Campaign seed: The Untouchables

I'm finishing up an Apocalypse World game and planning on starting another. My current game took sort of a Mad Max vibe for the setting--wide open wasteland, with a few pockets of urban maze left.

This time I want to set the game in a heavily urban area, inspired by Hamsterdam from teevee series 'The Wire', Kowloon Walled City in China, and the quarantine zone in the movie 'Blindness'. My idea is that when civilization began to crumble and the maelstrom began to form, the governments of the world started to put the poor (the untouchables) into what amounted to fortified concentration camps, which themselves were just walled off and secured sections of big cities. Automatic security systems were set up, and the world forgot about the people inside.

These places were called "Harm Reduction" zones, and were unpatroled, unprotected, and unknown to the general populace.

Then the end came, and the security systems that were supposed to keep the untouchables in ended up keeping the screaming hordes of mutants, pissed-off raiders, and physical manifestations of pure hatred out.

When things calmed down, the untouchables were all that was left. They turned the security measures of the camps to their benefit, and scavenge out in the areas beyond the safety of the walls. There were sometimes two or three of these zones in larger cities, and now they trade or war against each other.

There were dozens of these zones set up in various cities all over the world, and the game would focus on one that people simply call 'Sanctuary'. It's set in one of the cities that had a few of these zones, to make for interesting interactions.

Thoughts? Reactions?

Thoughts? Reactions?

I really like this idea, it's similar to something I was thinking about for my next AW game, but I was considering having the inhabitants not, initially, even aware there is something "outside" the City.

My main question is how you set this up with the players.  Do you have pre-game/char-gen Love Letters premade?  Do you just discuss it beforehand with all the players involved?  Curious how you're going to "enforce" the concept as the players' answers to early questions may radically change things.

One reaction: can I play?

I probably wouldn't enforce it, really. I'd just ask if I could set up a basic framework in addition to things like the existence of the psychic maelstrom and whatnot, and see what people say.

There are a few of these campaign seeds out there (like Objects in Space, or the one John Harper wrote about colonists being left on a distant planet) that spell out a few things like this, and as long as my players were okay with it I'd be okay with it. One thing I wouldn't do is run this as someone's first Apocalypse World game--your first game should probably be run as written so you can see how the game works.

Since I'm playing with vets I don't mind shaking things up a little.

One reaction: can I play?

Me too? Seriously, I think this is a great set-up, and I wish I'd thought of it. I don't think there should be any reason why you couldn't say all that up front, maybe changing the last paragraph about the Harm Reduction zones being world-wide to something sweet and simple like "This is one of those places. We call it Sanctuary. [beat, beat] Ok, who wants which splat?"

I did a similar thing with the Windmills game I'm running now - Hey guys, it's mountain-top removal in the Appalachians. Who wants which? - and it worked great.

Yeah, I wouldn't write up too much about the setting when presenting it to the players. I'd just be like, here's how things are for you, here's a bit about maybe why your world turned out this way, who wants to play what?

Thanks for the enthusiasm guys. If you're anywhere near the San Fransisco Bay Area, there's room at my table for you. :D