AP:Longneck

My Monday night group gathered last night for our first session of Apocalypse World! The heat was ghastly so quickly before everyone got there I cranked up the AC and sealed the gaming area shut. I also made some salsa, because nothing says apocalypse like salsa.

We have two Matt W's in the game so if I need to specify I'll call them Matt1 and Matt2. Matt2 posts on this very board and is hacking AW, so you know him. Matt1 I've gamed with at conventions before and digs BW and various indie games. Also in the group is Carly who is my girlfriend and has a little experience roleplaying - mainly college D&D and a few games we've played together like Breaking the Ice, Maid, and The Final Girl. Joe is a friend Carly introduced me to who is a huge Doctor Who fan and whose prior experience with gaming seems to be exclusively with D&D, WoD, Call of Cthulhu, etc. I think he'll do fine.

Matt1 is playing Ozair the Savvyhead. Covered in robes and goggles and tools. He has a workshop on the edge of Longneck that's a converted mobile home.

Matt2 is Proust the Operator. He has some surveilance, infiltration, and scavenging gigs going on, and is a wheeler and dealer.

Joe is Sorrow the Hocus. His followers are a cult who believe him to be a god-prophet, and depend on him completely.

Carly is Iris the Brainer. She lives in an old train tunnel dug into the cliffs that sit at Longneck's back. She had a twin who died when she was younger, and has been in touch with the maelstrom for a decade. Maybe more.

We only got a chance to go round the table for a handful of scenes once we were done with character creation. Ozair's young assistant, Lemma, let him know that she was thirsty and that the town's water supply had gone to shit. It was a stream that burst from the wall of the cave and had it's source above the cliffs. He wanted to make a filtration system, but would need someone to climb upstream and find what the source of the pollution was, and bring back a pure sample so he could develop a method of chemical separation. He went to Proust to see if someone in his crew could help.

Proust was at White's, who is Longneck's primary poultry provider. They negotiated getting one of Proust's crew up the cliffs. Proust nominated Jesus, one of his crew.

When they weighed the dangers, Proust got reluctant to send Jesus after all. The trip would probably be a day out and a day back, and Jesus was ill-equipped. But Jesus wanted to anyway. Not having water to drink is a big deal.

On the other side of Longneck, Sorrow woke up to the supplications of Tumtum. Apparently, the followers were starting to get sick and Gnarly had started puking and shitting all over himself. Nobody knew what to do and they needed Sorrow to guide them.

Meanwhile, Iris climbed out of her cave and tried to get a read on what's going on in the town. Reading the situation, she saw that the town was already getting antsy, and she knew that White had some stores of water for his chickens and their preparation. He was sitting on either a big opportunity or a pile of dynamite.

And that was it. I wish we could have gotten further, but at the same time I was relieved to have the opportunity to take what I had and do some prep. A lot of things got hinted at that I could develop, and the players gave me a ton of material. I only wish I had gotten some more scenes with Iris - I got a bit of ribbing after the game since she only got two minutes of screen time.

I'm excited about putting fronts together and getting things motoring next game. The characters are already pretty damn cool. Oh, and Iris has metal pasties.

My favorite part last night was when I showed up and said, Hi Bret, nice to meet you in person, and he says, we've met, we had a beer together at Dexcon.

So I've been at his place, what? like fourteen seconds and already I'm an asshole. Jesus.

Anyway, it looks like it's going to be nuts. Three weird-focused characters, and then me. That oughta be fun. Guess who they all have the most Hx with?

It was very satisfying to be able to say no when another character tried to recruit me into some sort of "adventure seed." You know how in games of yore that's the moment where you think, okay, this is how we get the party together to go on the GM's quest? Instead Proust gets to politely tell Ozair to fuck off because WTF does he look like a mountain goat, and he can have one of his crew help instead. That was nice. I'm playing him as if he's real, right? And there's no way he's climbing a cliff. Not as long as there's someone else he can get to do it for him. Or as long as there's some other job that pays better.

Dear Vincent Baker: I like you a little bit less because I had to deal with those goddamn playbooks last night. If I did holiday cards you would still totally get one, but the xo would maybe be written a little smaller.

Bret makes kickass salsa. Holy crap.

Salsapocalypse World

Ingredients:
2 large tomatoes, cored
1/2 large white onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 sarrano pepper
1/2 cup cilantro
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper to taste

Dump it all in a food processor and blend to desired chunkiness. Just as tasty chopped up with a knife and dumped into a bowl, just more time consuming.

We played our first session with fronts. Full frontal apocalypse?

I love the multiple fronts thing. It reminds me of good TV/books/etc where multiple storylines are rolling at once.

As I was hoping, the good stuff really kicked in when we botched rolls.

So here's what went down.

There was that whole water problem, yeah? So Ozair the savvyhead has hired one of my crew (Jesus, who looks like Jesus in The Big Lebowski) to climb a fucking cliff, because fuck if I'm doing it. Iris the brainer is assisting him a bit, but the dude, White?, who has his own sort of fast food operation, has approached Iris to help keep the nutjobs away while there's a water shortage, so they can both profit from it.

Proust the operator has been working his jobs, and Fleece, who's the closest the tent city has to a mayor, is all worried about a couple newcomers who apparently have turtle shells on their backs. She's all, Proust, grab one of them or both so we can question them. Proust convinces her to come clean about what's really going on, but he has to keep it to himself. She's seen them before, picking over the ruins of some kind of nasty carnage, and she thinks they're responsible, probably a scouting party. Probably the player characters from that other guy's game.

Iris and Ozair both tap into the maelstrom. Iris says it's like trying to get a signal with an old television, where you have to stand just right and move your arms a bit. You can help by taking her hand and then holding a coat hanger covered in foil in your other hand. Ozair sees things as blueprints. When Iris tries to help Ozair later, she suffers some kind of feedback and her cloak--made from a shower curtain--catches fire and melts.

They both see that the water problem is from some before-time thing up on the cliffs that's leaking from a broken container. Ozair is given what looks sort of like a treasure map in his vision, marking a spot to the south.

When Jesus finally comes back down from the cliffs, he's carrying a jug with some nasty looking shit in it, and he decides that what Ozair's paying him isn't enough. Ozair panics and tries to bully him into giving it back. That goes HORRIBLY WRONG and Jesus grabs the gun out of his hand and accepts it as part of his additional payment. Then he walks to Ozair's workshop and helps himself to Ozair's worth in barter. So that was fun.

Proust decides he wants to drug the newcomers so he doesn't have to fight them. He goes to the special camp of the followers of Sorrow (who wasn't present this session). Manages to convince Sorrow's second to give him a dose of that crazy shit they use to have their weird visions. So he shows up at their campfire, Lala and Bill, and he's all "hey, I'm the guy who can get you work, etc" and shares some mickeyed water with them, giving the dose to Lala so he can drag off Bill in the chaos.

This goes HORRIBLY WRONG.

Bret was about to say, okay, so you drug one of them, and I say, man, I thought you were going to make me roll for acting under fire. And Bret says, oh... hell yes you're acting under fire. So I get a 5.

So Lala starts mumbling like a crazy man, and Bill is all WTF did you do to him? And then Lala stands up and starts freaking out, shooting into the crowd. Like, killing people.

I'm thinking, oh fuck, not good. Okay, I have that move, eye on the door. Fuck this, I need to get away. So I say I'm diving toward the biggest crowd of panicked people and using the confusion to make a break for it. So I get a 6.

Amalia -- one of my crew -- comes to my rescue just a little too late, and she pops Lala. Lala is dead. Oh hey, he and Bill are clearly a couple.

Suddenly Bill is all "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" She has her gun in my face and drags me off into the desert, waving Amalia off.

At the moment, I'm hog tied, under a blanket, at least a day's walk from the tent city. Who knows what the fuck is going to happen to me. Bill seems like she might be sad about how I totally got her partner killed. We seem to be headed toward some ruins.

And one more thing: what's up with that brightness on the horizon. It almost looks like the whole world is on fire, and it seems to be getting closer.

Oh, here's a thing. Because who wants to do day-job work? Not me.

I was just reading the NPC triangle thread and thinking about how our three characters are all on different parts of the map at the moment, or gonna be as soon as Iris sets out with Ozair's assistant.

Got me wondering how that's going to kind of slow-burn the triangles. My crew are back where Ozair is, and one of them has already fucked Ozair over. His assistant is going off on a trek with Iris. NPCs spending a lot of time with other PCs. I think that might plant some good seeds.

And I forgot to mention a thing with Ozair. His assistant, who's like a 12-year old kid that Ozair has dressed up like a mini-me, is being all rebellious and wants to work on the cure for the water problem. Ozair tries to convince her/him to focus on given instructions, and assistant (Lemma?) has a little tantrum, starts smashing equipment. That was funny.

Okay, I'm really going to try and work now.

Still getting grips on rolls. I think I'm finally "getting" acting under fire as a catch all "oh shit things are kind of crazy can I pull this off" sort of roll. My brain keeps thinking in like skill charts or something. Stupid brain.

Iris has fallen in with White who wants to use the water shortage to get some sick profit since he's sitting on some water stores. She agreed to put her name on his sign which will be enough to keep some people away for awhile. I'm really not sure if she's planning on making good on her agreement to help him if he gets into some deep shit but we'll see. Oh and just now she is getting ready to set out on an expedition with Lemma and tells White about it. She's like "Yeah we're trying to fix the water problem," and he's like, "Are you crazy?!" So then she promises that she's getting a secure source of fresh water and he'll be the beneficiary here, like she's scamming Ozair so they can profit more. Doubt it, but White's bought it.

Oh and Sorrow's Children are all fucking with Iris and sneaking around her cave. Tumtum who is like Sorrow's second has a beef with Iris. Sorrow was laid up since Joe couldn't make it to game, so he was in the sick tent leaving Tumtum to figure out what to do. Obviously Tumtum has no idea what to do since Sorrow does his best to make them all dependant on him, so they're getting kind of weird.

I love Lemma. S/he's like, "Fuck watching this rope waiting for Jesus to come back, I want to do some SCIENCE," and just wanders off. S/he's right at the age where s/he's gonna push his buttons and Ozair seems like someone who is not a people person typically so how is Ozair gonna deal with that.

Nobody's fucked anybody yet though. I feel like a failure as an MC.

There was that whole water problem, yeah?

I love how people lapse into swearing and/or (what I see as) Vincent-speak when they talk about Apocalypse World.  I feel like I do.  Or maybe it's just an east coast thing.  It makes me think about game rules as meme medium.  Behold the wicked awesome power of the game designer!  ;-p

This game all sounds wonderful so far.  A water supply threat is a great threat; it wants such immediate response.

I might try making that salsa for Thursday night.  It's going to be 98 here.

Please do inform us when Jesus says, "Nobody fucks with the Jesus!" yeah?

I did actually describe him as John Turturro.

Nobody's fucked anybody yet though. I feel like a failure as an MC.

We usually have some PC sex show up every other session or so. You got time.

Guess we'll see tonight!

I can't see Jesus as John Turturro. Every time I picture him in my mind he looks like Jon Seda.

Iris the Brainer!  Yes!  My favourite part of Apocalypse-World-Online-Discussions.  I have an Iris the Brainer, also.  They seem very different.

I think the highest I rolled last night was a six. It was crazy fun.

Poor Bret. "You failed again? I'm running out of bad things to do to you!"

Last night the shit really hit the fan, I gotta say. Frenzied mobs tearing people to pieces, painwave projectors, freaky omens. Yeah, it was good. I'm sad that I have to wait a whole week.

Yeah, Sorrow wakes up from his beauty sleep and decides to rile up a mob to kill White and take over his water stores. Proust gets a claw hammer in the back from this tribe of folks who wear these sort of shell coverings over their back and then runs through the desert. Iris in-brain puppet stringed Lemma and abandoned her in the middle of nowhere. And Ozair managed to get some water filtration working and struck a deal with White, just before White got mob-murdered. Oh and Iris managed to get the water filtration system away from the mob by setting off her pain wave projector in the middle of it.

Yeah, I know there were some successes last night but coming up with move after move to make against Proust was straining my mental capacity. Guy needs to catch a break.

Iris the Brainer, drawn by Carly. Those are metal pasties over her nipples.

I love the shower curtain cape.

I look forward to this game all week. I really need to have two.