New Apocalypse World session for our first table ever happens today, woo! But it’s been an awful while since we played those characters. I’m the MC, and thumbing through fronts and dangers and NPCs and custom moves and shit, and I can’t recall the circumstances of half of them. The players? I bet likewise.
I thought about love letters, but about what? The things we cared about six months ago, do we still care now? What would those love letters be about?
So now I’m thinking you know what this game needs? A second first session.
Good idea? Bad idea? Stupid idea?
Or you could use the love letters to skip over 6 months. Then you just dive into the prep you did to cover 6 months. Easy peasey.
Six months for us, not our characters. Last time we played, they were about to fight a telepathic anthropophagous kutzu vine. I doubt the others will be happy if I skip over that.
And that’s the problem! That’s not something a good game’s about! That’s just a cool way to start up the session but the rest, those PC-NPC-PC triangles, the PC’s personnal commitments, those emotional charges and all that momentum is gone.
Love letters, by themselves, are not an option for me.
So I’m thinking : some love letters maybe to kickstart the plant fight, and once it’s dealt with it’s first session again. But instead of asking questions about some non-played (and thus non-existent) past, I’d be asking questions about what they recall from before and what is still relevant to them. I can make a first session sings far more easily than a love letter (thanks con games).
Under those constraints, your instincts are correct.
Under those constraints, your instincts are correct.
I feel like I’m using you. 😉
I’ll need to take a shower then. And my skin feels dry so ill have to oi… No, don’t worry about it, that’s what G+ is for.
use the telepathic anthropophagus kutzu vine to put some newer thoughts in your PCs to satart new fronts. Whatever really mattered six monthes ago will come back on the table and nourrish the game.
Or that.
I agree with Bastien. Telepathy, fresh start… There has to be something you can do there. Maybe they all get amnesia and have to do a group therapy session to remember who’s who and what’s where?
Fuck yes you are right, there’s something to do with it. I don’t know what exactly but we bitched about our collective inability as players to abord the psychic maelstrom upfront. I’m going to use that for starters, push there hard, ask question and let’s see where that takes us all. And if it stalls or falls flat, there’s always the 1st session playbook. Thanks guys! You rock.
My pleasure!
No worries. Just let us know how it goes 🙂
Or ask them how they dealt with it, what it cost them before they beat it back? You could make some supporting moves to deal with the outcomes or you could do the “you succeed, now pick x bad things” approach that was mentioned earlier in this community (I called it the “pick your poison” approach and I rather like it).
That’s the way I did. A second first session. But I also skept 2 years of game time. I asked questions like a crazy. What happended to you during theses two years? Our angel got a child. Our gunlugger killed his whole gang to recruit mercenaries and save his little ass from the army of General Lyon. Our Brainer became the infamous leader of a new stronghold… We all lived this as a second season of a show. And it was a great one.