Apocalypse World 2e

Special moves don't even work with rape.

They're excellent systems, AW is a little weird because it has sex moves which are going to turn a lot of people off outright and make others into juvenile idiots.

Dungeon World and Fellowship may fit better.

What is the purpose of the sex moves? From what ive gathered from passive mentions here and there it seems to be a fairly respected system, but Ive never seen a system with erp elements be respected, and if sex is incidental to the story having specific mechanics seems excessive

It's not "erp elements." It's not even necessarily "sex" moves. They kick in when characters are intimate in some way. The idea is that opening yourself up to another person in the post-apocalypse has repercussions. Dramatic things will happen as a result of it.
AW's sex moves are the opposite of ERP, where people bone without consequences or entanglements because it's escapism. AW doesn't do that, it does interpersonal conflict a la HBO drama.

>mentions Dungeon World

Hold up, son, you're gonna trigger people, and we're gonna have a dozen dudes come in to tell you that they think it's shit and it's vitally important you know that.

Reminds me, they came out with that Fallen Empires fantasy version of the playbooks.

Dungeon World? Do you eat shit, son?

AW is much better than Dungeon World. Like, crazy better.

So they keep using this word "Mesmerast", what does that mean? They use it in place of character, is that what it's synonymous with?

Never mind, there's just a typo in the PDF where they repeat mesmerast. I figured it out. I'm not retarded, I promise.

And here we go! Took over an hour this time, that's amazing.

Oh wow I see what you mean now. They accidentally called the wolfshead the mesmerast.

I like AW, DW is okay. AW is the better game. What's triggering you about that?

Nothing, I share your opinion as you worded it there -- DW is a decent, but not great Apocalypse Engine game -- but I predicted upthread that because some guy mentioned it, some folks would be unable to resist coming into the thread to announce that they don't like it.
Which is weird.

I mean, I consider Pathfinder to be a mechanically terrible game, but I don't feel any need to just blurt out "that game's shit, don't play it user!" every time someone says Pathfinder. But that happens every time somebody says "Dungeon World" for some reason.
My Good Job post was mostly about the first guy, though.

The reason people will say "that game's shit, don't play it user" is because of dipshits who make threads asking "how do I do X using 3.PF" or "I really hate X about 3.PF, what homebrews can I use to fix X?"

Then it mutated into "have you tried not playing D&D" and here we are.

The real problem is deeper than that, but if we go there people will get... triggered.

The ghost of VirtualOptim may return

But that doesn't apply here. It's not like somebody trying to use Pathfinder for a hard science fiction laser pistol shootout, (where I actually would say "don't do that") but this is more like someone saying "if you want a game with complex builds, maybe look at Pathfinder." It might not be my first choice, but I don't see anything wrong with suggesting it in that context.

The user upthread mentioned DW in a reasonable context as a possible entry system for Apocalypse Engine games, for which I'd say it's a decent choice. For instance, some groups can't handle the "SEX MOOVS" of AW, and DW doesn't have those. If your group is likely to have trouble with "Adult Themes" for whatever reason, (Like you're playing with your 12 year old nephew) then DW is a good alternative.
And from what I've seen, it doesn't matter if someone's recommending DW appropriately, or inappropriately, or just saying anything about it at all. Somebody jumps up to say "it's shit!" every time, without fail.

DW would be a better game if it didn't try to be a bastard offspring of AW and 3.PF.

It's not, though, it's clearly 1e AD&D. With a smattering of OD&D in there.

The thing with Sex Moves is that the author/game wants to look "Cool", and using something as feeble as "Intimacy Moves" may sound... gay. They don't want that, or they'll hit the wrong audience. A more dirty, bullseye approach is to go with the tabboo of sex and name something on your game with it, even if sex isn't the focus or even a possibility.

>"if you want a game with complex builds, maybe look at Pathfinder."

I would suggest Shadowrun or GURPS if you want a game with complex builds.

Hell, just playing a technomancer in SR is more complex than anything I've seen in 3.PF, and I mean this in a good and a bad way.

I don't know, I don't really consider those to be all that much better than PF. And it's not about what I personally would recommend for that (Fantasy Craft), it's about whether or not it's a reasonable thing to interject "no it's shit don't play that user!" when somebody says "Pathfinder."

But wouldn't be a better bet to recommend M&M 2e for d20 lovers who want Pathfinder and the like? It's almost the same thing (ALMOST, I know the difference).

Sure, maybe. Still beside the point.

Thing is, everybody has games they like and games they don't like. There's a point when it's reasonable to start arguing about who's system is better, but that point shouldn't be "the instant someone mentions a system I don't like."

To be absolutely fair, there are legitimate reasons for why people believe that you shouldn't recommend 3.PF to anyone, especially someone who is new to the hobby.

Without getting too jihad here, a lot of people have their own interpretations of the rules are supposed to work, including the devs themselves, and it tends to cause issues when you play with multiple players/GMs with their own interpretations for how the game is meant to be.

If you're not used to this sort of thing, it could cause one to develop bad habits or just get turned off from tabletop RPGs in general, especially if you're playing with THAT GUYS/GMS.

Except they're not even called Sex Moves by the game, they're called Special Moves. It's anons who call them "sex moves" because they all involve sex, except for a few recent ones, like the Child Thing's move.

Speaking of, a friend of mine unacquainted with the system said that the Child Thing's move has great potential to ruin the game by eating other people's things. I'm not sure if he really gets the game. Ravioli, if you're reading this, I swear to God

I agree, except change 3.pf to D&D in general.

Go to dungeon and fight stuff there before going off to the next place to fight stuff, with breaks in between for social encounters isn't a good fir for the AW rules.

>isn't a good fir for the AW rules.

I don't agree. The core mechanics of the AW rules are just a mathematical way of creating escalating tension that builds and builds until you either resolve it or disaster strikes, and then you wash, rinse, and repeat.
That's a great fit for crawling through a deathtrap dungeon where things go steadily from bad to worse. The weak spots of Dungeon World, IMO, are that it's not really built to do much outside the dungeon. There's some fairly basic rules for handling the around-town stuff, but they clearly weren't a big focus, and there's just a single cursory mechanic for overland travel.
(But then there's Perilous Wilds, a whole sourcebook for overland stuff. I imagine there's some town-related and social stuff out there for it too; I can't keep track of all the stuff for Dungeon World, especially since we can't have threads about it anymore, just 100-post shitfests about whether or not it's a shitty game)

>about whether or not it's a shitty game
It is.

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Does anyone have good podcasts or story threads of Apocalypse World games? It seems interesting, but I can't quite put it all together.

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I'd highly recommend the Roll20 Presents Apocalypse World game up on Youtube. It was good enough that I kind of wish it would get turned into a miniseries.
It also comes with a companion series where the GM discusses his planning and prep, and how he's handling things, behind the scenes. It's naturally very spoilery, so I saved it until I'd finished the show, but it has tons of good insight into how the engine works and how to really make it hum.

I was always on the hunt for Apocalypse World Actual Play, this is one I found.

it has Quantum Canadians.
rickneal.ca/?cat=407&order=asc

So, what's the weirdest thing you've found in the Ruins?

I don't know if this one is good or not yet, just started. They played apocalypse world twice, if you keep going through the tag.

jankcast.com/archives/category/podcasts/actualplay?order=asc

I was quite pleased by the Quantum Canadians.

Apocalypse World is awesome, it is WAY better than the Dungeon World game that Reddit fucking is obsessed with and will try to recommend to you at any opportunity. Apocalypse World is VERY different so I dunno if it's good as a first game but if you are an experienced GM and you have new players this is a great way to introduce them.

Running AW requires more skill than running a standard D&D game, in my opinion.

Dungeon World wuold be a better game if it actually decided to be OSR instead of the restrictive PbtA bullshit without the parts that make it worth the trouble.

It's only ability to make a case for itself relies on 3.pf

> less complex rulessss
> its so fast and easy to play, not like that other RPG we know you all play that has too many rules
> it doesn't have as many rules
> did we mention it's rules light?

Shut the fuck up Dungeon World. Plenty of other RPGs are rules light and manage to actually make a functional system, rather than a straight rip of Apocalypse World and AD&D with no imagination applied created by a pair of literal cucks who support the pro-tranny language in the 5e DMG.

Why the fuck are you all talking about Dungeon World in the Apocalypse World thread?

I mean, this might be a shitty thread with a shitty OP, but can we at least have our own arguments? We don't need yours.

>Why

Because somebody said "Dungon World," and these triggered fuckers can't help but go on about how they don't like it. It happens in literally any thread where someone even casually mentions the game in passing. The only explanation is some kind of massive butthurt. I'd say the Reddit mention supports this notion.

Is this too weird for a PC concept?

An androgynous skinner who's not particularly attractive, but has a huge collection of sex toys. Things from some depraved and extremely wealthy pervert's private storeroom, from before the world fell apart. Things that would make a nun catch on fire. Things that rotate, fold, spindle, mutilate, vibrate, or merely suggest all kinds of interesting possibilities.

Their entire body, aside from the face and the palms of their hands and feet, is tattooed with fragments of semi-pornographic art.

And they're always looking for more.

Cringiest game I've ever seen.

>le cringe
I'd tell you where you should go, but I think it's been said enough.

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This is very true

>as many points as a fucking elder dragon

What does that even mean?

He meant to write "hit points," user, that's pretty obvious from context if you ask me.

it means motherfuckers can't for the life of themselves stop being buttblasted about a system they've never even seen anyone play

also image file doesn't even but that's pmuch pare for the course if you're posting images of txt to be an argument

How do you know they've never seen anyone play it? Because if they had, they would CLEARLY see the genius and fall in love with it?

The amount of assumptions you are making in your post is flat-out retarded. Stop it.

Your wizard literally has as many (or as few) hit points as an elder dragon. 16 hitpoints.

Yes, you can literally killa dragon in two hits if you can use a move that gets through it's prodigious defenses.

If he'd seen someone play it, he'd realize that combat is asymmetrical and there's theoretically no upper bound to how many times the PCs can be injured before the PCs get to hit back, which is why it's important to give them a solid chunk of HP like that.
Also, there's no -10 HP bandage-me stuff, only Last Breath, so when you hit 0 there's a good ~50% chance you're instadead, with another ~30% chance that you've got some bargain you have to agree to or die.
Enemies don't need as many hit points because their defenses are in the DM's moves, not in being a giant 4e damage sponge that takes forever to bring down.

HP is the class's base HP+Constitution so that just depends on what stat you gave Constitution.

A dragon in the Lower Depths (i don't see the modifier 'elder dragon' anywhere) has 16 HP and 5 armor. It's a low-HP kind of game, yeah.

But does the wizard have 5 armor? Comparing PC's HP to NPC's HP as if that's the only factor is kind of myopic.

It also ignores the asymmetry between PCs and NPCs. PCs will have to go through a lot of things over the dungeon delve, the dragon only has to go through the party.

>Yes, you can literally killa dragon in two hits if you can use a move that gets through it's prodigious defenses.

Exactly like Smaug. Get into the right position, with the right weapon, and the right information about where to shoot him, and a Ranger could hypothetically one-shot him.
But without all those things you're likely going to be eating a ton of damage and doing none in return.
(Or maybe in your DM's world dragons really are glass cannons and all you need is to get close and poke him with a sword a couple of times. Just because a big winged lizard can breathe fire and wreck a lot of shit doesn't mean it has to be physically all that tough. One nice thing about DW is how open it is to differing interpretations, and how they can then be played through the mechanics)
How difficult an enemy is to defeat is entirely up the DM at the table, not how many hit points it has. High HP in a DW enemy only makes the combat grindy and dull, in much the same way that a DM whose only move vs the players is "deal damage" is going to result in grindy and dull combat. All those other DM/Dungeon/Monster moves are there for a reason.

I think the book specifically mentions this. DM fiat for when you can damage something.
>Note that an “attack” is some action that a player undertakes that has a chance of causing physical harm to someone else. Attacking
a dragon with inch-thick metal scales full of magical energy using a typical sword is like swinging a meat cleaver at a tank: it just isn’t
going to cause any harm, so hack and slash doesn’t apply. Note that circumstances can change that: if you’re in a position to stab the
dragon on its soft underbelly (good luck with getting there) it could hurt, so it’s an attack.

Not to mention two out of three of its moves are just 'demand tribute' and 'act with disdain'.

I mean it could do 6 to 17 damage in one bite that ignores most armor, but how fast it can kill you and how fast you can kill it once shit finally hits the fan doesn't seem the primary focus. Its instinct is 'to rule', not to eat people.

What a strange book. It's like the Spectacle (which IIRC was a fan playbook) but you're a rocker instead of a gladiator.

>If you and another character have sex, sweet.
kek

>It's not like somebody trying to use Pathfinder for a hard science fiction laser pistol shootout, (where I actually would say "don't do that")

Hey
paizo.com/products/btpy8qib?Pathfinder-Campaign-Setting-Distant-Worlds

Love

Also a secret underground lab of unknown use, which we promptly blew up because someone else wanted it and fuck that guy

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This has come up before.

And this was an older draft of DW, when the dragon did less damage and had less armor.
latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/

So this is the preview, has Baker said when the full version is going to drop?

They say it's "inspired by the Doof Warrior and Metalocalypse".

kickstarter.com/projects/226674021/apocalypse-world-2nd-edition/posts/1507768
>In order to meet our September estimate for shipping the books, we'll necessarily have to have the PDF ready in (let's say) mid-July. Once it's ready we'll get it right out to you. Naturally we hope to get everything out ahead of schedule, but you know what they say.

Oh good. Only a month to wait, and maybe I can convince my MC to go from not running the current AW game to not running a 2e game.

I don't get it, what's the significance of the differences between the -homeprinting and -spreads PDFs?

Also I guess they're giving 1e away for free like this on their website because 2e is coming out?

apocalypse-world.com/previews/AW1E.zip
At least i know what 1up means.
formaxprinting.com/blog/2010/05/printing-lingo-what-does-up-mean-as-in-2-up-3-up-4-up-multiple-up/

I think it's pagesize, letter vs legal.

No, they're the same.

It's that the homeprinting one uses less black ink, there's a lot more white. Large black areas make the paper end up seeming 'wet', structurally, in my experience, so it's probably that.

kickstarter.com/projects/226674021/apocalypse-world-2nd-edition/posts/1501198
So they took out fronts?

Is the threat map system really better? I guess you can still incorporate countdowns optionally for each threat.

It looks like they made it all looser and more flexible, compared to the old system.

>To create a front, grab a fronts sheet and:
>•Choose a fundamental scarcity.
>•Create 3 or 4 threats.
>•Write its agenda / dark future.
>•Write 2–4 stakes questions.
>•List the front’s cast.
>•Create the front’s overall countdowns.
>ere’s also the home front:
>•No fundamental scarcity.
>•No agenda / dark future.
>•No overall countdowns.
>•All the otherwise front-less NPCs listed as threats.
>•General custom moves, not attached to any threat.
>•Additional stakes questions as you need them.

How come the PDFs all mention a 'Cover photo by Ivan Bliznetsov, via Dreamstime.' but don't have a cover photo?

Does it have to do with Bliznetsov shutting down his account in 2011?
web.archive.org/web/20110411222940/http://www.dreamstime.com/Bliznetsov_info

the map's kind of interesting since I guess it would encourage the MC to think about the geographical layout of the world a bit more if anytime you add a threat you have to plot it somewhere on there.

So this game Apocalypse World looks pretty interesting so far. Has anyone played it? Got any game session stories to share?

Greatest campaign I ever played was in AW. Most games in the system last ~10 or less sessions (nature of the beast, things snowball quickly).

This one covered 25, and two years IRL. Here's the session update from 24, listing all the corpses we left in our criss-crossing wakes.

If relationship drama hadn't destroyed the next campaign we planned in Urban Shadows, and the GM hadn't moved to Boston soon afterwards, we'd still be playing together. I miss it so bad

Sounds pretty cool. Got any highlights you want to share? Any cool moments or greentext stories?

briecs.com/2016/02/five-or-so-bakers-AW2.html
>Vincent: Reworking existing rules is pretty different for us than doing new design. The easiest were the new Hx rules. Once we had the idea to turn the process around, to have you ask for volunteers instead of deciding things for yourself, the new rules just fell into place. They were so obviously sharper and more streamlined that they needed only a quick test to confirm. The new angel kit rules were the same way.

But angel kit rules look identical... oh they made resurrecting a dead person always successful, and you choose the cost to the patient.

And now the character histories at chargen need the other person to consent to say things like 'this character quite evidently dislikes and distrusts the Brainer'.

If I dusted off the memory banks, I could probably rattle off a bunch. The MC was a master of improv, which is important when it comes to AW. He could make moves that no one saw coming, that fit so well with the moment.

>There were two characters, Eileen and Kai

>Eileen was played by the most oblique motherfucker I ever met; Great roleplayer, but the man thinks like a corkscrew. In a campaign that was very bloody, Eileen was a pacifist who directly faced and overcame the meanest bastards in the Wasteland with calm words and the sheer weight of her brass balls. I can't remember her ever even using her taser, despite having enough Hard (and eventually a big enough gang) to beat up anyone. She started as Touchstone, moved to Solace (some of the special official playbooks, both of which deal heavily with controlling other people).

>Kai was the opposite end of the spectrum. The player was infrequent due to political commitments, so when he did come he tended to burn through characters by causing all kinds of mayhem -I know I would have been terrible at handling his shenanigans, but our MC worked them in beautifully, and the player was never malicious so it was great. Kai was an angry kid, with a sniper rifle, a saber, and a big black horse named Carthus, and he wandered the dust bowl looking for his mother (a dead character from the same player), blaming everyone he passed for keeping his mother away from him. Playbook was Horseman- wherever he went, destruction followed close behind.

There was, as you might guess, bad blood between the two. Eileen wanted Kai to join up with her and give up this self-destructive quest; Kai hated this woman for treating him like a child. Kai was rude, abrasive and abrupt with her, but he shied away from full-on confrontation.

I don't remember the trigger. I know it was after Kai shot my medical assistant in the head out of spite (to be fair he intended to shoot me out of spite and missed), and rode off into the dust. He found Eileen alone in the wastes, wrapped in the rags that concealed her diseased body. There were words exchanged, with Eileen still trying to get Kai to lay down his weapons, and Kai angrily denouncing her as a fraud, someone who didn't really care but was pretending to do so in order to make people do what she wanted. Eventually, the kid hit a breaking point, pulled out his sword, and charged.

I can’t remember the moves that were rolled- it was something like Kai blowing his Seize By Force and Eileen getting an advanced Act Under Fire, but there might have been special moves from their playbooks in there.

>Kai charged, saber raised. Carthus was a thing from the a metal album, a huge black stallion with red eyes and a love of hate, and it had ridden over every obstacle Kai had faced.
>Eileen stood there, unarmed, and did not move.
>There was a snap in the psychic maelstrom, and suddenly Kai wasn't a Horseman with deadly steel
>He was a boy falling, hitting the ground hard
>His toy sword bounced and rolled away in the dirt, and a little wooden horse figure clattered down beside him
>Eileen stepped forward to help
>With tears in his eyes, he grabbed up the toy Carthus and swung it at Eileen
>The old wood cracked and came apart, the last vestige of his family now splinters
>Eileen wrapped her arms around him and told him it was OK

That was the end of the session right there, the MC having a flair for wham moments (we treated the whole campaign like a TV show, cutting between scenes for dramatic irony and talking about audience reactions to this week's episode). I'd like to say it all worked out, and in a sense it did.

Kai never found his mother (or more accurately her pieces, dear Artemis having been ripped to shreds by a mechanized [as in, partially machine] gang of toughs). He ran away from Eileen's love and fell in with a tough crowd of biker thugs, who preached Justice instead of Eileen's Peace and Equality, but eventually he reunited with his sister, realised there was nothing here for him, and retired to safety.

Eileen continued in her crusade, and over time she won over one PC and NPC after another. If we're being honest, my character at the time went along with it not for IC reasons (although she was a follower looking for a new leader) but because I wanted to be a part of this grand march. Eventually, we uncovered of the reason for the apocalypse- the Three Fates had gotten into a spat, and were each trying to play all three roles and make the world as they saw fit. Clotho, the Spinner, got pulled from her metaphysical throne and placed into the body of a baby, Atropos (the Shears) got all tangled up in the Skinner (who, astoundingly, was a character who survived the entire campaign and only changed playbooks once near the end, where everyone else went through at least 3), and Lachesis (the Measuring Rod) was yanked right out of the physic maelstrom and discarded. The campaign ended with a fight between Grace the Skinner and the newest character (myself, the magically-aged-to-schoolgirl-age Clotho) that ended with Grace/Atropos, reborn Clotho, and Eileen as Lachesis taking their rightful places back in the maelstrom, promising not to try and control fate on their own, but dole it out to mortals.

Kevin, if you're a fa/tg/uy, I want to thank you for one hell of a game.

Wait so the Queen in Black was Clotho.

Also wasn't it one of the players who PK'd Artemis.

You did read the outline! I'm touched.

And yes. The Fates were never named as such in the game (post-apocalyptic wanderers not having a great base of classical learning), but the Queen in Black was Clotho. The Queen in White was Atropos, and the Queen in Red was Lachesis.

There was a wonderful moment early in the campaign when Domino, a Chopper and the previous character of Eileen's player, was confronted by the three in a dream, each of whom offered him great rewards if he supported them. Looking back, I'm not sure if the GM had already decided that the enemies were going to be the Fates, or if the retroactive allusion to the Golden Apple was just happy coincidence. In any case, Domino declared his intentions to forge his own path, turned his back on all of them, and walked away in the dream. Defining character moment for both Domino and the player.

Mekken and the Buzzards killed Artemis. They were all partially robotic, having gone through Zig-Zag's 'procedures'. Honestly that was a low point for the campaign- Artemis' player was clearly not feeling it that night, and literally had Artemis jump on Mekken's back 'like a horsey' to piss him off enough that he would kill her.

I said Queen in Red, meant Unseen Queen. My b.

That is pretty weird.

The first one, I mean.

I'm It was definitely very weird, having a character who insisted that everyone get along and care for each other, and please stop using your giant robot hands to rip people in two, Jane.

What the hell are dust stores.

Sex moves are such a deeply stupid thing, it makes my bones hurt

It's a style thing, the whole game is written that way.

Maestro D doesn't have to have sex.

So just feeding that filthy brainer lets him into your brain to rummage around, and possibly give you a nosebleed by accident.

Why would the Measuring Rod be the one who wants people to kill themselves and not the Shears?

I suspect your MC must have had a soft spot for that kind of chutzpah, because that's the sort of strategy the system actively encourages you to break.