Apocalypse World - Two Towers

I started running an Apocalypse World campaign this last weekend. Here's what come out of the first session.

Cast of Characters:

• Angela White - Hardholder
• Angela is the leader of Safehold, a mobile caravan of well armed merchants that move about the ruins of Two Towers scraping out a living trading with the various groups inhabiting the area.
• Batty - Gunlugger
• Batty is a hired mercenary and assassin. He is currently working a contract for Angela to take out the Jackelope, a bandit leader who is targeting Safehold for a raid.
• Spector - Savvy Head
• Spector has a semi-truck, which houses his workspace, in the Safehold caravan. He helps Angela with her problems.
• Dutch / Safire / Azaz - Macaluso
• The Macaluso has three people in its secret society. Dutch is Angela's lieutenant for her gang. Safire is one of Spector's lab assistants. Azaz is a merchant and family man who helps run the mobile market that supports Safehold.

The Hardhold: Safehold

Safehold consists of 8-10 trucks that carries a small group of 50-60 noncombatants and 10-20 well-disciplined and well equipped guards. Its market is well known throughout Two Towers and is welcome most places. They keep livestock and grow crops on gardens on top of their vehicles. Angela has also made Safehold a refuge for women and orphans. She demands that all members of Safehold treat women with respect.

Supporting Cast:

• Angela's gang
• Dutch, lieutenant and part of the Macaluso's secret society
• Jinte, Dutch's younger brother
• Fat Boy
• Squirt
• BBQ
• Echo, young troublemaker
• Spector's assistants
• Safire, another of the Macaluso's secret society
• Pamming, most technically competent of the three
• Azaz's family
• Asso, wife
• Ki Yin, 17 year old daughter, wants to join the guard
• Quick, 12 year old
• Limester, 10 year old
• Safehold members
• Doc, medic for the Safehold & civilian advisor to Angela
• Lizzy, takes care of the orphans & civilian advisor
• Franz, head of food & logistics & civilian advisor
• Rolfball, merchant & father of Echo
• The Jackelope, a bike gang leader, his gang is ruthless and known to torture captives for pleasure
• The Jackelope's gang
• Lovecraft
• Onion

The Setting

Two Towers is a ruined city from before the apocalypse. It currently has a number of strongholds situated throughout the ruins along with a number of hidden pockets of wild communities. These hidden groups are called Squirrels buy the inhabitants of the holds. Even though it has been almost three generations since the apocalypse, there are still salvageable goods available in the ruins. The climate is hot with a wet season and a dry season. The primary wildlife is a large gecko-like lizard that has evolved to a larger size and developed sharp teeth to aid in hunting and eating carrion. These have taken the place of rats in the ecosystem. A mutagen was released as part of the apocalypse. This has cause some rapid evolution among plants and animals, particularly in ones that have gone through many generations. Humans, however, are not immune. The biggest known change has been an 11 foot tall human with extended arms and sharp claws. Plants have become more aggressive in spreading causing an accelerated deterioration of the roads and buildings.

Sagas of the Icelanders - Critique

After playing 5 sessions of Sagas of the Icelanders, here are my criticisms of the game.

1) I read a number of the sagas that the game was supposed to emulate. The game as written does not lend itself to creating sagas. The sagas are about larger than life characters. They achieve great things and deal with large issues. They don't deal with tracking resources. They have successful households that generate enough food and resources that the main characters are free to pursue other parts of life. Having the Man as one of the main playbooks and having most of his moves revolve around generating resources just did not emulate the stories of the sagas. I mostly disregarded resources and let the players have what they wanted if it moved the story along. I could have easily made the characters' lives interesting in having them have to scrounge for food and warmth every season, but that was not what the sagas were about.

2) Handling the passage of time in the game is very erratic. The Man gathers resources at the beginning of each session, but spends resources at every season. We played some sessions that were only part of a season and one session that spanned an entire year. With multiple sessions in a season, it is easy to have enough to survive, but with a single resource roll to survive a year just about guarantees starvation. Along with this, is the advancement that occurs at the end of each winter. If you play out each season with great detail, advancement stalls. If you try to speed the passage of time, characters develop too quickly.

3) The game is set in a fixed period of time with a defined culture. This greatly limits a lot of the creativity that is allowed to flow in other Powered by the Apocalypse games. Players either need to commit to knowing something about the culture to play within the assumptions used to build the game or be willing to redefine the history but still keep the cultural norms used to write the playbooks. My players found the playbooks to be limiting to the actions that they wanted to pursue.

4) I did not like the way fronts were presented in the book. The three subthemes presented for each god were disjointed. They did not contribute to making unified fronts that flowed together. Maybe an example of a completely developed front would have been useful. Reading Apocalypse World after the fact made building fronts more clear.

5) Some of the recurring actions in the sagas were left out of the game. Reciting verses, visiting Norway for trade or politics, and resolving issues at the Althing were all left out. Each of these could be addressed by writing custom moves, but since they were key issues in the sagas, I think they should have been included in the core game.

Would I play SotI again? Yes, if others were enthusiastic about it, or if I was trying to introduce new players to RPGs that were not interested in fantasy or sci-fi settings. Would I suggest playing a game of SotI again? Not in the near future. If I were to take up the setting again, I would try my hand at hacking Cortex Plus instead.