We playtested Apocalypse World, and it was fun, fun, fun! We will certainly get back to it as soon as our schedules allow.

Fiction

Characters were Jag, driver, male; Mercury, skinner, female; and Snow White, battlebabe, male.

They were hanging in the Commons of their native holding, playing pool like the apocalypse never happened, when a convoy of heavily armored cars entered the holding. From the roof of the building they recognized the convoy for what it was - a friendly visit from the Tax Collectors, the strong arm of the Benevolent holding. Passing the Commons, the Tax Collectors headed to the HQ, apparently to meet with the hardholder, Mr. Nbeke. Later, TC lieutenant Doberman, along with 10 of his best friends, entered the Commons and settled down to relax. Overall, there was a nice tension around the pool table. Snow White beat Doberman in a mostly friendly game of pool. Jag observed them a bit too closely and got pushed around. Mercury made Doberman sweat with a single creak of her PVC body glove. It also became apparent that she was the one the Tax Collectors were there for!

Regardless, characters did nothing special, and early next morning the TC hit the Commons in force, with Mr. Nbeke. Mercury failed to escape, but was provided a second chance by Snow White. Running into the early morning, she tried to open her mind - just to try it out, she said - and failed.

Search parties spent the whole day looking for her, and failed. In the shadows of the early evening, Jag tried to surprise AND KILL the guys who had pushed him around, and failed again. Just not his day, I guess. He was so ineffective that they did not even take him very seriously, just tied him up and kicked him around. Then they took his car keys and left for a "test ride". In a semi-bonding moment, Jag convinced Snow White to help him recover the keys and possibly the tank.

Meanwhile, Mercury woke up with a seriously buzzy head, to find herself naked but under a blanket in a small box of a room, which turned out to be the secret hideyhole of the local outcast, Marlon. Deftly wrapping him around her little finger, she convinced him to provide her with some clothes, information - and an exit.

Jag and Snow White proceeded to the local depo, where the TC were just getting ready for the ride, with the local pack of hyenas did nothing to protect Jag's tank of a car. Jag read the sitch keenly, and after a few violent moments, the 4 TC guys were removed from the car and their pair rode into the darkening night.

All in all, the themes of violence and sex pretty much permeated everything.

Notes

I will not open all of these up immediately - the post would be too long, and interaction is better. Thus the individual items are numbered, and I am taking requests to unpack the ones that spark interest.

1. Against Vincent's better judgment, I prepped the fronts beforehand, and that was essential for me as the MC. Character creation is quick and sweet, and given how seldom we get to play, it is not really feasible to do it the way suggested - create characters, go away to build fronts, come back to play.

2. We started the game with me reading the blurbs for each of the characters and describing the hoped-for Firefly/Fallout vibe. Nevertheless, at the end of the session the players said that they would have appreciated a short game concept pitch before starting play.

3. Characters were created with interest, quickly and without much discussion. The players of the skinner and driver had some difficulty selecting their characters.

4. No one played a character with any followers or the like - which did not surprise me.

5. Another way in which I ruined the purity of the playtest: taking a page out of Dirty Secrets or Bliss Stage, I had with me a printed black and white Google Earth image of an area familiar to all the players. Here we placed the holding, and the players stated that this was instrumental in helping them to visualize the action throughout the game. This was true for me as well.

6. I only now noticed that one of the characters faked, taking a name that's not in the book!

7. The text at the start of skinner's barter section looks like a copy-paste error from the hocus playbook - is the correct copy available somewhere, or should we just invent something?

8. There were moments when I wished I could have handed the player some sort of token of appreciation.

9. PC moves got used quite a lot. I am afraid I forgot to always exactly define - to myself - which MC move I was using. Even so, I felt that the moves constantly drove the fiction, and the players sure did not hesitate to roll the dice.

10. The 2d6 probability distribution and the target numbers seemed to make even small bonuses or penalties quite influential.

11. There were situations where I felt a small negative or positive ad hoc MC-defined modifier to the roll would have been appropriate.

12. Was it so that any specific hold-eating action can only be used once during the time someone has hold over you?

13. Some of the questions you get to ask when using basic moves seemed weird to the players. We thought it was partly because they went with the title of the move - for example, they rolled to "read a person", then had difficulties making sensible use of the questions. Read a person was the worst in this regard, but some of the this seemed to concern reading a sitch as well.

14. For me, being hard or escalating appropriately is, well, hard. At times. I might appreciate some kind of mechanical crutch to support my situation-derived decision on how hard I should be.

15. At the end of the session, 1 hold was left over from Snow White flirting with Doberman. I assume it is no longer available in the next session, after a significant change in the situation.

16. It seems that I am not sufficiently agile to set up NPC-PC triangles on the fly - I need to do some between-sessions thinking.

17. The first paragraph of the barter rules turned out to be rather defining for the character motivations, in the sense of "what should I do now?" This lead to an after-game discussion on how the characters should have some sort of motivational stuff when first created - a motto, perhaps, or something to indicate their relationship with this whole apocalypse thing.

18. Speaking of relationships, the game does not push any sort of family aspect on the characters. I suspect that this is very much a conscious design decision.

19. Fighting is a bit of a question mark for me. I had to shift between just going aggro and using the battle rules during the Fight of the Tank.

20. We forgot to adjust the Hx at the end of the session. Overall, Hx was only used once in this session, to help.

Hi Mikael,

Those all sound like great suggestions and feedback. I'm sure that Vincent will think hard about them and I'll lobby for him adopting some (like stating a motto, or something about your relationship with the world--I feel like we all did that on an unspoken level  in our game, and stating it explicitly would probably help folks out). And I have a question for you. As you played in the world, how did you make it up? Did you as MC describe most of the things around the characters, did they suggest things? Was it a mix?

best,
Emily

Hi Emily! My, what an enlightened signature you have.

Some notes on the amount of player input in relation to:

Character details: They quickly determined what they wanted to look like etc., but were vague on the bits that say "detail". Especially the oddments are largely undetailed so far, and I guess we could do a detailing exercise at the start of the next session. Binoculars were offered as an oddment, but I nixed useful stuff like that.

Places: As said, I provided a B&W Google Earth image of a familiar place to all of us, claimed the highest building as the hardholder's HQ, and then asked them to mark things like Commons, Armory, Depo, Fields, Well, Wall, Gate etc. on the image. This clearly gave them a signal that they had some ownership of the surroundings, and as play started, they quickly framed themselves playing pool at the Commons (i.e. they invented the pool table and established that they had the luxury of free time - which made sense given the character types).

People and relationships: The players did not have any input whatsoever regarding any NPCs. If they had selected a character type with followers or a gang, that probably would have been a bit different.

Action: As stated, the players were active. It seemed that everyone was constantly trying to figure which cool - or insane - move they could do next, and as such they had as much input into the direction of the events as I did.

All in all, I would say it was a mix. Why did you ask? Is this somehow a concern that you have discussed in your game?

Aja hiljaa sillalla,
Mikael

Couple of playtesty notes more:

21. One of the players (the battlebabe) wanted to know how tough the characters are compared to the "average guy". I had difficulty answering this question, because I did not really understand it, but I guess it is the player wanting to know how over-the-top actions he could or should describe.

22. We had one moment where the basic moves really fit the fiction especially well. Jag the driver tried to shoot one of the Tax Collector bullies and failed. My semi-hard move was to have four of the TC now surrounding him, with a clear intent. Jag had previously scoped an escape route, +1 for making a break for it, but got only a partial success. And here was the beautiful bit: he had the choice of running - and receiving all the harm established from 4 guys with smgs and 9 mm pistols - or trying to win them over with -1. So it was either taking some bullets, or some fast talking in an obviously awkward situation - beautiful! (Of course he tried the fast talking, and failed again.)

23. The thing with battle and my traditional rpg sensibilities that momentarily confused me was the fact that there are no active "shooting" moves in a battle. Instead, incidental or concentrated fire just sort of happens every tick, based on established fiction of people's positions and aggression - correct?

24. I really do not want to start tracking months and doing actual barter resource management. Any other options? (Should I take this to the ecretsay ogblay?)

Sorry for the drip feed, but here's some more:

25. I love how easy the playbooks make creating new detailed NPCs at a moment's notice. Names, looks, stuff, plenty there in all the playbooks, even those used by the players.

26. The playbooks and the way the rules are explained there make things really easy for the players, as well. The player of the driver, for example, usually has problems with grasping new rules as fast as the other players, but here he had no problems (beyond the one repeated "what was 'roll' again?").

27. Characters have their niches, even though the basic moves and stats are the same for everyone. At least in our game, the battlebabe did not lose a physical confrontation and the skinner was devastating in the social arena. The player of the driver, on the other hand, was crumbling that he needs to be in his car to be effective. Not "in a conflict related to the car", but "physically in the car". I have some ideas on how to cater to that, but it seems a bit silly - like the Decker in the old editions of Shadowrun.

Mikael,

regarding #27, isn't that the point of picking the Driver though?  It seems like if you pick the Driver then you're explicitly telling the GM to throw car chase scenes and the like in the game, repeatedly.  If he just wanted to be a badass who owned a car and looked cool then perhaps he should of been a different character, like maybe a Hardholder?

Charles, thanks.

I hear what you're saying but, in this specific case, I think taking the driver wasn't such a directed choice. It was mainly something else than the obvious choice, for him - the gunlugger.

Thinking about it, none of the other character types is as tied to one specific "set", if I may resort to PtA terminology. Also, the other characters can do "their thing" around a holding, but the driver should really be somewhere else, driving his car.

Some of the ideas I have around this are pretty straightforward and physical. A tunnel expedition, with the tunnel big enough for a car. A mobile holding, gypsy-like.

I could also try to amp the character-to-character interaction to move the focus away from the specific character niches and more towards their personalities - a move that right now might take a better MC than I am, since the personalities are still pretty thin.

Hey Mikael, here's some guesses and responses to some of your points.

By the way, it's interesting that you say the characters were a bit thin. We had the same thing. I like your suggestion of a motto or some stated relationship to the world.

1. ...given how seldom we get to play, it is not really feasible to do it the way suggested - create characters, go away to build fronts, come back to play.

We're the same. I prepped the fronts beforehand, too, and it worked fine. You can always tweak them later to make them more personal.

5. Another way in which I ruined the purity of the playtest: taking a page out of Dirty Secrets or Bliss Stage, I had with me a printed black and white Google Earth image of an area familiar to all the players.

We did something similar: we drew a map of the Clapham Common stronghold. I think maps work well in this game, especially if you start a battle.

8. There were moments when I wished I could have handed the player some sort of token of appreciation.

Have you tried sticky buns?

9. PC moves got used quite a lot. I am afraid I forgot to always exactly define - to myself - which MC move I was using.

No, I didn't consciously consider which move I was using. I think the MC moves are more freeform: guides for action, rather than discrete moves.

11. There were situations where I felt a small negative or positive ad hoc MC-defined modifier to the roll would have been appropriate.

As I understand it, the MC can make calls about whether something is possible in the world. So, for example, if someone's Going Aggro at point-blank range, you can rule that dodging isn't possible. It's not a modifier, but it's something.

12. Was it so that any specific hold-eating action can only be used once during the time someone has hold over you?

No, I don't think so. You could miss noticing two key things, to use up two points of Hold. But I can't imagine it happening often. It's hard to dodge twice.

13. Some of the questions you get to ask when using basic moves seemed weird to the players.

We had wobbles here, too, although I think it ultimately worked OK.

14. For me, being hard or escalating appropriately is, well, hard.

I'm really surprised at this. I found it pretty easy: on a failed roll, I have permission to make a hard move if I want, and that involves doing pretty nasty stuff.

15. At the end of the session, 1 hold was left over from Snow White flirting with Doberman. I assume it is no longer available in the next session, after a significant change in the situation.

I think you can call it either way. If Snow White's player thinks the remaining hold is important, I'd let him or her have it.

16. It seems that I am not sufficiently agile to set up NPC-PC triangles on the fly - I need to do some between-sessions thinking.

No, it's hard, isn't it? I find that naming NPCs helps: so you never just find "a market trader", you find "Weasel, a market trader who's been around a while". Then, later, you introduce that named NPC to another PC.

18. Speaking of relationships, the game does not push any sort of family aspect on the characters. I suspect that this is very much a conscious design decision.

I think so. You're on your own.

21. One of the players (the battlebabe) wanted to know how tough the characters are compared to the "average guy". I had difficulty answering this question, because I did not really understand it, but I guess it is the player wanting to know how over-the-top actions he could or should describe.

I think that, as long as you decide as a group, you could play it either way: either PCs are average guys with special skills; or they're fucking heroes.

23. The thing with battle and my traditional rpg sensibilities that momentarily confused me was the fact that there are no active "shooting" moves in a battle. Instead, incidental or concentrated fire just sort of happens every tick, based on established fiction of people's positions and aggression - correct?

Yes, but there's also going aggro. You can use the standard moves in battles.

24. I really do not want to start tracking months and doing actual barter resource management. Any other options?

Let the players do it? They'll all keep track of what they have. As for the months: I don't think it'll matter. Living and employment situations won't be stable for long enough so that you can say "Right, the months' up now". By then, the home will probably have been destroyed.

27. The player of the driver, on the other hand, was crumbling that he needs to be in his car to be effective. Not "in a conflict related to the car", but "physically in the car".

Our Driver was cool with that. He just did things in his car a lot. When he wanted to seduce someone, he took her for a drive.

Graham

Hey Graham! I can only say "yeah!" to most of your points, but there's a couple I want to take further.

Re: thin characters, I think it could be a feature, or at least it's probably ok if you are planning on playing a longer game which allows for the characters to become thicker. Hey, 4 million D&D players can't be wrong!

Re: allowing every action to be used only once to use up the opponent's hold - I would actually prefer if this were the case. Looking back at our first session, it felt like it pushed my imagination to more fruitful places a couple of times.

Re: How hard is hard? and consciously using MC moves. This is actually an area of major interest to me, as it was Vincent's talk about "permissions and expectations" in his playtest thread that attracted me to the game. Really creating a structure around the GM's choices without sacrificing the fiction to pure mechanics is an uncharted territory in rpgs, as far as I know. Games like Agon and - I guess - 4th ed D&D do this, but in a more clear-cut and not as exciting manner ("here's the budget to create the challenge for the characters to fight").

I our first session, the existing structure felt really good and even liberating. I had no problem with the concept of maneuvers and hard moves, or escalating appropriately, even though my escalations tended to be of the clumsy, physical type. But still, I could see it in the player's eyes, the times when they were shafted, especially when I took their stuff away: WHY are you doing THIS to ME? Remember that we are a group of pretty traditional players: we get instantly infatuated with our own characters, and easily view character effectiveness as the main thing in play - pushing for tragic or revealing stuff is not really our thing. At the same time, the game will not fly without serious apocalyptic adversity.

Thus I want to push harder in the next session, in the inverted meaning of relying a bit more on the system. Here are some of the things I would like to try:

a. Be more explicit - to myself - about the move I am making.

b. Use the player roll, after modifiers, as a rough guide to the appropriate level of hardness. Something like:

• 5-6 - clear but moderate adversity
• 3-5 - medium nasty
• up to 3 - really fucking nasty

c. I also could, but probably will not, arrange the MC moves into groups that roughly correspond to those three categories, just to make it a bit easier to pick a move in actual play.

The key to my well-being - as in "not being branded as a sick bastard by the players" - is to make the points above known to the players at the start of the next session. Especially point b. That way, when they roll low, they already groan in anticipation of a royal fuck-up, and I am just following through on that promise.

Note the "at the start of the session". During play, I will be following the advice to misdirect to the fullest extent possible.

I am not trying to step into the designer's shoes here, honest! Just want to explore this direction a little bit more, and too eager to play again to wait for "official updates".

Okay! Let's see.

Thanks for numbering your points, by the way. I've skipped a bunch. I skipped several because I like Graham's answers, others because I don't really have anything to say. But if I've skipped any that you'd especially like me to comment on, point them out to me again.

7. Oops!

11. Interesting. Go for it.

13. Suggest questions to me! I already have one additional reading-a-sitch question: "who's in control of this situation?"

16. Remember to give the NPCs extremely straightforward motivations. In play and between sessions both.

17. Good - that's what that paragraph's for.

19. Going aggro is a battle move! Going aggro, making a break for it and acting under fire are the three basic battle moves. The moves listed on the battle sheet are there only for when going aggro (etc.) won't serve.

20. Be sure to adjust Hx at the beginning of the next session, then. It's an important source of XP.

23. Every tick or most ticks. I'm not really sure. Next battle, see which of those comes more naturally to you, and let me know.

Either way, concentrated fire happens starting at 9:00, not in the 3 ticks before 9:00. I think that incidental fire can happen in the early ticks, though.

To be clear: if it's 4:00 and somebody does concentrated fire, don't prevent them because it's too early! Instead, change the clock. Make it 9:00 right then, because they're doing concentrated fire and concentrated fire starts at 9:00.

24. At some point, you're going to make a "make them buy" move, because it will have been about a month in play. Don't track time, but do make that move when it seems right.

Your players should keep track of their own barter on their character sheets, of course, and you're under absolutely no obligation to provide them with any. If somebody feels poor, they're going to have to come up with a way to make some cash, that's all.

If you make your "make them buy" move, and somebody doesn't have the barter, follow up with another, harder move against that character. "Take away their stuff" is an obvious choice, but go with what fits.

About your thing to try (b): this isn't against the rules. The rules are: when they blow a roll, make as hard a move as you'd like. If you decide to create some scheme for figuring out how hard a move you'd like to make, that's perfectly fine; you'll still be making as hard a move as you'd like. So: go for it!

I'd recommend that you embrace being branded as a sick bastard by the players, though, actually. Cultivate an aesthetic of apocalyptica, and cultivate sick bastardy.

-Vincent

Thanks, Vincent, and thanks again, Graham.

I think battles will be greatly facilitated by the fact that the battle moves do not exclude any of the normal moves - dunno where I got that from.

I feel clear and centered, now. Which means I will be utterly confused and lost when we play the day after tomorrow.