Here is an expanded recap of the first session along with commentary with the perspective of 6 more years of experience.
Space World Session 0
The Pre-Session
Our group consisted of four players: Jamil, my first MC; Jordan; Grace, my wife; and myself. We all had some experience with Apocalypse World thanks to the game Jamil MC'ed for us.For this campaign we decided to do something different. We decided to co-MC: each of us would control separate fronts and threats, ideally ones that our own characters would not be directly involved with.
I believe we followed the guidance here.
After tossing around a number of ideas, we decided to set our game in space, with the characters living in isolated spaceships after something horrible happened to humanity. Now mad humans, called Reavers, seek to murder the few sane survivors.
Obviously we all loved Firefly.
The remaining humans stay safe by remaining isolated in the void of space for long periods. They come together regularly to trade goods and services in grand gatherings. Otherwise people eek out a lonely existence aboard cramped ships, occasionally making the wary trade or scavenging the corpses of dead worlds. Planets are too dangerous to live on. The Reavers pillaged those first.
We decided the available technology is somewhat primitive. Shot guns, rifles and pistols dominate the armories. There are robots but they are battered relics or jury rigged machines. Lasers, wireless comms, and other high tech devices are rare and expensive.
Then we set a date to make characters and start play.
Play Begins
In a typical first session of Apocalypse World, you make your character, choose their moves, and then play through a typical day. Unfortunately for us, Jamil couldn't make it to the first session.So instead we worked on the setting and characters until we couldn't continue on without his character. We focused on the events leading up to the formation of the ship's crew, including our characters and some NPCs.
Vivek
Originally Jordan named his Savvyhead Robert Williams. Later once he saw the tone we were taking with names, he revised it to Vivek.Statwise he use the line: Cool: +1 Hard: -1 Hot: 0 Sharp: +1 Weird: +2
Vivek began with the moves: Things Speak and Bonefeel.
His workshop included a controlled growing environment among other features.
Vivek grew up on one of the last planet colonization attempts. After the evacuations, the wiry man fell in with the wrong crowd. His investigative mind and his horticulture skills proved useful to certain druglords. The work and the drugs helped distract him from his planet-side memories.
Many assume Vivek is perpetually stoned, given his dark distracted eyes, unkempt hair and oddly stained clothing. That assumption made slipping his keepers two years ago much easier.
Vivek has ambitions. The biochemist and specialty botanist helped create some of the finest chemical distractions in the sector. While the drug lords wanted the product cheap and addictive, he wants to experiment.
The chemist fled with their premium stash and the recipes for their catalogue. Vivek made his way to Lilly Pad Base 3 hoping to go into business for himself.
Three weeks into his operation, Reavers attacked Lilly Pad Base 3.
Vivek needed to get aboard a ship. At the docks, he spotted an old hulk powering up for an escape. He slip aboard in the confusion and hid in the depths of the secondary cargo bay while the space station burned.
Nightingale
Elsewhere aboard the Starlight, a small figure in a vac suit helped a heavily pregnant woman to the unmanned medbay.Nightingale doffed her helmet and helped Tally into one of the beds. Her kept a steady gaze on the expectant mother as the contractions grew closer together. As the ship's engines roared to life, Tally's water broke.
In an effort to attribute artwork better, my wife used a photo of the actress Gong Li for this picture.
Thankfully Nightingale's mentor aboard the Centurion, her childhood home, prepared her for this.
Our Angel, played by Grace, used the stat line: Cool: -1, Hard: +1, Hot: 0, Sharp: +2, Weird: +1
She has the starting moves: Infirmary and Healing Touch.
Her starting gear included a space suit (1-armor) and a revolver.
As Nightingale went to work, she reflected on the doctor's teachings. She hadn't seen him in almost a decade. Not since she and her brother Bluejay went searching for their parents, who had disappeared on a scouting mission.
Gale's thoughts drifted back to that time as the ship decoupled.
Then Bluejay piloted the small shuttle out of the old warship, negotiating the patrols and checkpoints. Gale took care of rations.
Weeks passed.
Lost in the black, Gale begged her brother to send out a beacon.
"The Reavers will pick up the signal," Jay told her.
An explosion rocked the tiny craft at that moment. The double hull fractured. An exploding consol scorched Jay’s flesh and sent him reelling.
Gale rushed to him. Her ears popped as air vented into space. Blood pooled around Jay as he lay on the floor breathing weakly.
Desperate, Gale reached out for some sort help. Her mind connected with something. She drew power from the cosmos with her will and hope and poured it into the atoms of her brother’s flesh stitching it closed. Her head spinning, Gale slammed on the distress beacon before losing consciousness.
The teenagers were rescued by a passing freighter and managed to pay their way using Gale’s skills and Jay’s charm. They continued travelling, moving from ship to ship, base to base, planetoid to planet. They left many unpaid debts and incomplete contracts.
Then one day Jay disappeared.
Nightingale wiped her brow and dismissed her reverie as she prepared to catch Tally's child. Jay often talked about his plans for the future. Lilly Pad Base 3 was key to his designs but how Gale didn't know. Now she might never find out.
The child slipped out easily and took his first gasp of air. As she handed Tally her child, a crowd of wounded arrived at the medbay.
"Are you a doctor?" the lead man asked. Behind him, a handsome youth cradling a badly burned arm caught her eye.
"Yes," she said.
Midnight Storm
Finally my character enters the narrative. I decided to play something hot and took as my inspiration the song Jukebox Hero. Midnight Storm is a post apocalyptic rock star.Attributes: Cool+1, Hard+1, Hot+3, Sharp+1, Weird-2
Starting moves: Breathtaking, Artful & Gracious.
Midnight Storm's gear includes a long gorgeous coat (worn valuable); Acid, a zero-G adapted space cat (valuable alive), and a sleeve pistol (2-harm close reload loud).
I wish I could recall which rock star I used as the basis for this picture. I beleive it might be Bon Jovi, thanks to comments from my readers.
Midnight Storm's whole life burned in an instant. The 15-year-old tried to pull open the blast doors to Section 8, while the Reavers killed and ate everyone he ever knew. The dimly glowing metal seared his hand and forced him away. His home, his family, lay on the other side.
The surge of escapees carried him to the docks. A knot of people pushed him into an old hulk.
An older man in the crowd noticed his burns and hustled him into the infirmary. Some woman was already there cradling a baby while a doctor in a space suit checked their vitals.
"Are you a doctor?" the man, Captain Farley, asked.
The physician, Gale, guided Midnight to a bed and injected something into his arm. The pain subsided and he fell into a dreamless sleep.
A few hours later, he woke up. Around him the wounded slept quietly, lulled by narcotics and the drone of the ship's engines as they powered deeper into space, away from the Reavers and away from his home.
The only other sound Midnight could hear was a baby cooing. His mother, Tally, would soon name him Skip. A few days later, the newly bolstered crew found Vivek in the cargo hold. He agreed to join the crew for passage.
Now
In the last couple years, a certain peace has grown among the crew.Vivek trades his brief flashes of mechanical and chemical expertise for a place on the ship. While this kept him out of the airlock, his occasional “bad trips” have earned him a bad reputation among many of the crew. On his worst trip he locked himself in the comms room and screamed over the ship intercomms for a solid hour.
Gale's medical expertise makes her indispensable. She still searches for her lost brother but Jay remains elusive.
Midnight has matured physically if not mentally. The slim man fills out his elegant leather coat. Despite his beautiful face and laughing eyes an edge of hardness clings to him. In the ship's hold, Midnight Storm found an old crate with an assortment of musical instruments, including a beat up six string guitar. He taught himself how to play and has become extremely skilled. He helps the crew get into trading posts and similar engagements with offers of entertainment to break the boredom.
Next time a quick look at Brace, some custom moves for the setting and some background material on Spooks, or people with a high Weird.
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