Following on from my question about running *World via PbP, looks like people want to do Apocalypse World going by the poll I posted.
I’ve mostly only run Monster of the Week, so I’m wondering how solid an idea of the post-apocalyptic landscape I should have going in. Do I come up with a brief setting pitch, ask players a few questions about the setting during character creation, or get them to fill in those details during the first session?
This is probably a thing that varies depending on the MC, but hearing how other MCs handle it might help me figure out what would work best for myself. Any pointers?
List images (or find images) that you think are cool. Look and feel is the main thing. The rest comes in the conversation for me.
I’ve done classic PA desert. A flooded city (Toronto). A landscape covered with poisonous invasive flowers. Volcanic. A community built around a NASCAR track. Fungal forest with giant insects. Regular but aggressive forest reclaiming the world (a la Summerland). A giant alien spacecraft wreck in the arctic sea. A space barge turned prison.
When I ran ApocalypseWorld, it took time for me to accept that a lot of the apocalyptic landscape was in my/our control. I got the impression that discovery was part of the process, both for the players and the MC (“play to find out”), but I needed solid ground to build from.
I think you can get some of that by establishing and developing your fronts, but you can also draft your players to help establish setting details with loaded/framing questions like “why can’t you eat the local vegetation?”.