I had a sit down with each of my players individually and explained to them where and how I had failed to run the…

I had a sit down with each of my players individually and explained to them where and how I had failed to run the opening session correctly, and walk through how what I had learned about the setting they had helped build was going to explode in their faces. From this conversation I had to admit that I had come to the table without enough understanding of how to run the game, or enough explination for their benefit of what the Apocalypse World was about. As a result one of the players sat down expecting a roaming, open world experience of D&D: Dark Sun with some “silly stats”, and the other sat down to play Everyone Is John regardless of what the game was actually being called.

After some discussion I’ve proposed resetting the game, so we can all come at it fresh, with a clear genre in mind to give it some backbone. Previously everyone was kinda firing blind, not really knowing what we were getting into, and a shared, or more specifically understood, reference point would go a long way to giving everyone a touchstone (no pun intended). Thus far we’ve got The Walking Dead, STALKER, and Space Station 13 as suggestions, all of which would make great settings. Personally I’m leaning toward STALKER as it’s both a fresh look at societal decay, filled with evocative imagry, and I know it like the back of my hand.

The last bit of note worthy discussion is that one of my players is going to be dynamite once we actually get this game rolling. He has a kind of fearlessness when it comes to commiting to action while other players try and huddle up a plan how to out-contingency the GM. He’s going to be right at home in the apocalypse. He also really groked a lot of the underlying concepts, especially once it was explained that those random NPCs you have in town are actually legit important and not those throw away villagers that you have to roll to get The GM to admit they have no prep for, and they arent just being cagey about themselves. The other players (Mr.Everyone-Is-John and guy-who-passed-out-before-we-started) are quite a bit more conflict adverse, not as role players, which isn’t something they’ve done a whole lot of, but just as everyday people. My friends and I try and make people happy a lot of the time and when it comes to calling people out on bullshit or slights we let it go. This isn’t always conducive to running an exciting end-of-civilization, so I’ve got to work extra hard to convince and show them that I’m on their side as the MC, and my purpose is to set them up with challenges, not to make them squirm, but to give them a chance to be incredible. I’m starting to see that arc, and as a player I’ve designed or proposed game ideas that hog-tie the MC’s authority out of fear that they would use their power to ruin, poison, or derail any neat plans the group was building. What I really should have been exploring this whold time is ways to convince them to talk to the players in a way that in turn convinces them that as the MC they arent hiding any knives behind their GM screen. Then maybe some kinda system to make them mean it… Actually rereading this post I think I may have already started that just but chatting with the players…

So it might be a bit before I can run a game again, but next time I’m way more confident I won’t screw up as badly. Thanks again for all the advice everyone has given, and I’ll post again as soon as we’ve started up the new game.