Apocalypse World: Planning the Unplannable

Originally published May 14, 2014

I'm faced with an interesting challenge. I've been wanting to run Apocalypse World again for some time but I still have two campaigns going with different groups. We are nearing the end though, with To Boldly Go having about 2 stories or 4 sessions left and the Price probably approaching its last session.

On the other hand, I'm expecting a break in my gaming this summer when my son is born. So I'm trying to squeeze in as much as roleplaying possible. My wife has sending me signals that she wants to play Apocalypse World as well (partly humor me I think).

So anyway Monday it was suggested at the gathering for the third gaming group I'm involved with that I might run a two session game of Apocalypse World. Starting Monday.

I'm bad at saying no.

Luckily Apocalypse World is light to nonexistent on prep. On the other hand, these are fairly serious roleplayers and two of them have run a really great game for us in the past. Its my first time running for them. I'll need my A game for this. As a plus if I can get them working off each other, I can step back a bit.

Preparation

The third item on Apocalypse World's Agenda is "play to find out what happens." I take that to mean prep as little as possible and never have a prepared "plot". You can find more on my gaming philosophy elsewhere but essentially my goal is present situations for the player characters to react to. But I won't have characters to plan against until Monday which leaves me in a bit of a lurch.

I do have one kernel to start building the world. The group seems interested in having an alien invasion as the source of the apocalypse.

For me this conjures images of shattered flying saucers, perhaps the burnt wreckage of the city saucers from Independence Day, littering the landscape. The aliens are dead, or mostly dead, leaving the survivors to rebuild a world poisoned by radiation and infested with alien vermin. Scenes of crazy War of the Worlds heat rays and rusted tripod walking suits, along with surviving tentacled horrors hiding deep in the wreckage of their armada.

One key thing I want to make sure of is that the action focuses on the interaction between people, not a battle verse the aliens. I think Apocalypse World works best when the focus is on the human relationships between the PCs and NPCs. So I want to make the aliens are not the dominant threat. They are out there, they've helped ruin the world, but people are the most common threat. Not to say all of the NPCs will be "human". i like the idea of human-alien hybrids being thing in this game where "they walk among us.". But at least they will be relatable.

One thing I can decide now is what playbooks to include. Obviously all of the core books should work. I've heard concerns of mixing more mobile books like the Driver with sedentary playbooks like the Hardholder but I think they can work out well as long as you make sure everyone has an interest in what happens the next town over.

As for limited edition playbooks I think a few standout: the Faceless (what is really under that mask?), the Hoarder (collection of alien artifacts?), the Quarantine (how did we "win" the war?), the Space Marine Mammal (are they a hostile alien or Terran ally?), and the Maestro'D (no particular tie in, just works well with others). I decided against the Solace and Touchstone as I don't want any grand visions of the future or higher standard in this game.

Prompt

I was asked for a prompt to get the players into the mindset for this game. Here it is:

They say the aliens descended from the stars like the hosts of heaven. They burnt the old cities with atomic fire and laser beams. We knocked their space ships from the sky with nukes and missiles.
That was in my father's father's time. Before the psychic maelstrom came, opening minds and breaking souls. Before the black rains and the days of endless snow, before the chittering things crawled from the molten slag and bred with the last rats. Back when we humans ran the world instead of scrounging to survive.

Now we get by, farming mutant taters or stealing from those who do. Some do odd jobs or protect island of humanity in the wastes. Some freaks even try to scavenge alien tech from the wreckage. Its not like they need it.

As for the aliens, some say we stopped them with atomic fire, some say it was ID4 crap, some just say they just got sick and died. That last one can't be true though.


You can hear them sometimes when the wind dies down, crawling around in their broken saucers. They take our children sometimes. Maybe they eat them, maybe they do experiments.

Me and the girls are going to toss these old grenades down into the wreckage to see what crawls out. Want to join us?

Other Considerations

A big thing that remains up in the air is the number of players. We have a new player in the group and potentially her husband will join us as well. That means I could have anywhere from 4 and 6 players. 4 or 5 is pretty good for Apocalypse World but 6 begins nearing my limit as a game master.

A key concern I have is ensuring that every character gets to interact with every other character. Going by pairs would take about 20 scenes with 6. So I'll need to arrange groupings of 3 or more. I've worked out that I should be able to cover everyone in roughly 7 scenes. I plan to use a chart like the one below to track everything though:

I have a few other play aides I'm putting together: a fresh list of names, a larger front map, and a synopsis sheet for the few Limited Edition playbooks I'm including. I'm pretty excited to be running this again. I'll let you know how it turns out.