Tales from the Darkness: Gear

Originally published June 30, 2014

Back in 2013, I was involved in an Apocalypse World game that playtested Jamil Vallis-Walkers's Darkness rules. The world suffered from a psychic darkness that crept into people's minds except for a few hours of twilight each day. It was an evocative setting but my character died in an unsatisfying way. In the interest of getting past that bad experience, I used the Mythic Game Master Emulator is run a short game for myself, to exercising the shadows of that character. I found it pretty therapeutic. Here is some material from that game.

Mundane Crap

A lot of this material comes from the game that spawned this character. While my Savvyhead was captured by a rival hardhold, she turned her mind to building the tools for her escape.

shiv (intimate 2-harm)

Sometimes you don't even have a proper knife. You need to cobble something together, sharpen it best you can and stick in the guy you keeps pushing you around and taking your stuff.

zip gun (intimate 2-harm refill)

Sometimes you have bullets but not the gun. A zip gun is little more than a crude barrel and a trigger. Accuracy is shit but at close range it will still kill.

explosive vest (intimate 4-harm area refill)

Sometimes people don't take you seriously. So you strap explosives to your body, walk up to them, and make some demands. Other times you don't intend to walk away. At least you won't be around to worry about the consequences.

Here's a custom move (untested) for the explosive vest:

When an NPC triggers their explosive vest and you have some forewarning, roll acting under fire to escape the blast. On a 10+ you get out fine, cinematic explosion in the background. On a 7-9, you get out but you lose something, choose either a friendly NPC who dies in your place or suffer 2-harm. On a miss take 4-harm and the MC will get back to you when you regain consciousness.

When you choose to trigger your explosive vest, roll+hard. On a hit, choose someone (not a PC). They die with you. On 10+ choose a second person if you want. On a miss...well you are dead already.

Weird Crap

Any Apocalypse World game is likely to produce some strange stuff, especially one with a Psychic Maelstrom as aggressive as the Darkness. Here are a couple of items that draw on that.

Darkroom (workshop hitech augury)

Floodlights surround this steel box containing a darkroom for film development. What this device allows is for a section of the Darkness to be isolated and studied in a controlled environment. Through this one can access the augury move.

Built by my Savvyhead, Specter, this chamber allowed her to study the Darkness in relative safety. Using this she shielded her boyfriend Biter from the Darkness, allowing him to pass through it without harm. It also allow her to drag the mind of someone who tried to kidnap her into the darkness, killing him and corrupting his soul. Now it sits abandoned in the depths of the Dakotas.

Brain Cage (hitech unreliable)

The final item can be found here. Resembling a dentist's chair hooked up to wires and a LCD screen, this device allows one to enter another's mind, pull out their memories and alter them. Though Specter tried to put in a fail safe, this device is almost as much of a danger to the user as the subject. She left the device with her workshop in the Dakotas but rumors say she built a second one.