Tag: Rob Alexander

The Apocalypse World first session worksheet has eight Fundamental Scarcities marked on it. To wit:

Hunger

Thirst

Ignorance

Fear

Decay

Despair

Envy

Ambition

The book doesn’t explain what the point of this theme list is, but I can see how the first six, at least, a clear themes of the game. Post-apocalyptic settings get a lot of their emotional power from those things.

There are other things not on the list that could motivate threats – bad blood, tradition, war (on a larger scale), lust… but they’re not there. That implies a selectivity – things not on that list are not so important. They don’t drive towards the themes that the game is about.

So… with that in mind, does anyone have any good ideas for how we might adapt this idea to Dungeon World, or to any similar kitchen-sink fantasy game?

Not so much a question about *W games as such, more about Fronts in these or any other game:-

Do you track opportunities explicitly, just as you do threats/dangers?

By “opportunities” I mean a pretty broad set of things – treasures, magical or technological items, possible allies, potential helpful suggestions (or offers of help) from NPCs, things that the PCs could do to strengthen themselves that they may not have thought up.

The Fronts guidance in both DW and AW doesn’t say anything about this – it only tells you to record the threats.