Clarification On Landscape Threat Moves

Hey, I just started my first game of Apocalypse World. It has a Landscape threat in it, and I'm looking for some clarification on how they work.

The threat in question is the town the players are based in, Salvation. It's a Mirage, with the impulse of enticing and betraying people. I'm thinking the town itself promises to be a place of safety and warmth, but if you settle down there you get fucked over by politics.

However, the moves for landscapes are a little unclear to me. I can understand them being indirect, but I'm not sure how I would present them in the fiction. The 'Present a Guide/Guardian' and 'Open Another Path' confuse me the most; what would that mean in the context of a shantytown divided by cutthroat politics?

Um. Politics sounds more like a number of other NPCs who have names, are human, and have their own motivations. I don't believe making the character's home turf a landscape threat is a very good idea. I see where you're coming from though, I... I'm not sure how that would work mostly. You want the landscape threats to surround them, not be literally unescapable.

When I think of landscape threats, I think of that fucking sun blasted desert that stretches forever west, from which very few travelers make it through alive. Then I say, it's a threat because it's a generates badness. The ground moves out there, the sun cooks you alive, or freezes you when its down, there is irradiated sand blowing around and when those storms it's all you can do is hope you don't have to breath. When people try to cross this desert, it generated badness, not to mention it stretches forever. Threat? Cross at your own risk.

Or... surrounding the swampland hangs a thick mist, with ten meter crocodiles lurking in the shallows. Only people that know their way around attempt to go through, because if you don't know the paths, you're as good a dead. Threat? Getting lost and never getting back out.

That's what I think of when I think landscape threat. It means impersonal, environmental. If say some neighboring town was fucking weird as shit, and a dark evil seemed to lurk in the hearts of anyone that stayed there for too long--yeah okay, that's an environment effecting the people, maybe its politics, maybe its violence, but what you can do with that is play up some supernatural malevolence.

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Landscape threats don't change often, are not easily "defeated", nor do they have their own will. Although you can at some meta-level pretend that they do. What if that landscape threats were ruled over by some petty deity. Not actually, but like if you stepped into a prison landscape, the landscape itself, and therefore everything within it played as though it didn't want you leave. The vines gently start to wrap around your bags while you sleep, the paths seem to get lost easily, or lead you astray. Just the ambient descriptives gives people the impression that if they're not careful, they're never going to get out of here alive. Now, that doesn't mean there actually is some type of deity controlling those things and acting as a petty aggressor, but the land itself can seem to have a will.

When you make a move with a landscape, you do so to barf forth apocalyptica into the scene. To announce color, description, badness, or potential reprieve. Your moves happen whenever there is a lull or opportunity not snowballing, or some player driven initiative already taking precedence narratively. You some come up with a theme for a landscape, what is dangerous? Why? It is more dangerous when you're sleeping, or when youre awake and moving. When youre loud, or when things get quiet, when you're in a group, or when you're alone. What does the landscape want, and how do that want manifest in the environment?

I write up travel moves that worked like some of the harm hacks, when you suffer harm... when you travel through the wasteland, when you travel down the river, when you try to pass through the swamp and you dont have a guide.... And then I made them roll with a cache of supplies or whatever. I used the harm moves to detail the crisis or the effect the landscape has on them, but only when it was dangerous. This however isnt at all necessarily, all you have to do is make the world seem real, and make dangerous things be dangerous.

I see what you're saying. But I still want to make the town a threat. I suppose I could have a nearby wasteland be a landscape threat, but none of the options for that seem compelling. Perhaps it would be fairer to have the threat apply only to certain parts of the town, outside of their home turf.
Maybe I'm missing something; are landscape threats just so that players have trouble moving around or can it be extended to creating a Pathologic/Silent Hill/Dark City atmosphere?

Thanks for telling me about how Landscape moves operate. I did notice they were rather indirect and 'soft'; makes sense for what is essentially malevolent scenery, I suppose. I think chiseling out the personality of the town will do a lot of good to making this threat sing.

I see what you're saying. But I still want to make the town a threat. I suppose I could have a nearby wasteland be a landscape threat, but none of the options for that seem compelling. Perhaps it would be fairer to have the threat apply only to certain parts of the town, outside of their home turf.
Maybe I'm missing something; are landscape threats just so that players have trouble moving around or can it be extended to creating a Pathologic/Silent Hill/Dark City atmosphere?

Thanks for telling me about how Landscape moves operate. I did notice they were rather indirect and 'soft'; makes sense for what is essentially malevolent scenery, I suppose. I think chiseling out the personality of the town will do a lot of good to making this threat sing.

I wouldn't say that what you want to do is impossible but it definitely isn't a usual landscape threat, mainly because politics is very "hands on" in apocalypse world and is more something Npc's do and Pc's meddle with than a "threat". Politics in apocalypse world are not really abstract, they are the game. Now if you want to make it be this way I'd recommend making new moves for the landscape such as "Turn someone's loyalties around" or "reveal treachery". You may also go full on and build a special move triggered whenever politics are involved in the town if you desire.

I think a landscape threat is very good for a "silent hill" type affair (Where the corruption and the threat is all too real), but making it be a "political system/influence" is a bit harder. It is not impossible but it will need some custom threat moves to make it viable in my opinion.

You may also build it as a countdown clock. But I always felt weird about countdown clocks involving npc's close to the players.

Definitely create the PCs' home turf as a threat! Same as you create the chopper's gang and the hocus' followers as threats.

"Threat" doesn't necessarily mean "threat to the PCs." You want to know your NPCs' threat impulses even when they're the PCs' allies or home turf, so that you know how they relate to other NPCs. For instance, in the game I'm running now, the PCs' home turf is a fortress (impulse: to deny access), which is purely to the PCs' benefit. All of their enemies consider their home to be difficult to attack, because it is, because that's it's threat type.

Anyhow, mirage is a great threat type for a shantytown with dangerous fuck-you-over politics.

Presenting a guide would mean introducing an NPC who knows a little bit about the current political situation, who can show the PCs around, introduce them to who they want to meet, and warn them away from the worst dangers. A guardian would be an NPC who will not only warn them away from danger but who will act to protect them and get them out of trouble, if need be. These NPCs can be new people you invent, of course, or NPCs already listed on the PCs' character sheets, their gang members or followers or regulars or whoever.

Opening another path would mean giving them new access to someone in political power in the shantytown. A back door or a chance meeting, like.

-Vincent

Vincent, what would your impulse be for the threat type of a 'relatively peaceful' hardhold of the sort I've seen made fairly often in my games?  The archetypal version I've seen is 'large population, markets, manufactories, disciplined gang, small gang, owes protection tribute'- it de-emphasises the 'military might' part of the Hardholder in favor of 'a relatively civilised island of relative prosperity, avoiding the worst internal barbarism by taking options that reduce the tendency of the gang to go off half-cocked and not taking options that suggest savagery or a lazy, drug-addled populace.  None of the Landscape threat types immediately seem to fit for what players seem to have put together there, but I could just be missing something.

Vincent, what would your impulse be for the threat type of a 'relatively peaceful' hardhold of the sort I've seen made fairly often in my games?  The archetypal version I've seen is 'large population, markets, manufactories, disciplined gang, small gang, owes protection tribute'- it de-emphasises the 'military might' part of the Hardholder in favor of 'a relatively civilised island of relative prosperity, avoiding the worst internal barbarism by taking options that reduce the tendency of the gang to go off half-cocked and not taking options that suggest savagery or a lazy, drug-addled populace.  None of the Landscape threat types immediately seem to fit for what players seem to have put together there, but I could just be missing something.

Obviously I'm not Vincent, but my inclination would be to figure out what the biggest risks to that peaceful little civilization are. The players clearly want safety, but what threatens that? There's no status quo in Apocalypse World, so what do the characters have to struggle against to keep the prosperity they worked so hard to build? When whatever it is goes wrong, how will this place hinder them? Will they be trapped there (Prison or Maze), or will their salvation be trapped outside, unable to get to them (Fortress)? Will their destruction come from within (Breeding Pit) or will they be swallowed up trying to keep everything balanced (Furnace)? Maybe the peaceful prosperity is a thin facade, and there's something much darker just under the surface (Mirage)?

Basically, of course the players and their characters want a nice peaceful holding. That doesn't mean you have to let them have one. Something bad is going to happen, and your choice of Threat type indicates the general form that's going to take. When in doubt, I think Breeding Pit is a safe option. There are always plenty of opportunities to generate more badness for the characters to deal with if they want to keep what they've built.

ETA: Also, if this place is so great, everyone for miles around is going to want in. How the Hardholder decides to deal with that can determine what kind of Landscape it is. If he lets just anyone in, then it's a Mirage for sure. It looks great, so everyone flocks to it, but it can't handle so many people, and quickly descends into poverty and disease once everyone's there. If he bars the doors to outsiders, then it's naturally a Fortress.

Man, thank you all for the great advice on how to handle this. I definitely like the idea of a custom move for turning people's loyalties. Your input shall make the town of Salvation a more interesting place to live... If not a nicer place. :P