
Permanent home is on my blog, here — http://mhuthulan.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/first-session-worksheet-for-dungeon-world/
Jeremy Strandberg you say “I recall it not working very well”. Do you remember anything about how it didn’t work? Did it just not help you, or did it actively impede you?
I’m still not confident myself that this “themes” approach is quite right, but I’m confident with it than with the scarcities/drives approach that others above are taking. AW is postapocalyptic so scarcity (in the conventional, material, survival sense) is a big core theme. For DW, that’s not so true.
Vincent Baker could you shed some light on what you think the scarcity-circle achieves?
Sage LaTorra Adam Koebel do you agree with my point about theme difference? Do you have a mental list of the core themes of DW?
Alfred Rudzki The bit I think you’re referring to is on p130 in the AW book – “List the players’ characters in the centre circle. Think of the space around them as a map, but with scarcity and lack instead of cardinal directions. As you name NPCs, place them on the map around the PCs, according to the fundamental scarcity that makes them a threat to the PCs.”
So yes, that’s what they’re literally and explicitly for – they record needs/drives/motives. But what does that achieve? Does it achieve much that matters? What might a different game or setting want to do differently? That’s what I’m trying to get at here.
One important thing – I’ve read most of the AW book, but not played it. I’ve played DW (both as GM and player), and will shortly be GMing it again.
What it achieves is you have a record of who is motivated by what at the end of the first session, the end. It’s really not that useful of a tool! It’s just an organizer so after session one you can stare at it a bit and figure out your fronts! So the question is: do other games need organizers? If so, what kind of organizers? What motivations do I need to be aware of for my particular genre of play, after 4 hours of play before getting into the hardcore gaming?
Rob Alexander: it certainly didn’t impede, but I didn’t find it all that useful during play. Like Alfred Rudzki mentions, it was a way for me to record & organize my thoughts.
If I recall correctly, we’d been playing a D&D4e game for about a year and were about to move into Paragon tier and a new “phase” of the game. Andy many of the players were switching characters. So it was sort of like prepping for a second session.
The game fell apart shortly after that (players moving/having babies, DM burnout, etc.) so I didn’t get too much chance to deal with it. I think we’d established all the “Unquiet Past” stuff in play, and the rest was mostly based on PC backstory.
It did help when they went to the new, big-ass city. I was able to look at what I’d written for Civilization, Ambition, etc. and present some threats on the fly.
So maybe I’m just conflating the petering-out end of a year+ long campaign with this thing not working. Because the more I think about it, the more I think it worked just fine for what it was meant to do.
If you want to choose that bit of AW-tech, go for it. We deliberately dropped it from DW because DW’s first session works a little differently.