Best moments in the text...

"you pray for some grinning kid or veteran or just someone with a heartshocker and a hand with sutures and a 6-pack of morphine. And when that someone comes, that’s an angel."
-from the Angel description.

When I first saw the playbook for Angel, I scoffed. "That's a silly name for a class. And the picture looks like some scrawny punk kid." And then I read that description above, and it brought it all crashing home. It changed angel into the best class name ever, and it brought the vibe of Apocalypse World home so hard: you make do, because at least it's something.

"They’re the ones you should walk away from, eyes down, but you can’t. They’re the ones like the seductive blue crackling light, y’know? You mistake looking at them for falling in love, and you get too close and it’s a zillion volts and your wings burn off like paper.

Dangerous."
-from the Battlebabe description.

Pure fucking poetry.

"What they do in life is follow their parts around — their noses, their stomachs, their hearts, their clits & dicks, their guts, their ears, their inner children, their visions."
-From the Principle: Name Everyone and Make Them Human

If Vincent could just somehow let all the authors in the world hear this advice, I'd read more. It's what makes characters compelling.



Your turn. What moments in the text have grabbed hold and kept their grip tight?

At the limits of perception, something howling, everpresent, full of hate and terror. From this, the world’s psychic maelstrom, we none of us have shelter.

For me, it was the driver and chopper intros that brought it home for me. Especially the driver.

Came the apocalypse, and the infrastructure of the Golden Age tore apart.
Roads heaved and split. Lines of life and communication shattered. Cities,
cut off from one another, raged like smashed anthills, then burned, then
fell.

A few living still remember it: every horizon scorching hot with civilization
in flames, light to put out the stars and moon, smoke to put out the sun.

In Apocalypse World the horizons are dark, and no roads go to them.


In Apocalypse World the horizons are dark, and no roads go to them.

You guys are making my arm hair stand.

Ben, so totally the Chopper, esp. this part:

However, the Golden Age past did leave us two things: enough gasoline, enough bullets. Come the end, I guess the fuckers didn't need them like they thought they would.

I have a special place in my heart for the Savvyhead's description:

If there's one fucking thing you can count on in Apocalypse World its: things break.

There are a lot of good bits around the setting and the characters. (I always read the driver's sex move to people.) I also love the way the rules are written.

When you transform an NPC into an ally:

This is serious business and don’t risk the players’ trust by
fucking around with it. ...
 
Furthermore, stop looking at this NPC through crosshairs. She
has been set apart, safe from casual death, to a higher purpose.
By now the players are bone weary from knowing that every
single NPC is, at her heart, only a potential threat to them. Now,
this one person, they can breathe.

And this bit:

When a player says that her character does something listed as
a move, that’s when she rolls, and that’s the only time she does.

That's as clear a rule as you'll ever find.

I'd love it if Vincent showed up and told us his favourite moments from his text.

Something's wrong with the world and I don't know what it is...

It used to be better, of course it did. In the golden age of legend, when there was enough to eat and enough hope, when there was one nation under god and people could lift their eyes and see beyond the horizon, beyond the day. Children were born happy and grew up rich.

Now that's not what we've got. Now we've got this. Hardholders stand against the screaming elements and all comers, keeping safe as many as they can. Angels and savvyheads run constant battle against there's not enough and bullets fly and everything breaks. Hocuses gather people around them, and are they protectors, saviors, visionaries, or just wishful thinkers? Choppers, gunleggers, and battlebabes carve out what they can and defend it with blood and bullets. Drivers and operators search and scavenge, looking for that oppurtunity, that one perfect chance. Skinners remember beauty, or invent beauty anew, cup it in their hands and whisper come and see, and don't worry now about what it'll cost you. And brainers, oh, brainers see what none of the rest of us will: the world's psychic maelstrom, the terrible desperation and hate pressing in at the edge of all perception, it is the world now.

And you, who are you? This is what we've got, yes. What are you going to make of it?