So I wondered this a bit in first edition, but it's more stark in second edition...

Each of the playbooks has a Barter section where most of them say "At the beginning of the session, spend 1- or 2-barter for your lifestyle." In the Hardholder playbook, it makes clear that 1-barter will get you "a month's hospitality, including a place to live and meals in common with others."

If we had all the PCs pay one barter for rent at the start of every session at my table, they'd be paying a month's rent every, like, 1-2 in-game days.

So questions: Is this because our sessions are shorter than most peoples (or Vincent's)? We play for 2.5-3.5 hours at a time. Is it because we play way more moment-to-moment that most people? I'd say a session covers anywhere from a half a day to a couple of days. Almost never a whole week, let alone a month. There's just too much stuff going on. Because it might be relevant to play time, I'll also mention that we have 4 players including the MC.

What do other folks do? How long are your typical sessions in real time? In game time? How many players do you have?

Recently, I MCed my 2nd session of AW. The PCs got into a firefight with a guy holed up in an 18-wheeler cab they were trying to, um, acquire from him. We've got a pretty Weird bunch, so at one point, someone decided they'd open their brain and it went kind of interestingly (they got some vague hints about an unrelated Threat for their trouble). That was the first time we'd done it, so we talked a lot about the nature of the Malestrom, etc.

Because it went interestingly, two other (of the 4) PCs decided they, too, wanted to open up... and both rolled misses. Since it's the second session, they haven't bumped directly into most of the Threats (though, at least one in each Front, so far), so I don't have a lot of stuff that would make sense in a, "Well, Jojo and her biker gang roll out of nowhere. They must have heard the gunshots and decided it sounded like their kinda mayhem," sort of way. And with the Maelstrom, there's no harm establish to deal out...

Basically, I'm looking at these moves and trying to figure out what makes sense from a misdirection standpoint. I feel like the ones that make the most sense are, like, "Put someone in a spot", "Take away their stuff", "Activate their stuff's downside" (maybe), "Tell them the possible consequences and ask" (maybe), "Offer an opportunity, with or without a cost", "Turn their move back on them", or some threat move. In the case above, I wanted to make at least a medium-hard move (I'm still calibrating what's hard, so I don't know how strong I can hit, yet, but that's just an experience thing).

What I ended up doing was taking one PC's stuff away (hands go completely numb, drop your gun, freak out for a while) and turned the move back on the other PC by asking a bunch of questions. The latter didn't feel nearly as hard as I'd've liked.

AND, after the session, one of the players brought this up specifically. Basically, saying he wanted opening your brain to really have consequences to disinsentivize people from being like, "I open my brain, I buy a drink, I open my brain, I take a stroll, I open my brain, I gaze at the clouds, I open my brain" and never have bad things happen. While I think that's a sort of ad absurdem example (eventually, we'd all get bored and I'd roll out a super hard move no matter my temperament). But his idea was that, like, if you fail your roll+Weird, it would be entirely reasonable for the MC to just nod and be like, "OK. Well, sucks for you." and not say anything more until later when the PC gets back to the hold and finds out their house burned down. In the fiction, no causal relationship to the Maelstrom, but something bad did happen.

Also, in the case of turning the move back, I have a flavor question: If you turn the move around and ask the player a bunch of questions and something comes out, like, "Oh shit. Yeah, I'm totally terrified of snakes. Worst thing I can imagine would be to be buried in them. Can't stand to even be near one, but a ton would be panic attack city." In order for that to be a hard move, that should totally come up again. Do I need to tell myself that, off screen, Harridan the (little h) hardholder got a text from the Maelstrom with that piece of data and so, at some later date, can use it, or is it enough for me to know it and, later, have Harridan just happen to use snakes as a threat against that particular PC?

The rule book mentions, incidentally in examples, a few interesting place names: The rag-wastes, the burn flats. And, of course, there's the famous Hatchet City.

I wonder: What interesting place names have you had at your table? Holding names, regions, bunkers, whatever. Let's share.

When y'all are thinking about stuff before session 1... building your aesthetic, as it says... How far do you go? For instance, if you thought I Am Legend was cool and had this vision of a holding barricaded in at night to keep the monsters out... Is that something you might try to work in? It doesn't really seem like the kind of thing that might otherwise come up, but I've never run a game, so I don't know. Is it going too far?

Also, how much authorial control of the world do you folks hand over to the players after session 1? The example in the book is asking the players "Where DO you get your food?" And, to me, it seems clear that during session 1, the players are intended to have wide latitude with world details well outside their characters. After that, do you reign it in some, or still take a lot of opportunities to hand world-creation back to the group? If it depends, what kinds of things do you weigh?

I don't really imagine these questions have "right" answers. I'm just looking to see how other folks have done it or think about it. Thanks!