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So, now I've tried my hand at Apocalypse World. Despite myself, I decided to play it mostly by the rules (though there was some confusion). I choose Apoc Wörld for two reasons: firstly, it only required D6, the only dice I had access to in China. Secondly, it felt really beginner-friendly and lightweight, while still having all the dramatic potential of more complicated games.
Preparations
I had hoped for four players (though I'm most comfortable with 2-3), but my sister bailed on us, so we ended up being three players + me, at least for this first trial session. Melanie choose to play a Savvyhead named Lemieux, a female in her lare twenties. Kelly went with a Battlebabe by the name of Bubbles, who seem to be female but is quite ambiguous, 17 years old. Luca opts for a Gunlugger that goes by Dune, a 40 year old male, scruffy and somewhat mysterious. As we establish the character's HX to each other, some interesting stuff appears; apparently, Bubbles understands the freak Lemieux better than anyone could really believe, and Bubbles and Dune has once battled Lemieux's father together (it's an open question whether this guy is still alive; supposedly he fell into the lake). It is also vaguely hinted that Bubbles might have been a boy before he/she fell into the lake. This lake is interesting now.
I hand the players a map loosely based on the area around Er lake in Yunnan, China (where we live); the lake, now 'The Withered Ear' dominates the landscape, with high mountains in the west and a mysterious place called ' The Glass Forest' to the south. There's also a mysterious wall warding off The Glass Forest from the lake's western shore, a road from north to south called 'The Old Road', and another road from The Glass Forest to the southwest along a river, called 'The Ancient's Causeway'. Northwest of The Glass Forest along The Old Road is 'Old Town', a medium-sized town of some kind. North of this is 'Rolfball's mill' and 'Water Plant', and northwest of that is ' Towers of the Three Horrors'. . Out in the lake is also a few islets with buildings on them, labeled 'Water Cult Village'.
I now tell my players they may add one feature each to the map, plus the Savvyhead gets to place his house/junkyard. They can, I say, add one more feature after this, but then I will also add one feature that I will use to fuck with them (this is a misdirection ofc, because -any- feature they add, I'll use to fuck with them...turns out they didn't add any additional features though, maybe because we were all hungry after character creation and wanted to go for dinner). Anyhow, Melanie places Lemieux's junkyard on the lake shore close to Old Town, establishing that Lemieux drinks the lake water, that's why she's so weird. She further places a toll station along the Old Road to the north, adding that it costs one barter to use. (I later tell them there's a chopper gang, but they seldom go down to Old Town because they then have to pass the toll gate). Luca places an old, mysterious temple in the mountains to the northwest, and Kelly places a missile silo (half underground), also in the empty space along the northern half of the Old Road.
Then we go eat, and then starts playing. I really haven't prepared at all, just like you shouldn't with Apocalypse Wörld, so I'm a little bit nervous, and maybe the beginning is not so smooth as I could have made it. Anyhow, let's get down to it:
Let's play
Apparently, Bubbles and Dune have been squatting in Old Town for an undisclosed amount of time, sleeping in a makeshift shelter in a ditch. It's an ok place, really, but now a spontaneous ash rain has begn, combined with strong winds, and Bubbles and Dune finds their shelter collapsing on top of them (it's mostly fabric though, so no damage). Not only that, they can hear the menacing sound of a large group of people approaching (this is me Announcing future badness).
Turns out an old hag by the name of Momma Bones is in charge of the town (it remains to be determined how secure or unchallenged this position is), mostly through her control of the water purification plant which gives her local monopoly on clean water. Now Momma Bones and her gang of thugs is threatening Bubbles and Dune, wanting them to find proper shelter or get the fuck out of town. I ask Dune's player why Momma Bones is so hostile towards him, and it turns out she suspects him of killing her husband, that is, Lemieux's dad (so Momma Bones is Lemieux's mother, which will later turn out to be awesome). Bubbles and Dune leave without a fight, and head to the only person in town then can remotely call a friend, that is, Lemieux.
Lemieux has in the meantime been awoken by his servant, Tree, a waifish girl with moss or something in her hair (as we play, her name gradually mutates into Leaf, so now she's Leaf apparently). Tree/Leaf has found a dead body in the yard and is a little bit upse tby this, she's obviously trembling, and lies to Lemieux about not having looted the body (I didn't ask for a roll because it was so obvious). Lemieux is still half asleep and asks her to soak the body in acid (the usual procedure, apparently, this is another random detail that will later turn out to be awesome). As Bubbles and Dune barge in uninvited, they thus see a small girl dragging a fat, dessicated body up an enormous junk pile, toward a can/vat/somesuch of acid. They examine the body (Bubbles rolls Read a Sitch and Dune assists, but it's a crappy roll so I give vague and misleading info). Lemieux's enter the scene, and calls on her second assistant, Bob, a bookworm:ish guy, to come and explain the unknown body in the yard. Dune's player now asks "so, like, I can do anything? I can kill this guy?" and I'm like "yeah, sure, just remember that your characters are supposed to feel real, so their actions have to make sense". I tell him to roll for Go Aggro, as Bob is completely defenseless, and Bob soon ends up dying in the dirt, with a huge dagger lodged in his throath. Bubbles smile awkwardly and says: "Yeah, so this is Dune..." (maybe the best introduction ever).
Some conflict ensue as Leaf runs away in panic, Lemieux's demands to know what the fuck just happened, and calls on her third servant Lurch (a hulking, slow-witted mountain of a man) just to be safe. The players briefly toy with the idea of saving Bob, but I tell them they need to get him to a doctor pronto, which would be at the Water Cult (they have by now completely seen through my desire to get them to visit the cult), and they discard that idea. Dune insists that he had a reason for killing Bob, and Lemieux's forces his hand by taking Bubbles hostage (for this, I didn't know what to do exactly, so I let Lemieux's roll for Seize by Force modified by Bubbles Interfere roll; it ended up with Lemieuxs taking 'definitite hold over it', so she now has a screwdriver at Bubble's throat). Dune explains that Bob was an imposter, that the dead body was the real Bob, and with them having sort of the same body shape, Lemieux gets intrigued and her player asks if she can use 'Things speak' on dead people; I'm like 'fuck yeah', so she's soon at the first dead body's forehead with a weird device made from an old iphone. She rolls well and gets three questions: 'who are you?' 'Bob'. 'who killed you?' 'Bob'. 'what strong emotions have been recently near this?' 'Joy, connected to water somehow'. (Jääjj! The Water Cult!)
With this, Lemieux is convinced that Dune actually did have a point, and doesn't press the issue further. But she needs to pay Momma Bones tax for four people, so with Leaf run away, Dune and Bubbles may stay if they make themselves useful. Dune has to fix an old car lying about in the junkyard, otherwise he'll get thrown out, so I design a very quick custom move for this (not knowing what else to do; roll+Hard, on a 10+ the car is fine, but mangled, on a 7-9 it will run for a very short while before the engine dies). He rolls great, and actually manages to savagely beat the engine into shape with a crowbar. Lemieux wonders where Leaf might have gone, so I let her roll Read a Person, in order to figure out Leaf's standard hiding places (apparently, she uses them a lot). It seems Leaf would go to her Big Badass Brothers (except the one who's in the Water Cult), and round 'em up to go beat Dune into a pulp for scaring her. (Dune's player feels this isn't realistic, but I argue neither Leaf nor her brothers would have a good grasp on how fearsome Dune really is, and also add it's possible Lemieux's analysis is wrong; Leaf might jusst be hiding in a ditch somewhere. She really did like Bob, though).
In the end, the players decide not to pursue Leaf (she'll show up eventually), but either visit the Water Cult, or get the car in even better condition and then hit the road with it (maybe going to the water cult in it). While the car is now working and, for the moment, stable, it's critically low on fuel. They can ask Momma Bones for fuel (she's apparently hoarding the stuff), but another option would be to make the car nuclear powered. We all immediately cave to the awesome of this, so Lemieux suggests she go to Momma Bones (taking the car, to 'impress'), Bubbles and Lurch go to the Missile Silo to look for a nuclear core, and Dune guarding the junkyard. Dune refuses, however, saying he has an errand in the mountains (watch Dune's player being really clever here; he's IRL really tired and wants to go home, but realizes this is a good opportunity to separate the group for the moment, so the others can continue playing for a bit). Accordingly, he embarks on a trip to the mountains; Lemieux is curious what it's about, but Dune won't tell, for now.
Bubbles and Lurch take a tandem bicycle to the Missile Silo, but along the way sees a pillar of smoke on the horizon, and approaches more slowly to investigate. They see some burning wagons and dead bodies being looted by two hulking brutes, while a couple of two-headed mutant yaks graze idly nearby (or tries to graze, the ground is like, black-grey gravel mixed with ash). Bubbles order Lurch to cycle in a circle around the scene, ready to pick her up (I tell her I will count this as having an escape route ready in case things go bad), and then stealths toward the brutes, wanting to hear them speak. She fails however (fails her 'Act under Fire' roll), and they see her, draw their machetes, and attacks. They're some kind of savages, hairy and sub-human, maybe close kin to the yaks, but Bubbles blasts the head off one of them and scares the other one of; he throws his machete, but it hits her armor and does nothing. (She rolls a 9 on Seize by Force and chooses to Dismay and Suffer Little Harm). She then succesfully Reads a Sitch, and I tell her the dead people (two dudes, a gal, and two kids) are probably settlers from the west, there must be some kind of road through the mountains that Bubbles doesn't know about. She loots their meagre equipment from the wagons, and finds a sack of dried meat and a pot to use as an improvised helmet, but she neglects to take the yaks (who would be worth two barter each), as she still needs to go into the silo. Lurch can carry the rest of the stuff, but to bring the yaks along would simply be to complicated.
In the meantime, Lemieux drivers her car to Momma's place, a mansion in the middle of Old Town, and delivers the acid-cleaned skulls of Bob and Bob (apparently, Momma Bones is true to her name an avid collector of various human parts, and her mansion is covered in skeletal remnants). I describe the thoroughfare like the kind of place where all the people are sitting idly around glancing suspiciously at eachother, and Momma and her boys are no expection. Being Momma's daughter, after all, Lemieux is given an audience, and Momma even lets her take some of the seeds she's eating (though Momma would never offer her a single one, being a horder at heart). Momma can not explain the thing with the two Bobs (or simply doesn't want to), and basically gives Lemieux the cold shoulder through all the conversation, but she does provide the hint that there must have been a reason a Bob came to Lemieux's place; might something, some object, be missing over there? something important? There's also a brief discussion about Dune, with Lemieux feeling that Momma seems to perceive this guy as a threat somehow, but only to the point of annoyance (Momma is to full of herself to feel anything other than annoyance by other people). Lemieux ask for fuel, arguing that Momma will have to spend every day looking at her ugly-ass car parked outside otherwise, but is given only a canister of something of extemely questionable value ("it's made out of people!", I joke, but it might very well be true, given what we'll see in the next scene...). Lemieux opts to walk home, not wanting to waste the precious little fuel Momma gave her.
Meanwhile, Bubbles has painstakingly forced open the door to the silo (off screen, I didn't wanna waste time with that), and enters a wierdly lit space filled with some bubbling liquid in huge vats. Bubbles readies her weapons (spear and shotgun), as a emaciated figure appear, dressed in a doctor's robe modified to include a hood, displaying a weird glove
D) on her single hand (the other arm is missing). The figure repeatedly asks Bubbles to leave, in a scary voice, insisting she's running a moonshine factory here. Bubbles asks for her name, and gets the answer 'Violator...errr...Violet'. Upon being asked about the nuclear reactor, Violet starts a long explanation about how it's not really a reactor, just a warhead or two, but that someone took the missiles long ago. She doesn't know who, she claims, but because nuclear is 'a powerful force of the ancient world' and generates light, all Bubbles needs to do to find it would be to climb a mountain and look for the brigthest source of light. Bubbles is: "you mean the sun?" and Violet is "well, technically, it's similar to nuclear, there's fusion blablabla but let's not digress...not the sun". Bubbles is satisfied, and wants to shake hands; Violet gets wierdly happy (in some perverted fashion) and enthusiastically grabs Bubbles hand with her violation glove; what follows are sparks of electricity going up Bubbles arm to her head, and images flashing in her mind of her childhood, of Dune, and of Lemieux's father, a beared, scowling figure. And the lake, the water of the lake. She then leaves, dazzled, and Violet carefully bolts the door after her. In a cut-scene, we see Violet turning on another light, and rows of human bodies hanging from meat hooks appear out of the shadows.
When Lemieux and Bubbles and Lurch gather at Lemieux's place, Leaf is back, desperately asking for another chance to earn her upkeep. Apparently, she went to get her brothers, but they have all joined the Water Cult and become pacifist. Also, Leaf claims, she saw another Bob at the Water Cult's compund, a guy looking exactly like Bob, alive and well. Lemieux is certain she doused both dead Bobs in acid, though, so this is a little bit spooky. Upon Lemieux's asking why Leaf didn't stay at the cult, the girl insists she don't want to drink the lake water, it's not safe (Lemieux and Bubbles are doing it all the time, but then they're both rather weird...) Lemieux refuses to pay tax for Leaf anymore, but if she makes herself useful, sure, she can stay, and the girl quickly embarks on a desperation-driven quest to harvest all the rats from Lemieux's fridge (which is apparently a whole room).
Lemieux and Bubbles divide the loot, being somewhat irritated they didn't take the yaks (Momma Bones has always wanted a two-headed yak, apparently). They consider going out for the yaks again, but night is approaching and Momma Bones has a curfew at work (though not very heavily enforced), claiming there's 'something' dangerous out there in the night. With Bubbles' new information in mind, they also consider climbing the mountains to look for the light, but in the end they decide to painstakingly go through all the junkyard and the house, to try and determine what item might be missing, what Bob (which Bob is still an open question) might have been there for. Lemieux opens the secret door to her secret storage, a small cavern underneat the house, and it turns out (the player asking me to come up with something appropriate) she has, among other things, two missiles from the silo ready for launch (just in case), though someone harvested the nuclear cores from these ones too, long before Lemieux got them. (Lemieux also has a geiger counter, apparently, might come in handy later).
We end the session as the people starts sorting ALL the items, with me revealing "yeah, in the end, after a day of work, you find out something's missing...I tell you what next time". (Maybe it's just me being obnoxious, but after all these years of GM:ing I still love cliffhangers, they give such an easy way of jump-starting the game next time).
My first session worksheet
Note to my players, in case you read this. The following section would be considered spoiler by some people, but I'm fine with you reading it if you want, as I think it illustrates how I think about the game in a way that might be enlightening to you.
I wonder...
What's the deal with Bob? Why does the Water Cult have several Bobs, and how do they come to be?
Who leads the Water Cult, and what's his/her agenda?
How does Momma feel about Dune?
Who took the warheads?
What's in Violet's brew?
Some other questions of less immediate relevance:
What's the fucked up, scary noise Lemieux's hears on radio station 56,3?
Where is Lemieux's dad, and what's his relation to Momma?
What's the real story behind Dune, Bubbles, and Lemieux's dad, and what is it that Dune knows about Bob, really?
Who controls the road checkpoint, and the wall?
The PCs and their resources:
I reasoned the PCs have access to the following at present: labor, blood kin (though ambiguous, as Momma's primarily a threat), know-how, machinery, storage, raw materials, loyalty (Lurch's is almost beyond question).
The other people:
Momma Bones is a warlord of some kind, her resources are CLEAN WATER (this is very very big), connections, fuel, information, walls, food (in general), security (her thugs), loyalty (her thugs).
Violet is a mindfucker or warlord of some kind, her resources are information, drugs (the brew?), know-how, time (she seem content in the background for now), raw materials (of some fucked up kind).
Momma is mostly about ambition, leaning towards hunger, Violet is also about ambition, leaning towards envy.
On the other side of the chart is Leaf, her only resource being Big Brothers (Blood Kin), though these seem to have abandoned her for the Water Cult. She's driven by Fear, leaning towards Decay.
Lurch is less complex as of now (though Lemieux's player planted (in game ofc, only that counts) the awesome concept that Lurch is actually her brother who she had lobotomized and put on stupid-medication, so he wouldn't be before her in the line of inheritance. He's leaning toward ignorance.
Other afterthoughts
If you missed it before, the players are all complete beginners. As I suspected, all of these guys were good roleplayer material, absolutely showering out ideas. At least one, maybe all of them, seemed a little overwhelmed by the lack of direction (or maybe rather the fact that they could do ANYTHING, I dunno for sure), something I could probably have mitigated somewhat; for example, maybe I should have made the scenes more rail-roaded, or just more focused somehow, avoiding scenes were the PCs were alone with each other and having to find something to do. But this is hard when you improvise, like Apocalypse Wörld tells you to, though for sure I did try to Make the PC's Lives Interesting, as much as I love improvising, I think maybe I could have done an ever better job with that if we had made the characters, and I'd then gotten a day or two to plan ahead a little bit, like, stake out a few scenes, bombs and plots. I'm not entirely convinced that Apocalypse's approach that you should never plan anything whatsoever is the most optimal one.
Another challenge with Apocalypse Wörld is making it serious and dramatic enough, while still having it bisarre, outlandish, weird and darkly humorous. I have no idea how I succeeded in this regard, probably it will get better as I get more chances to portray weaker, more human NPC's with more basic and understandable needs and wants (which is usually where I excel as a GM).
GM:ing in english was not the easiest. I think it worked fine, especially in dialogues, but at times, especially when describing things, my vocabulary felt limited and I couldn't figure out what to say. I'm certain there could hardly be -any- language practice better than GM:ing, though.
Again, the players were great though, while still being beginners, they really bought the concept of us developing the world and story together, rather than just passively receiving what I served. There was a creative dialogue going on all the time, which is so cool. Given a few more sessions to develop, this gaming group might really exceed my expectations and turn out really worthwile. (This is just my experience though, it remains to be seen more precisely how the players felt about it).
So, now I've tried my hand at Apocalypse World. Despite myself, I decided to play it mostly by the rules (though there was some confusion). I choose Apoc Wörld for two reasons: firstly, it only required D6, the only dice I had access to in China. Secondly, it felt really beginner-friendly and lightweight, while still having all the dramatic potential of more complicated games.
Preparations
I had hoped for four players (though I'm most comfortable with 2-3), but my sister bailed on us, so we ended up being three players + me, at least for this first trial session. Melanie choose to play a Savvyhead named Lemieux, a female in her lare twenties. Kelly went with a Battlebabe by the name of Bubbles, who seem to be female but is quite ambiguous, 17 years old. Luca opts for a Gunlugger that goes by Dune, a 40 year old male, scruffy and somewhat mysterious. As we establish the character's HX to each other, some interesting stuff appears; apparently, Bubbles understands the freak Lemieux better than anyone could really believe, and Bubbles and Dune has once battled Lemieux's father together (it's an open question whether this guy is still alive; supposedly he fell into the lake). It is also vaguely hinted that Bubbles might have been a boy before he/she fell into the lake. This lake is interesting now.
I hand the players a map loosely based on the area around Er lake in Yunnan, China (where we live); the lake, now 'The Withered Ear' dominates the landscape, with high mountains in the west and a mysterious place called ' The Glass Forest' to the south. There's also a mysterious wall warding off The Glass Forest from the lake's western shore, a road from north to south called 'The Old Road', and another road from The Glass Forest to the southwest along a river, called 'The Ancient's Causeway'. Northwest of The Glass Forest along The Old Road is 'Old Town', a medium-sized town of some kind. North of this is 'Rolfball's mill' and 'Water Plant', and northwest of that is ' Towers of the Three Horrors'. . Out in the lake is also a few islets with buildings on them, labeled 'Water Cult Village'.
I now tell my players they may add one feature each to the map, plus the Savvyhead gets to place his house/junkyard. They can, I say, add one more feature after this, but then I will also add one feature that I will use to fuck with them (this is a misdirection ofc, because -any- feature they add, I'll use to fuck with them...turns out they didn't add any additional features though, maybe because we were all hungry after character creation and wanted to go for dinner). Anyhow, Melanie places Lemieux's junkyard on the lake shore close to Old Town, establishing that Lemieux drinks the lake water, that's why she's so weird. She further places a toll station along the Old Road to the north, adding that it costs one barter to use. (I later tell them there's a chopper gang, but they seldom go down to Old Town because they then have to pass the toll gate). Luca places an old, mysterious temple in the mountains to the northwest, and Kelly places a missile silo (half underground), also in the empty space along the northern half of the Old Road.
Then we go eat, and then starts playing. I really haven't prepared at all, just like you shouldn't with Apocalypse Wörld, so I'm a little bit nervous, and maybe the beginning is not so smooth as I could have made it. Anyhow, let's get down to it:
Let's play
Apparently, Bubbles and Dune have been squatting in Old Town for an undisclosed amount of time, sleeping in a makeshift shelter in a ditch. It's an ok place, really, but now a spontaneous ash rain has begn, combined with strong winds, and Bubbles and Dune finds their shelter collapsing on top of them (it's mostly fabric though, so no damage). Not only that, they can hear the menacing sound of a large group of people approaching (this is me Announcing future badness).
Turns out an old hag by the name of Momma Bones is in charge of the town (it remains to be determined how secure or unchallenged this position is), mostly through her control of the water purification plant which gives her local monopoly on clean water. Now Momma Bones and her gang of thugs is threatening Bubbles and Dune, wanting them to find proper shelter or get the fuck out of town. I ask Dune's player why Momma Bones is so hostile towards him, and it turns out she suspects him of killing her husband, that is, Lemieux's dad (so Momma Bones is Lemieux's mother, which will later turn out to be awesome). Bubbles and Dune leave without a fight, and head to the only person in town then can remotely call a friend, that is, Lemieux.
Lemieux has in the meantime been awoken by his servant, Tree, a waifish girl with moss or something in her hair (as we play, her name gradually mutates into Leaf, so now she's Leaf apparently). Tree/Leaf has found a dead body in the yard and is a little bit upse tby this, she's obviously trembling, and lies to Lemieux about not having looted the body (I didn't ask for a roll because it was so obvious). Lemieux is still half asleep and asks her to soak the body in acid (the usual procedure, apparently, this is another random detail that will later turn out to be awesome). As Bubbles and Dune barge in uninvited, they thus see a small girl dragging a fat, dessicated body up an enormous junk pile, toward a can/vat/somesuch of acid. They examine the body (Bubbles rolls Read a Sitch and Dune assists, but it's a crappy roll so I give vague and misleading info). Lemieux's enter the scene, and calls on her second assistant, Bob, a bookworm:ish guy, to come and explain the unknown body in the yard. Dune's player now asks "so, like, I can do anything? I can kill this guy?" and I'm like "yeah, sure, just remember that your characters are supposed to feel real, so their actions have to make sense". I tell him to roll for Go Aggro, as Bob is completely defenseless, and Bob soon ends up dying in the dirt, with a huge dagger lodged in his throath. Bubbles smile awkwardly and says: "Yeah, so this is Dune..." (maybe the best introduction ever).
Some conflict ensue as Leaf runs away in panic, Lemieux's demands to know what the fuck just happened, and calls on her third servant Lurch (a hulking, slow-witted mountain of a man) just to be safe. The players briefly toy with the idea of saving Bob, but I tell them they need to get him to a doctor pronto, which would be at the Water Cult (they have by now completely seen through my desire to get them to visit the cult), and they discard that idea. Dune insists that he had a reason for killing Bob, and Lemieux's forces his hand by taking Bubbles hostage (for this, I didn't know what to do exactly, so I let Lemieux's roll for Seize by Force modified by Bubbles Interfere roll; it ended up with Lemieuxs taking 'definitite hold over it', so she now has a screwdriver at Bubble's throat). Dune explains that Bob was an imposter, that the dead body was the real Bob, and with them having sort of the same body shape, Lemieux gets intrigued and her player asks if she can use 'Things speak' on dead people; I'm like 'fuck yeah', so she's soon at the first dead body's forehead with a weird device made from an old iphone. She rolls well and gets three questions: 'who are you?' 'Bob'. 'who killed you?' 'Bob'. 'what strong emotions have been recently near this?' 'Joy, connected to water somehow'. (Jääjj! The Water Cult!)
With this, Lemieux is convinced that Dune actually did have a point, and doesn't press the issue further. But she needs to pay Momma Bones tax for four people, so with Leaf run away, Dune and Bubbles may stay if they make themselves useful. Dune has to fix an old car lying about in the junkyard, otherwise he'll get thrown out, so I design a very quick custom move for this (not knowing what else to do; roll+Hard, on a 10+ the car is fine, but mangled, on a 7-9 it will run for a very short while before the engine dies). He rolls great, and actually manages to savagely beat the engine into shape with a crowbar. Lemieux wonders where Leaf might have gone, so I let her roll Read a Person, in order to figure out Leaf's standard hiding places (apparently, she uses them a lot). It seems Leaf would go to her Big Badass Brothers (except the one who's in the Water Cult), and round 'em up to go beat Dune into a pulp for scaring her. (Dune's player feels this isn't realistic, but I argue neither Leaf nor her brothers would have a good grasp on how fearsome Dune really is, and also add it's possible Lemieux's analysis is wrong; Leaf might jusst be hiding in a ditch somewhere. She really did like Bob, though).
In the end, the players decide not to pursue Leaf (she'll show up eventually), but either visit the Water Cult, or get the car in even better condition and then hit the road with it (maybe going to the water cult in it). While the car is now working and, for the moment, stable, it's critically low on fuel. They can ask Momma Bones for fuel (she's apparently hoarding the stuff), but another option would be to make the car nuclear powered. We all immediately cave to the awesome of this, so Lemieux suggests she go to Momma Bones (taking the car, to 'impress'), Bubbles and Lurch go to the Missile Silo to look for a nuclear core, and Dune guarding the junkyard. Dune refuses, however, saying he has an errand in the mountains (watch Dune's player being really clever here; he's IRL really tired and wants to go home, but realizes this is a good opportunity to separate the group for the moment, so the others can continue playing for a bit). Accordingly, he embarks on a trip to the mountains; Lemieux is curious what it's about, but Dune won't tell, for now.
Bubbles and Lurch take a tandem bicycle to the Missile Silo, but along the way sees a pillar of smoke on the horizon, and approaches more slowly to investigate. They see some burning wagons and dead bodies being looted by two hulking brutes, while a couple of two-headed mutant yaks graze idly nearby (or tries to graze, the ground is like, black-grey gravel mixed with ash). Bubbles order Lurch to cycle in a circle around the scene, ready to pick her up (I tell her I will count this as having an escape route ready in case things go bad), and then stealths toward the brutes, wanting to hear them speak. She fails however (fails her 'Act under Fire' roll), and they see her, draw their machetes, and attacks. They're some kind of savages, hairy and sub-human, maybe close kin to the yaks, but Bubbles blasts the head off one of them and scares the other one of; he throws his machete, but it hits her armor and does nothing. (She rolls a 9 on Seize by Force and chooses to Dismay and Suffer Little Harm). She then succesfully Reads a Sitch, and I tell her the dead people (two dudes, a gal, and two kids) are probably settlers from the west, there must be some kind of road through the mountains that Bubbles doesn't know about. She loots their meagre equipment from the wagons, and finds a sack of dried meat and a pot to use as an improvised helmet, but she neglects to take the yaks (who would be worth two barter each), as she still needs to go into the silo. Lurch can carry the rest of the stuff, but to bring the yaks along would simply be to complicated.
In the meantime, Lemieux drivers her car to Momma's place, a mansion in the middle of Old Town, and delivers the acid-cleaned skulls of Bob and Bob (apparently, Momma Bones is true to her name an avid collector of various human parts, and her mansion is covered in skeletal remnants). I describe the thoroughfare like the kind of place where all the people are sitting idly around glancing suspiciously at eachother, and Momma and her boys are no expection. Being Momma's daughter, after all, Lemieux is given an audience, and Momma even lets her take some of the seeds she's eating (though Momma would never offer her a single one, being a horder at heart). Momma can not explain the thing with the two Bobs (or simply doesn't want to), and basically gives Lemieux the cold shoulder through all the conversation, but she does provide the hint that there must have been a reason a Bob came to Lemieux's place; might something, some object, be missing over there? something important? There's also a brief discussion about Dune, with Lemieux feeling that Momma seems to perceive this guy as a threat somehow, but only to the point of annoyance (Momma is to full of herself to feel anything other than annoyance by other people). Lemieux ask for fuel, arguing that Momma will have to spend every day looking at her ugly-ass car parked outside otherwise, but is given only a canister of something of extemely questionable value ("it's made out of people!", I joke, but it might very well be true, given what we'll see in the next scene...). Lemieux opts to walk home, not wanting to waste the precious little fuel Momma gave her.
Meanwhile, Bubbles has painstakingly forced open the door to the silo (off screen, I didn't wanna waste time with that), and enters a wierdly lit space filled with some bubbling liquid in huge vats. Bubbles readies her weapons (spear and shotgun), as a emaciated figure appear, dressed in a doctor's robe modified to include a hood, displaying a weird glove
D) on her single hand (the other arm is missing). The figure repeatedly asks Bubbles to leave, in a scary voice, insisting she's running a moonshine factory here. Bubbles asks for her name, and gets the answer 'Violator...errr...Violet'. Upon being asked about the nuclear reactor, Violet starts a long explanation about how it's not really a reactor, just a warhead or two, but that someone took the missiles long ago. She doesn't know who, she claims, but because nuclear is 'a powerful force of the ancient world' and generates light, all Bubbles needs to do to find it would be to climb a mountain and look for the brigthest source of light. Bubbles is: "you mean the sun?" and Violet is "well, technically, it's similar to nuclear, there's fusion blablabla but let's not digress...not the sun". Bubbles is satisfied, and wants to shake hands; Violet gets wierdly happy (in some perverted fashion) and enthusiastically grabs Bubbles hand with her violation glove; what follows are sparks of electricity going up Bubbles arm to her head, and images flashing in her mind of her childhood, of Dune, and of Lemieux's father, a beared, scowling figure. And the lake, the water of the lake. She then leaves, dazzled, and Violet carefully bolts the door after her. In a cut-scene, we see Violet turning on another light, and rows of human bodies hanging from meat hooks appear out of the shadows. When Lemieux and Bubbles and Lurch gather at Lemieux's place, Leaf is back, desperately asking for another chance to earn her upkeep. Apparently, she went to get her brothers, but they have all joined the Water Cult and become pacifist. Also, Leaf claims, she saw another Bob at the Water Cult's compund, a guy looking exactly like Bob, alive and well. Lemieux is certain she doused both dead Bobs in acid, though, so this is a little bit spooky. Upon Lemieux's asking why Leaf didn't stay at the cult, the girl insists she don't want to drink the lake water, it's not safe (Lemieux and Bubbles are doing it all the time, but then they're both rather weird...) Lemieux refuses to pay tax for Leaf anymore, but if she makes herself useful, sure, she can stay, and the girl quickly embarks on a desperation-driven quest to harvest all the rats from Lemieux's fridge (which is apparently a whole room).
Lemieux and Bubbles divide the loot, being somewhat irritated they didn't take the yaks (Momma Bones has always wanted a two-headed yak, apparently). They consider going out for the yaks again, but night is approaching and Momma Bones has a curfew at work (though not very heavily enforced), claiming there's 'something' dangerous out there in the night. With Bubbles' new information in mind, they also consider climbing the mountains to look for the light, but in the end they decide to painstakingly go through all the junkyard and the house, to try and determine what item might be missing, what Bob (which Bob is still an open question) might have been there for. Lemieux opens the secret door to her secret storage, a small cavern underneat the house, and it turns out (the player asking me to come up with something appropriate) she has, among other things, two missiles from the silo ready for launch (just in case), though someone harvested the nuclear cores from these ones too, long before Lemieux got them. (Lemieux also has a geiger counter, apparently, might come in handy later).
We end the session as the people starts sorting ALL the items, with me revealing "yeah, in the end, after a day of work, you find out something's missing...I tell you what next time". (Maybe it's just me being obnoxious, but after all these years of GM:ing I still love cliffhangers, they give such an easy way of jump-starting the game next time).
My first session worksheet
Note to my players, in case you read this. The following section would be considered spoiler by some people, but I'm fine with you reading it if you want, as I think it illustrates how I think about the game in a way that might be enlightening to you.
I wonder...
What's the deal with Bob? Why does the Water Cult have several Bobs, and how do they come to be?
Who leads the Water Cult, and what's his/her agenda?
How does Momma feel about Dune?
Who took the warheads?
What's in Violet's brew?
Some other questions of less immediate relevance:
What's the fucked up, scary noise Lemieux's hears on radio station 56,3?
Where is Lemieux's dad, and what's his relation to Momma?
What's the real story behind Dune, Bubbles, and Lemieux's dad, and what is it that Dune knows about Bob, really?
Who controls the road checkpoint, and the wall?
The PCs and their resources:
I reasoned the PCs have access to the following at present: labor, blood kin (though ambiguous, as Momma's primarily a threat), know-how, machinery, storage, raw materials, loyalty (Lurch's is almost beyond question).
The other people:
Momma Bones is a warlord of some kind, her resources are CLEAN WATER (this is very very big), connections, fuel, information, walls, food (in general), security (her thugs), loyalty (her thugs).
Violet is a mindfucker or warlord of some kind, her resources are information, drugs (the brew?), know-how, time (she seem content in the background for now), raw materials (of some fucked up kind).
Momma is mostly about ambition, leaning towards hunger, Violet is also about ambition, leaning towards envy.
On the other side of the chart is Leaf, her only resource being Big Brothers (Blood Kin), though these seem to have abandoned her for the Water Cult. She's driven by Fear, leaning towards Decay.
Lurch is less complex as of now (though Lemieux's player planted (in game ofc, only that counts) the awesome concept that Lurch is actually her brother who she had lobotomized and put on stupid-medication, so he wouldn't be before her in the line of inheritance. He's leaning toward ignorance.
Other afterthoughts
If you missed it before, the players are all complete beginners. As I suspected, all of these guys were good roleplayer material, absolutely showering out ideas. At least one, maybe all of them, seemed a little overwhelmed by the lack of direction (or maybe rather the fact that they could do ANYTHING, I dunno for sure), something I could probably have mitigated somewhat; for example, maybe I should have made the scenes more rail-roaded, or just more focused somehow, avoiding scenes were the PCs were alone with each other and having to find something to do. But this is hard when you improvise, like Apocalypse Wörld tells you to, though for sure I did try to Make the PC's Lives Interesting, as much as I love improvising, I think maybe I could have done an ever better job with that if we had made the characters, and I'd then gotten a day or two to plan ahead a little bit, like, stake out a few scenes, bombs and plots. I'm not entirely convinced that Apocalypse's approach that you should never plan anything whatsoever is the most optimal one.
Another challenge with Apocalypse Wörld is making it serious and dramatic enough, while still having it bisarre, outlandish, weird and darkly humorous. I have no idea how I succeeded in this regard, probably it will get better as I get more chances to portray weaker, more human NPC's with more basic and understandable needs and wants (which is usually where I excel as a GM).
GM:ing in english was not the easiest. I think it worked fine, especially in dialogues, but at times, especially when describing things, my vocabulary felt limited and I couldn't figure out what to say. I'm certain there could hardly be -any- language practice better than GM:ing, though.
Again, the players were great though, while still being beginners, they really bought the concept of us developing the world and story together, rather than just passively receiving what I served. There was a creative dialogue going on all the time, which is so cool. Given a few more sessions to develop, this gaming group might really exceed my expectations and turn out really worthwile. (This is just my experience though, it remains to be seen more precisely how the players felt about it).
Momma Bones
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