First Time Playing: Apocalypse World

I've played a lot of PBTA games over the last few years (and even made my own) but I've only just had the opportunity to play the game that started it all: Apocalypse World.

We had four players plus the GM, and began by choosing playbooks.  I went for the Brainer, having had a sneak peak the previous night, and the others picked the Battlebabe, Chopper and Gunlugger.  There was then the now pretty routine process of picking options for name, appearance, gear, attributes and moves.  Then came relations, here known as history, for some reason shortened to Hx.  We each had some questions to ask the other players, which established some initial connections between us and gave us an idea of how we felt about each other.

To give us all a bit of focus for this one-shot, the GM asked us all to come up with a goal for our characters.  More sensible characters wanted money and respect.  I decided my weird Brainer just wanted people to be her friends, and if that meant using her mind powers to force them to do nice things for her on pain of pain, then so be it.

And in we went.  Things kicked off in a canteen.  Thanks to the GM having been watching the brilliant and annoying cancelled Blood Drive the barman was briefly modelled after Julian Slink, although after he'd been named via madlibs and ended up called Guava Seattle, his personality might have shifted a bit.  From there things proceeded in the largely improvised fashion that I'm familiar with from other PBTA games.

For how the whole thing went down see Trouble Comes to Stagnant Waters.

Other than the game itself, which was a delightful romp through a Mad Max style future and which I'm very much hoping to play again, the most interesting thing was comparing how much of this game can be found in the many other PBTA games out there.  The Sprawl loses the XP triggers and replaces them with character agendas and mission targets.  Kult: Divinity Lost drops the playbook aspect for a more flexible approach to character creation, while my own Matrons of Mystery does away with special moves entirely.  But the original game's DNA can be seen running through everything that it inspired.

There were a few bits I didn't really get.  I entirely understood the mechanics of Hx rolling over when it reached +4 and gaining an XP.  I just didn't understand why.  Maybe if I play more it'll start to make sense but at this point it really feels more mechanical than narrative.

Not that that matters.  A game doesn't literally revolutionise RPGs without being pretty damn amazing.

(And yes, I know Apocalypse World calls the GM an MC.  That doesn't mean I have to!)