New Apocalypse World Campaign, Toronto Ontario

Erik,

It took me a moment to realize what you were talking about! You're referring to our conversation after the last session, right?

If so, it was about a technique John and I (that's quite a mean typo you made there!) were working on a few years ago. It's not strictly relevant to AW, but could be made to fit.

The idea was to take traits important to the characters and then create NPCs that reflect them or subvert them. For example, if one character is struggling with issues of loyalty, you might create a strongly loyal villain (perhaps someone who takes that trait to the extreme), or a disloyal hero (Robin Hood?). Or simply an NPC who reflects a particular angle of that issue. Then in play you see how the protagonist relates or reacts to that NPC.

It's a very character-centric view, not along the lines of NPC-PC triangles, but...

OK, new thought on adapting this to AW:

* Take an important issue from a character. (We don't have too many of these yet, maybe some more "reading" moves and/or provocative questions will help here?)

For example: Big Dog clearly believes that respect is based on relationships of power, a "might makes right" kind of philosophy.

* Create a basic idea for an NPC who pushes that idea to the extreme or subverts/inverts it.

Example: A warlord/cult leader who believes in equal rights, loyalty, the value of the community over individual power. Might does not make right to this guy!

* Now do the same thing for another character.

Example: My Quarantine desires to find his family, it's his drive at the moment. Let's create an idea for a character: someone who believes family ties are an evil philosophy, that people are what matter, that we should erase all ties of blood, separate children from parents, etc.

* Finally, you create an NPC that combines those two things.

In our example, we get this warlord/cult leader figure who a) believes that people are equal, that violence is not the basis for respect or leadership, and b) wishes to destroy family relationships and create a society that values community above family ties: everyone is "equal", and ideas of blood lineage and family should be thrown out the window (probably at gunpoint, since this is AW).

Silly example, maybe, but that's basically the line of thought.

You could easily assign such "angles" to existing NPCs instead of creating new ones, of course.

Didn't really advance any of the fronts' agendas as a new character has entered the fold and the setting had to bend a little to fit her in.

Session Prologue:
* Character Generation & Background
Dust grew up among the hardscrabble Hillfolk somewhere in the USA.  They have been lodged up in their hills since the collapse.  When Hagar's tribe came by, they were cautious, interested in their herd animals, willing to pay a little tribute to the bikers, but not at all interested in their cult.  Dust was hanging with The Flock and had a quick fling with a shepherd boy.  Not being aware of the Flock's prohibition against the spilling of seed.  Or their insistance that marriage follow upon spillage.  Bored with the Hillfolk and looking for a way out, Dust agrees.  She also does not put up much objection when, for no clearly stated reason, Hagar insists she go home and slay her 1st spouse.  Dust's prologue ends with her walking out of the hut, husband 1 laying dead on the floor.

* Torture you, yeah, that's a good idea ...
Big Dog terrifies some of his captives from the time when he broke the blockade on the road outta town.  2 are gruesomely dismembered outright to make a point.  Then he has a few fight to the death for the right to bear his message back to Hagar's Tribe.  The pious fervour of Hagar's followers is exhibited.  The nature of the bike gang -- followers of Hagar's son, Ishmael -- is revealed.  Big Dog and the gang head back to headquarters. 

* Snipers!
The militia is facing a botched planting of the s-millet (soy-millet frankengrain) and their attempts to save the crop are stymied by a brief return of the hazy dust clouds.  Quarantine gets closer to Dustwitch and learns more about the strict gender roles of The Militia society: those who chose to take up domestic duties are to act as women and those who wish to bear arms and operate outside the compound are to act as men, regardless of biology.  And that vow is for life.  Joe's Girl -- now working as Newton's medic and curently AWOL in the company of Ethan Cullen -- broke that vow and left The Militia.  Joe -- renaming himself Fuse -- still resents that.  While the Quarantine is getting to know Fuse, Fuse is picked off by unseen snipers.  And the camp comes under attack from co-ordinated sniping.  At night.  Which scares the hell out of everyone.

* Showdown in Ft. Scott
Dust has been deputised to speak for Hagar in a parlay about the ambush/rout/torture events.  She makes it to Ft. Scott and encounters Big Dog.  They exchange a few tense words.  Newton takes them into HQ for formal negotiations.  Newton seems willing to allow Hagar's bunch to occupy the basin, and to make good the deaths of those tormented by Big Dog with a payment of narcostabs.  BD is disgusted by this mollification.  Situation takes a sickening lurch when Quarantine rushes in with news of the attack.  Convinced that Dust has been diverting her while Hagar's people make an attack, Newton calls for Dust to be arrested.  The battlebabe's acrobatic moves get her out of the meeting room in a flash, and she makes her escape from the poorly guarded fort.  Newton's demands that BD high tail it after her are met with derisive laughter.  BD does Newton the favour of leaving one of his prisoners in her custody.  Concerned about the source of the drugs affecting his gang, BD resolves to head to the mindfuck known as The Eye.

* Revelation on the Road to Ft. Scott
Quarantine catches up Dust on his ATV.  Makes it clear that he is not like the maniacs around him.  Moreover, Dust has run into some of the goatherds from Hagar's camp who are also bearing rifles with night scopes.  Resentments about Hagar's failure to reveal this sortie to Dust are expressed.  The goatherds hail Quarantine as the "Son of Light" that Hagar has been sending them to rescue from the hands of the ungodly.
Dust wants to clear things up: tells the boys to watch the road and escorts Quarantine to the camp.

* Welcome
Hagar welcomes Dust and Quarantine to her private tent.  Bizzare questions insinuate that Hagar has known Quarantine for some time.  Dust's displeasure with Hagar's scheming is expressed but Hagar tires to avoid the issue.  Ishmael breaks in armed, and aiming at the Quarantine.  Dust's spike-covered chain disables him but he continues shooting blindly and yelling something about "Father, how could you have treated us like this" and "Father, why did you forsake me?"  The Quarantine reaches out to the boy, and with his healing touch repairs the damage to his legs.  The boy reaches out through a psychic link and interrogates the man he believes to be his father.

* On the Road Again
On the way to The Eye, Big Dog and Gang treat with The Mounties, a gang that ride horses.  The Mounties have the spoils from an ambush on a caravan from The Pumps.  They seem awfully eager to trade jingle for a van that Big Dog boosted from Ishmael's gang.  What do they need all that storage space for?  They defer to Big Dog and the pack, acknowledging that the area around Fort Scott is their turf, but ask his permission to roam the place while BD and friends are down with The Eye.  BD insinuates that Hagar's bunch would be a better place for them to do their raiding.

Session ends.

New Questions to Address

"Is Hagar actually Lt. Tammy Jackson?  If she isn't, what happened to Tammy?" 

"Is -- whatever Ishmael might believe -- really the child of Hagar and Quarantine?"

An interesting session, for sure.

Dust was awesome! Love the backstory. She was intriguing enough for the Quarantine to follow her out to the Tribe, anyhow!

For some reason, I'm really curious to see how she will interact with Ethan the Savvyhead...

Another very interesting tidbit was Fuse's necklace/pendant, which, according to (someone?), is an emblem of the Eye, and can get the bearer into the Eye's presence, a favour from the Eye, or something similar.

Was Fuse a spy of some sort?

Terms to Describe Apocalypse (based on revelations so far)
* Fascism
* Space satellites
* psychic power
* mini nuclear generators
* what was resistance to the Administration like in the early days of the unfolding Apocalypse? (there was a time of protest)

Questions Answered to My Satisfaction
* will Newton give ammo?
* what is Hagar's prophecy?
* what is the storm?
* will scavenger dudes return? (they did, you wasted them and stole an ATV)
* how did a digi-cam survive?
* what are the effects of the drug that Flare has been feeding to Big Dog's pack? (highly addictive, withdrawal causes painful nausea and vomiting & sluggishness)
* what will Putrid's revenge be? violence and kidnapping!
* where did Flare get the drug? the eye
* how Bloodhound perceives what happened to him (the resurrection): he believes that he resurrected himself!

Questions Still Open
* how do the Pumps/petro work?
* how is the storm linked to the Psychic Maelstrom?
* where do basic food staples (grain, sugar, salt, pepper, cooking oil, fundamental proteins, coffee) come from?
* how will Dust interact with the Savvyhead
* Is Hagar really Lt. Tammy Jackson
* If not, what happened to Tammy?
* Is Ishmael really the child of Hagar and the Quarantine
* Will Mounties raid Ft. Scott or Hagar's Tribe?
* Will Newton pursue Dust for alleged betrayal?
* How does Gnarly plan to handle the snipers and the rest of Hagar's Tribe?
* What was Ethan's ride from Wyoming like?
* What happened to Lucy, the Quarantine's child that he remembers?
* What creepiness with the creepy militiaman Corbet do next
* How will the methane system get repaired?
* Is there a battery for the artificial life support?

Name: Dust
(a.k.a. Nimkii's wife, but no one says that to her face)

Look: Female, casual wear w. hat, handsome, indifferent eyes, angular body

HX:
Messiah Quarantine +1
Big Dog +2 (uncomplicated, but problematic, potentially)

Gear and Barter:
* Oddment worth 2 barter
* duds, straps, etc., +1 armour
* Cookbook
* Gun (antique [+1 valuable], automatic [area]. reload, loud) 2 harm, close
* Spiked Chain (chain, infinite, hand, area) 2 harm, hand
Submachine Gun

Cool +3 [as in waaaaaay cool]
Hard -1
Hot +2
Sharp 0
Weird -1

Moves:
Ice Cold
Visions of Death

Left the hill people of Appalachia after shooting husband.  A superficial tie with Nimkii, he is just a boy, really.

Happy New Year, Erik:

Questions Answered to My Satisfaction
* what is Hagar's prophecy?
* what is the storm?
* how did a digi-cam survive?
* what will Putrid's revenge be? violence and kidnapping!

Really? I'm not sure I know these answers. Refresh us, please?

Also:

* how Bloodhound perceives what happened to him (the resurrection): he believes that he resurrected himself!

Whoa! Crazy son of a bitch.

Looking forward to the next session!

Happy New Year, Erik:

Quote from: Erik Weissengruber on January 10, 2012, 11:09:21 AM

Questions Answered to My Satisfaction
* what is Hagar's prophecy?
* what is the storm?
* how did a digi-cam survive?
* what will Putrid's revenge be? violence and kidnapping!

* what is Hagar's prophecy?  That the Son of Light will fall to earth and lead the outcasts to salvation.  (It has been delivered in bits)
* the storm is a fusion of psychic maelstrom with the results of climate engineering by the authoritarian regime that brought about the collapse (again, delivered in hints)
* there seems to be many pieces of functioning high technology -- you were in an area with a surprising number of cached high tech
* the last one ... well, the first 2 minutes of next session will make that clear

Really? I'm not sure I know these answers. Refresh us, please?

Also:

Quote

* how Bloodhound perceives what happened to him (the resurrection): he believes that he resurrected himself!

Whoa! Crazy son of a bitch.

Looking forward to the next session!

Yep, he now believes that he has some strange powers

January 11 Resumption

Wow.  Wow. Wow.

3 Love Letters
* Big Dog: checks to see if the silty black dust has affected his gun (and his gang's) -- it has
* Quarantine: rolls+sharp to see if he is aware of members of Hagar's tribe slipping off to try to access his cryopods
* Ethan: rolls+sharp to see if a Tribe member he doublecrossed earlier gets the drop on him and Joe's Girl.  They do.  Big time.

Ferris Wheel is Rusted, Off in the Distance

* The Eye is not a person : it is the abandoned amusement park encampment of a drug maker and warlord, Hengelo, and includes a brothel (run by fraternal twins, Arroy-D and the androgyenous Cock Brand -- both are named after brands of hot sauce), a market for all sorts of folk to buy and sell and deal in the drug, and fun zone called Party Town, and coterie of smart operators that work under Hengelo to keep the place fucntional.
* Hengelo is in a fix since his dealer in Fort Scott, Fuse, has been rendered headless by the sniping of Hagar's gang.  He fixes on Big Dog as a replacement for him, but Big Dog has other aims: corrupting Hagar's bunch with the drugs.  After a pleasant lunch of smillet and please birds (pigeons who coo "please" after prolonged exposure to the Malestrom), Big Dog meets Omer, the psychic employed by Hengelo.  Omer's mind has been shorted out by the violent termination of his psychic contact with Fuse.
* Big Dog departs, with Pushpin and Calex to serve as the infiltrators who will start the process of corrupting the Tribe.  And with a vague awareness that one of his own gang is, once again, calculating a move against him.

Departing for the Visionquest
* Quarantine is weighing his options for chasing after the party of explorers when Hagar enders.  She confronts him with the fact he is leaving again.
* After maintaining her distance while he adjusts to his new world, she breaks down and embraces him.
* She wrings a promise out of him: he will return, and he will take his alleged son, Ishmael, with him.
* He takes off on the ATV

Howdy!  It's Payback Time!




[/list]

* Howdy, It's Payback Time!
Rabid and his gang surprise Ethan and Joe's Girl.  She walks to the front door for a stretch in the rising sun, gets a riflebutt to the jaw and goes flying into the room.  Ethan makes a grab for the gun, succeedes, while shots pepper him and Joe's Girl.
Rabid and 3 others want him to come out.  After a frustrated attempt to peek out of the window, Ethan just starts pumping shots through the wall of his trailer.  The ambushers respond with a teargas canister thrown in.  Ethan lurches to his SMG, busts out of the door and brings the ambushers down.  And kills Rabid.  And then Ishmael and Quarantine come over the ridge.

* A Tricky Plan
Pushpin reveals himself to be a solid operator.  And encounter with the refuse of a meal left by the cannibalistic Mounties makes him quake, but Big Dog reasures him that he will be safe.  So long as he does exactly what he is told.  They spot the party of raiders out to find the Quarantine's buried pod.  Big Dog's plan: stage a raid to debilitate their vehicles, have Pushpin ride up with a bombpack, throw it at BD's gang to "scare them off" and proceede to inflitrate the Tribe under the guise of a friend.  Good plan, aside from Pushpin's sidekick getting a bullet from one of the Tribe.  Pushpin, a good actor, uses it to build up his role as a good guy.  BD and crew take off to cache some of the drugs.
Note: Big Dog has promised Hengleo a fresh psychic to use in the manufacture of his strange drugs.  The Widow is in cold storage in the Quarantine's facility.  His maneuver is designed to both prevent the Tribe from making serious inroads there AND to start the corruption of the Tribe.  Brilliant scheming, Peter.

* Father and Son
Tense: what will Ishmael think of his father aiding enemies of the Tribe?  Well, the Quarantine uses manipulate to get Ishmael to eschew violence of the kind that resulted in the debacle at Ethan's shack.  As a return, he is supposed to convert Ethan and Joe's girl to the cult.  That is delayed a while while Q. takes Joes Girl and Ethan to Fort Scott.  Actually, Q. and Ethan want to pursue the cultists heading into the lowlands to dig up Q.'s facility.  Then the crew on the ATV bumps into Big Dog.

* Say, You're a Psychich, Arent' You?

* asdfas

Say, You are a Psychic, Aren't You?

* Big Dog and his pack circle Ethan, ATV, Joe's Girl, Quarantine
I was worried Big Dog was going to use Q's brain as the psychic battery.  I needn't have.  There was a lot of in-character parley.  The upshot was this: Joe's Girl will get dropped off at Fort Scott to get serious medical attention, then Q., Ethan, and Big Dog will head past Fort Scott to Liebert's Cut, the only pass down into the lowland basin where the Quarantine's facility is buried.  There, they will ambush the members of the Tribe.

* Big Dog had to change his plan a little.  He was going to cache the drugs near the tribe so Pushpin could continue with his infiltration mission.  Pushpin is travelling with the Tribe members who are on a journey AWAY from the main encampment.  So the cacheing couldn't take place.

* So, next week a bit of a battle and we'll see where we go from there.

From post-game discussion:

Peter's comments about fictional post-apocalyptic worlds being way too forgiving -- unlike The Road.

He is right.  And I like the way Big Dog acts out this thinking.  He is amazed by how soft and forgiving all the people around him are and how they avoid making hard decisions that they should be making.

Case in point, Newton, who has been described as an effective leader but acts in a way that seems WAAAAY too conciliatory.

Think of it this way: Ft. Scott is in a region that is littered with caches of pre-collapse stuff.  Let's put them in the top 10% of the living conditions on post-Apocalyptic Earth.

It didn't help the people who cached it, but Newton, Hengelo, and Hagar have all benefited from what was cached.

AND NOW IT IS ALL BREAKING DOWN

The power and recycling facilities of Ft. Scott are on the fritz.  The Eye has lost a key component of its drug manufacturing process.  The vehicles salvaged by The Tribe are being worn down by Big Dog's depredations, and by the dust of the local Storm.  And, you don't know it yet, The Pumps are having technical difficulties, which means that the local petroleum supply is about to get cut off. 

So: the upcoming struggle for the remaining stuff should prove interesting.  Big Dog's clear assessment of the situation -- these folks are deluding themselves -- will become clear to all the big players real soon.

Sweet, Erik! Great writeup.

One question: what important ingredient is the Eye missing for their drug production? I can't remember that part, but it seems interesting...

Now, here's the thread I mentioned during our conversation on resetting Hx:

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=1883.0

Looking forward to the next session!

One question: what important ingredient is the Eye missing for their drug production? I can't remember that part, but it seems interesting...

A psychic has to be hooked up to the production apparatus and catalyze it through conscious invocation of the malestrom's power.

So the ingredient is someone with malestrom proficiency.

Of course!

Omer's fried.