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!)

Apocalypse World: Trouble comes to Stagnant Waters

Pity is a brainer.  She's a small, slight woman, with a sweet face, but the feature that catches most people's attention is her eyes with their shattered pupils.  She dresses in a ragged couture evening dress and a single opera glove with wires that seem to have fused into her skin.

Unlike most residents of Stagnant Waters, she's not particularly tough.  All the same, most people give her a wide berth.  After all, rumour has it she can kill you with her brain.

I was hungry so I went to the canteen to see Mr Guava but he wasn't there on the top floor.  So I looked through the hatch and there was Chaplain talking to Cherry Bomb.  She's so pretty.  So I jumped down and I landed between them although I'm not sure how I got there.  And I'm not sure Chaplain wanted me there but Cherry Bomb said my dress was pretty and asked how I keep my skin so nice, so I told her about the red dust.  And she let me play with her hair.

Jet arrived with his gang and he didn't look very happy.  And a bounty hunter showed up looking for Jet, and they didn't look very happy either, so I thought it would be nice if Cherry Bomb protected me if a fight happened, but I must have thought it too hard because that thing happened where her eyes went all red and blood came out of her nose.

I was a bit worried but she got up and went to talk to the bounty hunter.  They were all covered in grenades, and I was scared they might try to blow us all up.  So I thought it would be nice if Chaplain protected me instead, but when I touched him I was looking at Cherry Bomb and I thought about how I wanted to make her jealous, and I must have thought that right because Chaplain picked me up and put me in his lap and looked at me ever so nicely.

Anyway, there was a fight, and the bounty hunter got away but Mr Guava got killed and he hadn't finished cooking my snake, so I went and got in the bar and used the pulley to go downstairs and find the kitchen, and my snake had got burnt but I ate it anyway.

Cherry Bomb invited me to a sleepover and we had a pillow fight and braided each other's hair.  It was really nice.  She let me touch her hair and I was careful not to think too hard about anything this time.

The bounty hunter said they'd be back in three days so Chaplain went out looking for them before that and found them and thought he'd killed them and brought back a piece of metal.  But I saw an engraving on the back and Jet recognised the picture and we realised they were with Veritas and that meant they probably weren't dead.  So Jet decided he could still do his original plan of strapping them to the roof of the canteen and letting the sun do the job, which made one of his gang very excited.

We needed information first though, and I needed my dress fixing, so we went to see the tailor.  Cherry Bomb invited him to a party but he didn't seem convinced so I told him that was why I needed my dress to look nice and Cherry Bomb paid him to fix it and that was enough to convince him and he told us all about the bounty hunter whose name was Tiramisu and liked bombs and some things called stamps.  I told Cherry Bomb that I liked bombs too but I don't think she heard me.

Jet didn't seem to like my new dress when we got back to the canteen but he liked that we knew about Tiramisu.  Chaplain knew where to find a post office which is where the stamps live.  The problem was that we had to go through Green Radish territory to get there.

Jet wasn't sure if he wanted to take me with the others to get to the post office and wanted to know what I could do, which seemed a bit rude, so I walked up and stroked his face and thought about how nice it would be if he told everyone how great I am instead.  And he told his gang how I could take out any one of them, which I could probably do if I thought hard enough, and some other nice things, and then it wore off, but he was still impressed so I got to go for a ride on a bike with one of his gang.

The Green Radish territory was very creepy and there were bits of broken bikes and flowers with teeth and snakes that weren't the kind that's nice to eat but had human skin which reminded me of things.  And we had to leave the bikes behind and the light and the colours were all wrong.  So I stayed close to Chaplain to keep an eye out in case the snakes got close but he knew the way and we got to the tunnel down to the post office, but when we got there there was a bomb on the grating so we couldn't open it.

Chaplain thought maybe he could collapse the tunnel but then we still wouldn't be able to get in.  So I decided to open my mind and see what came into it.  And then I was the wind blowing down the tunnel and then up and out of a vent further down the tunnel.  So I got back in my head and told them we could get in that way instead but it would be a very long way down.

Jet and his gang had lots of wire for us to climb down, but it was very thin wire and it cut my hands and they got all slippery.  Then I couldn't hold on any more and started falling, but then Chaplain put out his arm and caught me and carried me down, so I told him he was my favourite and went to look for the post office.

It looked like nobody had been in there for ages, but that couldn't be right because we were looking for Tiramisu.  So I went in and saw some red dots on the wall, so I told the others about the pretty laser pointers and then threw myself on the ground so I wouldn't get shot.  And I didn't get shot while Tiramisu talked to the others but I did see lots of rats wearing backpacks so I told them about those too.  Then the backpacks exploded and some of Jet's gang exploded too, but I was OK down on the floor.

Jet called Tiramisu a coward and they came out to fight us properly and Jet beat them up, and I thought maybe I could think about giving up and surrendering but I thought too hard again and blood came out of Tiramisu's nose, but it was OK in the end and we all got back to the canteen and tied Tiramisu to the roof just like Jet wanted.

I think they're all my friends now.