Hey all.. I'm still getting acquainted with fronts work and their peculiar flexibility. (Yeah, just in time for them to be replaced in 2E.)
I've got an Angel in my game. One of his infirmary crew is Shigusa, a junkie who's been toying with the bluish paste that's gotten popular around town and is becoming less and less reliable as an employee. If the Angel continues to do nothing about it, soon she's really gonna fuck it up and somebody's going die for it.
I'm making her a threat. I was just curious how you all would handle, as a threat, a so far good-intentioned junkie whose drug use threatens to destabilize the Angel's shit. Make her a Grotesque: Cannibal? Write up her addiction as Affliction: Condition? Just use her in other threats' countdowns?
I'm not sure what to do with the selection of threat types I have here. Thanks for any help!

Don't have a lot more to say but this is all really helpful! I feel way more fit to run this second session.

Thanks thanks thanks!

Cool!

If the steward knows there's a sorcerer in the town, is it still the steward's job to try to bring them back to the Faith?

Someone openly and obviously acting against doctrine is going to try to get the Dogs on their side, right? Because they're assured in their false doctrine, right? And because it gives the players a moral judgement to make, instead of someone easy to blame because they're trying to hide their own guilt.
So when an argument starts about it, how does that work? They can't convince the Dogs that they're right in a conflict, right? Because the players have control over their characters' beliefs.

Say Abigail is an NPC who's been smoking tobacco and the Dogs are up in her face about it. Am I right in thinking it's bogus to have a conflict where the stakes are, "Is smoking tobacco a sin?"
What about "Does Abigail become convinced that smoking tobacco is a sin?"
Or as GM do I push for "Does Abigail put out her cigarette," because in the end Abigail's going to believe what she believes and dice don't have power over that?
What if Abigail is a Dog, how does that change things?

I just GM'd a first half-session - first time playing this game for everyone at the table. I had a little difficulty in my game.

I think while creating my town I kind of set up some of the wonkiness that came out in play. My town had a lot of NPCs with dirty little embarrassing secrets they didn't want to admit to, each telling their own side of the story and lying to hide their secrets. The players pretty quickly began going around to everyone involved in the town's problems and asking them about what was up. One player in particular jumped on any signs of doubt or inconsistency between NPC's stories and interrogated people, intent on finding the lies and cracking some sort of mystery puzzle. He was getting really worked up and wild-eyed (the player, not the character)!

So it kind of devolved into a lot of conflicts trying to wring the truth out of people, for so long we couldn't finish our session. Which was fine, but not super driving, and not play as intended - I should be actively revealing the town in play and driving towards conflict. But how do I do that when it seems natural and correct for the characters to act this way?

I think maybe I misunderstood the spirit of town creation and buried problems too deep. The problems didn't spill out much into the community as a whole. Injustice was interpersonal and subtle, mostly hushed scandal. Demonic attacks were subtle - an empty bottle of whiskey showing up the in the Steward's daughter's bedroom, and a farm belonging to a sinner's family going barren. There is a sorcerer leading his daughters (false priesthood) in private services at home instead of attending the temple, with a fresh body buried under their barren field. I went all the way to hate and murder but everything still feels safely tucked under the rug.

Am I on the right track with my thinking here? Is my problem in town creation, or play as a GM, or both? Did we just have a slow start? How can I get my player characters to really ACT next session when we finish this town, get situations to start exploding?

Is there anywhere online where a lot of Apocalypse World Play by Forum is going on? What would be my best bet if I want to find a game to get in on as a player? If this isn't the place to post this, by the way, let me know and I'll move along.

 So I took my players through our second session last night. For me getting specific examples is one of the most helpful ways to learn this game and I just wanted to ask a few questions. I'll run through this scene outside a bar because a lot of rolls happened. Sorry if this is really dense and overly mechanical, I'm trying to really pick apart what happened to see how all the gears fit together.



Gritch the brainer and Duke the gunlugger got in a tussle with some NPCs: smalltime bad boy Dremmer and his lackeys White and Preen.
White and Preen have just dragged Gritch out of a bar and they're holding him by an arm each. He's not struggling and doesn't seem to care at all. Duke's come outside with her whiskey to see what happens. Dremmer gives Gritch one last chance to hand over his violation glove without getting the shit beat out him (they don't know what it does but they were hired to get it). What do you do? Gritch responds by trying to use the glove on Preen. I wasn't totally sure how to handle it, but I called for a Seize by Force, the thing seized being the chance to fuck with Preen's brain. Gritch rolls an 8 and chooses to take definite hold of Preen's face and impress, dismay, or frighten his enemy. He now deep brain scans Preen and asks in what ways Preen's mind and soul are vulnerable. (the old lady Shazza who works at Duke's Kitchen was like a mother to her in years past and it'd be a real shame if something happened to her.) While Preen is on the ground reeling and everybody else is watching, stunned, Gritch puts the glove in front of White's face. Go aggro: he rolls a 7 and White backs off calmly, hands where he can see.

At this point, Dremmer has come to his senses and pulls out his gun and points it at Gritch's face: "What do you do?" Duke's player jumps in and says, "I shoot him." Again I wasn't sure how exactly to handle it, I went with seize by force but I didn't have Dremmer shoot back because he wasn't paying any attention to Duke, he was set on the freaky brainer. Duke nails the roll with a 10 and choose to inflict terrible harm: her shotgun tears the top half off of Dremmer - and impress, dismay, or frighten her enemy: White turns around and books it. Now Preen's coming to her senses and White's on the run, what do you do? Gritch decides to tackle White and kill him with his scalpel: I go with seize by force again. He rolls 9, takes definite hold of White, and saws through his artery with the scalpel.

Duke now wants to shoot Preen in the leg to keep her from getting up and running off. I have no idea what to do with this so I fudge it by letting her seize by force again but only making her deal 1 harm. She and Gritch hogtie Preen and they haven't decided what to do with her yet.




So I feel like I don't really understand the intended purpose of seize by force and I ended up kind of using it to fall back on when I wasn't sure what to do. It never really felt like the right choice because in each case the other person wasn't really fighting back. How would you have handled using the violation glove on Preen? Should I have let him deep brain scan, without a basic move? Likewise with Duke shooting Dremmer while he wasn't paying attention - better done with go aggro because he wasn't fighting back? Or no move at all? It seems like a pretty drastic action to take without making a roll. Same with tackling White who was busy running away, and shooting Preen in the leg while she was trying to get up.

Any thoughts at all would be greatly appreciated, I know it's a lot to drudge through and I hope it's not too presumptuous to give you guys my big ol' mess to sift through. Any little tidbit of advice will make my day :)

Thanks for the replies everybody, this is super helpful. Mind if I refine/bend my question a little bit?

We have these characters and we're getting a feel for their personalities and the situations they've had themselves pretty comfortably seated in the past few years. Should we play out this situation for a while to get things established, or can I start pushing right away and let the world fill itself in as we go? The more I think about it the more "there is no status quo in Apocalypse World" stands out in my head. (I think I'm getting the book crammed into my head pretty well.) So in the second session, is it too early to be saying to my Gunlugger, "When you get back to the diner Hugo's waiting for you with two buddies and he's got a knife to Foster's throat and he wants his delivery now?"

On the other hand if you like to leave things calm for a while, how do you make sure things stay not boring?