(AP) Frigid Cali

My Monday Night crew started up some AW this week, I was the MC.

The four players chose an Operator, Skinner, Chopper and Brainer.

During setting discussion, someone bitched about how all post-apocalyptic settings are burned out deserts, so we decided on a New Ice Age. I suggested we use a place that would never be ready for a snowapocalypse, so we ended up settling on southern California.

We moved to the hardhold and the players got really jazzed about holing up in a prison. So I looked at the name list and said the warden was the great grandson of the warden from before (or so they say) and he was called Bill, son of Bill.

I was about to end it for the night because it was getting late, but a couple players talked me into running a bit.

I cooked up a plot where Bill son of Bill had called them in for some help because he got word that a cannibal cult was heading their way. The PCs spoke with a caravan leader who barely got away from them and he said the cult leader was some fool called Missed by the Hand of God and that the cultists didn't use guns, just machettes and crazy rage. The caravan leader suggested they talk to the Maestro D' at the Last Stop, a watering hole sitting halfway between the prison and the cultists. We left it there.

Things I need to work on:
* I didn't ask enough questions; I told the players how their characters helped out in the prison rather than asking them; I did it because we only had so much time, but now I'm kicking myself
* When one player tried to interrupt another PCs action, I got distracted and forgot to bring it in, so I basically ignored their action. I apologized and I feel like a doofus and I will fix it for next time.

Doofus!  :-)

hey I started an ice age setting game which unfortunately never got past session 1 due to work schedules, I can drop the fronts and stuff on you if you like to look. Not saying they're great or anything but might be interesting and you're welcome to use anything that doesn't suck.

Throw me some fronts, it will be cool to see your thoughts.

Sounds like a great setting, Rich!  And I like your self-reflection about yourself as an AW GM too – we all must interrogate ourselves on how to run/play AW better.

Let's start by hearing more about these PCs.  What are they like?  About which aspects of the playbooks and the world do your players' seem to be the most excited?

Fronts come from the intersection of challenging what the characters' value while rewarding the players with spectacle and consequences for making Moves in the first place.

Another thing I'd suggest here is treating that bit of AP as setting building, and not actually worry about it too much. Maybe you start up from where you left off, maybe not. Go make your fronts, think off-screen, and come back with love-letters that ask questions like mad. And also, I'm curious like Evan - what are your favorite features of your snowpocalypse? I keep thinking about the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and whether there is a pack of maelstream-touched tigers  out there in the snow.

Hey orklord, I sent the material to your listed email, did you get it?  If you have a different address you'd like me to send so just say so.

I got the fronts, octoscott. I ran some tsoy last night, so I haven't gotten to check them over yet. Pretty excited to check them out.

Evan / Margolotte, let me type up some character and setting info. I'm thrilled you asked!

I've started this reply numerous times over the past several days. Honestly, all I know about the PCs are their names and playbooks and a handful more. I've done a horrible job as an MC. What I have is...

Orchid - Skinner (Dancer): Hot +3, looks like a porcelain doll, wears catholic schoolgirl fetishwear.

Brace - Brainer: Indefinite gender, talks all mysterious, likes hang back stay hidden.

Hooch - Chopper: Loud, wears slick leathers, made a joke about wearing assless chaps.

Ebbs - Operator... uhm, that's all I have.

I appreciate the exercise, it's taught me where things fell apart in session one. I'm going to ask questions and draw maps like crazy in session two.

Sorry to keep y'all hanging out there.

Quick update on the game.

My wife decided she didn't like playing a Skinner, so during the next session, she cooked up a battlebabe.

We skipped a bit of time on the next session and I told the players that they were successful on their mission against Missed and his cult, but Orchid was killed. My wife introduced Melody, who just happened to be Orchid's sister who was away at the time.

In the past few months, the game has centered around threats to County, the name they players decided on for the prison. The hardholder, Bill Son of Bill, uses the party to keep things going. He has Brace the Brainer skulk around other villages and camps and sniff out problems before they get too big. He pays Ebbs the Operator to pick off long range threats (he took juggling with murder and surveillance) and we used the hardholder playbook rules to decide the hold had about 70 souls, so Hooch and his small gang of bikers act as scroungers and security for the hold.

Due to the generosity of octoscott on this forum, I had a nice ready-made pair of threats, one of which has been used heavily. The main threat to the PCs has been the Blue Angles (sp on purpose), a savage pack fo women running around in fur bikinis and hacking up people for their stuff. The PCs have figured out, through mostly Weird visions from the Brainer and a captured sniper prisoner, that the Gas Tribe has aims to use the Blue Angles to unseat Bill, son of Bill.

That's the sum of where we're at up to the latest session. Some cool things we've cooked up:

* inspired by ice road truckers, the PCs visited a traveling caravan of ice trucks and smaller vehicles that run a circuit across the area and trade goods up and down the coast
* the local meat market was once a bank before a couple meteors hit it. Its still mostly standing, and they call it by its sign - Bank of erica. The hardholder calls herself Erica. She raises sheep on most of the floors of the office building and she keeps a family of men called the Rothschilds, who tend sheep and kill and sell the meat.
*a days ride away is The Last Stop, a gas station/strip club run my a Maestro 'D, but they haven't gone to see her