Scarcity

I ran my first sesh of AW a few weeks back. I had a good time, and the players were pumped, pestering my disorganised ass to get the next session in motion. But there's an issue that bothers me a bit about the future, and that's scarcity.

We decided to set things in a British town, which had a much more accessible feel to us than the American blasted wastes and bikes post-apocalyptic vibe. (We do have a few bikes: they're fixed-gear pedalled choppers used by lieutenants to traverse the rough streets.) The players were excited and inspired by this, and although it wasn't exactly where my pre-game musing had been, I felt excited too. I think my mistake began here, by not emphasising scarcity from the off, to them and to myself. A game set in an urban location that isn't rubble but merely emptied out doesn't bring with it the same baggage of dirt, drabness  and absence, and as a consequence I wasn't alerted when some facts were introduced early on that for me feel undermining.

Specifically this is around our Hocus. S/he is basically a sex and debauchery cult-leader who holds the cult in sway by regular wild parties set to yammering drum and bass, that gathers huge ecstatic crowds beyond the cult hardcore. I basically nodded and said 'cool' - these were answers to my questions and honest, invested ones that synched with the whole table (we came of age amongst warehouse parties and breakbeat culture), but as we started to colour in, with a party in that first session, something began nagging at me. With cirque-du-soleil style acrobatics, banging soundsystems, strobe lights and sex parties, the player (and to a less extent the whole play group) had it 'all' from the off, at least in terms of what they prioritise. To add to this, when I opened the sesh by asking where the Hocus woke up and what they saw, smelt etc, her player described an opulent flat in a secret location, with satin sheets, prints on the walls etc, furnished by the cult's provisions over time.

For the other characters this has been less of an issue, but this scope of opulence feels like it's given too much from the off; that beyond doling out plasma screens

Lest I seem too dozy, I should point out that I did begin to burrow into these areas:

*I asked questions about how the parties were powered, we agreed on a generator, I pointed out that other factions were likely to covet it. I also made a move that had the generator give out mid-party which on reflection I'm not sure I'm so proud of - see below
*I had the Hocus bump into 2 followers on her rooftop exit from her block, who were proudly seeking out her resting place because they wanted to be closer to her. This didn't negate the secret nature, but did put pressure on it and introduce fiction first implications: if you are secretive, you're going to attract curious, awkward folk.

The last thing I want to do is be adversarial and take away all of their stuff: I feel a bit bad about the generator bit even though it was my hard move and it made sense from the fiction that it wouldn't be in perfect working condition, but due to the savvyhead's roles its forced them into the taboo part of town, which is more mission-focused than I would like. At the same time, it feels like a fully powered pleasure-warehouse in a time of intense scarcity and collapse would be bound to come under intense pressure, from the elements, the envious etc. But on the third hand, I don't want to screw on the players.

I'd really appreciate any thoughts on this. I've seen several people write that scarcity is fundamental to the game, and have that similar intuition. Is having leisure and comfort at luxury levels going to cause problems down the line?

Thanks

Alex

Hi Alex,

Wow. Sounds like nostalgia for the early 1990s -- UK raves with no cops, so to speak.

I think your players have several golden eggs they'd like to protect:  a notion of front-room/back-room (i.e. the Hocus' lavish secret bed chamber), a fully-powered sex club, and the feeling that they've carved out a nice, hedonistic existence here in the post-apocalypse.

Scarcity in AW isn't about real lack per se - it's about launching an assault on these things they value and seeing what they're willing to do to protect them.

So rather than just making the generator flicker, have it cut out completely, and the sex party keeps going and getting wilder when the lights go out.  Suddenly, the PCs may get the idea that their equipment isn't what makes the club, it's them (or even the sex).

Or maybe you invite the Hocus into starting a relationship with these two followers.  Or maybe she spurns them, and they take revenge by spiking some of the party's drugs.

As for the nice sense of hedonism, don't let all the PCs have it; at least one PC should be really feeling the effects of the scarcity, and their encounter with this reality can be brought as a force to bear on the fragility/necessity of the club in ways that simply taking the PCs' stuff cannot be (much like present-day relations of the First World with postcolonial nations).

And one final question: would they be willing to commit egregious crimes to protect this lifestyle?  What if a band of 50 orphans show up with a guardian (i.e. like in Fritz Lang's Metropolis) asking for shelter?  Hell: it's cliché but it gets them to start asking some hard questions of their characters!

Hey Evan

Thanks for your reply. I think your analysis itself is well on the money. That said, the solution which you suggest is the thing I'm agonising about:

it's about launching an assault on these things they value and seeing what they're willing to do to protect them.

I've seen a lot of people with a lot of play history that seem to counsel against targeting the PC's in that way, and I'm chary of just launching into it. It can create the impression of punishing people for putting their wants out there. I can contrast it with another player who is playing the battlebabe, all solo orphaned ninja. I think it would be interesting if they start finding things to connect to in the apocalypse world; if I'm threatening the stuff that the Hocus is connected to, that seems to be sending the wrong message.

In answer to your last question, which gets at some of the others, the pc's have committed some fairly harsh acts pretty casually to protect their status quo. the hocus sent those two followers off to meet up with the battlebabe, implying that she knows how to deal with those sent in that way: basically bump them off rather than even have to deal with two unpredictable if faithful followers.

And the battlebabe was perfectly casually happy to execute the one of the two who actually showed up, a 16-year old girl with lots of parallels in background, after they had sex. Which kind of shocked me, it seemed like a PC-NPC triangle in the making but was just bulldozed through in the (slight) interests of the PC's. In retrospect I can partly put it down to a long D&D history in these guys (they're brothers IRL) and reflexively shoring up their backs; the third player meanwhile was quicker to take on problematic obligations and stick his neck out.

Creating an unbalanced scarcity situation is a nice idea. At the moment it could be tricky; the players all found reason to go into the taboo area together, and seem to be starting to bind themselves into a fairly traditional group. Hence abundance for one character can shore up the others: I can easily anticipate 'come and sleep in my other spare room' - is it my job as MC to step in and say nah, a 1-bed apartment is definitely all you'd have? I dunno...

One answer for this of course is to have interesting NPCs continue to pursue their interests interestingly, forming triangles and making the world as complicated as it deserves. One idea you've spun from is is to  simply respond to how much the players emphasise their abundance by making that a theme: your apartment is how big? OK.... Hey guys, the hardholder is calling for a window tax, and asking (nicely, as always) for people to volunteer their details and pony up. ; after the next party there are a family shivering outside. They're asking to bed down in the warehouse for the night; the heat generated from the bodies, machinery and lights can keep them from hypothermia. Just for one night....