Author: Patrick Henry Downs

In a traditional RPG, like say D&D or Shadowrun, if a PC is surrounded by enemies the GM rolls for every enemy to strike at the PC. In Apocalypse World, and all of it’s hacks, I’ve noticed that there isn’t really a decent way to emulate such a situation. Even if the PC succeeds at striking their primary opponent, they might still have two to five more people around them.

After a seize by force I’ve asked a player to act under fire to evade the attacks from other opponents. But making one roll doesn’t feel like it emphasizes the peril of the scenario, and making a roll for each opponent seems excessive to me.

As an MC how would you handle such a situation?

As a player how would you want an MC to handle the same situation?

I would like to play Apocalypse World, I often get stuck MCing but I would really like to play. I’d prefer to play face to face, but I also assume there probably aren’t enough people in the Madison, Wisconsin area to get a tabletop game together. I can probably play online but I don’t know of any groups that might meet regularly or semi-regularly and would appreciate an invite.

I created a riverboat captain (a trader but also a pirate) for my players to do business with.

So I’m looking at my notes for him and thinking…

My players have all been playing Apocalypse World for some time now, they’re familiar with the basic moves, they know how to game stat substitution and try to work up towards Ungiven Future advances.

So I’m looking at my notes for this NPC and thinking “I really want to fuck with the players’ expectations about who this guy is. I want him to be inscrutable and distant, but eager and greedy.”

when you read Honest Jon, unless you have the move advanced, you may only ask questions from this list:

– who, on your crew, do you trust the most?

– who is your crew’s weakest link?

– what’s worrying you right now?

– what do you want to get rid of?

– what do you want to hold onto (you won’t take barter for it)?

– how can I get you to take an interest in me?

– where are you headed after this, and when will you be back?

I can’t bring this up with my group, but I can blog about it.

I just realized that in the last two sessions of Apocalypse World that I played in a foursome happened between both PCs and NPCs. Two different groups, completely independently, with no prodding from me.

Sex moves!

The last session was fun and eventful.

My players sometimes forget when they have +1forward or +1ongoing, so I decided to create a utility pdf that lets me print off little card-sized reminders. The +1 cards have enough space to explain where it came from, though I just hand over the +1forward cards until a roll happens. I’ve found the blank cards are the perfect size for writing down 10+ and 7-9 results from my custom moves, and I also made a page of blank Mystery cards (6 to a page) so I can reference clues without having to remember the name of every NPC.

Our last session ended on a downer.

Last week our Maestro d’ hit a 12+ on an advanced Manipulate. He was convincing two guards into abandoning their paymaster and working for him instead. He chose to make these two guys, Birthday and June, allies of the guardian type. Thing is, both of these guys had flamethrowers and there are no stats for flamethrowers in the rulebook. I decided, on the fly, to give these weapons the stats of (4-harm ap close area reload).

I have a thing for flamethrowers, I blame Deadlands!