So, about the only genre that hasnt been Powered by the Apocalypse yet is Young Adult/teen Future Dystopias- and I’m thinking of movie series: Hunger Games, Divergent and Maze Runner. SPOILERS for those series below as I deconstruct them.
Seriously- SPOILERS! (if you care about teen dystopia movies/books)
Having watched them recently, I’m spotting the ur-plot and archetypes shared by all and thinking how they would break down into Playbooks:
:The Rebel/Exception/Hero- the lead character who does not conform to convention, and in defying adult society causes its collapse (Katniss/Tris/Thomas)
:The Love Interest (Gale/Four/Teresea (sorta))
:The Collaborator/Yes Man – he conforms to society and betrays the hero to the adults (Peeta/Caleb or Peter/Gally)
:The Tragic Sacrifice – their role is to be the emotional heart of the group, and whose death motivates the Hero- (Rue/Will/Chuck)
:The Manipulative Evil Adult – the force of repression, the Man to rebel against (President Snow/Jeanine/Ava Paige)
:The Good Parent- an adult they can trust who may also die to allow the Hero to lead (Haymitch/Natalie/Alby)
:The Techie/Expert- even in a post-apocalypse, someone knows more than the rest of how things work- they provide exposition to the hero: (Beetee/Tori/Minho)
Plot elements:
Rite of Passage: A selection for your role in society: Tribute Lottery/Faction selection/Glader roles
Rite of Passage: A life threatening contest: Hunger Games/Dauntless Training/The Maze
Destruction of all you hold dear: Massacre of District 12/Abnegation massacre/Greivers attack the Glade
Heroic sacrifice for another/greater good: The heros risks or surrenders all to save others: “They want me- I wont let anyone else be hurt” : Katniss volunteering in HG and risking the Cornucopia and talking to Snow/Tris surrenders to Erudite to stop the suicides/Thomas jumps into the maze to help Alby
Open Rebellion: Mockingjay Rebellion/Dauntless and Factionless allying/Fighting the Greivers and Escaping the Maze
Thoughts? Is there a good mix of playbooks that would make this a fun mash up of the teen drama and coming of age of Monsterhearts with the grim and gritty survival of Apocalypse World? All of these YA future dystopias are about teenagers refusing to define themselves by the choices the established order forces upon them and discovering/becoming themselves and in so doing, destroying the unfair society that victimises them.
Of interest: https://twitter.com/dystopianya
Also Misspent Youth is a good dystopian rebellion game, you might get ideas from it? I also haven’t read Dream Askew, but I know it’s a PbtA game that subverts authority in some ways.
J. Walton had something like that in the works!
I believe there’s an Apocalypse World hack to this effect, about being you the in a community and the learning and bending of rules but for the life of me I can’t remember the name.
Yeah, it’s my short hack The Afterborn (hopefully out by the end of the year, but who knows), but that doesn’t mean there can’t be other entries in this popular genre.
Here’s an old draft, but the newer one is going to be much better: https://corvidsun.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/afterborn_061412.pdf
i feel like t his is just a straight apocalypse world game almost
Thought the other day about setting a game of Monsterhearts on a space station. Might do it.