Just Outside the City: Five Years Later

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.

We had this funny moment at the start of the game.  I wrote down every character's name and 3 NPC's who were important to them, thinking that everyone would follow the above directions for each and every NPC and in doing so, the map and setting would become full of stuff that had happened and changes and drama.  On a 10+, they were set up or brought close and doing well.  On a 7-9, they were doing alright but needed help.  On a miss, they were in TROUBLE...most of the TROUBLE folks died during last night's game.  I put them in the crosshairs with extreme prejudice.

But I didn't explain that and the sheet seemed to say that you should just pick one NPC.  So, they each rolled one and then they sat there, looking at me.  I thought they were being reticent to continue, so I made some smalltalk.  And they were looking at me, smiling, wondering what the fuck was going on.  And I'm thinking that I have made a letter-move that is so fucking awful that they are all scared to fucking roll.

Then JJ starts to explain to me that if we rolled for each NPC, it'd make this really cool map of conflict and trouble and such.  And I'm wondering why he's explaining my fucking idea to me.

Finally, after an uncomfortable 15 minutes, I ask bluntly why no one is rolling for the rest of the NPC's and the miscommunication became clear and we had a good laugh, getting on with the game.

More on what happened with each NPC later.

Oh Judd! I'm so excited to read this AP! I love living Vicariously through your games. Its awesome, both as player, voyeur and MC. :)
Thanks so much!

I really like the NPC 'set-up' custom move. Nice. I'll be stealing that tahnk you very very much!

Can't wait to see what transpires over your autumnal game. :)

Oh yes. That is a steal-worthy custom move, for sure.