Apocalypse World Review on Idle Red Hands Podcast

After failing miserably as an MC and having our Apocalypse World game go belly up after just three one-hour sessions, my co-hosts and I decided to record Idle Red Hands Episode 73: Campaign Confessions: Apocalypse World. It's a pretty balanced review in that one host loves the game, one is kinda neutral, and one didn't care for it very much. We're also evenly divided about the profanity and writing style of the book, and evenly divided about whether we'd give it another shot or not.

While collecting my thoughts for the episode I realized all the stuff I did wrong as an MC. Listening to my mistakes and the other host's comments may help burgeoning Apocalypse World MCs out there. If my screw ups can help other people succeed when running this game, then my failure will not have been in vain. 

If people have the time and inclination to give us a listen, I'd love to hear comments on what I could have done better, or how you set up your own successful games. Thanks.

Cool. Your first game went about like our first game did and I think your next go would be better. It's become one of my favorite games. I jotted down some thoughts while I listened.


Did the MC ask probing questions during Hx? You run a sandbox, but you should be asking all kind of questions. They have a caravan? Cool, of cars? Where do they get their gas? What do they trade for it? Who's responsible for that? Who's in charge of the caravan for that matter? Why? Who wants to take over? Why haven't they made a move yet?

NPCs, why does it matter if they know them? Ask how they know them? What is their relationship? Are they sleeping together? Were they together in the past?

Yes. You should have approached AW the way you did in Monsterhearts.

Scorched worlds are boring????? Have you seen Mad Max?

Vegetable gardens are not boring. You have a vegetable garden? Cool! How do you protect it in a world of scarcity? Who was the last group that tried to take it from you? How long ago? Who did you lose in the fight? What was she to you? Who blames you for her death? Now that she's gone, who's watching out for her little brother? What's your relationship like with him?

Threats and problems grow from the questions. See above.

Yeah, fuck profanity ;)

Don't baseline. Just get into your characters and answer the MC's questions.

Hey noclue. Thanks for listening, and for the response and the comments on the episode. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

I think that the problem we encountered was twofold. Firstly, it was the first time I'd run the game, and I was essentially doing it blind. Meaning that I hadn't played in an AW game before and didn't really know what to do. I mean, I knew what to do from reading the book cover to cover several times, but book knowledge is very different from practical knowledge. I said this on the episode, but I think that AW is a game that you can only run (or at least run well) after having it run for you.

Secondly, and not to throw my players under the bus here, but no one else had read the book or knew anything about the AW system or how narrative it is. I suspect that they were suspecting a more "traditional" game, one where the GM/MC sets up everything about the world for them. They seemed really taken aback with the questions during character creation and with the amount of creative input they had. My players are not railroaders (well, not all of them) and some of them are very proactive, but AW seems to crash and burn really hard when the PCs just kind of sit around doing nothing.

It's also my fault for not making it perfectly clear to them that the first session of every AW game is character and setting generation. I got the distinct feeling that at least one of the players kind of thought we were wasting time and not really "playing". That's totally understandable since I didn't articulate that beforehand, and also since we were only doing one-hour sessions over Skype. I can see how someone would be disappointed if their entire play session for the week was just the MC asking them questions.

I was asking lots of questions during the first session and Hx assignment, but it can be pretty damn hard to do that. It's kind of like a game of ping-pong; if either the players or the MC "drops the ball" by being unable to come up with something, then the whole process kind of looses momentum. This didn't get mentioned during the episode, but after that first session I got private emails from my players saying they needed more information about the setting. So I kind of broke the rules and set up most of the setting, including all the details such as who was in charge of the caravan, what they did for food, MC characters and friendships/rivalries, etc. for them. That fell absolutely flat.

I didn't want to railroad them and tried to dangle plot hooks in front of them, but no one bit on anything naturally, because none of the PCs were invested in anything that was going on. I tried to set things in motion by having one of the Hardholder's lieutenants cut up one of the Hocus's followers (the player decided that his followers were prostitutes, like temple whores). That went nowhere, as they just kind of said "don't do it again". I tried to split loyalties by having the Hardholder (an MC character) "request" that the Faceless join one of the raiding parties and "keep an eye on the Hocus" (the players decided that the Faceless was one of the Hocus's followers), and that went nowhere. I was actually getting a little bit pissed off at how buddy-buddy the PCs were being.

But ultimately, the game failed because of my MCing skills. I listened to The Walking Eye's actual play podcasts of AW after the fact and realized what I was doing wrong. I hadn't put the characters into situations that demanded a reaction from them. I had made the character's lives boring. I wasn't creating situations that required a "What do you do?" for the players to react to.

Hopefully I've learned from my mistakes for the Monsterhearts game I'm running now. Sadly though, I think I've wasted my one chance of running AW with this group.

It sounds like you had some of the issues we had in our first session. Part of the problem is that the MCisnt asking the Players questions. The MC is asking the characters questions. You never talk to the players. And, in fact, the MC isn't really just asking questions. The MC is making moves, or setting up a move. That's what the MC does, try to make moves.

So, if you ask where they get food and Breads replies that he has a vegetable garden. The MC turns to Breads and asks questions to make and set up moves, looking for places they're not in control. So "Breads, how do you folks determine who gets to eat when there's not enough vegetables for everyone? Ah, I see, and do you keep the peace during the rationing? What do you do when someone takes more then their share? Ah, so Breads are you the one who kills them or is that Abo's job? She's the gunlugger afterall."

That's a lot of announcing future badness in those questions.

Our MC, Colin, discussed his issues with our first game and got some John Harper schooling in this thread on SG. It really helped.

The most helpful AW comment I've ever seen is from Harper in that thread:

Instead, the GM moves are what you always say. Whenever you need to talk and you're not sure what you should say, you make a move. Cover it in fiction, misdirect, and barf apocalyptica on it (so it doesn't look like you're saying a move), of course. So the GM moves are constantly in play. I'd be hard pressed to think of anything I say during a game now that isn't one of those moves.