Barf Forth Apocalyptica
barf forth apocalyptica => Apocalypse World => Topic started by: gregpogor on June 04, 2011, 05:40:45 AM
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Good idea or not?
I've got this brainer in the game I'm MCing who's really into exploring the whole thing. I'm thinking I'd make the whole thing a threat, or even a front. The maelstrom makes a wicked landscape.
Now, the problem I might have is
Creating a front means making decisions about backstory and about NPC motivations. Real decisions, binding ones, that call for creativity, attention and care.
...and I'm not sure "binding" the maelstrom to anything would be a good idea. The maelstrom is interesting and useful because it's proteiform and maleable. I fear making it into a full fledged threat might kill that.
So, anyone did it or thought about it ? Pros, cons ?
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I think it has to be.
A better, longer, more personal answer:
In my experience, detailed in lots of other places on this board, I only get into trouble with AW when I try to keep the Physic Maelstrom as this unknowable thing. I have a similar desire to not want to nail the Maelstrom down into an answer and it's just turned out to be frustrating for my players every time.
The line? In some games, the players are pushing towards finding out what the maelstrom is. This happened in a game I ran for Mike P and others. He wanted to explore the Maelstrom and I wanted to keep it vague, at least to start. I was "doing it wrong". He got frustrated with me being evasive, but I had to be evasive because I hadn't nailed the Maelstrom down to anything. It was a bad idea.
In other games, I nail the Maelstrom down and the PCs simply aren't the type to care about it. I've got a driver, an operator, and a gunlugger and to them, the Maelstrom's just some fucked up thing that other people get into. But in both, the Maelstrom is a threat.
So. That's all just a really long way of saying: "Is your Maelstrom a threat, to the PCs or others? Then it's a Threat. Is it not a threat to the PCs or others? Then it probably should be, because it's the fucking Maelstrom." :)
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So. That's all just a really long way of saying: "Is your Maelstrom a threat, to the PCs or others? Then it's a Threat. Is it not a threat to the PCs or others? Then it probably should be, because it's the fucking Maelstrom." :)
Fuck you're right. Okay, my maelstrom's a landscape: fortress. I don't know what it's denying access to but it's huge, let's say: "the truth" for now. It expresses fear, because no one but the brainer want to have anything with it around the table.
For the cast, I'll see. Maybe dead people only, that'd be fun. It has access to information - which means that, due to scarcity, nobody else fully does.
Doing it right ? I don't want to figure it out yet, and I want my brainer to have input, but at least I've got something to work with.
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In the games I've played, the Psychic Maelstrom is usually a Front, actually, but sometimes it manifests as a Threat in specific circumstances.
In the game Tony Dowler ran, for example, the Psychic Maelstrom was the ghost of the past, which we could reach through playing rock music. When our Hocus-led band played "Helter Skelter," we used augury to accidentally summon Charles Manson into our apocalyptic future. Charlie became a specific Threat (I think, since I wasn't running it), but he manifested from the Maelstrom.
Likewise, in my current game, the Maelstrom is related to the restless echoes of everyone who died in the apocalypse. That's all we know at this point, but those echoes have already manifested in a number of ways, driving at least one member of the quarantine's stasis insane, haunting our faceless and now our quarantine too, and making our touchstone crazy until she learned to control the voices in her head. Those are all threats, potentially, that are related to the Maelstrom as a front.
Then again, when people use augury or other moves (open your brain, healing touch, visions of death, etc.) to interface with the Maelstorm, sometimes the Maelstrom acts as a threat and makes threat moves when they fail.
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Every significant thing with agency that isn't a PC is a Threat (or a whole Front, as Jaywalt says). So, yes, the psychic maelstrom, too.
In my games, it's been a threat on the home front, a threat in a different front, and a front of its own. Oh, and a threat that I never wrote up specifically (I do that a lot).
Making it a Landscape: Fortress sounds awesome.
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It can also be part of the cast of a threat, or part of the casts of more than one threat. It can also be a weapon.
I think that keeping the world's psychic maelstrom perpetually undefined will be counter to your agendas and principles practically every time you play. Sooner or later, in practically every game, you'll have to decide and commit to some concrete explanation, or history, or something for it.
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In the games I've played, the Psychic Maelstrom is usually a Front, actually, but sometimes it manifests as a Threat in specific circumstances.
In the game Tony Dowler ran, for example, the Psychic Maelstrom was the ghost of the past, which we could reach through playing rock music. When our Hocus-led band played "Helter Skelter," we used augury to accidentally summon Charles Manson into our apocalyptic future. Charlie became a specific Threat (I think, since I wasn't running it), but he manifested from the Maelstrom.
Likewise, in my current game, the Maelstrom is related to the restless echoes of everyone who died in the apocalypse. That's all we know at this point, but those echoes have already manifested in a number of ways, driving at least one member of the quarantine's stasis insane, haunting our faceless and now our quarantine too, and making our touchstone crazy until she learned to control the voices in her head. Those are all threats, potentially, that are related to the Maelstrom as a front.
Then again, when people use augury or other moves (open your brain, healing touch, visions of death, etc.) to interface with the Maelstorm, sometimes the Maelstrom acts as a threat and makes threat moves when they fail.
That is so cool and very similar to how I imagine the psychic maelstrom.
I see it as a massive wound in the world's psychosphere caused by the death of so many sentient beings at once, kind of like a world wide mass haunting that every living person is psychically plugged into.
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Yeah, before my current game started, I kinda decided in my head what the Maelstrom would be like (ghostly echoes of some kind), but kept it flexible enough so I could see what the players did and how they interacted with it. Once it became clear that it was driving people crazy (psi-harm, since we had a quarantine) it began to take shape and then, the past session, when people started using augury, things got clearer real quick.
Good call on casts and weapons, Vincent. I'll have to think more about that. People in the games I've played have definitely used the Maelstrom to gain the fictional positioning needed to make otherwise impossible moves. Like opening your brain or using augury and then moving from there to do something else, like reaching into somebody else's mind or seizing control of crazy weird tech or something.
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The Psychic Maelstrom is my Follower.
The Psychic Maelstrom wants to shut down my Maestro D's brothel.
The Psychic Maelstrom is a Grotesque named Rolfball.
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I think that keeping the world's psychic maelstrom perpetually undefined will be counter to your agendas and principles practically every time you play. Sooner or later, in practically every game, you'll have to decide and commit to some concrete explanation, or history, or something for it.
That would have been good to know in the book! (he said, trying not to sound like a jerk)
Anyway, in the first game I MCed, the maelstrom was super-vague & undefined & only towards the end did I define it for myself as something less vague like, "all the souls that died in the Apocalypse, floating in psychic space." It didn't really play a large part in the game, and my less vague description of it didn't come up in a meaningful way.
I realized on my own that that keeping it vague was problematic (just because it didn't seem to be anything, and I wanted it to be something), and in the game I'm MCing now I came up with a fairly concrete definition up-front (for myself). But I never even thought of the possibility of making it a Threat! Or a Front! Maybe I should do. But for now, I feel on solid ground with what I've got. Maybe it'll get solider.
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Yeah, before my current game started, I kinda decided in my head what the Maelstrom would be like (ghostly echoes of some kind), but kept it flexible enough so I could see what the players did and how they interacted with it. Once it became clear that it was driving people crazy (psi-harm, since we had a quarantine) it began to take shape and then, the past session, when people started using augury, things got clearer real quick.
Good call. To me this says, "when people interact with the maelstrom, it should gradually become clearer what it is." That's super helpful. Though the PCs have been using Augury in our game since session 1 (that Hocus never seems to roll less than 10 on his Fortunes).
I think I need to cultivate a voice for my maelstrom.
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It can also be part of the cast of a threat, or part of the casts of more than one threat. It can also be a weapon.
I think that keeping the world's psychic maelstrom perpetually undefined will be counter to your agendas and principles practically every time you play. Sooner or later, in practically every game, you'll have to decide and commit to some concrete explanation, or history, or something for it.
So where's the line between writing into a the fiction as a Front/Threat and allowing the players to define it in play by exploration? Actually writing it up feels like I'm violating the 'Play to See What Happens' principle.
I have some ideas about what the Maelstrom is and why it's like it is in our 'Super-Apocalypse' game, but I fear that setting that stuff down too concretely shuts down (or just really restricts) the players' chances at exploring it at their own pace.
Honestly, based on my reading of the book, it hadn't even occurred to me that I could use 'The Maelstrom' as a threat or even a Front. I'd love to see more specific examples of how people are doing this in their games! (And for anyone on here who is in 'Decimation City', be ready for a spoiler or two, maybe, as we talk about this, and maybe skip over my posts!)
-JC
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So where's the line between writing into a the fiction as a Front/Threat and allowing the players to define it in play by exploration? Actually writing it up feels like I'm violating the 'Play to See What Happens' principle.
It seems to me that what a front is, and what happens, are totally different. I mean, if writing up the Maelstrom violated the 'Play to See What Happens' principle, wouldn't writing up any front violate that principle in the same way? I don't think it does, though, because you can nail down all kinds of concrete details about the setting without driving the story towards particular outcomes.
I have some ideas about what the Maelstrom is and why it's like it is in our 'Super-Apocalypse' game, but I fear that setting that stuff down too concretely shuts down (or just really restricts) the players' chances at exploring it at their own pace.
Why do you say that? Why couldn't they explore it at their own pace, whether or not it is nailed down?
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You can nail it down upfront, or you can nail it down only as the PCs dig into it - either's fine, it's all to whether you prefer to decide in advance or improvise it.
What you can't do is resist the PCs' efforts to dig into it because you're trying to keep it undefined.
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You can nail it down upfront, or you can nail it down only as the PCs dig into it - either's fine, it's all to whether you prefer to decide in advance or improvise it.
What you can't do is resist the PCs' efforts to dig into it because you're trying to keep it undefined.
So, if I go with the idea that it is the potential energy of the 90% of life on Earth that was erased from existence by the Anti-Life Equation, but don't decide exactly what that looks like, or how exactly you can fix it, I'm good?
That's cool, I think maybe I got caught up in the notion that the Maelstrom is a piece of the setting that's explicitly undefined. You guys are saying that yeah, it starts play that way, opaque to the PCs, but that doesn't mean the MC can't have notions, or even a concrete idea, of what it represents and how it affects the world, what it wants, etc, I just can't arbitrarily styimie any of the PCs' efforts to look into it (or force them in that direction if they don't find it interesting.) Right?
Part of my disconnect may be the practice in both long-term games I've been in (one as a player, the other as MC) to have the PCs each describe what the Maelstrom looks like to them. In play, that's made it feel like I shouldn't (as MC) push a particular interpretation. But it sounds like I can know what it means, and what it wants, but that it's totally OK for each PC to interface with it in a way they think is cool. I just need to do a bit of shoehorning to work those individual interpretations into the overall thrust of it.
-JC
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Jim, what I've done -- rather than ask the PCs what it looks like when they open their brain -- is instead say, "Okay, how do you do that?" And some folks take drugs or go into a trance or talk to their faceless mask or whatever. And the way the players approach the Maelstrom definitely colors the way the Maelstrom communes with them, no question. But it's not like everyone necessarily has their own personal Maelstrom or even their own personal relationship with it, at least not all the time.
On my end, to give the Maelstrom a sense of identity, I try to start out just projecting an attitude. This means I know what kinds of things the Maelstrom's likely to do and saves a lot of time thinking of questions or what kinds of things to show when people open their brains. But it doesn't pre-define things too much.
For example, the first time I ran the game at PAX, I made the Maelstrom AGGRESSIVELY HELPFUL, assisting the PCs in whatever sort of misdeeds they wanted to get up to, showing them where the crazy tech was, egging them on.
In my current game, I began with the Maelstrom being BROODING AND NIHILISTIC, pushing the PCs towards introspection and doubt. And that's developed and solidified over time into more concrete traits -- it's a bunch of ghostly echoes that make people crazy and violent! -- but it began as just an attitude.
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P.S. In my next game, whenever that is, I'll probably end up making the Maelstrom a bit more complex from the beginning, rather than a one-note thing, but still try to start by just projecting an attitude or desire. For example, maybe the Maelstrom will embrace people with high weird but plague people with low weird. Or maybe it'll want something specific and strange, like for everyone to have babies, and then later we can find out why.
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Part of my disconnect may be the practice in both long-term games I've been in (one as a player, the other as MC) to have the PCs each describe what the Maelstrom looks like to them. In play, that's made it feel like I shouldn't (as MC) push a particular interpretation. But it sounds like I can know what it means, and what it wants, but that it's totally OK for each PC to interface with it in a way they think is cool. I just need to do a bit of shoehorning to work those individual interpretations into the overall thrust of it.
-JC
Another solution would be not to have a pre-decided idea about the Maelstrom, but rather listen to the players describing it, and then make it an active agent based on what they said (that is, if it is the subconcious hiding our real potential, make it start attacking the minds of people who seem to know too much; if it is a sort of feral communion between all beings, make it start calling weird animals and people to attack you, etc.).
IMO, it´s better to have a rather simmilar Maelstrom for every character, but that´s something the players choose, not me. But there could be a sort of group-maelstrom-generation, where all players contribute, from highest weird to lowest, to the maelstrom, each introducing one fact, when the first character opens his brain. Maybe a little messy, but it´d allow to create a single maelstrom that gathers at least partially the input of every player.
Another option would be to have the weirdest character´s player define the true m., the other ones might be illusions, true to that character but not true for the maelstrom as a whole, as an active threat.
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I don't really think there needs to be much of a connection between what the Maelstrom actually is and what it looks/feels like for each character to Open their Brain to it. I am struggling to imagine a definition for the former that would preclude anything in the latter.
In the last game I MCed I decided that the Maelstrom had two layers, both of which were the result of some sort of psychic virus. The bottom layer was something like an adaptible, google-enhanced, viral version of Wikipedia -- an experiment to distribute all of human knowledge genetically to all humans. This part of the Maelstrom wanted to help everyone, tell them what they wanted to know, assist them in whatever plan they had, etc. It was present in all human beings born since a little bit before the apocalypse, and included all pre-apocalyptic human knowledge. The players didn't see much of this Maelstrom to begin with.
Instead they mostly interacted with the second layer of the Maelstrom, which I called 'the Static' and which also manifested physically in the world in the form of contaminated snow and water. (It was a Front with a variety of threats.) The Static was a virus released as a countermeasure after the first Maelstrom somehow resulted in the Apocalypse, and it was designed to stop people from accessing the other layer. It was genetically engineered information interference, and it was proactive -- it didn't just stop people from learning more stuff, it actively attacked and stole things that they already knew. The content of this first-layer Maelstrom consisted of all the knowledge it had stolen from people since coming into existence. The information was largely incoherent, since there was no organizing principle. The Maelstrom's personality was aggressive and nihilistic.
So this is clearly a pretty 'defined' take on the Maelstrom, though to be fair the second layer was not developped immediately, but emerged later as part of an answer to the question of what I would do once somebody rolled a 12+ on Open Your Brain, and also because one of the characters was actively engaged in +augury, which I decided could access both layers equally effectively. But even though it's pretty defined, both in terms of personality and in terms of what sort of information is available (and what perspective it might have on that information), it is largely agnostic as to what it might feel like for any particular PC to access it.
For example, if I remember correctly, we had the following 'what it's like' answers for our PCs:
For The Maestro D', the psychic maelstrom was a garden that represented his establishment, which manifested information with sort of symbolic plant-life and flora/fauna interaction -- weather also played a part, and simple dreamlike intuitions.
For our Savvyhead, the psychic maelstrom was a radio station, or a series of radio frequencies, broadcasting bizarre messages. (This was the original inspiration for The Static and all the related Maelstrom and Weather fronts, etc.) Sometimes information would simply be spoken over one of these frequencies, but more commonly it would be intuited through a sort of passive, trance-like receptivity to the patterns beneath the static, or a combination of all sorts of different stations blending together.
Our Battlebabe entered a sort of fugue state of extreme focus/relaxation (a parallel was drawn with ultra-high-performance athletes when they are fully engaged in an activity) in which he saw first-person visions, either of the future or the past or other people.
So while I would think about my Static-y maelstrom when considering what sort of information was available that was relevant to their questions, and what sort of attitude/agenda might colour that information, it would usually pass through a final layer of translation before it got to the PC. And in some cases that meant they actually got pretty different information, or levels of information. The battlebabe generally got the most coherent information, but it was usually limited to factual visions; the Maestro D' tended to get really allegorical versions of things, but they hinted more explicitly at a much larger picture; and the Savvyhead kind of vascillated in between those two extremes, depending on what was being asked about.