Hello

Hi

I'm very interested in AW. But after reading up on it, I've still got a few questions.

I'm still not 100% sure what its setting/genre is?

What type of 'adventures' you'd have in its setting?

Does it support campaign type play?

Does it allow for extensive character growth?

What exactly does this mean? "The book is digest-sized (5.5” x 8.5” ), 300 pages plus a few, color cover, b&w interior. It comes with the PDF for no extra"?

Thanks

The PDF bit means that if you buy it, you also get a link to download that same book in pdf format. So you can read it on your computer, before it's shipped, if you forget it at home or something. And obviously, you'd want to print copies of the playbooks (character sheets) without cramming your book in the scanner.

The genre is Post-apocalypse, meaning after some major disaster that destroyed society, the earth, or (most likely) both. The book doesn't contain much info about exactly what the world looks like, because the group is supposed to create it in play. It's part of character generation and play – building the world as you go along.

It does support campaign play, though a word of warning since you talk about adventures and campaigns: the MC (AW's term for GM) does not have an adventure or a story prepped. No pre-bought adventure books, no home-made campaign notes, nothing. It's improvised. The MC is allowed to prep some, but never in a "this is what's going to happen" way. Only things like "these guys live over here" and "this is what will happen if no-one fixes the water system".

What happens to the characters is that they're trying to get by, survive, and, if they seem to be doing that, starts striving towards their goals. You might have a group with a travelling gunlugger, the chief of a tribe living in a bunker and his weirdo psychic right-hand man. Then most of what happens would be focused around the bunker and its surroundings. There aren't much dungeon crawling or plain "adventuring" – everyone's supposed to make their characters behave like real people would in this kind of world. Badass, competent people, but real.

Hope it helped. Someone who's played it more can probably give good examples about what kinds of things happen in play.

Yes that does help a lot.

Thank you very much

What is the system like?

System.. has bits of Mountain Witch, TSoY, Sorcerer, and Ars Magica mainly(and a bunch of others, too).
Most important for me is the distinction between moments when you just play, and declare things, and it happen, and you get consequences, and moments when you and MC(Master of Ceremonies) take turns making "moves". Also rather important is that MC never rolls dice(so no fudging), his stuff happens through the fiction.

The system is light, most things are decided by a player rolling two dice and applying a few modifiers, with a roll of less than 7 being a miss, 7-9 being a weak success, (usually a success with complications) and 10+ being a strong success.

Whilst the system is light, it works best if it's run by the book and because it's different to a lot of mainstream or traditional play it's important for the MC to read the book beforehand and get a feel for how things are meant to work. I think it's also really important for the MC to create the right expectations amongst the players, and the book is pretty clear on how to do it.

Creating characters is done during the first session, each "class" has their own little playbook to fill in. Advancement is straightforward as experience is built up.

The 'sex' thing, it bothers me a bit. It may turn some of my players off.

How prevalent is it in the game?

I purchased the game anyways. How do I receive the pdf?

Could this game be hacked to run a contemporary zombie apocalypse game?

If your players don't use it - not prevalent.

I've thought about this long and hard before my first session (in 2 weeks) - I'm going to encourage them to use it, to push through the unease. We roleplay detailed death, carnage, mayhem, slaughter all on screen / during active play with no problem. Why not allow characters to get laid between scenes / during fades?

If they still individually decide their characters won't get laid, that's up to them. I'll offer them chances to as part of the narrative but not penalise them if they don't take them up.

The 'sex' thing, it bothers me a bit. It may turn some of my players off.

How prevalent is it in the game?

Depends, I guess. We didn't use them until the 5th session - when a Skinner joined the group, nudge nudge, wink wink - and at the 10 session mark we used them, what, twice ? Three times ? So not that much. Good to have them there, too.

Could this game be hacked to run a contemporary zombie apocalypse game?

Totally, but you might need to retool the playbooks a bit. Still, you have a chapter full of advices and examples about how to hack the game in whichever direction you'd like, so that's good.

Cool

I have a question, what if, for example, one of my players wanted to play a male version of a battlebabe?

So, for example, only femals can be battle babes

Nope*. From the battlebabe playbook available here :

LOOK
Man, woman, ambiguous, or transgressing.





*Chuck Testa!

Thanks for that, it's just the name battle 'babe' threw me

Ok, I just received the pdf, but I'm confused as to what all the other pdfs are.

I know the standard AW pdf and the spreads, but what are these:

Non violent
Playbook
Sheets

Non-violent is, I think, it won't murder your printer if you print it yourself.
Playbooks are like your "class" or type and those are there.
Sheets is, I assume, the MC prep stuff, but that's off the top of my head.

Started to read AW but it's confused me a bit.

I mentioned this over on rpg.net and someone said they had the same problem, but that there was this unofficial guideline on which parts of the book to read first.

Anyone know what I'm talking about and where these guidelines can be located?

Thanks

I think the book makes very good sense in the order it's in: just read through it, trust the author, and then if you *still* have a question, re-read the appropriate section. There isn't a glossary or anything like that, so sometimes you'll figure out what a certain term means a little later, and that's OK: it's all very straightforward.

The only exception I might recommend: it could make sense to read "character creation" (chapter 3, p. 95) before reading through the playbooks themselves (chapter 2, "the characters").