One of the games I'm GMing at the moment is Apocalypse World, a very atmospheric game of life after the end of the world. As it's very different to the standard D&D-style game, I thought it might be useful to document some of my learnings, because a lot of it can be applicable to GMing any kind of game.
We started by discussing how we wanted the setting to be, establishing some guidelines ("no zombies", for instance) and spitballing some character ideas from the established playbooks - which are similar to 'classes', but function a little differently. We decided to set the game in the ruins of the near-ish future, so most technology and architecture would be familiar, but there would still be some whiz-bang proper science fiction stuff in it. We didn't want to just rip off Fallout, so we also decided that everything wasn't just tin shacks in the ruins- things were starting to recover. So we decided there were some thriving communities, starting to reclaim the world and make things better again. We've also set our game in what's left of Sydney, Australia. As a gaming group of former Sydneysiders, it's a place we're familiar enough with to make it familiar, but not so much that we'll be arguing about what's down a particular street or not. Once we'd worked out our setting, characters were the next step. Since each playbook gives you some options as to what kind of possessions or contacts you have, it was important to work out what kind of assets players would have access to, and what kind of threats would endanger them. We ended up with a mobile trader who owns a great big beast of a vehicle, hardy and able to cross the wastes. and with contacts in lots of locations; a medic who has established a clinic with some NPC staff helping them out; and a weird youngster making their home in the crater that used to be a mad-science university and scavenging for high-value tech. This meant I didn't have any characters who were tough fighter-types, and were mostly linked to specific locations, so although I can certainly have some beefy boys try to beat up my PCs, it's not what they're interested in, and I probably want to have some challenges which do line up with what they do, and where they're based. I'll be trying to keep things updated as the weeks pass, so keep an eye out next Thursday for the next update! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 16 July 2020. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
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