Fronts and First Session Report-ish
My players out!
We started up our game of Apocalypse World with a nice double first session and now I am looking at the things established to create fronts. Our game has Jax the Hardholder, Columbine the Faceless, Hudson the Angel and Travis the Driver. The hardhold is an old dam. Most people in the hardhold live inside, there is electricity for the more important bits (reliant on an NPC). The hardhold is part Jax’s Gang and then there is the lower caste that does more manual work and then there are useful people that are kind of in between.
The gang is mostly there to protect the bustling market that goes on on the dam. There are a lot of traveling traders that go from hardhold to hardhold selling stuff. Travis is the personal driver of Jax, driving around in an old New York taxi. He smuggles, he makes important trading runs, he drives VIPs around or helps recrut useful assets. Hudson helps sick and injured citizens of the hardhold and is an available doctor on big market days. Columbine is muscle for hire.
There are 3 hardholds nearby. Junkyard to the south is build in and out of a giant waste dumb and junkyard. Petrol Springs is in the north and the only place you can get fuel. PaParadies used to be a “peaceful” sect of some kinds with really strong and firm social laws.
Problems that occurred during play or that I am seeing are:
The diseases going around the hardhold. It has already killed one of the hardhold’s Hunters, a few more people, including the Angel, are sick. President Jax has also closed of the street to the north, angering nearly all the merchants because they either can’t get further north. Can’t get in or can’t leave because they would need to get to Petrol Springs for a refill.
Travis was helping some of the Hunters (Comact, DVDs, Blueray) go hunt some bison but they were attacked on the run by a Humve that apparently came from PaParadise. They were attacked in the south, making this even weirder since no one remembers that car coming through and there is no other bridge, that anyone knows of. So I am really wondering where that car came from. During the car vs. car contest/struggle the car was hit by submachine gun fire and Blueray, unknown to everyone atm, was slightly hit and will most likely die from these wounds during the next few days. The hunters also lost Pellet to the disease and Compact, their chief, was kinda pissed at Hudson because she was able to help him and others, but not Pellet.
Columbine picked a fight with some Merchants (and later killed them) and Joe’s Girl has a big problem with her since the two look really alike and Joe’s Girl feels like Columbine is imposing on her territory. She also saw Columbine inspecting the blockade wall, looking for a way out and told President Jax about Columbine’s plans, wanting him to punish her for that.
So the two main fronts I see right now is the disease and the attacks from outside.
The outside stuff is clearly an ambition front.
The disease might be decay but I think even more that it is ignorance.
The threats for the disease are:
The disease itself, an affliction. Left unchecked it will spread and kill most of the population, especially the lower class. It will eat up all of the Angel’s resources if it doesn’t kill her before that. It will aggressively try to spread to Jax’s gang.
The hunters that feel ignored and uncared for are a Mob of Brutes. Left without help they will see Blueray die without anyone caring for that. They will be denied the dead body of Pellet (most likely) and then start to seperate themselves from the hold. At first they will stop paying their rent/tribute/tax to Jax and sell their food to everyone. They will attack whoever antagonizes them in their grief and outrage and will try to punish Hudson for not helping them out. They will most likely try to recruit Columbine for their cause.
Then there is the barricade/quarantine but it is kind of between the two fronts. Maybe I should separate it out between the ones that are inside and outside? Inside merchants then. Some of them will go but most will have no other place to go most likely. They will complain to President Jax and demand compensation. They will start fights between them to get by and after that attack the Gang and Jax directly to find a way out. They will most likely try to hire Columbine. The ones that do leave tell the tale of Leaky Lake (our hardhold) and warn everyone not to go there.
The Dark Future of the Disease front:
The holding is torn apart by rampaging Hunters and attacking merchants while the common people of the hold and Jax’s gang are killed or weakened by the disease
Stake questions:
Who will be worth priority treatment?
How much does Jax care about people not in his gang?
To what length will they go to keep the Angel in stock? What desperate deals need to be made?
Where do people turn for food if the hunting goes down, the mushroom farmers are sick (uh, another good place to spread disease) and trading isn’t going on?
The outside/ambition front.
There is the ambition of the locked out traders to make money and continue their normal routes.
There is the ambition of PaParadise that is launching raids.
There is the ambition of Joe’s Girl who wants to remove Columbine AND TAKE HER MASK (that just hit me!)
There is the ambition of Pierre who is the mistress of Jax and who is secretly a Double Agent. She is spying for Jax but also spying on him. We don’t know yet for whom.
The ambition of PaParadise is to bring the other holds down so they will also accept the strict social structure they believe in. To do that they will raid Petrol Springs and bring free petrol and a few gifts to the Merchant to make them come to their place again. They will take over PS and make it so that only believers can get petrol. They will extend an ultimatum to Leaky Lake, surrender or be attacked. They will attack and possibly take over the hold. They are clearly Warlord Prophets.
The merchants before the doors have the ambition to make money. They will try to find a way to still trade with Leaky Lake and then raise the prices. They will demand to have free access again and respond with violence if denied. Should this not work they will try to bribe their way in and once they are throug to the other side and free to act as they want they will conspire against Jax&co to find people to bring them down with and do that. Somewhere along the way they will most likely try to hire Columbine. They are a family (in a way) of brutes.
Joe’s Girl already made a demand that Columbine should be punished for her attempted breaking of the quarantine. She will find some friends to go beat Columbine up with to put her in her place. Should she act up again she will come for Columbine in her sleep, stab her and take the mask. If she has the Mask she will take a new name and then take Columbine’s name away (not sure what that means yet but it sounds right). She will then give her a new identity and “purpose of life” so that no one will ever mistake the two again.
I am feeling like there is some serious jealousy going on with Joe’s Girl, as if Columbines existence is tearing at her soul. She might be much more WEIRD then I thought she was.
For Pierre – I need to see more of her in play to know what is going on.
The Dark Future here is:
Helped by a backstab from the merchants, the cultists of PaParadise take over a weakened Leaky Lake and enforce their social structure on everyone who is willing to accept the new faith.
How does that look?
