Help me pitch sales?

So far, when people have asked me about Apocalypse World, my sales pitch has been to blink stupidly, scuff my feet, and perhaps mumble. Ask Nathaniel Cole, I did exactly that to him at GameStorm.

Help! I'm hopeless. What would you say?

-Vincent

It's Max Max, as written by Grant Morrison, and directed by Joss Whedon.

I tell people what it used to say in the playtest PDF under "why to play."

- It's basically Firefly.

- The characters are fucking hot.

- They're together against the world but they can't for sure trust each other and they're the only hope and what if they fuck it up?

Also:
- You don't really need to know the rules before we start playing.

- Sex moves.

- It's basically Firefly.

As a warning, when "Orly" opened with this in his Apocalypse World game at GPNW, it gave a few people the impression it was a scifi game for a few while until we realized the disconnect and corrected it. So you might want to append that with "Except post-apocalyptic, instead of scifi".

Well duh.

;-)

Obviously I was speaking to other, less awesomely talented individuals than as yourself, who might be reading the thread and considering applying the suggestions therein!

I'm also a big fan of using the "Intoducing the..." sections to get to the heart of Apocalypse World's setting. The Chopper one in particular's excellent in that regard, followed by the Operator and Driver in no particular order.

I like what Benhimself said. I'd go with something like:

"50 some-odd years ago, the world as it was ended. We're what's left. The characters are the people that can scrape something together out of the ruin of the world and try to live instead of just survive. Think Mad Max, for sure, but also [insert your favorite 2 or 3 bits of appropriate media]. The rules are quick to pick up, the characters kick ass, and everything matters. Here's a character splat. Wanna play?"

"... everything matters."

I love that!

nothing about my experience with apocalypse world has led me to believe it's much like firefly at all, except maybe that many characters have abilities and skills that other characters do not have.

i wouldn't pitch AW as much like firefly unless I had a demo that supported that to follow it up.

The character classes come directly from Firefly. Think about it.

The firefly reference is an interesting one. It makes sense only in terms of plot, story, and characters, which is almost everything, but it doesn't have lasers so everyone gets so hung up on "genre".

The character classes come directly from Firefly. Think about it.

I am, and it's interesting. I can see most of it, but not all.  What's Mal?  Or Book?

I see that there are some parallels in how the game is set up and in characterization, but in actual play, there's almost none of the "adventure" feeling of the show. 

like I said, if i planned on playing it thusly, I could see it working out but out-of-the-box I wouldn't have noticed the parallels without the direct comparison.

I correct myself (I was paraphrasing John at the time) I said it was Vx's Firefly game. Which is kind of like saying that D&D is Gary's Lord of the Rings game. It helps if you're familiar with both Vx's work and Firefly but it's not even close to any kind of definition.

The consensus on this thread would appear to be that it's "Mad Max II in the style of Firefly".

(I'd have said "Mad Max in the style of Deadwood" but that's just me.)

Quote from: Chris on June 28, 2010, 07:54:13 PM

The character classes come directly from Firefly. Think about it.

I am, and it's interesting. I can see most of it, but not all.  What's Mal?  Or Book?

Mal is EXACTLY an operator. Book is a Hocus. Obviously, things have drifted with the setting. But those character types work well together, on the archetypal level.

To me, Firefly isn't about the "adventure". The "things" occurring in that show are just a lattice to hang the character interactions on.

Deadwood is also a great example. Looking at the rules or several iterations, and maybe Vincent can speak to this, but it seems like the game began as a travelling game similar to Dogs and morphed somewhere on the way into a game centered around a singular town.