Looking to Start an Apocalypse World Game

[Queluna]

Apocalypse World is a pen and paper roleplaying game, similar to dungeons and dragons, though with much fewer rules and therefore a much more cinematic and story-driven rather than mechanically-driven plotline.  There are no status quos in Apocalypse World, everything is constantly changing for better or worse, and usually its for the worse.  Gangs rise and fall, settlements form and fall apart, warlords carve out their own territory after a bloody struggle only to have another more powerful warlord come in and reap the benefits of all their work.

Somewhere in there, you the players exist.  Whether you're a chopper or driver riding about from place to place, robbing travelers and stealing from settlements, or whether you're a hardholder trying to keep what little order you have established, you get to decide how you want to make your way in this post-apocalyptic wasteland.

I am looking for only two or three players tops.  I'd like for people to understand that this isn't necessarily a first come first serve basis, I will be selecting persons based on how active they can be, how interesting of a character concept they have, and hopefully if timezones match.

This will be taking place on the Light: Human Small Groups board.

I would like for the roleplay in the thread to be moving at a fairly constant place, hopefully with posts coming in at least every other day.  Though erotic events might occur, they will for the most part be either summarized within a few posts from each participating party, or perhaps go to make a spin-off thread of their own whilst the story continues on the main thread.

If you are interested in playing, let me know the top two or tree classes that appeal to you.  Also let me know what your timezone is, how often you think you'd be able to post, and what sort of setting (why/when/how did the apocalypse happen?) that you'd like to see.

You can look through the following link for a list of playbooks, along with the abilities and statistics that each of these playbooks gets.  Don't worry too much about the mechanics of these classes, look moreso for what you think you'd have more fun playing as, as opposed to what you think would be most efficient.

http://apocalypse-world.com/ApocalypseWorld-playbooks.pdf

Hope to hear from you guys soon!

[meikle]

Pick meeee!

I am interested in playing a gunlugger, a brainer, or a hardholder, in that order.  I have an idea bouncing around for Gunlugger with the Cool-1 Hard+2 Hot-2 Sharp+1 Weird+2 layout.  Just a real nuts chick with way too many guns.  I've got a picture in my mind of like really bulky armor decorated with reflector tape.

Brainer ideas are probably more subdued.

[Lorelei]

I love AW!  I am waiting to be re-verified and hopefully will be done soon.  Would love to play a Skinner or Battlebabe or Maestro'd or Operator. 

[meikle]

I don't have particulars to weigh in about setting stuff, but I thought this was interesting for inspiration for worlds that are noticeably foreign from ours (perhaps because of an apocalypse or some other anomaly): http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/nasa-predicts-colour-alien-plants/

[Queluna]

Lorelei, I see that you are verified now!  Still interested in playing by chance?  If so, do you have any preference between the playbooks?  I'm not sure what Maestro'd is, I'm guessing that's part of some expansion thing, but for this I'll probably ask people to use only core/basic playbooks.

In any case, none of the playbooks you seem to be interested in appear to be conflicting with Meikle's own choices, so perhaps if one or the other is more appealing, you can try to figure that out.  Or perhaps you'd like to chat with Meikle a bit to figure if you two could pick an interesting pair that might shape the sort of campaign we wind up going with.

[Lorelei]

I think I'll take the Skinner.  That would be quite the contrast with the Gunlugger.

[Queluna]

Okay, sounds good :D  If it's not too much trouble to ask, do you mind writing up a character sheet for her?  I suppose I should have asked that in the first post, a character sheet to give me an idea of the character and whatnot would probably be an excellent way to help me figure out who to pull into the party :)  It might also give others some ideas as well!

In any case, just don't fill out the HX part yet until the others get written up as well.  Perhaps Meikle can do the same!

[meikle]

Here is probably what my Gunlugger will look like (the Gunlugger name list leaves a lot to be desired):

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Name: Keeler
Look: Woman, battered old armor, worn face, sad eyes, hard body

Cool: -1 do something under fire
Hard:+2 go aggro, seize something by force
Hot: -2 seduce or manipulate
Sharp: +1 read a sitch, read a person
Weird: +2 open your brain

Hx help, interfere, session end
  Character A +X
  Character B +X
  Character C +X

Gear & Barter
assault rifle (3-harm close loud autofire)
magnum (3-harm close reload loud)
shotgun (3-harm close messy)
grenades (4-harm hand area reload messy)

armor worth 2-armor (think scratched-together riot gear)

oddments worth 1-barter

Moves
Battle-Hardened: when you act under fire, roll+hard instead of roll+cool.
Fuck this shit: name your escape route and roll+hard.  On a 10+, sweet, you're gone.  On a 7-9, you can go or stay, but if you go it costs you: leave something behind, or take something with, you the MC will tell you what.
NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH: in battle, you count as a gang (3-harm gang small), with armor according to the circumstances.

so let's get some more people in here for Keeler to stand in front of when bad guys open fire hooray

[Rook Seidhr]

Hi! AW is one of my very favorite games, and I'd love to try it here. I'm interested in the Savvyhead, Hocus or Angel. I'm in US Eastern timezone, I can post more than once a day, and I'm sort of interested in an apocalypse where things got overtaken by Nature, full of poisonous plants and dangerous animals, rather than the usual bleak desert-like expanse.

Character sheet for a savvyhead:

Name: Westinghouse
Look: man; utility wear plus tech (ancient military fatigues and web gear with oddments a-dangle); open face; appraising eyes; wiry body
Stats: Cool-1, Hard=0, Hot+1, Sharp+1, Weird+2
Moves: bonefeel, spooky intense
Gear: 3-barter, 9mm pistol (2-harm close loud), heavy jacket with ballistic cloth lining (1-armor)
Workspace: controlled growing environment, weird-ass electronica, transmitters and receivers

[Lorelei]

The Skinner

Name: Venus
Look: Woman, luxe wear, beautiful face, arresting eyes, quick hands, toned body
Stats: Cool +1, Hard +1, Hot +2, Sharp +1, Weird -2
Moves:  An Arresting Skinner, Artful & Gracious
Gear: hidden knives (2 harm hidden infinite), Skin & hair kit, Long gorgeous coat, oddments worth 1 barter

[Queluna]

Hi! AW is one of my very favorite games, and I'd love to try it here. I'm interested in the Savvyhead, Hocus or Angel. I'm in US Eastern timezone, I can post more than once a day, and I'm sort of interested in an apocalypse where things got overtaken by Nature, full of poisonous plants and dangerous animals, rather than the usual bleak desert-like expanse.

Character sheet for a savvyhead:

Name: Westinghouse
Look: man; utility wear plus tech (ancient military fatigues and web gear with oddments a-dangle); open face; appraising eyes; wiry body
Stats: Cool-1, Hard=0, Hot+1, Sharp+1, Weird+2
Moves: bonefeel, spooky intense
Gear: 3-barter, 9mm pistol (2-harm close loud), heavy jacket with ballistic cloth lining (1-armor)
Workspace: controlled growing environment, weird-ass electronica, transmitters and receivers

I'm really curious about your workspace.   Controlled growing environment... does he grow plants or food of some sort?  Does the weird-ass electronica play any part in controlling this growth, or perhaps in transmitting and receiving things?  How are all of these going to work together to provide an interesting workspace?

[Rook Seidhr]

I'm really curious about your workspace.   Controlled growing environment... does he grow plants or food of some sort?  Does the weird-ass electronica play any part in controlling this growth, or perhaps in transmitting and receiving things?  How are all of these going to work together to provide an interesting workspace?

The controlled growing environment is predicated on the lush, toxic apocalyptic world I mentioned; if it were a barren place, he'd have something different. He's experimenting with breeding plants that interface with electronics. It'll also come in handy for growing medicines once he gets the life support advancement, but that's down the road.

He has a dozen projects at any time, but among his current lines of research are bionic limbs made from plant material, and transmitters that will control wild animals that have been surgically implanted with slave chips. More prosaically, he repairs the hardhold's precious few walkie-talkies, allowing the patrols to stay in touch when they can't see each other, which is nearly always.

[meikle]

Here is an idea I batted off toward Queluna, in the terrible short-form I originally wrote it:

overgrown plant apocalypse in the remains of what used to be a dedicated prison moon
hardholds built in the remains of prison-complexes that span miles, jungles full of black-leaved trees and hellish alien monsters between

I mean, if we're distancing ourselves from the classic apocalypse, why not distance ourselves from the site of the classic apocalypse, too?  Maybe a few hundred thousand astral units away.

[Lorelei]

That sounds fun!

[Rook Seidhr]

I mean, if we're distancing ourselves from the classic apocalypse, why not distance ourselves from the site of the classic apocalypse, too?  Maybe a few hundred thousand astral units away.

The only question I have about that is, how does a prison world jibe with the plenty-of-gasoline-and-bullets assumption?

[meikle]

Isn't it enough bullets and gasoline?  We don't have anyone who drives, so gasoline isn't a big issue.  Otherwise, it's the stuff that the people who provided the infrastructure to support a world-spanning prison-industrial complex relied on.  It's a life-bearing world, it's probably got its own fossil fuels too that might have been in production in the golden age.

Bullets, I mean, you cover a jungle-moon full of monsters with prisons, and then you stuff those prisons full of monsters, of course you send that world plenty of bullets, probably even put together some bullet-producing infrastructure, even if that infrastructure is lost since the end of the Golden Age, when supplies from the sky stopped arriving and the prisons broke open.

When I say it's a prison world, I mean, the idea I had in mind is that it was a prison world; they're not prisons anymore, or if they are, it's because the survivors of the apocalypse decided to start taking prisoners again, rather than suggesting that there's still an authority running the show here.

[Rook Seidhr]

We don't have anyone who drives, so gasoline isn't a big issue.

Eh, as long as I can shoot people and run my generator, I'm fine.

[Frank Reshman]

So...did I miss this?  :(   FUARK.  Ah well, let me know if anything goes catastrophically wrong with one of your other players!  This sounds right up my alley. 

All the best!

[Queluna]

Feel free to pitch a character idea, Frank :D

[Queluna]

Okay, so I want everybody to contribute to trying to create this world, the story and the characters to populate it.

Lorelei/Venus, what beauty is there to be appreciated on a planet that's out to kill you? How is it that you fit into this world?

Riveda/Westinghouse, which animals are you looking into controlling?  Do you expect to get a full remote function, or perhaps just be able to steer them toward/away from the camp when you desire?  Who's the one that goes out to gather specimens for you to experiment on?

Meikle/Keeler, how did you come to be at the hardhold that we've yet to develop?  Is she comfortable doing grunt work for others in the interest of the hardhold, or is she out for herself in some way, perhaps just passing through?

[Rook Seidhr]

Riveda/Westinghouse, which animals are you looking into controlling?  Do you expect to get a full remote function, or perhaps just be able to steer them toward/away from the camp when you desire?  Who's the one that goes out to gather specimens for you to experiment on?

Razortongues, mostly, there're a lot of them in the swamps to the south of the hold. They look kind of like pigs with frog-faces (this is a purely OOC comparison if we're on an alien planet where neither pigs nor frogs are likely ever to have been imported) and they have the disposition of hippopotami: herbivores who attack without warning or reason. A field that would steer them away from the hold would make life a lot safer. Chipping a couple of them for absolute control and using them as guard dogs would make life a lot safer.

Ragazzi does some of my sample collecting. She's fast and crazy brave and I just know she's gonna grow up to be a battlebabe. Maybe Keeler does some work for me too?

[Lorelei]

Lorelei/Venus, what beauty is there to be appreciated on a planet that's out to kill you? How is it that you fit into this world?

1.  Darwin's Rose (named by original colonists many generations ago) is a flower of surpassing beauty, whose nectar can be distilled into a potent narcotic and aphrodisiac.  The thorns of the plant, however, are deadly poison.

2.  Addicts of the rose abound and seek all manner of pleasures.  Who better to fulfill them than I? 

[meikle]

Maybe Keeler does some work for me too?

Keeler is pretty good at killing things, and she's pretty good at standing in the line of fire without breaking too much of a sweat, but she wouldn't probably take home many rewards for precision work.  So like, if you're okay with getting your samples back full of bullets, she might be able to work something out.  If you're more like, I need these things captured alive or killed clean, you might get a sample filled with bullets anyway and a live grenade if you don't pay for it, so probably better not to hire her for that kind of work in the first place.

If this hold's been populated long enough, then Keeler's a native, born and raised.  If it's not that old, and I'm not saying it is or isn't, then she came by as a hired gun riding with a caravan of ATVs and big off-road vehicles, and found better work here (or at least, more exciting.)   Keeler's out to do good by herself, but sometimes the best way to manage that is blowing off some poor motherfucker's head for a little bit of jingle.  In that sense, she's pretty mercenary; she's got her own concerns, and she tends to throw in with whoever can best support her fulfilling those.

[Winterborn]

Ugh, why? Why do I always come late to these things? Especially now that I can actually see how the game works!

meikle, you should be feeding my addiction, seeing as how you're the one who got me hooked!

[meikle]

Ugh, why? Why do I always come late to these things? Especially now that I can actually see how the game works!

meikle, you should be feeding my addiction, seeing as how you're the one who got me hooked!

there's still room

[Queluna]

You've still time to post a thing, Winterborn :P  We haven't exactly started yet!  And I still haven't technically accepted any characters just yet either <.<

Meikle, who owns the hold?  What have they done that has kept you and the other muscle from leaving?

Riveda, what is the hold?  Is it an old prison cell, an armory, an abandoned quarry or what?

Lorelei, who are the people that call this place home?  How long have they been here, and what do they do in their free time?

[Winterborn]

Name: Bossman Lane.
Look: Man, uniform/armor, strong face, sharp eyes, massive body

Cool: +1 do something under fire
Hard:+2 go aggro, seize something by force
Hot: +1 seduce or manipulate
Sharp: +1 read a sitch, read a person
Weird: -2 open your brain

Hx help, interfere, session end
  Character A +X
  Character B +X
  Character C +X

Gear & Barter
Handgun (2-harm loud close).
Combat knife (2-harm hand).
Canvas uniform with hardened leather plating. (fashion/1-armor)

Moves
Leadership: when your gang fights for you, roll+hard. On a 10+, hold
3. On a 7–9, hold 1. Over the course of the fight, spend your hold 1 for 1 to
make your gang:
• make a hard advance
• stand strong against a hard advance
• make an organized retreat
• show mercy to their defeated enemies
• fight and die to the last
On a miss, your gang turns on you or tries to hand you over to your enemy.

Wealth: If your hold is secure and your rule unchallenged, at the
beginning of the session, roll+hard. On a 10+, you have surplus at hand and
available for the needs of the session. On a 7–9, you have surplus, but choose
1 want. On a miss, or if your hold is compromised or your rule contested,
your hold is in want. The precise values of your surplus and want depend on
your holding, as follows.

Holding
Hold (surplus: 2+barter, want: famine, obligation 2-armor)
Gang (2-harm gang large 1-armor)

The Outfit is a large, well-disciplined gang which has recently taken control of prison-cum-fortress, under the command of Bossman Lane. They used to be a somewhat nomadic company of mercenaries, inevitably leaving a few men and picking up a few more at every settlement they hired on with. Now they're more like a standing military force, ruling over the lands around the prison by dint of superior might and sheer ruthlessness where keeping their new home is concerned. While the Armory did not hold the weapons they had hoped to seize, and thus make themselves a serious force to be reckoned with, the secure base of operations it provides has ensured their continued survival.

Separated into nine man squads, the Outfit men rotate each week between the duties of patrolling, hunting, and policing the Hold, as well as any other needful chores. This ensures that no one goes stir-crazy from spending time inside the walls, or provokes Murphy by always being outside with the rovers and beasts.

Outside the gang itself, more than a hundred less warlike men and women have gathered under its protection, housing themselves in a cellblock attached to the Armory. They are more or less tolerated by the gang and their leader, who have little or no use for the largely drug-addled populace. Outfit men leave the people more or less to themselves, and the people know better than to cause problems for their protectors. Bossman Lane has a strong desire to make something of all the hands at his disposal, but beyond figuratively lashing them into bringing in some food and keeping things generally clean, he has had little success on that end. He has twice threatened to evict any addicts at gunpoint, both incidents leading to a brief period of industry and compliance, soon to return to another stretch of Rose induced complacency. Many a meeting between the Bossman and his officers has been spent discussing a way to wean their charges off the stupefying drug, in order to make them more useful in the long run.

Often, it's necessary to assign a squad or so to chivy the work parties along at their daily tasks; trash has to be carried off and dumped, gardens have to be tended, and carcasses have to be skinned and butchered, and those products tanned and cooked. The Outfit relies on the leather of thick skinned animals for new armor, and the meat and vegetables produced by the populace just to survive; they demand that the people do their share in this regard, since without their presence, the guards could tend to their own individual needs with far less trouble.

Lane does keep his eye out for anyone in the Hold who is more than a layabout Rosie, though. Anyone who can keep their head clear two days in a row is offered a position in the Outfit, with the promise of a clean bed, hot food, and a place in the Armory whenever they need sanctuary. Refusals are disappointing, but he's still willing to hire people in the short-term for the same or comparable rates; given that his gang is mostly kept busy by patrolling the wilderness, collecting tithes, and keeping an eye on the populace, it's always nice to have some specialists hanging around.

[meikle]

Meikle, who owns the hold?  What have they done that has kept you and the other muscle from leaving?

Winterborn's character owns the hold.  Let's ask him what's been done to keep Keeler and the other muscle from leaving!

[Queluna]

Hurray, a hardholder :D Go for it Winterborn!

that saves me a whole lot of work on stuff :P

i guess we should cancel out the previous questions i sent, as for the most part i was just trying to organize the hold, though now that will be up to winterborn :D

[Umbral Sanguinus]

Just wanted to say good luck guys, I look forward to seeing how your apocalypse develops. :)

[Winterborn]

• Cool+1 Hard+2 Hot+1 Sharp+1 Weird-2 is the statline I'm looking at right now. The Holder is a persuasive guy with a head screwed tight on his shoulders, but he's firmly grounded in the real world, mainly the here and now. Maybe not the best at looking to the future, but he's kept his hold going so far. He's a fighter too, leads from the front whenever trouble rears its ugly head, always the first one to jump in when a fight starts with the whole weight of his people behind him.

The Hold itself is an armory, which is the main fortress for the Hold, and an attached cellblock which is a more general area for the population. If the Armory is the castle, Cellblock D is the village that grew up around it.

for gigs, add protection tribute. Surplus: +1barter, want: +obligation.
your gang is large instead of medium, 60 violent people or so.
your gang is well-disciplined. Drop unruly
your compound is tall, deep and mighty, of stone and iron. Your gang gets +2armor when fighting in its defense.

That's what I have so far for stats, but I need two drawbacks, and I'm willing to take suggestions on that as well as anything above. The Hold is pretty young, since the Holder founded it along with his gang, which is and was big enough and well-trained enough to take and hold the area. The Holder is more like a military governor than anything else, being leader of his gang on top and the populace down low. The bit about a mighty compound seemed obvious to me, since prisons are built to keep people out as much as in.

Thoughts? Questions?

[meikle]

Focusing all of your benefits on your gang gives you less room to play with your drawbacks.  A lot of the ones you picked are directly contrary to certain drawbacks:

You're enforcing tribute, so cross off owning tribute.  Your gang is large, so cross off small.  Your gang is disciplined, so cross off fucking hyenas.  Presumably, since your armory is an armory, it's not for shit, even if it's not stocked up like it used to be.  So cross off your armory is for shit.  The hold is a prison and the compound is an armory, so it's not mostly tents, so cross off lean-tos and wooden walls.

Leaves you with:

Filthy and unwell, lazy and drug-stupored, decadent and perverse, pick two out of three.  You've got a big gang, but the people outside of it are pathetic.

[Rook Seidhr]

That's what I have so far for stats, but I need two drawbacks, and I'm willing to take suggestions on that as well as anything above.

Well, we've got this narcotic aphrodisiac flower going around, I'd say "the population is lazy and drug-stupored" is a natural.

[Winterborn]

I was actually thinking that the Armory was less "unstocked" and more "stripped bare". But apart from that, what do you think think I could change up about the gang? Maybe they're savage instead of well-disciplined? I dunno, mainly because I'm doing this on the fly and I'm kind of all jumbled up on it.

So armory for shit and people are junkies. How do y'all feel about it? I'm getting the sense that the Holder made a much better Chopper than he does a Holder in a lot of ways, but it's not like he's been doing this for very long. Maybe he doesn't really see the general population as his problem? Maybe he just doesn't really know what to do with these drugged up bastards filling up his cellblock?

[meikle]

I think I came across more authoritatively than I intended to; that was just my basic examination of the situation!

Anyway, I'm going to consider swapping Keeler out for a brainer -- I'm not sure that gunlugger will be as interesting to play if she's surrounded by soldiers.  I'll give it some thought.

edit: Trimmed down in response to Winterborn's edit!

edit2: After further consideration, probably will keep Keeler.

[Winterborn]

Hey, meikle, I opened up for suggestions! Don't be weirded out just because I look at your advice and go "Wow, that makes some sense..."

[meikle]

Yeaah, I just don't want to come across like I'm telling you what to do!  I think the stripped armory is a good choice; this gives you a gang that's pretty terrifying, but it doesn't quite leave the rest of the population out there hanging like they don't matter.  I think that's important, because a hardholder who doesn't care about their hold is, like you kind of said, more just a chopper (albeit a chopper with a big entourage.)  If you take a look at your moves, as a hardholder, you get two: one is making your gang do stuff for you, and the other is getting the benefit of your Hold.

I think having the character be distant about the hold at first could be cool, but I'd hope it doesn't really stay that way!  A hardholder who doesn't care about their hold will probably see it burn down around them pretty quickly.

[Winterborn]

I'm thinking that it's much more that he just plainly has no idea what to do about them than anything else. He's used to running a big gang of elite warriors who don't need fancy guns, they'll just ram straight through anyone who fucks with them. A bunch of strung-out rosies who spend all their time staring at the walls talking about teh koloooours? Hell's he supposed to do with that? Can't make 'em fight worth a damn, can barely get them to do any damn work, what good are they?

But it's not apathy, really. He tolerates their presence, gives them a safe place to stay and keeps the critters and the plants and the jungleboys from trying to eat them. That's the biggest thing about the Hold itself: It's safe, as safe as anywhere can be on this forsaken planet.

[Queluna]

Well I think I like the group that we've got :D  A Hardholder, Skinner, Savvyhead an Gunlugger.  I might start up a thread in the next couple days, both and OOC and an IC thread, that I'll link here.

If you are still interested in playing but haven't been approved yet, still feel free to post a character idea into this thread.  If something happens to one or more of the current players, or if I feel like I can take on an extra player or two, I'll pick people up from here.

[Umbral Sanguinus]

I can do that.

Winter
Battlebabe
Cool+3 Hard-2 Hot+1 Sharp+1 Weird+1
Moves: Ice Cold and Visions of Death
Custom Weapons: scoped, ap rifle and bladed, hidden chains
Winter is a wanderer haunted by the memories she is trying to run from.

[Queluna]

Okay I made a shitty OOC post!  Get in there, post sheets and develop your Hx!

https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=174863.0