[AP] Two Cities, One Desert

First session:

There are two holdings out in the desert. The characters live in The Hive, but there is also The Pit. The Hive is located upon a shelf of rock near the mountains to the west. This shelf is separated from the rest of the desert by a cliff, a hundred feet high. In the lower desert, with less protection from the badlands raiders is The Pit. Far off to the east is a thin black line extending from the horizon up into the sky indefinitely. It is used as a visual aid to separate the Northern Badlands from the Southern Badlands. There are some alien features to the landscape, and hi-tech gear is futuristicky.

The protagonists:

Oliver, the 14-year-old Savvyhead. His father managed the mechanical caste, but he has died recently, and Skip has taken over. Oliver does not get along with Skip. Oliver has been growing clean food in a secret space that is an Ancient automated greenhouse, with a few assistants, including Mercury, a 13-year old motormouth.

Easy (Yi Xi), an old Chinese guy Hoarder. He is a scavenger, who usually goes around in the underground tunnels, but may have found his last stash within walking distance. He has armaments, machine stuff, and Golden Age Tech in his hoard, which is conscious and beautiful (it talks to him in his mind and NPCs covet it). It is hidden away behind his shopfront. He is an old man and vaguely remembers being a child before the Apocalypse. He has a bunch of grown-up children in The Hive

Vonk the Sculptor, a mutilated Gunlugger with a robot arm. She is tall and fit and very, very dark-skinned, with burns and scars on her left side. She fights for The Hive, and is respected, but not a leader.

Spc. Horace Staszkiewicz, the Quarantine. Born in Poland, raised in California. He always wears his armour suit, so people think he's a robot. His memory is not so good, but he remembers getting a degree. And that he lost his wife Rosalita and his three children when Las Vegas was destroyed… and that he could have warned them. His colleague, Spc. Jackson has gone insane and he has her locked in an observation room.

The story so far:

Vonk the Sculptor and Easy are out in the desert together, with Shanelle and Freddy, who drove them out there in his car, trying to impress them (esp. Shanelle). Freddy was showing them this door he discovered in a desert valley, but when they got there, a large cloud of dust signals the approach of badlands raiders. So they entered the underground compound for safety.

Easy figures he knows this place, because this is where he found the "robot." He manages to ditch the others and walks back to The Hive. Vonk sends Freddy down the other stairwell to look around.

Meanwhile, Stashkevich has been looking for food. he finds Castro, a fighter who is a sort-of lieutenant for Vonk the Sculptor. Castro leads the Stash-bot to Oliver, because he knows a thing or two about machines as well as food. But then the radio goes off in Stash's helmet, and he hears someone nosing around in his compound, perhaps opening some doors and then screaming and causing a ruckus. Then the warning signal goes off in his helmet too, a bit later.

Oliver leads the robot (but not Castro) to his secret greenhouse, in exchange for Stash showing Oliver where his own home is. On the way there, they run into Easy. Stash tries to get Easy to go back with them, because Easy warns them of bad things going on, but he won't go.

Meanwhile, Vonk the Sculptor finds Freddy again. He has found a medical kit after supposedely getting lost. He wants to just open the door and get going again, and won't listen to Vonk's orders. She threatens him with a gun and he doesn't care so she shoots him, gives his handgun to Shanelle and gets her to carry the medical kit.

Downstairs, Vonk the Sculptor looks around, and finds an empty observation room but also an elevator, below which there is the sound of running water. She climbs down to find a concrete room and a flimsy aluminum door with light shining underneath it. Listening, she hears something beyond it and after she bangs on it a few times, a couple bullets rip through the door. She hears the sound of Antonio, a guy who sells clean water, and somebody else making up their minds to leave.

Upstairs, Stashkevich and Oliver come into the compound carefully, but when they surprise Shanelle, she shoots at them before she sees who they are.

I might have missed a thing or two.

NPCs who died before the game started:
All of Easy's wives (no names).
Staszkiewicz's wife Rosalita and their three children.
Oliver's (not biological) father, Frank, head of the mechanics.

NPCs introduced during the session:
Freddy, a guy with glasses and a leather jacket. Got shot by Vonk, who left his car (and his binoculars) behind.
Shanelle, a mechanic. Sensible, but no good with a gun.
Castro, a fighter. Sort-of a lieutenant for Vonk (i.e. he looks to her for leadership decisions).
Mercury, 13-year old girl who helps Oliver grow stuff. Motormouth.
Antonio, a water merchant. And his buddy, who has an assault rifle.
Skip, new head of the mechanics (no screen time).
Spc. Tammy Jackson, insane woman from the past (no screen time).

Things we established about the world:

The Hive is segregated into occupational communities. There are, at the least, growers, mechanics, and fighters. Families do not rely very heavily on biological relationships.
The fighters go hunting for animals in the mountains, and sometimes conduct raids on The Pit. Mechanics have a communal warehouse area, as well as some private workshops. The water that flows through The Hive is dirty, has to be boiled before it can be drunk

Specialists Horace Staszkiewicz and Tammy Jackson were working on a scientific project that had something to do with causing the apocalypse.

The badlands raiders are psychotic nutbars who have gear and weapons in surprisingly good condition.

All four PCs know how to read, at least somewhat.

What will we find out next session? I wonder…

Apocalypse World: The Hive session 2.

The next day, Vonk the Sculptor and Easy are waiting outside the office of Antoinette Cassidy, aka Mama Cass. She's the head of the growers, and de facto head of The Hive. The fighters pretty much report to her. Vonk and Easy were brought there by Castro, who is playing with his toddler while they wait.

Outside Mama Cass' office there is a hallway with a few chaise-lounges for benches and the walls are lined with shelves containing urns. In these urns are the ashes of fighters who have died defending The Hive. It is an honour to rest upon these shelves.

Grampa, an old man, comes out to usher them in. Vonk and Easy stand in front of Mama Cass, who sits behind her desk. Shanelle is sitting off to the side, looking apologetic, like she had to tell on them or something.

Mama Cass berates Vonk for losing a car and driver out in the desert for no good reason. She wants the three of them to go back out there and collect the car. She sends her daughter Phoenix (who drives a very fast car) with them this time. Then Mama Cass sends Vonk and Phoenix out so she can talk with Easy. She brings Castro in. They say 2 things: Mama Cass says her youngest daughter Mercury has been sneaking around with Oliver, and she is concerned for the quality of her grandchildren, so she wants Easy to keep an eye on him. Also, Castro says Oliver has been supplying the robot with food, and he wants Easy to help make sure that the fighters get the robot working for them, because it owes The Hive.

Once all the people assemble outside in the hall, easy immediately makes excuses and tries to fuck off. Vonk decides to go through the tunnels instead of driving and tells Phoenix to buzz off. She says Easy doesn't have to go with them, but he has to provide her with something. Easy, Vonk, and Shanelle head off to Easy's shop. He lets Vonk in but not Shanelle, and pulls out a missile launcher and two missiles in cases. He gives them to Vonk and says he wants the launcher back. He also rolls his Sticky Fingers move and finds out that he will get it back within the week—with strings attached.

So anyway, Vonk and Shanelle head off through the tunnels carrying the cases full of missile launcher and arrive at Stashkevich's hide-out. The hi-tech door is impenetrable, but Vonk's banging on it brings the Stash-bot to the door. After some discussion, they discover that no one can open the upstairs door that leads to the outside world. Vonk retrieves the body of Freddy and orders Shanelle to fuck off back to The Hive with it. Shanelle is none to pleased but Vonk is unsympathetic.

Vonk and Stashkevich decide to head back themselves, a bit later, after determining that there is no other way out for them (although there was for Spc. Jackson). They run into Antonio the water merchant and Delgado, his AK-wielding assistant. The pair acts a bit cagey, saying they are just looking around, trying to find something worth finding. Vonk and Stashkevich make sure they part ways with them and tell them not to go back towards the Quarantine HQ.

But later on, Vonk and the Stash-bot hear someone following them, so they set an ambush. That familiar AK comes around the corner and Stashkevich lays down some suppressive fire that puts Delgado on the ground, praying he doesn't get hit. Antonio tries to apologize by saying they were just following because they were suspicious of the robot. They think somebody has been following them around and they think it's probably the robot. Vonk assures them it's not the robot, then the proof shows up. Two guys in ponchos with their faces covered appear suddenly holding guns on Antonio and Vonk. Two more approach from the opposite end of the tunnel. One of the ambushers has segmented eyes. They let the four leave with their guns but not the missile launcher cases or the jug of clean water that Antonio had been carrying around.

When they get back to The Hive, Vonk assembles a gang for herself, consisting mainly of the fighters who hunt in the mountains and go on raids and such. Mostly dudes who go roaming, but who also like to get drunk and party. She also asks around, and figures that these four mutants probably come from The Pit, which has been suffering an increase in attacks from badlands raiders lately. Also, Pit has a class divide between normal(ish) people who live at the top and the mutants who live in the bottom. The Hive is less tolerant of mutants, possibly because of Mama Cass' policies.

Meanwhile…
Skip calls a meeting for the most skilled of the mechanics, including Oliver, Slack, Mastodon, and Polecat, as well as Bennett, who's not much of a mechanic, but who has three arms and fights real well. He says that the water is getting worse in The Hive, and crops aren't growing as well for independent growers. Slack mentions that all the food in his gardens has all gone bad because of the water. Skip wants to build a water filter, but if they do there will be tensions between the mechanics and the growers and they need to be prepared for it. Skip wants the other mechanics to pool their ideas and see what they can do to come up with a plan.

So later on, Oliver and Mercury go to see Easy. But Polecat, who is mostly a blacksmith, has the same idea. He harasses Easy, demanding something that will fix the water. Easy stonewalls him and Oliver finally convinces him to leave. Mercury handles something of Easy's that has a screen on it and it turns on, displaying a map of some kind. Easy, Oliver, and Mercury look at the map and see the Stash-bot marked on it. They also see a large reservoir of water that has apparently been completely overlooked by everyone.

When they see the dot returning to The Hive, they scout it out and realize it must be the Stash-bot, returning with Vonk the Sculptor. Easy warns Oliver that Mercury's mother is keeping an eye on her (and him) and then he leaves. Mercury complains about him being mean. Oliver then looks into expanding his secret greenhouse.

And some other stuff, no doubt I forgot a few things and damn the notes I took are crap.


Recap of Characters:

Vonk the Sculptor, apparently the most cautious Gunlugger evar.
Easy, the Hoarder. He's easy like Sunday morning. Also, a total fucking slacker.
Oliver, the Savvyhead. He's a young man with big plans.
Stashkevich, a robot from the past. He doesn't know anybody but they all know him.
+
Freddy, a corpse.
Shanelle, a mechanic.
Mama Cass, hardholder head of the growers and the fighters.
Grampa, aged secretary.
Mercury, 13-year-old daughter of Mama Cass.
Phoenix, older daughter of Mama Cass and driver of a fast car.
Antonio, water merchant.
Delgado, water merchant's muscle.
Skip, head of the mechanics.
Slack, older mechanic whose gardens have spoiled.
Polecat, a mechanic and blacksmith, not the sharpest tool in the shed.
Mastodon, skilled mechanic.
Bennett, three-armed mechanic, handles security.
Barstow, one of Oliver's skilled labourers, thoughtful and nonconfrontational.
4 mutants from The Pit.

Third session, as written by Vonk's player:

We opened last session with Vonk delegating tasks to a handful of her gang members. Pyrex was set to work on bringing their small armada of bikes and vehicles back up to fully functional, MJ was asked to go speak to Mama Cass about the invasion in the tunnels, and Harri was put in charge of monitoring the tunnel entrances. Spit she took with her and, along with Stasbot, went to Phoenix's hovel in order to head back into the desert over land in search of Freddy's abandoned car. Phoenix gave them the brush off so Vonk investigated, finding Gargamel "fixing" the car. Vonk motivated him to work faster. For the greater good. Stasbot was appalled by the unchecked child abuse but said nothing.

In the desert, the small crew found Freddy's car, but it was definitely not in any condition to be driven. Strapped to the hood of the pire-car was the roasted carcass of a humanoid creature with a tail. When Vonk asked the maelstrom to give her a fuller idea of the situation, all she learned was that the briefcase in the trunk was a necessary acquisition. Directing Stasbot to take the case, she decided that what she was looking at was either a sacrifice or, more likely, an execution, of a mutant and probable member of the group she'd previously encountered in the tunnel. With no choice but to abandon the vehicle once more, the group returned home with the briefcase (which Stasbot had opened and in
which resides a military remote computer).

While the party was away, Easy was roused from his horde by the sound of someone breaking through his shopfront storm doors. (I think there was some Horde communication before this in which Easy tried to have the Horde give him the same security credentials it had given Mercury, so that he too could interact with his objects in this new and exciting way.)

Easy was summoned from his Horde by the sound of someone breaking through the storm doors on his shop front. The neanderthal Springsteen was breaking in. There was a brief struggle in which Easy was quickly overpowered. Springsteen kept shouting about getting the car in the desert and all of Easy's arguments that Vonk was already in the desert with Phoenix getting the car proved wasted. He was dragged across the compound the Phoenix's house and forced to wait with Springsteen and Gargamel until the party's return. Gargamel was happy to see them. He had managed to pry a storage door free from the wall and had discovered a wheel-less motorcycle, classic Golden Age tech in pristine condition. The Horde hungered for it. Springsteen wanted to help move it into the work shop. More yelling ensued.

To this racket, the retrieval party returned. In the garage, Phoenix suggested Vonk return to the desert with Oliver to inspect the car, Vonk resisted the urge to tell her to jump off a cliff and chew her out for being so useless as to not have a winch on her car and instead went into the side room to shut Springsteen up. Which she did by offering to help move the damn bike in Easy's place. As she was picking up her end, Stasbot got her attention to let her know that he and Easy had business. As they were talking, Springsteen started yelling again so Vonk gave Stasbot the nod and crushed Springsteen into the concrete floor. She and Spit moved the bike for Gargamel.

The bike is unique and the warriors recognized it from their encounters with the badland raiders. Vonk tried to explain to Gargamel that it wasn't broken and that it was designed to fly, but the child would not believe her one bit. He wouldn't even let her turn the machine on a prove it. Vonk was pretty bummed out.

Meanwhile, Oliver has gone on an adventure. He has decided to look for the water source the maelstrom and the map have revealed to him and heads towards the tunnels. Mastodon and Slack(? I think) cornered him there and started working on him to join their conspiracy to overthrow Skip. They are convinced that a power struggle is brewing between Skip and Mama Cass and have decided to side with Mama Cass. Oliver very diplomatically avoids aligning himself with them and pries himself from the sticky situation only to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

While walking the tunnels, he discovered that two of the main arteries have been caved in, herding him into a third pathway. Not expecting danger, he stumbles straight into an ambush and is surrounded by armed humanoids in cloaks. They are mutants and they have claimed the reservoir of water as theirs. Oliver is brought before their leader and questioned as well as given the message of ownership to bring back to the hive. He is traded a jar of fresh water for his homegrown carrots and a screwdriver. When Oliver tries to make the case that due to the quality of his produce, the jar of water is fairly traded for the carrots alone, the lead mutant eats the carrots by spewing bile into a bowl, letting the carrots break down and then swallowing the mixture. In this case, the food could be cardboard. Quality means nothing. They keep the screwdriver and Oliver heads back to the Hive, shaken and upset.

Upon his return, he went to Easy's shop to speak with him more about the mysterious map Mercury had accidentally powered and that seemed to be tracking the "robots." Instead of Easy, Oliver found Polecat rummaging Easy's shop and doors that had clearly been pried open. Oliver suspects the very worst of Polecat and tries to convince him to leave without stealing anything. Polecat won't listen and finds the hatch leading down into the cavernous Horde and descends.

At this time, Easy and Stasbot return to the Horde. Stasbot has convinced Easy to show him any similar artifacts the Horde holds that may be similar to the briefcase found in the desert by implying that Easy could add the briefcase to the Horde. The Horde hungers for the briefcase. Discovering Oliver in his inner sanctum and, worse, Polecat in the belly of his Horde, Easy's temper snaps and so does the hatch lid, locking Polecat within the depths of the Horde. Easy makes it clear that he has every intention of simply letting Polecat die down there and is insensitive to Stasbot and Oliver's pleas to free him. They finally convince him after offering a trade. If Polecat is released, Stasbot will give Easy the other robot. Easy is convinced that the other robot, the lady robot, will be ten levels of megababe and is convinced that he can possess her if he learns how to fix her. He's very excited about this trade.

Polecat is released and tries to flee holding on to an engine stolen from the Horde. Stasbot stops him, recovers the machine and the trio threaten Polecat, stating that he is never to come back nor to speak of the Horde to anyone.

The drama over, the men get down to the business of inspecting their new tech. Using the maelstrom, Stasbot discovers a list of all members of the Hive with security clearance permitting them to access the tech escaping from him secure hold and showing up in odd places. Jackson is on the list, as are Oliver, Easy and Mercury as well as others. Jackson has higher security than he does. This does not impress him. Oliver and Easy handle the computer as well, but I don't remember what they learned.

Back on the other side of the compound, Vonk and Spit return to the Warrior den and check in with Harri. There's news. Of the news Vonk wants, Pyrex has made good progress. A detail of warriors (not of Vonk's gang) have gone into the tunnels led by Ponyboy the Prettyboy, probably on Mama Cass' orders after MJ spoke with her. But Harri is more interested in talking about the sudden and imminent marriage between Alison, a grower, and Skip. Alison has a lot of close ties with the warriors, having been partners with two of their fallen brethren. Harri is deeply suspicious of this union and suspects Skip setting himself up to take on Mama Cass and seize control of the Hive.

Vonk is concerned, but not overly. She connects with the maelstrom and confirms that the real problem is that in the tunnels. There is blood in the air and petty internal squabbles are irrelevant in the face of the coming threats.

Session 4:

Scene 1.
Ponyboy confronts Easy, accuses him of supplying the mutants with weapons. He found the empty stinger missile launcher while fighting the mutants in the tunnels (which wasn't as successful as hoped), and was told it belonged to Easy. The Stash-bot doesn't interfere because he sees a vision of his mother, a round, chain-smoking Polish woman who always wore rubber rain boots.

Harridan wakes Vonk up to tell her there's trouble, so she brings a few of her gang with her and diffuses the situation. Ponyboy accuses her of being "in cahoots" with the traitorous Easy. After Pony leaves, Vonk sends Ninja to go find out what happened in the tunnels. Oliver arrives to fix Easy's door and metal curtain, and the four protagonists discuss the mutants.

During this scene the maelstrom asks Staszkiewizc a few questions.
What's the biggest problem in this situation? Stash: "I can't trust my senses anymore."
What's going right in this situation? Stash: "Nothing is going right."
What would fix what's wrong right now? Stash: "Securing Spc. Jackson would solve things."

What I did with these answers is classified.

Scene 2.
Harridan informs Vonk that Mama Cass has cut the food rations for her gang by half, as punishment for Freddy and his car, and also because Springsteen died. Michael Jackson couldn't get any maps out of Mama Cass, and she's put Ponyboy in charge of defense (I think that might have been from an earlier scene, whatever). Vonk checks in with her gang and with Pyrex. He's working on the hover bike, and Vonk tells him to ask either Mastodon or Oliver for help.

Scene 3.
Starlight comes to see Oliver to tell him that Skip wants to see him. Oliver doesn't want to leave the store, so he asks her to wait there for him. She wants to get with Easy's youngest son, and asks him to try setting something up, since he's hanging out there with Easy, and Oliver agrees to do so.

Note: Oliver neglected to communicate any such thing to Easy during this session. Although, truth to tell, why the fuck Starlight thinks Easy can help her get with his son is beyond me. They're not close at all.

Scene 4.
Easy and Stashbot go to the Cassidy Estate to look for Mercury, but Mama Cass finds them instead. She is accompanied by one of her sons (she has 7 living children, remember?), Kneel Cassidy. He is tall dark and handsome, and by tall I mean almost 7 feet tall, and by handsome I mean Vonk the Sculptor has at the very least made out with him once. Mama Cass basically asks for their support, and offers to leave several guards around Easy's shop if the Stashbot will lead some fighters against the mutants. The pair profess support but refuse to undertake any actions to prove it. Mama Cass blatantly offers Stash a better position working for her than he has hanging out with Vonk and Easy. He declines but says they will talk later, maybe because he opens his brain to the psychic maelstrom and discovers that the food here grows so well and so nice because Mama Cass is in charge and no other reason. The maelstrom also offered to show Stash the difference between maelstrom visions and the input from his own senses, since the maelstrom communicates through pre-existing memories and experiences. In any event, Mama Cass lets the pair leave.

Scene 5.
In his office, Skip scolds Oliver for not bringing anything to the table with regards to the water filtration project. Oliver almost comes to an understanding with Skip, but walks out on him in the end, knowing that this really was his last chance to patch things up. Skip regards him as an enemy now. On the way out Oliver opens his brain to the spirits of the land and finds out they support Skip. They offer him 1xp to support Skip and demand he act under fire to refuse. Of course, Oliver refuses, but I save the act under fire roll for later, when Oliver has an actual opportunity. While he's standing around exposing his brain to forces he has no understanding of, he hears Skip and slack leaving to go see Vonk.

Scene 6.
Skip corners Vonk near the fighters' quarters and tries to recruit her. He says he is concerned that because of the water-filtration technology he is developing, Mama Cass will use violence against the mechanics, because she basically controls the fighters. skip wants Vonk to protect him, basically. Vonk grills him about his intentions and how far along the project is. Once she realizes it's not done, she basically turns him down and says that if violence breaks out, she'll kill whoever poses a threat to the community.

Scene 7.
Stashbot and Easy find Mercury just as she is leaving the Cassidy compound, stuffing well-machined metal wire (which Easy immediately covets) into a large shoulder bag. She's wary of Easy and not very talkative, but agrees to guard duty at Easy's shop, in exchange for a gun. Back at the store, Easy gives Mercury a small-calibre pistol and a box of hollowpoint bullets, and the three protagonists travel into the tunnels with Stashbot using the electronic map in order to find Spc. Jackson. The map pad's screen says she is somewhere in the tunnels.

Ponyboy and a few of his goons intercepts them as they go into the tunnels, and again accuses Easy of supplying the mutants with weapons. Vonk is nearby and hears this commotion. She walks up and seizes Ponyboy's face with her robot arm. Pony's tough-guy facade cracks pretty quickly, but he begs for his physical face quietly, so as not to lose social face in front of his boys. Vonk is bloodthirsty, so she still inflicts 1-harm, even without hitting him, and there's blood on his face when she lets him go and he backs the fuck off. Everybody notices, as he leaves, that he has a hi-tech handgun in the back of his pants (and Easy covets it), which shows you just how much he values that face of his (he looks a lot like Harry Potter).

The four of them head into the tunnels together, variously discussing the political and tactical situations, and when they get close to Stashbot's hideout, the map shows that Spc. Jackson is located in the reservoir. Where the mutants are.

Session Five starts out with love letters:

Dear Easy,
(he's the Hoarder)
How 'bout that wedding, hey? Nothing like a celebration to make stuff and things move from hand to hand, yours included. Why don't you roll+hot to see how many good deals you got? On a 10+, tell me about 3 good deals you made with different people. On a 7-9, just 1, so make it count. For each one:
* Name an NPC.
* Tell us about the deal.
* And at your option, go ahead and either lower your hunger by 1 or make a move.
On a miss, aw, look at you, showing up for the wedding with a bunch of gifts! Too bad you only realized now you got paid in dogshit.
Hugs and kisses,
Your MC.

Easy rolls a 10+ and details 3 deals, the substance of which is very telling. First he negotiates a truce with Polecat, and Polecat fixes the door to his shop. It shakes out that Oliver helped negotiate this deal. Second, he makes a deal with Skip that he will trade supplies and parts for an "in" with the mechanics, an alliance of sorts. Third, he makes a deal with Mama Cass: she provides security and protection for his shop and he will spy on the robot (Stashbot) for her.

Dear Horace Staszkiewicz,
(he's the Quarantine)
I think your commlink has been acting up lately. Maybe your memory, too—it's like you're getting panic attacks and hearing voices at weird, inopportune times. Well, whatever it is, it's not the maelstrom, that's for sure. How do you handle it? Tell you what, you can roll+cool or roll+sharp for this one, your choice. On a 10+, choose 1:
* You can pinpoint where it's coming from.
* You can turn it off.
On a 7-9, if you rolled+cool, you can turn it off or ditch the helmet. If you rolled+sharp, you can pinpoint the source or keep your helmet and track the source on foot. On a miss, whoa, how the hell did you get here, and is that who I think it is? Good luck getting back in time for the wedding, homes.
Hugs and kisses,
Your MC.

Stash decides to roll+sharp but it doesn't matter because he blows the roll. And then he has to wait to find out what that means.

Dear Oliver,
(he's the Savvyhead)
Is it just me, or are people giving you the hairy eyeball a little more than usual? Don't roll for anything. Instead, tell me which of these three is your top priority and what that means:
* Being social for its own sake.
* Getting supplies to expand your workspace.
* Keeping your workspace secure.
Just one, no fudging.
Hugs and kisses,
Your MC.

Incensed that he doesn't get to roll for something, Oliver's player chooses supplies.

Dear Vonk the Sculptor,
(she's the Gunlugger)
So, you've been organizing this gang of yours, giving people jobs to do and whatnot. How's that been going? Why don't you go ahead and roll+sharp for me. On a 10+, rock on, why don't you ask me something about each of the following. On a 7-9, sorry, just 1, but I'll still give you an honest answer.
* Mama Cass and her business.
* Ponyboy and what he's been up to.
* The mutants in the tunnels.
On a miss, well... yeah, you've been missing something big, alright. Do you think maybe you've just realized what you fucked up on? If not, it's cool, I'll tell you soon.
Hugs and kisses,
Your MC.

Vonk doesn't like the sound of a miss, but luckily she gets a 7-9. The deal is a specific question about 1 of 3 topics so she asks what the best way to deal with the mutants in the tunnels is. I talk about how Ponyboy's been leading sorties into the tunnels and he's lost a few guys already, but y'know, he's never brought back a dead mutant or anything like that. And while he's not the best leader or fighter, he's in the top tier at least. So it would seem the best way to deal with them is to either trade with them or fight better.

Scene 1.
The morning before the wedding. Polecat is fixing Easy's door while Easy relaxes. Oliver is there, having helped them patch things up. Shanelle is there. She carries Polecat's shotgun around for him, apparently. Gossip reveals that Hasty, one of the fighters (and one of Easy's sons) has thrown in with Skip and is now providing him with protection. About this time we also see Delgado and Antonio moving in across the street. Antonio used to be the head of this team, but he is no longer a water merchant and so it seems that the tables have turned.

Easy also used the Maestro D' move, Fingers in Every Pie, to make it known that he wants Ponyboy's fancy hi-tech gun. He misses the roll. We'll see what happens later.

Scene 2.
Still right before the wedding. Oliver returns to his garden/workspace with supplies and finds Mercury there. She seems to have been crying and she has a bruise on her cheek. She says she got in a fight with her mom (Mama Cass), her mom hates her, blah blah blah, but Oliver realizes there's more to it than that. Before he can get more out of her, she makes a pass at him. Mercury throws her arms around him, hugging him tight and asks him "But you like me, right?" Oliver goes for it and kisses her. They make out a bit, but then Oliver wants to go to the wedding instead of stay in his workspace with Mercury. Unfortunately for him, I hit him with an act under fire to resist roll (not the one I have banked because the spirits of the land want him to agree with Skip) and because he misses, a couple of teenagers get laid for the first time. Isn't that sweet?

So, one of them's a Savvyhead, and his special move reveals something rather disturbing: Mercury is a mutant. It hasn't manifested in anything obvious yet, but it's there, it's going to get worse, and it's contagious. Oliver can fix this by getting her right with the spirits of the land (i.e. the psychic maelstrom), realigning her brain or whatever. Another curious detail is revealed by the question: "Who handled this last, before me?" Answer: No one.

Scene 3.
More bad news for Oliver, sad to say. After the wedding, Vonk the Sculptor is partying with her gang. There seems to be a pretty clear segregation going on. Santiago, the most well-respected of all the fighters, is heading up the faction that has sided with Mama Cass. Ponyboy is leading her external security team and leading strikes against the mutants. Hasty and his gang support Skip and are protecting the mechanics. Vonk and her gang are pretty much the only fighters that haven't picked a side, and it shows. But hey, Castro is hanging out with her tonight, and around the time pretty much everyone else is passed out, he tells her a weird story.

He says that morning Mercury came to him, in his garage, and told him that she was in love with him. He says he laughed at her, she's way too young, why would he be interested? Ridiculous. She got mad and pushed his bike over, almost took herself out with it (that's where the bruise came from, in case it's not obvious). Castro can only shake his head and laugh. There's only a few women in The Hive that could make him stray from his wife. Only one in fact.

And that's when he stumbled forward drunkenly and makes a pass at Vonk. She pushes him away and acts like it's a joke. Castro nervously tries to pass it off as a joke too, but isn't very convincing. Then he says he wants to show her something that he found, out in the tunnels. Vonk eyes him warily, but realizes he's telling the truth. He might be trying to impress her so his pass won't be a joke anymore, but there's something out there.

On the way, they pass by two of Ponyboy's men, Space Station and Angel, passed out from partying. Vonk takes a pretty scarf from one and a rifle from the other. Out in the tunnels, Castro shows her the machines that filter the water that flows into the Hive, that everybody uses for growing food, drinking, cleaning, etc. He says if they can turn the filtration back on, they can be heroes and save the community. But when they get there, the machines have been broken, pretty recently. The control panels are smashed up pretty bad. Something of a sobering sight.

Scene 4.
Finally we find out what happened to Stashbot and why he didn't make the wedding. He's comes to standing in the middle of the reservoir area, with three armed mutants standing around him in their ponchos. In front of him is Specialist Tammy Jackson, apparently mounted on some kind of pedestal. Her limbs have become elongated and seem to be wrapped around her. There are tubes hooked up to her and there is some more organic mass to her in the back. It looks like she is impossible to move. Stash has a long and frustrating conversation with her, part of which takes place in a vision where the two of them are back in the lab, looking normal.

Jackson blames him for her present predicament. Bronson, Stashkevich's old supply sergeant shows up, a manifestation of the maelstrom. He has clipboards and orders, and asks the Stash if this isn't what he wanted when he asked for Jax to be locked down? In any case, she thinks that controlling the water will help her control the local community and help her find the main underground complex. Stashkevich argues that there are other ways, but when Jaxn presses him, he has no answers (because he has no memory, of course). The thing that they tried that didn't work, the question he got an answer to at the beginning of the session, was direct mental interface. This is something that comes up during the conversation but not too much, I think. Jaxn mentions the Objectionists, and is concerned they are still operating.

Scene 5.
Stashbot leaves the mutant stronghold and runs into Vonk and Castro on his way back. Vonk shows him the water filtration machines. Vonk also gets rid of Castro so she can sleep with the robot. This one goes a little different though. She doesn't have to make a pass at him because he's sharp and he realizes that she's interested. Unlike all the other characters so far, his feelings are "That could be okay," so Bronson shows him a route that has them passing by Castro's residence first. Then they head to a private area near the fighter's main digs and get busy. Stash wants to know in what ways are Vonk's mind and soul pure, and finds out that she genuinely and fundamentally wants to help people.

Scene 6.
Next day Ponyboy is shoving his fancy hi-tech gun into Easy's face asking him if this is what he wants? He's pretty pissed and he's not letting Easy weasel away. But then his head explodes and Easy gets blood and gore all over himself. Seems like Delgado took him out. Lucky there's security on this block. Delgado doesn't give a shit about Ponyboy, but wants to make sure that Easy will back him up when they have to tell a story to Mama Cass about why they bumped off her #2 guy. They dump his body in the water.

Scene 7.
Oliver is working in his garden and opens his brain about Mercury. He hooks up the remote control units that easy gave him in the first scene and realizes that he doesn't have to expand his workspace, he can just put different sections in different rooms on different floors and the central machine (computer) can control everything via wireless remote. Oliver also gets augury. Then he goes to see Vonk and Stash, leads them to his garden/workspace and essentially offers them the same deal Skip offered to Vonk. The difference, for Vonk, is that Oliver actually has a machine, while Skip just had plans. They seem amenable to providing him with protection.

Easy, meanwhile, is fooling around with his own gear, using the psychic maelstrom, and ends up overhearing the conversation in this scene.

Cool APs, man. Thanks for posting them.

I will most likely have some explanations and some analysis to post when we wrap it up, but for now I don't want to give away the mysteries.

Ooooh! I'm looking forward to that.

These APs are great: probably my favorite Apocalypse World APs yet.

Session Six.

I was pretty out of sorts for this session, which slowed things down a bit and made it hard for me to take good notes.

The Quarantine gets a couple questions to begin with. In dreams he remembers Skyping with the lead development team and watching them get nuked in real time (right after Las Vegas got nuked). The irony is that they had already realized that direct mental interface wasn't going to work and were ready to shut that off when they were taken out. Staszkiewicz went ahead with the plan anyway for a few reasons: he was pretty drunk after seeing his whole family killed less than 24 hours earlier, he had drilled the plan many times and was operating "on auto-pilot" as it were, and Spc. Jackson pretty much took charge and kept everything on track and got all 8 of them to the stasis chambers.

1.
At Oliver's workspace, his helper Barstowe is explaining to him that Mama Cass is barricading herself in, setting up fortifications around the three open areas where she controls most of the growing. These are the areas that are thriving in spite of the dirty water. Vonk shows up with Harridan, Lou, and Bottlecap, and sets them up to guard the place.

2.
Easy has reached out to his family for help, and intends to move into Mama Cass's compound along with his son Big Al. His grandson Left Eye is helping him move some stuff and close up his storefront. The Stashbot tracks him down and they decide to go see Mama Cass.

At the barricades they run into some trouble. Space Station and Angel are there and while they will let the others in, they won't let Stashbot in with his weapon. He refuses to give it up, easy tries to bribe them with a bottle of liquor but to no avail. The duo take this very seriously, and while Easy goes inside and Stash stands outside waiting, they take cover inside a building and keep their guns trained on the robot.

Inside, Easy runs into Delgado who tells him in a low voice that things are not good around here and he's leaving to go join Skip's community, but Easy doesn't join him. Then he runs into Kneel Cassidy, who takes him to see Mama Cass. Mama Cass doesn't seem too happy to see him, and is still annoyed at the death of Ponyboy. Easy comes within an inch of being seized by Kneel and his goons, but he manages to convince Mama Cass that he can replace Skip as a supplier of mechanical objects, and is thus a valuable asset.

Outside, Delgado makes an effort to look subtle while he warns Stash off Mama Cass' compound. He says they should both get the hell out of there, but Stash is fine, he stays. While he waits, he opens his brain and sees Mama Cass's compound as a shrinking forest of green surrounded by a swirling mass of desert images built out of his memories of driving across Nevada. Bronson appears and asks him how he wants to handle the various problems, like the water shortage, the suspicious activity that's been detected on the outside, and the internal personnel problem. Stash replies:
Water: He tells Bronson to help Oliver out with that problem.
Outside: He says Jackson should keep an eye on that one.
Personnel: He says he needs a list, and Bronson says he'll begin preparing one.

What I did with these answers is classified, and you don't have the proper clearance level.

And then what happened after that? All my notes are psychic maelstrom notes, so this is what I remember off the top of my head.

3.
Santiago comes out and brings the Stashbot in to have a talk. He sits down at a table in a building that isn't Mama Cass' office and pours two glasses of Stash's liquor. But Stash doesn't sit down. They have a somewhat inconclusive conversation which ends with Santiago agreeing to let him see Mama Cass, even though Stash doesn't account for his visit to the mutants and doesn't provide any proof that he isn't a mutant.

Easy sees them going to Mama Cass' place and realizes that Santiago, even though he isn't visibly armed, is in control of this situation, as he's basically the head of all the fighters at the Cassidy compound. Easy's bluff was that he controlled the Stashbot and it did what he commanded it to, but now he tells Santiago the robot is a free agent.

Once they get to the office, past the hallway full of urns, Stash wants to speak with Mama Cass alone, but she refuses. Santiago, Space Station, and Angel remain in the room with her. He offers to solve the mutant problem for her, but won't offer a concrete plan. She suggests he kill all the mutants, since they are contagious and trading with them will lead to infection. But then Stash's commlink starts acting up and there is piercing static and screaming in his ears. Bronson is talking to him but Stash can't hear what he is saying. He decides to escape (Eye on the Door) and in the process he rips his helmet off and leaves it behind.

4.
Oliver took Polecat to go and check out these water filtration machines. Vonk had set Spitfire and Ninja to guard the door, and they are there doing their job.

Polecat tells him that the guards at Mama Cass's compound took some pot shots at him while he was walking by. Oliver finds this extremely troubling. He opens his brain as part of a long string of misses. The maelstrom asks some questions, and gets Oliver's opinion on the situation. He thinks more people should listen to him, they are stupid, have no perspective and are too selfish. They need to calm down and not act so rashly, which is exactly what Polecat begins doing. He gets really chill and unconcerned.

Then Spitfire knocks on the door and says "we've got company." Oliver looks outside and there are three mutants approaching, slowly, with hands up: Roark (the leader), Rothschild, and Dushomp. Initially, Spitfire and Ninja are tense and keep their guns pointed at the mutants, but as they approach and begin saying everything's okay, the two also start to chill out. Roark says they just want to talk with Oliver. Ninja's cool with that. Roark explains that Oliver will come with them for a little while. Then Spitfire seems to be cool with all of it, too. So Oliver gathers his tools and leaves with the mutants.

5.
Roark takes Oliver back to the mutant headquarters, to an area that is more reserved for living than for trading water. Roark explains (poorly) that Oliver is a mutant, and she can see this even if he has no obvious signs of physical change. Oliver is naturally upset at this, and doesn't believe Roark's insistence that the people of The Hive will kill him once they know. She says he should come and stay with them, but he refuses and wants to go back.

Oliver thinks that the mutants wrecked the water filtration machines, but Roark doesn't seem to know that that's what was in the room at all. She says they fled from The Pit because of a civil war there, and just happened to set up in this area. It's pretty well-known in The Pit that The Hive has stronger anti-mutant sentiments. In the Pit, the people above just shun mutants and drive them down to the lower levels, but at least they let them live.

6.
Vonk is organizing her gang at the fighters' warehouse/garage area, which is now a lot more empty because everyone else either went to join Mama Cass in her compound or went with Hasty to side with Skip. Then Spitfire, Ninja, and Polecat come running up, freaked out and babbling about the mutants having mind-control powers. They say the mutants took Oliver. Vonk is super pissed that no one is guarding the water filtration room and yells at Ninja to get back there and after some confusion and yelling she ends up shooting him in the head and ordering Carry to go and take up guard duty. Then she heads into the tunnels to go get him back.

As she nears the reservoir, Vonk opens her mind to the psychic maelstrom. Usually, this provides her with some kind of birds-eye view of the surface, but underground here it is more like a focus and a premonition, perhaps more like it is when she gets drunk with the fighters and they celebrate. She can see in this instance that there is nothing threatening in front of her. This way leads to a still pool of water, trouble is all waiting in the other direction.

The maelstrom starts grilling her like it's conducting a Voigt-Kampf test. Vonk is headed out here not just to rescue Oliver but also to fix the fear in her people created by his capture. Vonk prioritizes who she saves from threats by evaluating the threat, not the target. The weakest threat gets taken out first. She doesn't choose to save someone based on who they are. But the maelstrom isn't really satisfied with this answer, and proposes a situation where two people are dying and Vonk can save one of them, maybe her parents for example, or maybe Oliver and Spitfire instead. Vonk settles on saving Oliver because Spitfire's job is to defend and protect the community. She also tells the maelstrom that her biggest problem personally is her inability to negotiate with other people.

What I did with these answers is classified, and you don't have the proper security clearance. However, it's interesting to note that Vonk is already taking steps to overcome the last problem (hot-2) by taking Charismatic so she rolls+weird to manipulate. The Stashbot also took this same move. Also of note is that they both took the Hocus move which applies only to manipulate and not the Brainer move that also applies to seducing.

In any case, she arrives at the mutant holding and enters peaceably. Oliver is on his way out, so they leave together. In the tunnels they run into Stashkevich, who is running around all fucked up with no helmet and can't see them. Once they get through to him, he proposes they go to his secret lair and undertake to show the people of The Hive that most of them are mutants, including Mama Cass. Oliver puts his ear to the Stashbot's chest and opens his mind to ask the spirits of the land if he's going to be okay. They tell him that Bronson has this awesome list of people for him and it's cool and stuff, but as to the actual question, maybe, maybe not?

Oliver, Vonk, and the Stashbot had a conversation about the political situation and what they were going to do that was pretty fascinating in that it revealed some of what each character thinks is going on and what they should do about it. Or not do about it.

Session Seven.

Easy the Hoarder packed up his stuff and some of his people and fled in the night, leaving Vonk the Sculptor, Oliver, and the Stashbot to ruin everything um I mean pick up the pieces.

As more of Staszkiewicz's memories come back to him, he remembers that it was a combination of elements within the US government and other dissenting UN nations that supported the nuclear strike against his project. Scientists in the project had called these elements the Objectionists, because they had objected to the project and the direct mental interface. Of course, since they nuked the project before the direct mental interface was turned off, it was never turned off.

1.
Stashkevich and Oliver head to Stash's secret lair, where Stash opens up a new room. He finally remembered the password. It's his psychic isolation chamber. As he enters the room, he has a premonition of Robot Jesus, descending from a flying craft that resembles Boba Fett's spaceship, surrounded by the wretched and miserable who long to drink of his blood and eat of his flesh. After this, he has doubts about using the machine, but Oliver talks him into it. He gets into the box and uses augury, reaching out through the psychic maelstrom. He contacts Mercury, and the machine copies her sensory input and faxes it to Stash.

2.
Back at the old fighter hang-out, Michael Jackson shows Vonk a problem they have: all the plastic jugs full of water they had have been all shot to hell. He says that Hasty came by to ask them if they would help to escort Skip and his mechanics out of The Hive and over to The Pit. But then Santiago and his boys cam by and opened fire, more at Hasty than Vonk's gang, but Vonk's gang drove them off. Then Hasty and company left.

Vonk has her guys pack their stuff up and head over to Oliver's secret lair. On the way, though, they run into Space Station, Angel, Castro, and Antonio looking around. They are trying to find Oliver's place, too. They're getting close, but still have no cigars. Vonk confronts them, with a small pedestrian overpass in between them. Space Station takes point, but Antonio is creeping back towards a ruined shopfront. Vonk calls him out, Angel takes his eyes off her and swears at Antonio, while Castro looks back and forth uncertainly. Antonio breaks and runs, Angel goes after him. Vonk shoots Space Station, his vest keeps him alive. He shoots back at Vonk, as does Castro. Oh, how the worm turns! Castro books it while Space Station hurls a grenade over the bridge at Vonk, which she catches and throws right back. Having already turned around, Space Station face hits the concrete ground and his back becomes a bloody mess.

Luckily for Vonk, his other grenade doesn't go off and she is able to loot it. Her guys come running up and she tells them to keep and eye out for Angel, Castro, and Antonio. In the distance, they hear explosions.

3.
Stashbot sees robotic hands looking through belongings. Then he hears explosions. Hands stuff belongings into a bag. He sees people in Mama Cassidy's place running around, he sees a building on fire, some people wounded. He sees all this from behind corners, hedges, and other obstacles. He sees tunnels underground, the sound of running. He gets Mercury's full information file from the computer, too, but doesn't pay much attention to it. Oliver sees this on the screen in the other room and gets rather concerned about it. He communes with the spirits of the land and finds one particular to Stash's hideout. It tells him that there's too many people with strong connections to the spirits and it will probably have to shut the system down soon.

Oliver gets mad at Stash because Mercury's name came up. They discuss things and decide to move out. Stash gives Oliver a gun and tells him it's time for him to become a man. Once they get into the tunnels, though, they get ambushed by Kneel Cassidy and some fighters (Richard, Rome, Tum Tum, and whazisname a guy that looks Mexican to Stashbot). Stash guns down Richard and puts bullets in Tum Tum and the Mexican. Tum Tum is wearing armour and doesn't go down, but Richard is over and the Mexican guy might not be dead, but he doesn't look like he's going to get up again. Kneel shoots him and he almost falls off the catwalk attached to the side of the sewer wall as it starts to collapse.

Oliver calls out to Kneel for a truce and they have a parley. Oliver tries to tell him that everybody needs to cooperate instead of shooting each other. Kneel wants him to come back to Mama Cass' side, especially after Oliver says he knows where there are water filtration machines. But Stash and Oliver are pretty resistant to that idea, having their own business to take care of. So it's back to the guns and soon enough Kneel is down and Tum Tum and Rome are running away. Stash guns them down and then asks Oliver if they need Kneel for anything. Oliver is pretty resistant to him just offing them, but Stash says Kneel and the other guy are just going to die anyway. So he boot-on-windpipe executes them.

4.
Vonk sent her vehicles outside The Hive to circles around and look for a way in and out closer to Oliver's workshop. Having done that, she's up on top of The Hive with Pyrex showing her some bad omens. He points over to the Cassidy complex and Vonk sees smoke rising from it. Further away though, Pyrex points to the desert out past the cliff wall, where The Pit is located. There's smoke drifting up out of The Pit too. Neither know what to make of it, but Vonk starts feeling pains in her cybernetic arm.

Then Bottlecap brings in a captive: Antonio! He's a little beat up, rather craven, and very apologetic. Vonk questions him about Mama Cass' plans, which are basically to steal whatever they can from the mechanics and Oliver, because apparently they might have water-filtration technology they won't share and Mama Cass has no clean water. Vonk threatens him and finds that his main motivation is to stay alive, so she basically takes him prisoner.

5.
Stashbot and Oliver make it back to The Hive, but as they do, Stash gets a nagging feeling that there's something important over there. He's in front of one old department store, looking across the street at another one. The pair hear Mercury's voice call out Oliver's name questioningly. Then they hear some people from the other side of the department store, around the corner. They yell out "Robot!" "Robot?" "Robot!" and fire a few shots across the street in Mercury's direction.

Stash books it through the burned-out department store. He almost comes up on Angel and Castro without them knowing, managing to gun Castro down, but Oliver calls out to Mercury that she should stay under cover. The pair turned around, not in time for both of them to live, but Oliver sees Angel kill the fuck out of Stashkevich. He fires a few shots at Angel but he ducks out of the way, under cover.

Back at Oliver's place, Vonk is arranging her guys into a security perimeter when they hear shots and yelling from not far off. Vonk takes Spitfire and Harridan and goes to check it out. As she comes up on the department store, she sees Stashbot stumble out, in pretty bad shape, with blood all over his face. Then she sees Angel sneaking up behind him to get a real nice close-range shot off with his AK. And then her cybernetic arm stops working.

Stashkevich comes around and hears someone yelling about angels. "No," he thinks, "it's Robot Jesus, not angels." He turns around and there's Angel behind him with an AK, looking over at the people yelling at him who then start to shoot at him. Stash ducks and rolls and gets the hell back into the department store.

Around the corner, Oliver sees Mercury emerge from behind cover. It looks like she is wearing some kind of silver mask. He yells at her to get down and goes into the department store, where Angel is trying to make a getaway. Stash, having dropped his gun, waits until he is trying to get through a hole in the wall and then tackles him and choke-holds him into dreamland. Vonk comes over and shoots him dead immediately. Oliver starts yelling at her for killing an unconscious person. Vonk is not impressed that he is unsatisfied with her job of defending his stuff. While they have this argument, Stashbot goes across the street to look for Mercury, but she has fled.

In any case, the fight's over and they figure they can pack it in and go home. Then they get back out onto the street and look around and bam! Hovercycles are not only a post-apocalyptic technology that Stashkevich is unfamiliar with, but they are also silent! But when the small gang of wasteland reavers riding them sees the five people, they start making noise! Psychotic eyes full of rage and bloodlust! Barbed wire wrapped around their arms, their swords, their guns! A vast horde of even more reavers behind them on noisier, more conventional vehicles! What could happen next? What could happen?!?

Next week, maybe we'll find out.

Session 8.

Quarantine beginning of session move reveals that Spc. Horace Staszkiewicz was sitting in the secondary control room in the complex of machines that control the psychic maelstrom when the world ended. He realizes that he probably could have shut the direct mental interface off, just like the primary scientific team was going to do before they got nuked by the objectionist faction of the UN. But he was pretty fucked-up after Vegas, and he let Jackson take the lead. She put the team into stasis, which was supposed to last a few years, only as long as the automatic shut-down function was supposed to take. He has a vague recollection of where this massive repository of machines is located, not all that far from his stasis hideout, but he doesn't know exactly.

1.
In this episode, Oliver's assistant Barstowe is upgraded to full PC status as an Angel. The first thing he does is bring some food to the captive Antonio and start up a conversation with him. Antonio begs him to help him escape so he can go off and hide somewhere, but Barstowe instead tries to convince him to go and talk peace with Mama Cass. Barstowe and Oliver have a way to grow food using the dirty water, and Mama Cass has her own skills at growing. So even though Barstowe doesn't like Mama Cass, he recognizes her skills and wants to make a peace between her faction and his project. Antonio says he needs to take some proof to show Mama Cass, so Barstowe gives him a jar with some fresh produce in it.

Of course, Barstowe still needs to get Antonio out. Luckily, he happens to have a big vacuum-sealed bag of marijuana he scavenged from somewhere. Three of Vonk's men who are supposed to be guarding Oliver's workspace (and Antonio) are gambling with dice for cigarettes, which the Stashbot has (by example) shown people how to smoke properly. Barstowe gives them this new smokable weed, and within the hour all three of them can barely crawl around they are so stoned. So even though Barstowe gave Antonio his stun gun, Antonio doesn't need to use it. He slips out easily.

2.
Back in the shit, Vonk hurls Space Station's other grenade over the tops of the five hoverbike reavers into the seething mass riding conventional vehicles (quick math: 4-harm grenades from the bloodcrazed Gunlugger who is NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH vs. a medium gang with 1-armour) and sends an open-topped jeep and at least one motorcycle flipping through the air in cinematic fashion. Then Stashkevich dashes across the street in an attempt to get to Oliver. Vonk sends Spitfire and Harridan with him to cover and assist, while she lays down submachinegun fire at the five reavers on hoverbikes. This pretty much takes out three of them. Stashkevich is almost across the street when he looks behind and sees Spitfire and Harridan firing underneath the foot bridge unaware of the hoverbike coming right over top of the footbridge. He takes that one out right quick. The final hoverbike reaver goes charging straight into the ruined shopfront Vonk is hiding in. He has some strange laser pistol he's shooting at Vonk and it seems to do the trick. He's on her before she can dive to cover and the energy beams cut right through her makeshift armour, and everything goes black for her...

After the other three each Oliver, they hoof it up to the second floor of the buildings and start to make their way back to Oliver's workspace. While Stash is looking out at the streets and the carnage below (the reavers have begun to split up and possibly also leave), the four hear the words "Stop right there, hands up!" Turning around, they see Hasty and some of his goons (Cactus, Violet, Harley, and Timberwolf, and Starlight the mechanic is with them, too). But then Hasty lowers his gun and expresses concern that Oliver is wandering around out here when reavers are wandering the streets.

They learn that Hasty is still with Skip, and that Skip is still alive but not doing so well. They're holed up not too far from here. Oliver tries to get Hasty to work with Stashkevich in clearing out these raiders, and while Hasty is skeptical, he seems amenable to trying it out, so Stash goes with them while Oliver, Spitfire, and Harridan leave.

3.
Back at the workspace garden, Pyrex and Michael Jackson have been driving around the perimeter shooting at wandering reavers, but Vonk has not returned. Harridan organizes a search party, leaving the workspace somewhat under-guarded. She also discovers that Antonio has escaped. Oliver tries to give her some advice about what to do at this point but she doesn't listen very closely to him. In the garden, Oliver goes into a sort of trance and uses augury to make contact with Mercury's mind and call her back to the workspace. After that, Oliver and Barstowe talk about the situation. Barstowe admits he sent Antonio to broker a deal with Mama Cass, and Oliver is still concerned with keeping the workspace top secret.

4.
After completing a sweep with Hasty and his goons, Stash has shot a few wandering reavers but it seems like they have scattered and left for the most part. He still hasn't found Vonk, but Hasty wants him to come and see Skip. They have a long drawn-out semi-argument over the reavers. Hasty treats them like any other reaver attack, they come and then they leave, the only thing strange is that they got inside The Hive en masse. Stash tries to get him to consider maybe something different is happening this time, but it doesn't seem to work that well. Finally, Stash gets Hasty to consider the idea that instead of packing up and fleeing The Hive altogether, he brings Skip and the mechanics over to Oliver's workspace, where there is food, and they can trade with the mutants for water. Besides that, Mama Cass is hardly a threat—Stash already killed half her fighters (making Vonk's gang the largest group of skilled combatants in The Hive). Hasty takes him to see Skip, who has been gut-shot and is in pretty bad shape. He's on the third story of a nearby building, with some of the mechanics. Hasty explains that Mastodon turned on Skip and took some of the mechanics back to Mama Cass with her. skip wakes up briefly, but it seems like Hasty is really the one in charge of making decisions here, and he's already agreed with Stashkevich's plan.

5.
Vonk swims in and out of consciousness over a period of undetermined time. First she's slung over the back of a hoverbike with her feet bound together with wire. Her makeshift armour has been looted by the reavers, and one of them is wearing her cybernetic arm around the throat like a trophy. The convoy seems to stop at some point and the whole group runs around screaming for a while, then they keep going. The reavers are totally psychotic, many of them are mutilated or wrap barbed wire around their limbs and they seem to feel no pain and don't care about their wounds. There is no obvious leader. And yet, their vehicles, both hoverbikes and conventional bikes, are perfectly maintained. She opens her mind to the maelstrom to see a top-down view, and realizes they have gone north, farther than she herself has ever gone. The cliff face is nowhere to be seen. Then, from the east, she sees a small dot approaching the reaver convoy. As it gets closer, squares of her top-down view go black, until it arrives at her location.

The convoy park their vehicles in a rough semi-circle, with a space on one side. Most of them are running around inside this space, but some have grown weak and are beginning to collapse. It looks like they have captured three or four other people from The Hive, as well. Then from the east, a hovering craft approaches, looking very much like Boba Fett's spaceship. It lands in the space in the semi-circle, a door slides open, a ramp rolls out, and then a robot emerges. Since she knows about Stashkevich, Vonk figures it's a man in a suit, but he looks even more hi-tech than the Stashbot, more like a Jack Kirby robot. The reavers are excitedly screaming about "communion," and then a silver, cylindrical vat also comes out of the ship and down the ramp. Robot Jesus announces he has brought them communion, and produces some plastic cups which he fills with a clear liquid from the silver keg.

Some of the stronger reavers leap forward to take communion immediately, while others drag the prisoners and the weaker reavers forward. Vonk sees the ones who drink the liquid become euphoric and reinvigorated. They carry her forward and pour the liquid into her mouth. She tries to resist but they continue until the drug takes effect and she exhibits the signs of successful communion. She feels euphoria, all her pain disappears, it seems like she has superhuman strength, and she rips away the wire binding her feet together. Her individual personality seems like it disappears and she is now part of this herd.

Robot Jesus speaks commands to the reaver horde, telling them to go forth and capture the mutants who control the water supply in The Hive. Then he produces new vehicles in perfect working condition, and a series of weapons (guns and machetes). The reaver horde mounts up and rolls out. Vonk gets a bike and a machete and muscles her way near to the front of the convoy.

Zardoz is the best.

New rule: YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO POST NEGATIVE OPINIONS OF ZARDOZ IN THIS THREAD. Yes, I know how bad it is. It is also a work of genius. No Zardoz-hating.

Luckily for Vonk, Oliver has been using his augury to reach out to her, and aside from seeing this while scene as a horrible nightmare, he has established some sort of connection with her. His presence lingers in the back of her mind which the rational, conscious part of her clings to in order to not be completely subsumed by the psycho-communion reaver drug.

6.
While Oliver is having this horrible dream, Barstowe finds Mercury sneaking back into the workspace. Her skin and hair and eyes have turned to shiny, chromed silver. She's pretty apprehensive, but Barstowe welcomes her back and tries to encourage her. He also shows her that he has become a mutant, too: he has Wraeththu-like flowerstem genitalia instead of cock and balls! He thinks the cause might be the garden. Turns out Mercury's body has no genitalia, in fact no orifices of any kind except on her face.

Oliver joins the scene and is reunited with Mercury. He is concerned for her, even though he's the one who looks to be in terrible shape (from having "nightmares"). They have a conversation and the whole sordid story comes out:

Mama Cass wanted to set up Mercury with Santiago, because his wife had just died the year before, partly as a way to solidify their alliance (Santiago is the best of the fighters and probably over 30, while Mercury is 13, which is less creepy after the apocalypse than it is for you but feel free to make your own judgements, I mean Oliver is 14 and Vonk thinks "he's too young" and her standards for men are pretty much "a man"). Mercury didn't like that, especially since she had a serious crush on Castro (who might be younger than 30 but his wife is still alive so obviously Mercury doesn't care about your judgements) so she went to confess it to him. But he laughed at her, as was already revealed and she went to Oliver to make her feel better (i.e. feel wanted by someone). After that, Santiago actually started to pay some attention to her, which she didn't like, and then her skin turned all silver. She hid at first, then there was an attack on the Cassidy Compound and things were on fire and so she used that as an opportunity to escape (as was already revealed in Stashbot's vision). Oh, and also, she had followed Castro around and saw him discover these strange machines, so after he spurned her, she went and smashed them up. She doesn't know what they do, but now she thinks that it was a bad idea.

And so we end with Vonk as part of the returning reaver horde, Stashbot moving Hasty and his people into Oliver's workspace, and Barstowe attempting to make peace between Mama Cass and basically everybody else.

Next one might be the conclusion, we'll see.

Session Nine.

I brought a grocery-store sandwich to this game and while I was watching it being made all I could think was "I'm not just going to buy that, I'm going to eat it, too? Really?" But I only ate part of it, because it was pretty much as bad as I thought it was going to be.

1.
Stash brings Hasty and others into the garden to sort out logistics of moving Skip's people with Oliver. Hasty wants more of Vonk's people on patrol duty, Stash convinces him that's getting sorted out. In private, Oliver tells Stash about Vonk and his visions, and they have a discussion about the psychic maelstrom, which includes Stash's claim that he invented it. Barstowe is concerned about Stash's various wounds, but is interrupted by Michael Jackson bringing news of a serious problem outside.

That serious problem is a Mexican stand-off: three groups of gunmen, ready for a possible fight. Hasty and his small group of people and Vonk's slightly larger gang are ready to rock n roll with Santiago and a few armed fighters and growers who have driven up. Thing is, Antonio is with Santiago and he's waving a white flag. Hasty is verbally insulting Santiago, and Vonk's gang has no strong leadership.

2.
As the convoy of drug-crazed reavers approaches The Hive, Vonk splits off. About half the reavers follow her, sensing that she knows where to go, while the other half follow the other new recruits who know how to get to the mutants. Vonk drives her half of the horde into Mama Cass' near-empty compound, past the barricades and into the appartments and greenery, where they begin to disperse. Vonk herself comes to the notice of a small cadre of resistance, 6 people wielding guns but poorly-trained in fighting led by a dishevelled Mama Cass. She looks haggard and worn and dehydrated. With her are Mastodon, the boy Shut Up, and three others. Vonk tries to evade them, but when they start shooting, she returns fire, wiping out all but one of them, whom she leaves crying and praying for mercy. As she wheels around on her hoverbike, intent on returning to Oliver's workspace, she manages to shake off the last mind-numbing effects of the reaver drug.

3.
Oliver takes charge of the stand-off, marching out between the two forces to parlay with Santiago. Stashkevich and Barstowe follow. Santiago comes out from behind cover to speak with them, but he is still holding his rifle, which spooks Hasty into shooting him. Stashkevich wheels around and opens fire on Hasty, who ducks behind cover and runs off, trailed by one of his guys. Most everybody else is too shocked to react quickly, giving Barstowe time to come to the aid of Santiago. This includes removing Santiago's shirt, which causes everyone watching to freeze in place and do nothing but watch (an arresting skinner) while  Stashkevich leaves the scene in pursuit of Hasty. Barstowe whispers into Santiago's ear that he's only going to save him if he promises never to pick up a gun again. Santiago can't reply but Barstowe can tell he's in that bargaining-with-God-in-order-to-live phase, and that he'll promise anything not to die. Barstowe turns to the nearest person with a gun, Jason, standing behind Antonio, and tells him to put down his gun and give him some help. Jason comes out of a daze, realizes he is holding a gun, and grabs Antonio as a hostage. Jason has his gun to Antonio's head and is yelling that nobody better start shooting.

4.
Stash pursues Hasty and his pal into a ruined storefront. They are hiding behind a burned-out couch display, attempting to sneak through a back door. He scurries over to the cashier's desk and gets them in his sights, yelling for them to "drop the weapon shitbird." The pal is surprised but Hasty whips around spraying bullets. Stash relies on his armour and returns fire, inflicting s-harm by peppering the area with bullets until both men have dropped to the ground, cowering. Then he pulls Hasty up by the collar and drags him back, berating him all the while.

5.
Oliver makes a speech and, because he has Frenzy, gets Jason to let go of Antonio, and everybody around to form into a gang and fight for him. They all start to chillax something fierce, even though far-off gunshots punctuate the speech about how they are the only people left and shouldn't be fighting each other. He says they need to be fighting the reavers and defending the water. He leaves a few people behind with Barstowe to defend the workspace, while the rest head of with him and Stashkevich.

6.
When Vonk arrives, they are gone. But Lou is on guard and he is ecstatic to see Vonk alive, bear-hugging her and crying tears of joy. Inside, Barstowe wants to patch up her wounds, but she prefers to just get stabilized and back into the fight. She leaves the designated defenders behind and rides out.

7.
Oliver and Stash lead their mob into the tunnels, finding crashed bikes and dead or dying reavers along the way. They are not good at driving their bikes through these cramped tunnels. While our two heroes discuss plans, Stash's imaginary friend Bronson turns up with a clipboard showing serious psychic activity in the reservoir area. Stash decides to enter from the other way, and splits off from the group. When Oliver and the mob get to the choke point where the mutants had their ambush set up, there are dozens more dead bodies, but it seems the reavers prevailed, and managed to get through. Inside, there are dead reavers and mutants both. Also, a cacophony of moaning, many voices in pain and dismay. Oliver orders the others to hang back and goes to check the reservoir. Inside, Spc. Jackson has merged with numerous others to form a giant mass of flesh, melted together with the parts of people still sticking out of it. It spreads out around the room and into the reservoir, turning the water cloudy. He opens his mind to the psychic maelstrom and when it asks him to opt in or opt out, he opts out.

8.
When Stashkevich gets back to his secret lair, he opens up the armoury and peels off his old beat-to-shit suit, donning even better futuristic robotoid armour. But when he hears an explosion upstairs, he goes to check it out. Turns out someone has used a shaped explosive charge to open the door that leads out to the desert. As the dust clears, Stashbot sees it is Robot Jesus, bedecked in his power-armour complete with UN/EU markings and a blaster gun in his hand. Stash riddles him with bullets in an attempt to stun him (he has super-awesome armour, after all), then charges in order to grapple him to the ground. The resulting fight goes disastrously for the Stashbot (snake eyes, twice!), as the blaster gun destroys his armour, blows off a foot, and makes his left arm useless.

9.
Vonk shows up right when the mob starts to freak out, after one of them (Starlight) sees the flesh monster and loses it. The psychic maelstrom is showing Vonk an imminent battle between the darkness above and the bright light beneath, a final showdown looking to happen. Vonk charges forward, flanked by some of her gang, and they see the flesh monster thing in all its glory, starting to tense its muscles, as if they were all one creature. Vonk flees fast, but Oliver backs off slow enough that a fleshy tentacle-like appendage whips out and coils around him. Vonk throws bullets into it until it is useless and they all flee back into the other room.

As they flee, they see a set of elevator doors opposite them, in the reservoir room, open and reveal Robot Jesus. He steps into the rooms and begins blasting the fleshy monstrosity with high-powered energy beams.

10.
When Stashbot comes to, he is pretty badly maimed, but he's still in the fight. He stumbles down to his isolation chamber and plugs it in. By now, he knows he could have prevented the apocalypse, or at least the effects of the psychic maelstrom. He could have turned it off, even after the main scientific team was nuked, since he was manning the auxiliary control room at the time. But Spc. Jackson, because she was a control freak and wanted to mold the environment around her to her will, kept it on and put them in stasis. So he fires up the isolation chamber and reaches out through the psychic maelstrom to make contact with the auxiliary control room. And he's successful! Once that is done, he's got a lot of information at his fingertips, even though he doesn't remember what all of it means. Still, he knows enough to flick the on/off switch and command it to power down. Time for the custom move! When you program the computer, roll+sharp. On a 10+, it goes off like you wanted, no problem. On a 7-9, it works, but there's a cost involved. On a miss, it all goes horribly, horribly wrong. And he gets a 7-9, hooray!

So, Stashbot realizes that there are a number of ongoing accounts that are connected to the maelstrom that will have to be terminated if the maelstrom is terminated. There is a specific threshold, but he's in no shape to figure out exactly who those people are. Spc. Horace Staszkievicz decides to go for it anyway.

He turns off the psychic maelstrom.

11.
All the life and vitality seems to go out of the giant flesh monster. Robot Jesus stops blasting and puts a hand to one side of his head, as if listening to something inside his helmet. Oliver, sensing the absence of the psychic maelstrom, calls out to him. "Hey, who are you?" Robot Jesus looks up, then turns away and gets back in the elevator.

Vonk is fine, but her arm doesn't grow back (it was a possibility, earlier). Oliver is no longer able to go without water, and doesn't exude chillaxing pheromones anymore. But otherwise, he's fine. Vonk finds Stash passed out at the control panel and brings him back to The Hive for medical attention. Barstowe's flower-stem-penis doesn't require any upkeep by the psychic maelstrom, so even though he is stuck with it, he is fine. He finds Mercury, however, dying in a corner of the workshop, bleeding from her mouth and ears, her metal skin quickly growing stiff and unmoving. Everyone involved in the flesh monster dies painfully and awfully as it loses cohesion and they are left without most of their functioning body parts.

The remaining survivors live off of Oliver's crops until they can get the water filtration units fixed, which Vonk oversees to make sure it happens. They look to the cacti in the mountains and out to The Pit (where no more civil war rages) for additional water until they have their own again. Barstowe prioritizes Skip and people who aren't fighters for getting better medical treatment, so that's who survives, and so they're able to grill Skip on his plans for a water filter.

Oliver goes on to become the hardholder of The Hive. Vonk is fine with this, preferring not to be leader. Stashkevich decides not to revive his six other comrades from stasis, after considering how "well" things went with Spc. Jackson around.

The End.


Some explanations and many hours of spiteful accusations and savage denouncements I mean constructive criticism followed but that stuff can wait.

(The game's over, so questions and comments after this point are fine, if there are any.)

Explanations of the Setting and the Psychic Maelstrom

The psychic maelstrom was a nanobot cloud developed by Staszkievicz's scientific military team. When they added the direct mental interface functions, the Objectionist forces reacted by launching nukes. Instead of shutting everything down, Jackson and Staszkievicz went into stasis.

In the Apocalypse World of approximately 50 years later, the psychic maelstrom was still around, though no one had the proper codes for it, or knew where the central hub for it was. Two types of people had strong connections to the maelstrom. The first could control that link, and would cause the landscape around them to slowly change to better suit their subconscious desires. Mama Cass was like this. The plants she looked after grew even in the polluted water after the filtration machines broke down. The second type of strong connection was more common, that of the mutants. Mutants were caused by a strong, out-of-control connection to the maelstrom that would cause their bodies to change rapidly and usually as a result of subconscious fears and emotional needs. Mutations were also contagious, causing other people in proximity to develop a stronger connection to the maelstrom which usually also spiralled out of control. This is why The Hive was mostly intolerant of mutants, and why The Pit exiled them into the lower depths. Mutations almost always ended with the melting-flesh monster.

Staszkievicz and Jackson had their own relationships with the maelstrom. She went crazy upon contact with it, and Staszkievicz knew some of the codes, though he had forgotten most of them. The maelstrom communicated mostly in thoughts and memories drawn from a person's own mind, so Stash had an image of Bronson showing up and communicating information to him. Oliver spoke to the maelstrom as if it were spirits of the land, and because Skip was like Mama Cass at one point the spirits were telling him Skip's ideas were the good ones. Vonk was able to download images from the few remaining satellites, and get an overhead view of her surroundings. Neither Stash nor Vonk became mutants, though it was a close call for Vonk. Some mutations were basically one-off changes, others (like Oliver's lack of thirst or Mercury's metal skin) required constant maintenance by the maelstrom. When Staszkievicz turned it off, that maintenance was also turned off.

The Hive and The Pit were the only two settlements left, but there had been more, once. One by one, they failed, and settlements continued to fail well into our game. A civil war had erupted in The Pit between mutants and non-mutants, mainly because of the flesh monster, and some mutants fled the war and invaded the water reservoir next to The Hive. But most other settlements failed because of the wasteland reavers.

The remaining Objectionist forces lived in a crystal tower far off in the east, with a space elevator that cut the skyline in two (north and south) and allowed them to manufacture hi-tech devices in orbit. They also had protection from the psychic maelstrom. In order to locate the maelstrom's control centre, these Objectionists had created the reavers, by feeding them drugs and commanding them to raid settlements where the centre might be. The men commissioned to perform this task, like "Robot Jesus," were equipped with armoured suits that blocked contact with the maelstrom, and flying vehicles that allowed them to bring drugs, vehicles, and weapons to the reavers. In the end, "Robot Jesus" thought that the centre was located in The Pit and wanted to capture the mutants who had fled, thinking they knew its location.

Since the maelstrom was sort-of conscious, in that it could communicate with peoples' minds and was eager to do their bidding, I had to find ways for it to ask people what they wanted and still provide opportunities for it to fail, due to poor communication or a lack of proper clearance codes. The system I employed mostly worked for Staszkievicz, though perhaps that is only fitting. When characters opened their brains to the psychic maelstrom, I would ask them questions, like;
* What is wrong with this situation?
* What do you need to defend yourself?
* How could your problems be solved?
* What do you need most right now?
* What makes you uncomfortable where you are?
* What makes you feel comfortable right now?
* In what ways do you feel vulnerable here?

Sometimes, especially when these questions revolved around what should be done, I wrote the answers down in sequence. When the characters opened their brains to the maelstrom afterward, I noted the die results next to the questions and their answers. That result determined the maelstrom's reaction.

So, in one case, Staszkievicz provided the following answers:
1. "I can't trust my senses anymore." The first open your brain roll after this was a 12, and so the maelstrom later made it clear to him what it was projecting into his mind and what was real.
2. "Nothing is going right." There was no concrete information here, so I skipped this one.
3. "Securing Spc. Jackson would solve things." After that 12, the next open your brain result he got was a 7. That weak hit resulted in Jackson being locked down alright, but it changed her physically so that she could not leave the reservoir where she had met up with the mutants. She mutated herself into a living statue.

Another time, instead of asking questions, I had Bronson ask Staszkievicz for orders:
1. "Help out Oliver with water." Stash's next open your brain roll was a 12, so the maelstrom started providing Oliver with all the hydration he needed.
2. Bronson asked about the outside. "Jackson should keep an eye on that." The second open your brain roll was a 6, and of course Jackson is in no shape to be watching the perimeter of The Hive. This roll was the sole reason they had no warning when the reavers finally showed up.
3. Bronson asked about personnel: " I need a list," said Staszkievicz, so Bronson produced one. Or told Stash he had one several times, anyway, Stash didn't take much advantage of it, although it would have told him who was a mutant and who had a strong, under-control connection to the maelstrom. At the end of the game, when he had to shut down the maelstrom, I didn't tell him who would die if he turned off the maelstrom because he got a 7-9 result to make the computer do stuff, was operating the controls remotely, and still had his memory scrambled, but perhaps I should have had Bronson give him the list at that point. But it had been a while since it came up and I wasn't thinking about it, so my bad.

Shortly after that, Oliver told the maelstrom he wanted people to chill out and listen to him, and so he started producing the chillaxing pheromones. And Vonk told the maelstrom her biggest problem was her inability to negotiate, but she solved that herself by taking the Hocus move Charismatic.

I was originally going to use the Metamorphica for some inspiration, but didn't really need it. Mercury's metal skin was an idea inspired by a Kult rulebook that I've had for nearly twenty years, and most other mutations just followed naturally from questions and answers.

So, that should explain the setting, I think.

And now the critical commentary.

Overall, the game was enjoyable, and there were some pretty awesome highlights. It was also rather frustrating at times.

Some things that didn't work very well for me:

1.
In our previous AW game, the MC did most of the world-building work. There were times where I wanted to be asked more questions so I could add more of my own ideas to the world, but it was clearly not that kind of game. And, you know, fair enough it's not the end of the world (ha ha) and I will still play in that style, although I had wanted it the other way. So, in my game, I set up the initial situation and was hoping the players would fill in all the glorious details for me so I could concentrate on fronts and threats. They were not particularly interested in doing this, however. Although Vonk's player seemed to enjoy detailing her gang, the details of life in The Hive were principally left up to me. It could be I did not make my intentions clear enough, so I think next time I want to MC in this style I will say up front that I am not going to invent any aspect of their regular lives or the people in them.

2.
I wanted to try something different in terms of scene framing this time, based on the examples in the rulebook. I would frame each scene with a situation, and the players could deal with it however they liked. Anything they had intended to do in between scenes they could simply describe as having happened already, if it was relevant. And if there was stuff they wanted to do after the initial situation of the scene, the scene could be extended to accommodate that stuff. With this technique I was hoping to put the focus more tightly on dramatic scenes, and also to be able to string out some of the early scenes in time, as opposed to allowing the players to cram as many scenes as possible into each in-fiction day. Well, this went over like a lead balloon. I had to abandon it after fierce resistance, and the dislike was string enough that even much later I was told it was an incorrect way to play, and not just a matter of opinion.

In any case, these two are on me. I tried some things, they didn't work. If I had been more aware going in, and assumed less, I definitely would have run the game differently.

3. Also, I found the way fronts to be organized isn't my style. I hadn't really used them when I ran the playtest rules, so I tried them this time and didn't like it. Which is not to say they are bad, just not for me. I like the threats and threat countdowns, but putting them together in fronts felt weird. I have other procedures that are similar and more intuitive for me personally, so I should probably be using those to get the same results instead. Again, that's just me, and this wasn't really a big deal.

4.
However there is another problem I noticed that has happened to some degree or another in pretty much every AW game I've participated in. The people I have played with have a tendency to ignore the words on pages 101-102 that say the characters "should be basically allies" and are "at least colleagues." They tend to accept characters living in the same holding as close enough, even if they don't actually associate with each other. Now, I've been guilty of this myself on occasion, but I've seen it again and again where players put their heads down, fill out their sheets, and only talk to each other about Hx, which is done pretty fast and then it becomes the MC's responsibility to tie the characters together. In one game where I was a player, I had several other players actively avoiding my character when I was trying to initiate scenes with them, and one player even accepted a scene with me basically in order to tell me we wouldn't be playing any subsequent scenes. Why? Because our characters were not "at least colleagues" and the Hx questions did not make up for that lack. They provided no connections with me on anybody else's sheet, and so when they started playing their characters, they had no reason to associate with mine.

Some playbooks are better at connecting characters to communities and thus to each other. When we have had hardholders and maestro d's, they were loci for the other characters to revolve around, and provided a natural tendency for them to associate. In this particular game, though, I think the players probably picked the second-worst combination of playbooks for this. Three out of four players were essentially playing Batman—socially marginalized loner-types (to varying degrees) with super-secret lairs. The Quarantine player stated that he had not met anyone in The Hive except the other players' characters, effectively removing him from the position of ever contributing details about it or the people in it, and the other three did not inhabit overlapping social networks. In spite of this, the players did make considerable efforts throughout the game to have reasons to associate with each other and to seek out scenes that included each other. So that was good. But I feel like the initial connections between the players' characters is something I will need to emphasize in future games, instead of relying on Hx to do all the work. Or the MC, because that's a lot of work to have to do.

I also have a specific critique of the Hoarder playbook.

First off, I really like the idea behind the Hunger mechanics. There's a lot of potential awesomeness locked away in them, but there were some aspects of this playbook that felt detrimental to play.

Part of my issue with the Hoarder is that this playbook throws so much of the creative stuff over to the MC and takes it away from the player. The player picks the contents, sure, but if it's conscious, it's over to the MC to roleplay as an NPC. When the player wants an item, it's up to the MC to decide what it is. It's up to the MC to spend the Hoarder's hold and provide opportunities for lowering hunger. I found the Hoarder tried to monopolize my time and creativity as an MC, and yet the hoard is an exclusive thing, not something all the players can actually share in. Especially since this hoard was the kind that NPCs want to steal, so it had to be secret, much like the other secret lairs.

The other issue is how hunger works, and how the two horde moves manage it.
If you get something out of your hoard and you miss before the MC has spent enough hold that there's something you can get or give back available, you're stuck with -1 to all your rolls until at least the next session and nothing you can do about it. This encourages the player to turtle, lay low, and not play the game until he has the chance to lower his hunger again. This is what happened the very first time the Hoarder used his move in this game, and while I can't remember exactly what I had spent his hold on, I think it was on something that was very hard for him to get at that point.

I would prefer a version that gives the player options for lowering hunger that don't rely on the MC. This tweak would encourage two different sets of behaviours: one that actively shows the character to be awesome (which the hoard does when it produces items) and another that shows the character in a bad light, but does so through active behaviour that the player can also resist and perhaps overcome (instead of being stuck with a -1).


For example, here's part of (the revised version of) The Damned, one of my Heralds of Hell playbooks:

The Hunger of the Damned

You bring judgement to those sinners you most despise (choose 1 or 2):
* the Envious, who take what is not theirs.
* the Gluttonous, who consume more than their due.
* the Greedy, who hoard what belongs to all.
* the Proud, who claim false authority.
* the Slothful, who are lazy and afraid to act.
* the Vain, who flaunt their flesh.
* the Wrathful, who use violence in anger.

You begin play with hunger+2.

At the beginning of the session, roll+hunger. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 1. During the session, you can spend your hold, 1-for-1 to mark an NPC whose actions identify them as the kind of sinner you most despise, and take +1forward against them. If you punish a marked sinner for their actions, give yourself -1hunger. If you have any hold left at the end of the session, add it to your hunger to a maximum of hunger+4. On a miss, you immediately go to hunger+4 and pick a character you consider more innocent than most. You'll be acting under fire if you ever use violence against them in the future.

When you suffer harm, you get +1hunger, to a maximum of hunger+4.

When you are mocked, challenged, or humiliated by a marked sinner, you get +1hunger, to a maximum of hunger+4.

When you drink fresh blood or eat warm flesh, give yourself -1hunger. If your victim is alive when you begin, you must inflict at least 2-harm.

When you have hunger+4, take -1ongoing.

See how that works?
1. You can mark people and punish them, but when you do that your chances for gaining hunger go up.
2. If you opt out of punishing people, you pretty much have to act like a vampire.
And
3. If you are too diligent in lowering your hunger, you wind up with a long list of innocents you can't touch.

At no point, however, are you stuck without a choice to make.