Apocalypse World [Recruitment]

[Shjade]

Apocalypse World is a tabletop RPG with a pretty pared-down approach to rules and an emphasis on story and character development, particularly with regard to player characters interacting with each other (and not always in a positive or constructive way - you know, like in life). The setting, as one might gather from the name, is post-apocalyptic, though exactly what form that takes is shaped by the Master of Ceremonies (aka: Game Master) and the players as we craft the world around us through play. You can find the basics on the mechanics of the game and its playbooks (aka: character classes) here.

A few of us started up a new campaign of AW here not too long ago, but it's on pause at the moment as one of our players has some other things to deal with for a couple of weeks, so in the interim it seemed like a good idea to open up a thread for new interest in the game from other players. Our current cast includes Cold Heritage as the Faceless, CarnivaloftheGoat as the Driver, and Ebb as the Skinner, so those books are spoken for, but the rest are on the table. I'm Shjade and I'll be your Master of Ceremonies, pretending to have a plan while making it up as I go to keep things interesting and varied for everyone who takes a stab at surviving Apocalypse World.

For a general feel of what the world is like at present: The most stable nearby community is a bit more on the rigid side, not so much because of wealth or violence, but because of, well, ignorance, really. The Contents aren't terrible folk, and they're not stupid, but it's hard to put a whole lotta faith in people who put theirs in some scrap of paper nailed to the wall they swear tells them who they are. As long as you do right by them, they'll do right by you. Mostly. Mega, the Faceless, makes a living here scavenging meat and selling it to the commune for whatever other goods he might need, with some other violence on the side as opportunities arise. One of those opportunities led to the Contents thinking ill of June, the Skinner, for inciting Mega to make a messy example of one of their own. Funny how a group takes that kind of thing personally.

As for the territory around them, well, it's not exactly lush. Meat's mostly competing with the wildlife for scavenging what you can, and the only greens around are what meager growing they can manage in the Contents' commune - nothing to brag about, but more than anything else in easy reach, enough to draw attention from anyone who'd care about that sort of thing. Water's a lot easier to come by, just not the sort you'd want to try drinking unless you're the desperate sort (though, really, who isn't these days). Dark weather's more likely to rain down lightning than anything else, and a good wind will have you gagging on grit for days if you don't button up.

There's a long-dead riverbed on the south side of the Contents' camp that goes on for miles, pretty much a long winding gulch that ends up at the Basein. Creative folks that they are, the fellows who decided to build their home in the old lake bed just said at some point they oughtta build a base in it, and the thought became the name. They get by mostly on trading what water they can dredge up from below, which isn't a helluva lot, but still more than most other places have to offer, at least within reasonable traveling distance for most folk. Figure the Contents and Basein are at least a good hundred miles apart, maybe longer - not that the specific distance is important, just enough that it's a task to get from one point to the other unless you've got wheels, and even rolling it's gonna take a not-insignificant period of time, say at least a couple hours.

Feel free to ask questions, throw ideas, post character concepts, or just have a browse.

OOC thread (which kicks off with the above summary of the setting): https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=247780.0

Game thread: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=249029.0

[Aida Rose]

I love AW. I'm interested in playing the Angel.

[Shjade]

Great! Feel free to work up a playbook and lay it on me, and/or ask anything about the current setup you'd like to know. The OOC thread linked above has a lot of conversation about the existing characters' relationships and how things fit in at the moment, which would probably be helpful as well.

[wander]

Which playbooks are taken and which would be most needed?

[Cold Heritage]

We've got a Skinner (Ebb), Driver (Carnie), Faceless (me), and otaco expressed interest in Angel.

I'm not really sure that any playbook would be most needed. Not a lot's happened, so there hasn't been any sort of lack screaming to be filled.

[Shjade]

I dunno about "most needed," but the Skinner, Driver, Faceless, and Angel are all pretty individualist playbooks. If the group so far had a "gap" in it, I'd say it's someone with a group dynamic - the Chopper, the Hardholder, the Hocus, etc. The current player list doesn't have much in terms of territory or stakes in the world they're in outside of their own personal interests. Nobody they're tied to, so to speak.

That said, I'm not sure the game needs that element in it, just observing it's what we currently have the least amount of. That and combat oriented playbooks, I suppose, but this isn't the sort of game that needs to balance out its party composition for healing, tanking, damage, etc. - that's not really how Apocalypse World works.

[ArinTalis]

I'm trying to get into a Dungeon World game, and since Apocalypse World is the same basic system, I'm Intrigued! I'm reading through a PDF online, and it strikes me as being different, but similar. And I'm in the mood for a post-apocalyptic game.

How does a wandering Gunlugger woman with an outfit and demeanor suited to an old west gunslinger mixed with a wasteland survivalist sound? :) Are you still recruiting?

[Shjade]

Dungeon World was built off the foundation of Apocalypse World as far as I know, so yes, the systems have a fair amount of similarities, even if DW goes in more of a systemic direction with its mechanics than does AW for the most part (at least that's how it looked to me).

A Gunlugger would likely be able to find something to gun somewhere. I'm not sure how many themed cowgirl gunslinger outfits are around, but I imagine she'd come up with something. And yeah, I'm still open to new additions for the time being; we're up to a headcount of 4 if otaco's Angel joins up, and I'm thinking 6 is probably the cutoff, or at least the point where I'd be considering it.

[ArinTalis]

Introducing... (With some censoring, because this part of the board is PG-13...)

Max the Gunlugger

Look: (stuck with the game's conventions, but added some details:) A woman in custom, homemade armor. The armor looks like a brown duster and cowboy hat over a complex ceramic and kevlar bodysuit. She has cunning eyes on a bony face, and a compact body. She's short but deadly, with dirty blonde hair, and usually a bandana around her neck for covering her mouth to keep the sand out of her lungs, and a pair of goggles to keep it out of her eyes for good measure.
Stats: Cool+1 Hard+3* Hot-1 Sharp+1 Weird=0
Moves: All Basic Moves, Insano Like Drano (+1* Hard), Blood Crazed* -  whenever you inflict harm, inflict +1 harm., NOT TO BE F--KED WITH - in battle, you count as a gang (3-harm gang, small)
small), with armor according to the circumstances.
Gunlugger Special: If you and another character have sex, you take +1 forward. At your option, they take +1 forward too.
Gear: Custom Armor (+2, Duster and Hat over Kevlar and Ceramic bodysuit), Silenced sniper rifle (3-harm
far hi-tech), ap ammo (ap) (Add ap to all your guns), magnum (3-harm close, reload, loud),  grenades (4-harm hand area
reload messy), oddments worth 1 barter

Her Story...

So long as two people want another person dead, you can find a third person to do the job. That person is usually Max. Max travels the wastes, taking odd jobs that usually boil down to "shooting some asshat in the face." Max lives hard, and will likely die hard, drinking, fighting, sleeping with men worth the effort, and generally trying to make life as interesting as possible before she takes a bullet to the head (in her own words.) She briefly worked as a hardhold enforcer at a distant community, keeping the peace as best she could, before the place got wrecked by a roving band of raiders. Her response was to crawl out of the ashes and hunt down the leaders of the raiders one by one. She performed a one-woman guerilla war for the better part of a year before deciding that she'd killed enough of them, and that the gangs that splintered off of the original one weren't worth her time. The hardhold, its people, and most of its destroyers were all dead. But Max was still there. She picked up her star, the thing that marked her as the hardhold's enforcer, and decided to go back to what she did best: living hard, and making other people die fast. If you need to stack some bodies, have something to pay with, and aren't an asshat, she's the person to call.

EDIT: Fixed the Harm values on the weapons.

[Shjade]

For clarity, let's keep your weapons' harm values at their stated values. Bloodcrazed doesn't make your weapons meaner; you just add +1-harm to any harm you do. Meaning you might also find yourself challenged to take someone alive if you wanted to for some reason, 'cause that 0-harm punch to stun someone? It does 1-harm. Put another way: it's not what you're using, it's how you use it.

Aside from that, I don't see any particular problems with the playbook. Seems okay to me. That'll bring us up to 5 players, I believe.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Which playbooks are taken and which would be most needed?

AW isn't really a D&D-style game where there's an "optimal party." The game creates itself around whatever characters are there, so there's no "need" for anything in particular. The only book that has real healing capabilities is the Angel, and yet I often see AW games without one.

Really, the only guideline for party content is "You can't play a playbook that someone else is playing."