Two very good suggestions, thank you!

I want to keep the Freeze Clock, I think it's a nice way of reminding my players about the winter and the constant threat of hypothermia. But I agree that it takes too many rolls before anything "happens". Just rolling once per exposure should be enough.

I like your suggestion Johnstone, but I'm worried that it's too easy to heal yourself. If you're heading out in a snowstorm it should be a race against the clock. It's getting colder and colder and harder and harder to move. 1-harm for each segment on the clock is cool, but the character needs to head outside a lot before it starts getting dangerous.

I've been thinking about everything that's been said in this thread, and maybe this could be something:

You make this move (roll hard) when you're exposed to extreme cold under a longer period of time (snowstorm, spending the night outside etc.)

10+: Add nothing
7-9: Add 1 segment and 1 harm or 2 segments and no harm
Miss: It's worse than you thought - You're at 10 o'clock

The MC may also add segments to a characters Freeze Clock. He may do this if the character fails a move while out in the cold or if the fiction demands it in any way.

This makes the move a bit more dangerous, but I don't know how balanced it is.

Hi,

I've started making Fronts for our next session. One threat is a big, bad wolf pack that haunts the city. This is what I have so far:

The Wolf Pack
Warlord, Alpha Wolf

Cast:

- The Pack (3-harm gang medium savage 2-armor)
- Fenrir, the legendary alpha wolf (3-harm fangs alive messy)

I made the pack using the rules for creating new gangs, but it's hard to know if it's balanced or not. Any opinions, good or bad?

Oh, and I have a Countdown Clock where Fenrir awakens at 12. I want him to join his pack and go crazy if that's the case. What's the best (mechanical) way of showing that Fenrir's in the gang? Should I make a "new" gang with higher stats... Or should I make a custom move?

Those are some thorough answers, gregpogor! Thank you (and everyone else!) for your input so far; it will certainly help me and my group.

Regarding my questions about fighting and using the seize by force move: The answer seems to be to stay flexible and shape the rules around the fiction. I think that I'm a bit stuck in the old, traditional "I roll to hit, you roll to avoid etc"-kind of rules. If it seems logical that Glenn inflicts harm on both of his opponents, then that's what he does. If it seems logical that his opponents should hit him at the same time, then he will suffer harm from both of them and so on and so on. Yeah, that feels right according to the rules.

Please, continue to contribute if there's something you would handle differently. It's always nice to see more than one side of things :-)

After reading this thread, I started thinking about a playbook that was based on the idea that the character went somewhere else now and then, like The Trader, The Eremite, The Vagabond or The Explorer  perhaps. These guys would have a reason to come and go, and the player would be able to skip sessions because of that.

The rules/moves in a playbook like that could be made in such a way that they helped the player get into the fun faster. The rules could maybe even be based upon what has happened in the sessions that the player has missed (don't ask me how it would work, but it could help the player by giving her/him reasons to be there).

I don't know if it's a good idea at all, but I thought it couldn't hurt writing it down atleast!

Oh, the home front is just a name for all the threats that don't have a front, plus all the custom moves that don't, plus any countdown clocks that don't, plus whatever else doesn't, if there is anything else. "This NPC isn't in a front" and "this NPC is in the home front" mean the same thing - it's a threat, it's real, but it's not part of a front.

OK, that's cool. I'll try to write down (or make one of my players write down) our first session and share it with you all in an AP, so you can see how it went.

Thanks again!

Hi!

This is my first post in this forum and it's a bunch of questions... No cool and interesting thoughts/ideas, sorry. I'll try to contribute with such things in the future though, promise!

I have no prior experience with AW since I haven't played/MC:ed the game before (just read the book). My questions will therefore be pretty basic; some will probably be pure misunderstandings from my part and others will be more of a "how do you do" than "how's it meant to be done?". Enough of my mumblings, here goes:

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1. Who creates the world?
I love how the "cog wheels" of AW work. Everything from the PC's moves to the MC's principles inspire and helps everyone too create a unique world together, but there's one thing that's been bugging me; who should create the basic idea of the world? I'm speaking about ideas like "the world is a big desert and the sun is boiling" or "earth is a piece of ice, it's cold as fuck and we live in igloos".  The book mentions that the MC should allow himself to daydream about apocalyptic imagery, but the basic idea should be something that the group invents together, right? How do you and your group do this?

2. Apocalyptic Roadtrip?
Well, I've read both the book and a healthy dose of Actual Play-threads by now, and it seems like the game depends on the PCs living in a rather small area (hardhold, city, camp etc.) to flow like it's meant to. The book gives an example of a travelling PC group, but I don't see how that would work since much is based around reoccurring NPCs and such. Hey, let's presume that the PC group consists of a driver, a chopper and a savvyhead who wants to do a roadtrip post-apoc style... what would you tell them?

3. Hold?
Hold. It's mentioned over and over again but I never seem to get the hang of it. You can get hold through moves and spend them to learn shit but you lose them if you lose the opportunity, am I right? Every playbook got this little Hold section too, what should the players write there?

4. 1st session worksheet
This is a really cool part of the game, but it feels like I'm not quite getting it all. The worksheet is used to show in which way the NPCs can be a threat to the players. Does that mean that every NPC the PCs meet is a threat and should be noted as such on the threat map? If not, who and what is it that should get a spot on the map?

5. Fronts
Okay, fronts are hard. I'm not sure why, maybe because I'm so used to the old "play a written adventure"-style of roleplaying. First of all, one front consists of several threats, linked by a single threatening situation. That's what it says in the book, but what I don't understand is how all these threats get connected in the first place? It seems like the 1st session threat map is meant to grow into the first front, but how do you link all these NPCs and places together? Should you only have one front in play every time (and then create a new when all of its stakes has been answered)?

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Well, those are the questions that's been stuck in my head the last few days (I'm sure that more will pop up in due time). I know that it's probably a bit diffuse, and I'll be happy to clarify what I meant if there's something you don't understand.

Thanks!
/Widundret