Hardholder Compound

When making a Hardholder: during holding creation, it says you get a compound of concrete, sheet metal, and rebar. Is that compound the holding itself, or a special base within its walls?

Whatever you wish? But if you want an answer, it's the holding.

I usually get the sense that a "holding" is bigger than just one building, like a small city, like some fields and some buildings, like a village, like a warren of underground tunnels, whatever. And then there's one base, your compound, that's *your* place.

Just my 2c.

I usually get the sense that a "holding" is bigger than just one building, like a small city, like some fields and some buildings, like a village, like a warren of underground tunnels, whatever. And then there's one base, your compound, that's *your* place.

Just my 2c.

That's what I was wondering! Like, I could see it either way. A special HQ within the holding, or the holding itself.

Mostly because I noticed that when a non-Hardholder PC takes a new holding as an improvement, there's no mention of compounds at all, or even a description of the holding. Which made me wonder if you and the MC just flesh that out, and the Hardholder gets a special base within.

I play it out like we've seen in real life: a large scattering of unprotected people surrounding a protective holding of limited space. Like a castle. Can you defend 150-300 people at +2 armor because you have big walls? 150 people themselves are security risks. So there's the Hold itself. And the farmers, scavs, etc living around it who can retreat toward it in times of need.

Holdings I've seen in play:

Alison's Alley - started as an alleyway with a secured gate, spread out to include the building block around the alley as reinforcements (human and material) became available.

Foster's Place - a smallish cement warehouse-type space under an multi-level overpass.

Marie's Other Room - a door in a wall to a weird room that didn't fully exist, where Marie's 'people' lived.

Hillview Mall - a shopping mall full of weird, with one store being the actual hold and the rest being just...weird. Hocus-land, for reals.

The Luxor - A big hotel containing a marketplace on the ground level, rooms for hold-folk on lower levels, offices and infirmary and etc on the mid-levels.

Also, one could make an argument for The Garden and Wensdy's Factory as holdings, which are secured sets of rooms in different places in the Luxor during a very tenuous and unsettled time.

I think a holding is not necessarily a keep, but it does often play like that.

So what does it say about Improvement-gained holdings that there's no option to increase or decrease a compound?

That doing so is a matter of doing it in the fiction, and not something that can be shortcutted?  That increasing the holding is not a move, even for the hardholder, but a thing that happens/is sought after?

I have a question.... can it be mobile like a bus, Semi-rig with a flatbed or a reffer?. I know that a driver gets a vehicle so isn't it the same but the holder has better stats?

Running a train-themed Apocalypse World convention game. Pretty sprung from the thought "What if the hardhold were mobile? Something like a train?"   A bus of course would work but doesn't seem quite large enough.  I'd see something like a large ship at sea or maybe a caravan of trucks, buses, etc.

In the text it does specify an "Immobile" hardhold I believe but like everything that's not necessarily the only way to go.

Damn it!... you stole my thunder!

I'm at Ft. Irwin, Ca and Barstow is the biggest yard in the U.S. so that was what I was getting at. I thought would be awesome thou...

my train from another game
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rxJCh-sNHtw-37l47wOjnrRgYNC6pJJhW8iQdxU0YPM/edit?hl=en&authkey=CKbTh3E

Anyone who wants to know what a completely awesome mobile Hard-Hold might look like should read Iron Council by China Mielvile.

-Jim C.

OMGosh, thank you, thank you , thank you, thank you...


Did I say thank you?!