Apocalypse World – session one.
Our second session of AW tonight (the first was session zero). Our group consists of –
Paul as Boo, an Angel.
Rick as Marlon, a Driver.
Bard as Emmy, a Maestro’ d.
Dave as Keeler, a Gunlugger.
John as Sundown, a Brainer. (absent this week)
Our second session starts with three of the PC’s wanting gigs. They’re low on barter already.
We all decide the Sheriff from New Jerusalem wants Jackson’s biker gang killed and agrees to pay them two barter each for it. He wants half the loot from the gang until the gunlugger goes aggro on him, which quickly changes his mind. But now he’s all like “fuck you” to Keeler. I’ve already highlighted everyone’s hard during Hx cos I’m pretty sure blood will flow tonight.
The scene in the Pig Pen (Maestro’D’s bar) allows rolls for read a sitch, read a person, manipulate someone etc., along with some playbook moves (way out of here, eye on the door and everyone eats, even that guy). This is all driven by the conversation of course. After every move I make I’m asking “what do you do?”.
There’s a scene with the driver trying to sucker someone, which he totally misses, so I turn his move back on him, and he hears a gun cock next to his ear. This is what lets him get an eye on the door.
We’ve already established the psychic maelstrom was created by a computer virus, before, or during the fall (was it because of, or the cause?). It manifests as electronic “white noise”, like an audible TV static, through bluetooth headsets, walkie talkies, radios, TV’s etc. MC note – I’ve been told “The Cell” movie, and “Dollhouse” TV shows have some good tips for this.
The aim of the party now is to find whatever is generating this virus (AI supercomputer? Underground? Military hardware, like the “Red Queen”?), and get rid of it.
I had initially envisaged a “Pig Pen” vs “New Jerusalem” scenario a la “The Stand”, but now have a radically different story arc to consider. And you know what? – I love it!
I’m rolling with what the players are putting down, and between us we’re creating a pretty good story.
Two of my players have already gained an experience improvement – is this normal to improve once per session? The others are one roll away. I want to see them unlock more rewards, and grow as characters. They need five to unlock those advanced rewards right, so that’s another four sessions at least.
Also Gunluggers – how shit hard are they. He walked up to the biker gang with a machinegun and just mowed them down! Because he’s got that small gang thing going he was on equal terms, and his armour kept him from harm (along with “suffers little harm”). Is that normal too? I mean one guy taking out a small gang on his own. I visualised it like Terminator, bullets smacking into his flak vest, and him just keeping walking. Wow!
The driver used his car to mow down some, and the other players cashed out the rest. All except Jackson, the leader, who is Preacher Moon’s brother (the leader of New Jerusalem, and the Sheriffs real target). He had that crazy tech virus thing going, so the Angel wants to heal him. I need to decide where that’s headed – maybe he pretends to recover, but is still working for the computer?
Thanks to all of you that offered advice on my first post. I used most, if not all, of those suggestions and had a great game thanks to it. Any more suggestions gratefully received.
Anyway, until next time – keep your supplies close by, and your powder dry.
Adios amigos.
Yup, Gunluggers are pretty good at mowing shit down.But Keeler probably is rather bad at seducing or manipulating someone. Set up triangles that make him choose between mowing everyone down with a poor outcome (reprisals, lack of supply, loss of knowledge) or manipulating someone to a great outcome (win/win, an ally, protection, power, knowledge).
Nathan Roberts yeah he can’t manipulate to save his ass. I’ll try to set that up. Cheers.
Great AP by the way Dale Jennings! I can’t wait to hear more about New Jerusalem.
Do these PBtA sessions always sound like a bunch of rule lawyers talking instead of actual roleplaying ?
If I were to compare this to the after action reports from RpgPundit’s DCC campaign ( therpgpundit.blogspot.com – DCC Campaign Update: He Should be Well Into the Masturbation Phase ) then it doesn’t read like a game I’d ever enjoy being part of.
ron d Hi, it’s just the tone of the after action, cos I’m still getting the hang of the pbta system, and how it all hangs together. I’m focusing more on the system, and giving a brief session rundown with it. If I find time I may attempt a more narrative post. Appreciate your input; Have a good one.
Dale Jennings I’m trying to get the hang of the system myself as well.
Except all the stuff I’ve seen so far is written like your post and that isn’t helping. It’s not your fault though.
In practically every other RPG system that sort of ‘rules talk’ is kept to the bare minimum even in examples.
IMHO this is why the system is so difficult to learn. They rarely give good examples of actual play sessions. It always reads like “I do move X and then the GM responds with giving me the option to do A or B”.
As a result it reads as a mechanical system where you push buttons as opposed to actual roleplaying in a living world where stuff just happens and the players don’t get to decide what problems they get to deal with as a result of their actions as that is the GM’s job.
My guess is that by making players do part of the work of the GM the explanations and real world examples are needlessly difficult.
btw : try spacing out your text in paragraphs. That makes it much easier to parse.
ron d It may help? To know that all of the examples in the Book are from the Baker’s home game whilst playtesting the system.
I personally find APs like Dale Jennings’ rather handy because they let me know (as MC) what moves were made and how they interact with the fiction generated at the table.
Adam Koebel ran two very different, yet awesome games of AW on Roll20 that may give you a better idea of parsing the rules and seeing the system in play. The sessions generated some pretty juicy stories.
youtube.com – Apocalypse World Ep1.1 | Roll20 Games Master Series
Nathan Roberts I’d be tempted to argue that ‘not knowing what moves were made’ is the result of a design flaw.
With D&D style games I rarely have wonder what skills/attribute combos were used (except for whether I need to roll high or low, but that’s a thing that finally got fixed in recent versions of D&D).
The thematic styling of PbtA games tends to get in the way of that kind of clarity, because the same action/attribute gets a different name in almost every single one.
Contrast this to OSR/D&D style games where a Dexterity check is a dexterity check and a called shot is a called shot.
Thanks for the link to that YouTube example though.
The rules in pbta games are – from what I understand as a relative newbie – supposed to be a catalyst for roleplaying. So the mechanics and the storytelling is more intertwined than in many games, I think.
To me this seems like a good thing. In most traditional rpgs I have played we had to fight the rules, or ignore large parts of them altogether, to get any roleplaying done.
Also, the rules are supposed to push the campaign in new directions. You do not have a pre-planned campaign in pbta games. You “play to find out what happens”, and this includes the GM /MC.
This way of playing may not be for everyone of course. But it might explain why rules are mentioned more often in pbta reports than in others. It is because the rules impact the story in a way that they don’t with more traditional games. That’s my theory at least.
With that said, I agree that it would be nice to see some reports that focused more on narrating a story without any rules focus. It would obviously be helpful for some people. Though I don’t think there’s anything wrong with including rules talk in the reports either. There is plenty of audience for that.
Mattias Swing I must say that I never had that problems with rules as such (until I read Hackmaster … eep).
RPG’s with an internal logic to the mechanics tend to be easy to learn.
Combat tends to be pretty easy in most systems (roll X to hit, then roll something else to see how much damage you do, repeat until everyone is dead … )
It’s the mechanics of creating adventures and running them that are more of a problem (for me at least).
That sort of stuff isn’t system specific, but some systems do give more (useful) advice than others. PbtA relies a bit too much on the mechanics doing the job of telling the story while not providing sufficient info to get started. Or at least that’s been my impression so far. Fate has the same problem.
ron d Ok, I see where you are coming from. I think we should probably respectfully agree to disagree. 🙂
I’m with you that systems with internal logic are easy to learn. But I have still spent plenty of sessions in lots of games where a random unimportant fight takes half the evening, and where every round is more or less the same: “I shoot at the enemy.” “The enemy shoots back.” Etc, in perpetuem. This seems to happen, to a high degree, with both good GMs and bad GMs, with experienced players and newbies.
And while it is easy enough, “repeat until dead” does not make for very exciting gameplay, not for me.
So far, I’ve found that this does not happen to the same extent with PbtA games. The rules often force the action to become a little more… Actionfilled.
And if a combat ever get kind of same-y, it usually does not last as long as it would have in games like Shadowrun or Through the Breach which are the games I am into right now that is not PbtA.
When it comes to the mechanics for story-telling and adventure creation, I think the PbtA way provides useful tools for me. I appreciate that the moves make me (as MC) think about the setting and the story in new ways. It makes the adventuring more dynamic, and not quite as limited by my own imagination.
The fact that the PbtA games give fairly little info about the world beforehand is also mostly a plus for me. I have really struggled with getting players to read even short fluff texts that are important for them to know about the world, in other games. In PbtA, we get to create most of it as we go along. That means that everyone gets the same info, as well as getting the players more invested in the world since it is “theirs” in a more deep sense.
But yeah, most of these things are a matter of preferences of course. One way is not inherently objectively better or worse than the other. PbtA might not be for you, even if it is for me.
(I still think you should give it a try though. I’ve tried it with a couple of skeptics that really liked it after a few sessions, when it started to “click” for them.)
Dale Jennings Sorry for hijacking your post btw, but I think it is interesting to discuss these kind of differences in preferences. I appreciate your post, rules talk and all, and it inspires me to try my hands at a new AW-campaign soon. 🙂
Mattias Swing No problem. It’s all gaming chat, so all good. Nice to hear people’s opinions.
Dale Jennings sounds like it went really well! Glad to hear it.
Don’t make ‘story arcs’ per se. Make countdown clocks for your notables and threats. Like, what they are going to do if the PCs don’t intervene? What’s New Jerusalem going to do? And Jackson? Make sure that what they are going to do impinges on the PCs’ world so they (the PCs) can’t just ignore it. Also, it’s perfectly okay (even preferred, sorta) if there’s nothing the PCs can really do about those plans! Then, when you’re stuck and you have to announce future badness, or think offscreen, or someone opens their brain, etc…. look to your countdown clocks for inspiration.
Yes PCs can advance pretty quick if they’re rolling highlighted stats. Sometimes it’s 5 xp a session. Sometimes it’s none. Just depends on what they have highlighted and what rolls they make. No harm. Levelling up only LOOKS like it makes you more powerful, but it really doesn’t; it just opens up more moves to make in general (sometimes it does make you more powerful though). Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry if someone gets to level 5 before others get to level 2. No biggie.
Gunluggers are serious business. Every once in a while, throw in a badass threat with armor piercing rounds. To really challenge your gunlugger, get them tangled up with NPC relationships (you know, social problems).
Every time PCs open their brain or interact at all with the psychic maelstrom, ask them what it’s like. If they build on what yall have already talked about, awesome; go with that. If not, if they give you something totally new and out of place vs what you’ve already established, great! Build on that and put your bloody fingerprints on it (meaning incorporate what they tell you into what the table has already established re: the psychic maelstrom, and blend them together).
Last, keep up the AP! Tell us the moves they made and how you played them. It’s super helpful.
Mattias Swing the world would be boring if we all had the same opinions 😉
I do have to say that when combat degenerates into ‘roll to hit/damage’ ad nauseum it does feel boring/pointless. And at the same time it doesn’t have to be like that, because the verbal descriptions for various actions are where the action is as it were.
However I think it’s not so much the system as it is the difficulty in visualizing that sort of stuff.
You are right … PbtA hasn’t clicked with me yet. I can sort of feel what it wants to be though, but at the same time it sort of feels like I lack the skill to run it.
This sort of brings me back to my comment on the after action report. I can sort of feel what happened, but at the same time it there were huge short cuts that felt like missing scenes with important plot info in a movie.
I saw an example of ‘Sentinel Comics RPG’ ( store.greaterthangames.com – Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game Starter Kit ) and that looked somewhat similar to PbtA, except it felt more approachable. It also kind of matched the Fate RPG example in Wil Wheatons’ tabletop show.
I haven’t had time to watch the example vid posted. Maybe that will help.
As such it might not be the system/mechanics but more the lack of a good tutorial/intro that makes it easier for me to grok it.
ron d Mattias Swing good discussion. I have thoughts on what yall are talking about but don’t want to hijack the thread more. If you take it to another thread, please tag me so I can participate!
Christopher Wargo ron d Feel free to continue discussing here. I really don’t mind. I mean this group’s for pbta discussion, and that’s what we’re doing.
Christopher Wargo Thanks Christopher. I’ll keep posting the updates; hoping next time to incorporate some dialogue, and how that triggers moves. Appreciate your input.
Dale Jennings Christopher Wargo Mattias Swing I also think it would derail this thread too much if we continue.
Plus we’ve already covered the basic comments on your session report.
To me that serves the purpose of this thread.