Author: Craig Judd (Shiro Kuro)

I’m trying to come up with a good set of prompts to help establish how the world’s broken at the start of a new Apocalypse World game, and thought I’d maybe try out a “pick 3 options” approach to collaborative world-building.

I started MCing a new game of Apocalypse World today. A so-so start, but hopefully it’ll lead to bigger and better things.

How can I make it easier to start things off, especially with a new group? There wasn’t a lot of imbalance at the start apart from two PC relationships, and I didn’t want to start the game off by having those two guys shoot each other! Do I need to ask more questions? Find out who they deal with in their day-to-day and make trouble based on that? Have some established setting details for the players to build on? Was there another way I could have started things off?

Re: MC Moves – I find I have trouble holding all of them in my head at once, which interferes with my ability to make a decision at the table without always picking the most obvious thing or spending ages going down the list. So I sorted the MC Moves into categories. With only seven broad things to remember, I’m hoping I can juggle them more efficiently during play.

Positioning – separate them, capture someone.

Portents – announce future or off-screen badness.

Harm – trade or inflict harm (as established).

Stuff – take away, make them buy, activate downsides.

Choices – spell out consequences, offer an opportunity, put someone in a spot.

Reversal – turn their move back on them.

Fronts – make a threat move.

Now I have a shorter list to look over, and I should be able to winnow down the list more quickly by considering which categories are suited (or totally unsuited) to the current situation.

What do you think? Would you organise them differently? How do you remember the MC Moves and make your choices at the table?

Here’s a link to the AP of that one-on-one game I mentioned earlier.

I just started running a one-on-one AW game with a Hardholder, and I’m wondering about how to apply some of the descriptive/prescriptive things to do with their Holding.

For example, he chose a large population (200-300) which gives +1barter and +disease. Now, he’s been recruiting population into gangs, sending them away on missions or to occupy colony sites, and some have been dying of disease, so his population is approaching 150.

When it reaches the 75-150 population level of a standard Holding, should that trigger a loss of the extra barter and the disease tag? Or do those tags stick around until he buys them off with advances? Or something else? I think the former makes sense, but just wanted to make sure that’s how to treat Holding tags/upgrades…

I’ve been idly considering putting together a “World That Time Forgot” hack of AW, inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle et al’s pulp fiction of primal lands, savage people and dinosaurs… I figured that it’s at the opposite end of civilisation from AW, and suffers from similar scarcity, savagery, and dangers.

So far I’m just brainstorming a list of potential playbooks, including:

Thunder Hunter – specialises in hunting megafauna.

Beast-Dancer – trains large dangerous pets.

Archer – hunts at a distance, from the shadows.

Shaman – wields spiritual influence.

Chieftain – responsible for the tribe.

Lorekeeper – draws on tribal and ancestral memories.

??? – gathering and scouting.

Warrior – specialised in fighting other people.

Trapper – sets snares, pits, logfalls, builds stuff.

Does this sound like an interesting exercise to anyone else? Can anyone suggest other playbooks that might be interesting, or offer suggestions about the spread I have now?

We played the season final of our “London Calling” Apocalypse World campaign this week. Having taken a Holding, we’re taking a break for a bit. Also, had some issues regarding one player not really jibing with his playbook or some of the rules; I expect it’s due to a lack of familiarity with the system and the playbooks on both his and my part. Comments from more experienced Apocalypters welcome!

http://powerframe-rpg.blogspot.com/2013/02/aw-london-calling-20135.html

So apparently I can’t share with my Circles and a Community at the same time…

I ran our first Apocalypse World session for 2013 last night. The group consists of a Brainer, Gunlugger, and Savvyhead. It’s been a couple of months since we last played, so it took a while for everyone to remember what was going on!

The group’s working for a holding based in the Tower Bridge in the middle of London, which is allied with a holding based in the Tower of London itself. Last year they were mostly concerned about marauding bikies from the Brick Field, slave raiders from the Barrier Siltway holding (who were on a “recruitment drive” because their workforce was dying of a mystery illness), and that the Tower’s holder looked like they may have plans to fully annexe the Bridge or start a war.

This session they uncovered another problem – toxic waste is leeching into Hackney Marsh and contaminating the river. Because the Thames Barrier was closed before the end of the world, it’s built up a massive silt deposit that makes for great farmland, but has also caused the river to rise and slow. So, the contamination is slowly spreading upstream, and will eventually affect the Bridge’s farmland, leading to sickness and death as seen at the Barrier.

They’re working on a plan to get the Tower to deal with the toxic leak, while they assimilate refugees from the Barrier, and use their extra numbers to take over the Tower before it takes over the Bridge. Hopefully the Brickheads will hold back on their attacks until everything’s under control!

 😉

I’ve been idly mulling over the concept of an AW hack for classic Gibson cyberpunk. The Roles from CP2020 would be a good start, and some of them are pretty close already – Gunlugger -> Solo, Angel -> Medtech, even Brainer -> Netrunner. Reskin the Psychic Maelstrom as The Net.

I think I’d like to include “Edge” points, maybe similar to Lore in tremulus, to let characters do cool stuff somehow – either allowing a custom Move when you spend them, or allowing you to shift the results of any Move.

I think the AW engine would be much better suited to stories like those we see in the books than the CP2020 RPG is. With disparate PC groups, a Rocker or Techie in a party of Solos is more likely to be able to contribute meaningfully rather than either cowering up the back or being moulded into a de-facto Solo.

Thoughts? Has it been done? 🙂