This apocalypse is a mess. Super-heroes caused an apocalypse and the players are living in a surf commune on top of the ocean-flooded Rockie Mountains.The hardhold makes its surplus by desalianating water, making it drink-able.

Norrin Radd - Hardholder - he goes back and forth between being an affable, joking surfer-bra to being a frightening killer with an AK who will kill you while smiling and assuring everyone it was the right thing. Jay has him take stands at times that surprise me. Most folks just call him Radd.

Burdock - Savvyhead - known around the hold as the good cop, or the reasonable one. He's the one you go to if you've fucked up and want to soften things up before going to Radd. Yeah, he's an odd one but he's a nice guy and more often than not makes sense.

Trey - Gunlugger - she's the monster under the bed and the hammer Radd uses to bang on any nails who need banging. She's also an ogre of a lady who has a thing for Burdock and he doesn't seem to have much of a clue.

Two games in and we've got a shitty map of the local islands and mention of the Dark-side up north. Jason is the one who drops the most super-hero stuff and I have been putting in dribs and drabs here and there. They have a glove that seems like something off of Tony Stark's right hand, a big gray repulsor ray that Trey has taken a shine to.

Wisher had the glove and turns out he got it from an Atlantean, dropping intel to them in a bottle into the ocean, letting them know about the Crest's defenses and such.

This past game, all of the Sex Moves got activated right before the big feast. Trey slept with the bone-setting/barber, Mojo - but it wasn't exactly a love match. He just ended up crying to her, talking about his late wife after they both got off. Radd slept with Balls, who had been with Roark before Trey put a grenade in his sternum. No hard feelings, Balls wants to be the Number Two. We'll see how that works out. Burdock fixed Wise's cybernetic arm, in what was probably the most intimate moment of the evening, him taking apart the arm, cleaning it out and putting it back together so that she wouldn't have the shakes anymore.

Next game they execute Radd's plan, figuring out how to deal with the Aramadans. Armada is a string of boats out at sea who circle the islands and they came to the Crests, hat in hand, with nothing to barter but needing water. What they said was that they lost their usual shipment of fish due to a bad storm but word around the camp-fire is that they are sizing the Crests up, seeing what they will do and where the Armadans will side if a full-on water rebellion goes down.

It is Apocalypse World, so it is a big, glroious web of names, desires and lusts all pinging off one another.

Good times.

Andrew, our new housemate, hasn't gamed before, so I suggested a few games and he chose Apocalypse World.  I suggested a few choices for apocalypses and luckily, he chose my favorite of the bunch, Jay Walton's Low Earth Orbit apocalypse.  Fantastic.

Andrew played an Operator, Lafferty who did surveillance for the local satellite lord, Roark, making sure the Angel, Doc, stayed put and didn't defect to a different community.

Anthony played a Battlebabe, Raymond Omega, who is a Bladerunner-style replicant, a cold killer with cool clothes.

Matteo played Doc, the Angel, who I didn't have much of a read on but seemed to be a jaded pragmatic guy out to do the least amount of harm possible while still looking out for himself.

The first scene of the game tipped the rest of the scenario.  Miller, a local pilot, came in to Doc at his module aboard the International Space Station with two thugs to talk him into coming with her to a new satellite she was starting up.  She wouldn't say how she was doing it but she was starting a new joint with hydroponic vegetables.

"You'll be able to take a proper shit, Doc."

Doc was in.

Things went poorly between the thugs outside.  Ray and Lafferty got into a brawl with them and the thugs both ended up getting got.

After that it was a blur of failed rolls, tense stand-offs, machine gun fire and zero-g brawls in the void.

In the end, they ended up with Miller, back in Eden, her hydroponic satellite garden.  The new joint was on an un-mapped trajectory that no one had found and was currently manned by a skeleton crew.  If/When we play again, the crew will go out into the other satellites and try to start pilfering solid personnel to make the move to Eden.

I had to get a bunch of things done after the game so I didn't get to talk it over with Andrew but will do so when I have a moment, get his thoughts on his first table-top RPG experience.

We haven't played all summer, so I cooked up this custom move/letter thing to get NPC's into place and get a feel for what the landscape looks like:

Dear Apocalypse Worlders,
Five years have gone by and the threat from the south never came, the remnants of the Five Points Empire collapsed like a flan in a cupboard.  New York City continues to eat itself in uncountable petty feuds.  The cannibals have crammed their way into the southern tip of the Garden.  Meanwhile the Hudson River Valley Compact has flourished and despite the harsh winter famines, commerce has blossomed and the roads were cleared.

There is a murmuring among the populace, some say it is time for elections and others say that democracy got them into the Big Mess in the first place.

Choose an NPC from your list.  You can choose to Hold them Tight or Set them Up.

Hold them Tight means you took them into your confidence and kept them with you during these past five years.  Roll ______________ to find out how that’s going.

Set them Up means you saw to them finding their own place and now they are in charge of some thing, place or organization in the area.  You can find that place on the map or you can explain what they are now in charge of.  Roll ______________ to find out how that’s going.

I'll have every PC listed with a list of relevant NPC's and we'll figure out what is going on in the post-apocalyptic Hudson River Valley.  I've missed them, being a fan of the PC's means missing games is like missing an old, fictional friends.

And of course it will be nice to see the real folks, face to face again as we get our soups, tea's and jackets ready for autumn.

Tons of sitches and people read before this one moment...

The Five Points Empire is at work with Mrs. Dubya and her manufactories in Albany.  After some deliberation, the Hudson River Compact rides to aid her.

They attack in a brutal multi-pronged attack with Dent's Demons falling like old world para-troopers from the overpass that goes over their camp, Bullet's new truck spitting out heavy calibre machine gun fire and Baby's Boys riding in like a biker calvalry.

In creeps Marsh, under fire, with his tribal cult.  He comes face to face with number I, the creepy brainer kid, one of four left in Five Points.  The kid surrenders when Marsh goes aggro.

It is the first big battle like this where no one was shot-up terribly, no mad dashes to find a doctor, no comas, no scars.  Their losses are minimal.

I watched Padraic really think about this and then, in the middle of every thing he says, "Fuck this.  I walk up to the kid and touch him on the forehead, 'Go kill your brothers.'" He rolls for his move, puppet strings and nails it.

"Then I hand him his gun back."

The kid get's in one of the armored school-buses and drives away.

The Five Points Empire is done.

There aren't any really threatening groups out there anymore. I think they will spend the summer exploring, securing and governing this section of New York State that they have carved out for themselves.

It has been over a month since we gamed.  It seemed like a good night for letters:

Dear Driver,
You’ve gotten to know the roads around the Hub-towns pretty well, roll +Cool:

10+ Choose 3 from the List of St. Dale

7-9 Choose 1 from St. Dale and 1 from Crash and Burn

Miss, all Crash, all Burn.

List of St. Dale
•   Ask Read a Sitch for the roads and drivers around Hoover, get as many questions as you rolled on this move.
•   +1 barter for some parts you’ve picked up here and there.
•   +1 forward on your next driving related move because you know the area so damned well.

Crash and Burn List
•   You are driving one of the cars, you’re bleeding and the car’s lurching back into the Hub with trouble in your rearview.
•   One of the cars is not drive-able until you can get some parts and some fixin’.
•   You took a nasty wound and you are bleeding all over the damned seat.  Mark your wound countdown at 3.

Pete rolled 7-9 had Harlan read a sitch on the roads of Hoover and decided to be lurching back into the Hub with trouble in the rearview.  He was on his way towards Cocktail with a band of scavengers from the Roark clan in his rearview.  Due to a misunderstanding, they thought the Croaker's crew was trying to take their claim.

Dear Brainer,
Welcome to the life of a working stiff.  The good news is, take +1 forward for being well fed for the first time in your life.  Other than that, roll + Weird:

On a 10+ You can ask 3 questions from the list below about the Chemist or anyone in his employ.
On a 7-9 you can ask 1 question from the list below and somehow the Chemist get’s to ask one of those questions to you.
On a miss, you answer a question from the list below and the Chemist things you’ve stumbled on something you shouldn’t have.  Brace for trouble.

The List Below
•   Who do you love most in the world and what secret are you hiding for them?
•   If things move according to plan, where do you see yourself in five years?
•   If things go to shit, where do you see yourself in a week?

Sara rolled really well and asked 3 questions about the Chemist.  She found out that he loves his wife most and that her secret is that she is a burned out brainer from Area 51.  If things go according to plan, he'll have his own electricity in Vegas and no longer have to pay taxes to Hoover.  And if things go to shit, if his family was killed, he'd either throw himself into the canyon or walk into the canyon and let them ligers eat him.

They parted on good terms, as her month of employment was over.  She read a sitch and saw that as long as she didn't talk a bunch about the inner workings of his operation, he'd let her go and keep his side of the bargain.  Hum gave her a lift back to Cocktail. 

Dear Angel,
If you want, the hospital’s building is underway. Where is it?  If so, roll +Sharp:

On a 10+ you have +1 Barter from people excited to have an up and running hospital, you have +1 forward on your next roll advocating or defending the hospital and you & a small gang, a clan of scavengers has adopted the hospital as their place to protect, painting and tattooing red crosses on their necks and faces.

On a 7-9, choose one from the list above and you have a spy in your shop.

On a miss: The construction is a total mess and you need 3 barter to get it up and running again or else this site is going to go fall apart inside a few days.

If you aren’t setting up shop with the hospital, roll +Hot to see how things are going between you and Bar.

On a 10+, you two have really connected.  She gets to ask a Brainer question about you and you get to ask a Brainer question about her.

On a 7-9 You are both having good fun, nothing wrong with that.  Where was the last place you two had sex?

On a miss, you are in bed with her when catastrophe strikes…

Anthony wanted more time to think about the hospital, so we just rolled for him and Bar.  He got 10, so they learned about one another and are really close now.

To post later:
The Roarks
Pima and Harlan, up a tree
He shook her hand.
A toast

Doc and Harlan left the Chemist's place in Vegas (along with the NPC's, St. John, Shigusa and Mox and Pima).

Why was Pima, the Chemist's best gun with them?

Because the Chemist pressured him into becoming the Doc's apprentice over breakfast.

Pima offered the Doc his gun (he has two guns tattoed on his abdomen, so that they stuck out as if he always has guns in tucked into his pants).  Doc didn't want to take it until Harlan explained.  "He is taking you as his shogun and is offering you his sword.  Take it."

Doc took the gun after some hemming and hawing.

They drove out of Vegas, leaving Cybelle, who was working for the Chemist, Graham now.  Cybelle was escorted to one of Vegas' manufactories, where the drugs are cooked.  Graham introduced her to Nava, an elderly Mexican lady who shook hands with her before the Chemist said, "Cybelle is my counselor, much like Lovelock used to be."

Nava took her hand away, looking at Cybelle's Violation Glove like it was a venomous snake.  "Fucking brujah."  Nava and Graham sat down in the office to talk and the Chemist gave Cybelle leave to walk around the place.  "Feel free to go where you need to go and get a feel for the place."

Word had gone out among the workers that Cybelle was the new Lovelock and people started to get good and nervous.  She walked around, nice and slowly and one guy just broke.  He jumped a guard and took his gun, starting screaming that no witch was going to poke around in his brain and that he didn't steal much.

Cybelle threw knives at him and disarmed him, allowing the other guards to jump the guy and hog-tied him up (roll under fire).  I probably let too much get done with one Roll Under Fire roll but so be it.  The gun-man was taken into the basement and not seen again.

Happy with the whole endeavor, Graham called it a day and gave Cybelle some midnight reading, SPEC OPS MANUAL 053: Psychic Warfare.  We'd make that move in a bit.

Meanwhile, the guys were going out and doing their rounds.  They stopped by Cocktail to visit her working boys and girls.  A windstorm had swept through and taken her roof right off.  The prostitutes were grabbing bits of tin roof off the ground and putting them into piles.  The Croaker's crew helped as best they could but it was clear that Bar was short on temper and short on time.  They left, making their way around the rim.

The next town is called Gun.  Gun is a shack in the middle of the fucking desert with a speaker/mic, like in an old world fast food joint.  There was a dumb-waiter where one could put their gun and a barely understandable voice from under-god-knows-where-the-fuck.  Harlan got his shotgun sawed off proper and when Doc asked if they needed anything, the voice said that they did not.

Puzzled, they left for the next town on the rim, the Pit.  Pit is a pit with X-mas lights hanging from poles all around it.  Two biker gangs were parked around the pit and two gang members were disarmed and stripped naked, tossed into the pit until one beat the other and then all beef was said to be over.  One gang was on dirt bikes, they knew these folk, led by Esmerelda.  The other gang was led by a tall black fella named Lincoln, who had a necklace of shiny pennies.

"Your boy lost...he need me?" Doc asked.

"Nope, but thanks," Lincoln responded.

That was that.

Next around the Rim were the ruins of Library.  There was nothing but a burned out foundation and the concrete foundation, covered by sand.  Harlan and Doc walked around alone, talking about the politics of putting up the hospital here.

"I think its spitting in Phoenix's eye to set up here, Doc."

"Whaddya say, Harlan, want to stand up to her?  Want to set up here and fight?"

"No offense, Doc but this hospital was always your dream.  I'm always for moving on."

Then they ran across the map in the concrete.  They found a big ole map, etched in the concrete of Hoover and the Rim and the roads that connect them all together.

There was:
Dark
(?)
 
Arvee
(water)

Gas
(gas, duh)

Cocktail
(drinks, sex)

Gun
(ammo, guns, repair)

Pit
(conflict mediation)

Library
(Learning)

Wheelyard
(parts, fixin)

Vegas
(Ligers, Chaos)

Hoover
(electricity, light)

Harlan made his new move, the one that allows him to read weird shit off of inanimate objects.

It was the first of failed Weird-based rolls that would send the game into an unforeseen direction.

Harlan's hitch-hiker

He failed his roll to read the lettering of Library, his new Weird read-stuff move from another playbook.  Suddenly, he was in a man's brain during his last moments of life.  He was in the back of an army truck.  It smelled like some kind of flammable liquid, like kerosene but worse.  They were setting their flamethrowers to burn Library down; it was a truck full of Engineers from Hoover.  The guy whose POV he is stuck in doesn't want to do it and says so.  He says burning down Library is wrong.

Someone slits his throat and he bleeds to death, watched by the men and women he thought were his friends.

The guy's name is Brooks and he's now in Harlan's head, another hitch-hiker, like Ma is in Cybelle's head.

Harlan found the man's bones nearby.

Speaking of Cybelle...

She read the book:

Cybelle reads the bookWhen you read SPEC OPS MANUAL 053: Psychic Warfare, roll + Sharp:

"It reads like stereo instructions but the stereo is your mind and the music it plays is the act of killing people."

On a 10+, you can take 1 of the following 3:

+1 forward with any Weird based roll used to hurt or infiltrate someone/something.
Take an XP in order to buy up your Weird stat or buy a Weird-based move (custom or from another playbook)
The next time you are in deep shit, you can roll Weird for the Seize by Force move.

On 7-9, you can take any one of the above but the MC can ask you to Roll Under Fire when you are doing something perfectly normal.  The book is training you to see people's minds as nothing but pieces in a wargame.

On a miss, this fucking book doesn't make any kind of fucking sense.  Fuck this.  And you also get the consequences of the 7-9 but with no good stuff to go with it.

I had it as a Weird roll but I like it better as Sharp.  I'll talk to Sarah about it, see if she's cool with future readings being Sharp rather than Weird.  I reckon she'll be able to read it once a game or so, though I allowed for two readings this game but from here on out, once a game seems reasonable, unless lots of time passes or something.

She failed.  She didn't grok the book at all.  What is the next thing Cybelle does, the next normal, human thing?

"She's been reading all night.  I guess she goes down to the kitchen, frustrated, looking for food."

"Roll under Fire."

Failed.

"You have a bowl of chicken soup in your hands and your dog is growling at something.  At your feet is the quartermaster, the cook, the guy in the kitchen...what was his name?  Anyway, he's bleeding out of his nose and when he fell, he must've hit his head on the metal kitchen counter.  What the fuck just happened?"

The still-unnamed guy had some kind of seizure.  Cybelle screamed for help and Graham sent out a car to find the Doc.  The cook was put in a bed but he wasn't responding at all.  Everyone's spooked.  They remember the kind of shit Lovelock used to do with his brain and they're looking at Cybelle and they are fucking scared.

Cybelle goes into her room, throws up and locks the door.  Graham goes to talk to her and asks her if something happened, if the cook somehow provoked her.  She says that she really doesn't know what happened.

After the Chemist leaves, Cybelle spends the night talking with Ma, who doesn't know what the fuck happened either.  All she knows is that after reading the book she started seeing minds like pieces on a chess board, like things to be taken and something happened that she couldn't control.

She was still talking to Ma when Harlan and Doc came to her room, after the Doc had a look at the cook in a coma.  Harlan could hear her talking to someone in her room.

Other things to write about:
Doc meets Lovelocke
Harlan, Hum and Brook take a ride in the sweet new car
Cybelle and the Chemist talk
Not a whole lotta rolls tonight

They spent the night in a converted executive office of some kind, now outfitted with military cots and tin tubs for bathing.  The bathroom worked.  This was some luxe shit, going on here.

Harlan went for a drive in the Chevy Interceptor, made by the GM.  I wish I could duplicate the speech he gave to Pima, who road shotgun.  Cubic inches, zero-to-sixty, make, model, how the frame ripples like water to keep bullets off...it was inspiring shit.  St. Dale, who died so the roads could remain open after the apocalypse, works his will through Harlan and he did again today.  Harlan spray-painted 3's on the doors of the Interceptor.

They road down the crotch-rocket bikes that were careening down the highway with stolen drugs and when a semi-truck hit the highway from the off-ramp, Harlan just drove the Interceptor right up into the truck's loading dock.  When it was over, they had a semi, had the stolen drugs and had their enemies dead.

Pima was shocked that everything went so smooth.  Harlan seemed unsurprised, having always put his faith in Dale and his holy number of three.

We did some rolling under fire, some seize by force and all was well, Pete rolled high and killed this mission.  It was nice to see the Driver be awesome.

Other things to write about:

Cybelle's new job
Doc's politics
Hum's stupid
Harlan's new ride
Desert Junkies Attack