Excited and nervous for running my first session today. Wrote this for my players…
Welcome to Honolulu! A city in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Honolulu is a travel destination for people around the world. The island of Oahu is rich with natural beauty and culture…
But beneath the tropical paradise, unbeknownst to most mortals, a darkness crashes over the city like waves on an eroding shoreline. What was once an isolated center of natural beauty is now infested with invasive species. Werewolves, vampires, wizards, and demons have come here to thrive on the magic that flows through this sacred land. They struggle with each other to seize power for themselves, and the life of the land itself fights back as a reminder that it cannot be contained.
Who are you? Why are you here? You may think you know the answers to these questions, but you have no idea what’s about to happen. How deep does the corruption of this city run? What effect will you have on this power struggle in paradise? Like it or not, we’re going to find out. You’re in it now.
A city move that makes me smile: Intrude on events with a group of unaware tourists.
Oh this is so excellent! Are you from Honolulu, by chance?
I don’t live there, but I’m there all the time to visit extended family. I chose the city because I’m intimately familiar with the culture and locations… and my players are not!
A great reason to choose it.
I’ve been looking at using the islands as the backdrop for an US game: ghosts of Pearl Harbor; were-shark surfer gangs; ley lines and volcanos. If you have the time and inclination to keep posting about your game, I’ll follow it gladly.
Sounds really interesting. You should also consider, when doing supernatural factions etc, what creatures are native to Honolulu? The Vampires and wizards are foreign, but are there monsters in Honolulu who feed on the natives? What’s the animosity between the local power users or spirits and the foreign ones, even if they are part of the same faction? There’s a lot of potential for interesting conflict here.
I agree. Hawaii has a rich cultural & mythical tradition to highlight and mine for dramatic purposes. It is a crossroads of Eastern, Western and Native populations with all the dramatic tensions bounded by limited physical geography. Lots of great story hooks waiting to be fleshed out.
The first session went well! Judging myself, I could have framed the big opening scene harder, and I should have made the players roll to keep their cool more (maybe 5 times instead of 0 times oops). As for Hawaii-specific factions, I’m definitely incorporating local ghost legends I know and Menehune some how… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmarchers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menehune
It’s always tough to know how hard to go in the first game, it’s the same in all Apocalypse World games. Practice makes perfect.
You’ve got that right. A lot will depend on what your players give you from chargen and when the dice hit the table to grow the fiction. I’m currently GMing 2 MotW games so US is simmering on the mental back burner.
We have a native oracle, a techno wizard, a kind-hearted hobo vampire, a punk rock “King”, and a veteran restaurant owner. Lots of Mortality representation! Now that we’ve had our character introductions (so creative and random, as should be expected) I can mix up some appropriate threats.
First scene was a wolf gang coming to “collect” from a fae hotelier in the restaurant. When a wolf killed a tourist as a display of power, the players reacted. They killed the leader and drove the rest off.
Now they’re off to find and demand justice from the gang for killing an innocent mortal. And to investigate why they were after the fae in the first place. I’ve got plenty of delicious dynamic ideas for how to weave all the players’ first-session contributions into a twisted political mess. Urban Shadows is such a great game!!!
“kind hearted hobo vampire” – was he turned/embraced/created in Hawaii or did he/she arrive from elsewhere? “punk rock ‘King’,?
The “King” is some playbook one player brought to the table, not core. The Vamp moved to Hawaii. His parents were turned when he was young, so he was raised by Vamps to adulthood, then turned by his parents. He has poor memory (this may be a World of Darkness thing? I’m not familiar), so he doesn’t recall when this all happened.
The Vamp PC sounds like it has some good potential – poor memory is an open invitation to ‘chum the fiction’. I don’t recall ‘poor memory’ being part of any vamp clans in WoD but my memories are pre- Reqrium (it could be from chargen options – Merits & Flaws).
Not familiar with the King play book.