Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My Name Is Ryan. And I'm 100 different, more
concise hacks. All right, We're just jumping
right into it. So, hey, listen, today we are
going to be looking at Apocalypse World from Meg and
Vincent Baker. And I'll tell you right off the
bat, if you didn't like our review of Blades in the Dark,
you won't like this one either. So you really won't.
So here's we we were talking on this a little bit before because
this we we, we, our little ADHD brain, struggle to read this one
in a in a similar but different way.
At least for me, I don't know if it's free from blades in the
dark like that. Was just such a difficult book
to parse. I don't know, more difficult.
I don't know if this was difficult in the same way.
I think I didn't like reading this one.
I think it was like, I don't like reading that one either.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I didn't like
reading both of them. Blade and Dark.
I really genuinely had a hard, a hard time with it.
Felt like a lot of text packed into small spaces.
This one has some breathing room, but it's just very, very
conversational. Yeah, it really sounds like
someone with and. And here's the thing I I I say
this from experience because I know this is how I talk.
It sounds like someone had with ADHD, had too many Red Bulls,
and just ranted the entire story at you in one go.
But, and that's why it repeats itself so many times and then
talks about things but doesn't get to them until like 200 pages
later and like. We start with the caveat in our
own discussion before this, which is that the original
version of this game is from like 2010, right?
This is this is TUI, which is, I mean I still think it was 2016.
So OK, so here let me do the. I have a whole.
Spiel. Oh yeah.
Do the opening. Yeah, hold on here we go.
We have new openings things to Josh Dimansky because he he 100
plus episodes in he told us or at least by his own preparation,
things that we should have been doing instead.
It's on my Discord. So yeah, there was a couple
things I wanted to say. I Discord messaged myself
because I didn't want to put it in notes app and I meant to put
it into paper and then I didn't do that either.
So first and foremost, let's say that Meg Baker did come down
with illness a couple of months ago.
Maybe I'm completely wrong because I meant to write in
here, but she did get diagnosed with breast cancer, yeah, on
7/17. And there is a meal train, which
is like a GoFundMe set up to help support her while she is in
appointments and I'm unable to work and things like that.
So we will that it's still active, it's still opening and
still donate. I donated a while ago, so we
will make sure that that link is in the in all the shit so that
you can donate to Meg. From everything that I've heard
about Meg Baker, she sounds like the fairy godmother of a lot of
the people in the TTRPG. Universally loved, universally
respected, has seemed that everyone that's ever met her has
felt supported by her. So that would be a really nice
thing for everyone to do if they could.
If it's possible for you to donate to.
I keep pointing data as if the link's down there already.
It's not, but it will be. It will be.
So that's the first thing I wanted to say.
So definitely try to support Meg as she goes through this
situation if you can. And if you can't financially
share on the link. That always helps.
So second, all right, the spiel for Apocalypse World.
OK. So it originally came out in
2010, OK. And when I think back to what I
was doing in 2010, that's just so that's so crazy.
That's like 13 years ago I. Was doing drugs.
So yeah, I wasn't even playing tabletop role play games in 20.
I wasn't. Yeah, but when it came out, it
won the 2010 Indie RPG Award for Game of the Year.
It won the indie the 2010 Indie RPG Award for Most Innovative
Game. It won the 2011 Golden Geek
Award for RPG of the Year, as well as a number of other
awards. So when this came out, it really
blew a lot of people's minds. It's a lot different now, 13
years later, when there's like 1000 PBTA games that are done
differently. But this is the original, So the
2016, the 2nd Edition came out 2016.
That is when Vincent Baker of Lovely Games added Meg Baker on
to the game as well. That's when she joined to help
write the game It funded on Kickstarter for 4332 backers,
pledging $149,681.00, so about almost 150 K in 2016 for a
tabletop game. Which also sounds crazy.
That doesn't actually sound pretty crazy.
Yeah, and again, this is Lumply Games is the creator.
You can find them on Twitch. That's Vincent Baker.
You can find their a blog that talks all about putting stuff
together and and they're active on Twitter and stuff like that.
The other thing I want to talk about before we hop into this is
what is a PBTA Powered by the Apocalypse isn't the name of a
category of games, set of games, set of games, features or the
thrust of any games design. It's the name of Meg's and
Vincent's policy concerning other's use of the intellectual
property and creative work. And if you don't believe me,
that is literally from their website.
That is a quote from Vincent Baker.
There is literally a page on their on their website called
like what is PTA or whatever. And that's what it is.
So the the all of the and if you read through some of the lumpy
blog stuff about writing a PBTA, it talks about a lot of the
mechanical aspects that have now been tied to PBTA were never
intended to be a system like the Apocalypse World is written to
be Apocalypse World, not a system and obviously a an
ecosystem of systems has come from that.
So just to get off the bat, 2D6 mixed success and playbooks and
moves and stuff like that doesn't mean it's a PBTA.
And if you don't have it, it doesn't mean it's not a PBTA per
the creator. Per per them, I think there's a,
there's a that that like intent versus execution thing here.
I see that with the caveat too because at the end of the book
we get to a section called Powered by the Apocalypse which
is literally other people's like move hacks of it.
So it's it's it's interesting that they then chose to use it
and say it's not that thing that we said at the back of the book.
But yeah, so that is part by the apocalypse.
So do we want to complain now or just the whole time?
I think we we did some preliminary compliance.
Just if you're listening, this is going to be one of those
episodes where we don't read word for word because this book
has a lot of words and a lot of them are not necessary.
It's 309 pages and it's not even that it's jam packed.
There's a lot of empty space in this book, but it's there's a
lot of things that are said that.
I think part of it is just like the evolution of how we write
games and the understanding that the ecosystem has about how
games are run. Things are less explained now
because there's more context, because we have a better
understanding of like this is the rule, this is how it works
and and you don't need to really expand upon any more than that.
And and sometimes I think we've been like, oh, it would be great
to have play examples here and maybe that is why there's so
much here. It's because it's really a
progenitor to all these things. But yeah, so we're going to.
We're going to. Surmise.
There's going to be, there's going to be a lot of pedantic
bitching and I don't think a lot of it's pedantic.
I think a lot of it is just well, let's get in.
I'll just yes, you're right. We did preliminary complaining
and I'll just get another complaining.
There's a there's a really early thing that I think would would
change a lot about this book. So let's address that.
First of all two things about the cover.
One, it's dope as fuck. And two, I love that it's a
photograph. Yeah, totally.
Great cover. Just very iconic.
You know, like, yeah, yeah, Good cover for those that haven't
seen it, it's an apocalypse looking person, like with a red
like gas mask on. Like old school gas mask with
the tube kind of looking up the sky looking like maybe they
either just put it on or they're tearing it off.
There's like smoke behind them, like it's just a dope fucking
cover and like this one, the Red.
Just is great off of that smoke from the back, it's so good.
I will say I do enjoy the red on the the actual book cover,
better than the white on the PDF cover.
But again, it's just a PDF. It's fine and I know that the
1st edition as far as pictures I found of it is a completely
different piece of art which also looks dope as fuck.
So again, it's one of those books that I'd love to have,
just to have and I will say from a from a strictly like text
usability standpoint, it is bookmarked to fuck.
It is hyperlinked to hell yeah, It has indexes at the back, It
has glossary at the back, It's got hyperlink table of contents
in the front. There is very little more that I
could want from a PDF. They did a really fucking good
job of at the very least making the PDF navigable, you know, and
and I do appreciate that. We start off with the list of
other games with It's in Baker. I have never really read a lot
of these other games. I know that a lot of people are
into Firebrands, which is called a romance game, and then other
games from Meg Baker listed here as well.
But there's a bunch in a Wicked Age, Dogs in a Vineyard spin,
the Beatle, the eventual demon of the ring.
I don't know what that is, but that sounds cool.
I do have some of the recent stuff that they put out.
We might get a chance to go over sometime, but 1001 nights.
Valiant Girls from Meg Apocalypse World, Master of
Ceremonies. So this is a page where I went
back to double check and didn't see.
So this is what's interesting to me.
So this is Apocalypse World, the Master of Ceremonies Playbook
Second Edition 2016 Dee Vincent Baker and Maggie Baker.
Meg Way Baker, Meg Baker. So Illustration and Book Design
by Dee Vincent Baker, 2010 2016. Cover Photo by Elsmont.
Stock photos, you know, and then a couple of things.
Is there any? And this is says a lumply game.
It's got the original part by the Apocalypse logo on this one
and it's rated R for language, sex and violence.
Sex is in this game. Interesting.
It was interesting, especially
like, I mean, I have a very modern take on these games.
Like, it's really only been the past few years that I've really
gotten into, like the the non what's up?
No, keep going. Yeah, I like the non traditional
tabletop gaming. And like, yeah, you know, it's
really avoided in almost everything.
So it was interesting to like, oh, they talk about that here.
I mean, I don't inherently have any issue with it, but like, my
table is probably not that. But yeah, I wouldn't have sex on
my table. But like, the way that they do
sex in this game is really interesting.
We're definitely going to talk about it because it's definitely
not making love and trying to have romances.
It's it's it's having sex and bugging.
So we'll get to it, but is there, is there any anything on
this page that you find extremely that you find missing
maybe like a different kind of person that generally would be
on this page? Oh, an editor.
An editor. My God does this book and I'm.
Fucking editor, that actually really does.
I did not like. God, it would I.
It would change so much if someone sat down.
I was just like, again, going to the analogy of someone just like
ranting the game at you. If someone was like, OK, bro,
you said that like three times already.
Let's just cut that part out. Like would make such a huge
difference. An editor could cut this down to
150 pages. I mean really they they very
much could do. I think there's a lot of good in
here. I think I think there now has is
like hacks of this. I think have less of the same
stuff that I think do a little more with it.
But I think other than that, yeah, I mean cutting down the.
The needless word count and like the triple mention and stuff,
we'll get into it. But yeah, and that is there with
a band. The good idea.
My goodness. And here's The thing is this
game is, is I I like games that are spoken with like a voice.
When a game has a personality of like, it feels like the person
that's playing the game is like talking to you.
But I like it in the way like marching order does right.
This doesn't sound like like the creator made like this character
that's talking to you. I don't know how to explain the
game. It's not.
The creator is just having an extraordinarily casual
conversation about we're in the. Kitchen at a house party with a
beer. Oh my God, I'm explaining to
you. Keep what you kill.
I'm like, listen, so it's that it's that meme of like, the
dude, like holding that girl's neck and just like talking into
her ear. She's like.
Caring for it. OK, dude, there's literally a
part. Like there's numerous parts and
it's like, well, this is what I do for my house rule and I'm
like, bro, you brought the game. All the house rules are the
rules. Why the rules?
Come on. So OK, let's actually get into
it. So you'll also need some stuff.
I love that so much of Apocalypse World is free and out
there for you. You can just go to the website
and download a ton of it. Totally.
That's the other thing about Mega Vincent Baker is they
never, really, they never asked for for money, really for
anybody to use their system. And again in 2010 this was very
different and then basically opening up the entire system to
be able to be hacked and made money off.
And it's crazy the number of names you see in this book that
made very popular PBTS afterwards.
John Harper, Adam Coble, like a lot of the original like first
Gen. PBTA's are in this book.
So it's interesting, but they have been extremely generous
with their the popularity of their system.
I think the culture owes them a couple bucks.
I know they did something recently.
We're like, hey, you could back this.
And yes, the money. If you've used her, I think
they're probably more than they actually got.
Yeah, well, yeah. A lot of the recent tiers for
the Kickstarters lately, there's literally a tier that says, hey,
if you're a game designer who made a bunch of money off of
PBTA and you want back at this tier to literally just give us
money, we've never asked for any.
But if you feel like you might owe it to us because.
You need money off of us. They're probably owed that
money. So getting into this, I'm we're,
I'm hoping and I know this, this as we get into books, we say
this and then we don't do it. I want to skim like 90% of this.
So we're going to do a lot of. Definitely going to, I'm going
to like, sit here, I'm going to crack out the whip.
And every time we get too deep, I'm going to start, yeah,
raising it above my head and screaming, Well, The thing is, I
do want to skim through most of it because we don't need to talk
about most of it so that we can't talk about the parts we
really want to talk about the other thing, the other thing
that I think an editor would have helped massively with as we
go through these two pages, 3 pages of of table of contents,
is the order of the sections makes my brain explode.
It seems like they wrote all of the chapter headings down on
cards, the room on a table, did a casino shuffle, and it was
just like, that's probably good because I don't understand why
things are in the order that they're in, right?
Why do you? Why do you have the basics and
then the playbooks, right? And then a whole GM section of
stuff and then go back to the basic moves.
So the first time you really get a solid read through of like how
to play the game by its basic moves is 136 pages in Why is
Harm and Healing, which is a basic component of the game, 200
pages in like I don't understand that at all.
Why is the MC section like the third thing, and why are all of
the players playbooks literally like the second chapter heading?
I actually went to go look at my my favorite PBTA, which is a not
very good. I think it's a good game.
It's not very balanced game to see where the playbooks were in
this one. And you know what?
They're at the fucking end where they should be.
I don't understand. Here's the other thing too.
Reading this, I reached out to a person who I love and respect.
They're fantastic. Aaron King, If you want to know
how to play a PBTA, you need to read Patrick World 60.
They do their take on PBTA, but as far as explaining how things
like moves work and clocks work and and and things like that, it
is like such. It is, in my opinion, like the
primer for how to understand the intent of a thing.
That's a little bit headier sometimes because it's not
completely straightforward, even though it kind of is like
because of the concept of moves. But Patch of World 60 is made me
reading this easier to parse because I knew the parts are
important and how they're actually like, meant to run.
I feel like this is one of the, like, my least favorite and most
poorly explained PBTA is the original PBTA.
Yeah. So that's correct.
So world is great. And every time I read it, I like
it more. Not that they don't like it at
first, but after like going through a couple times like,
man, this is really, really good.
Yeah, Yeah. And also just the fact that the
moves really are questions, and that's something that I really
want to dig into. So anyway, check out Patrick
World from Aaron King. Aaron King has also done like
actual just like straight up books about PBT moves and things
like that. They are like the PBTA master.
So anything from Aaron King definitely want to go check out
all of their things as far as PBTA and all of its how to's.
So I'm not even going to go through the list of stuff in
table contents because it's like 20 things where you going to
start with the basics. I will say this is what I always
mean when we talk on about games on I want a rundown of the rules
before we get to characterization so I can
understand why I'm creating my character in that way.
So. So I really like that they start
with that. That's my favorite part.
And then we go from there. So yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, huh.
Yeah, 303 hundred. So it's really not 300 pages,
because by the time you get, it's like 288 before it starts
getting into other things. And then the playbooks
themselves take up like 50 pages.
So at the end of the day, when you really look at like the
stuff that you like quote, UN quote, need to read, you're
looking at more like 50 pages. 10 you know, well, outside of
those things you can chop off, I'm talking so you can drop off
like like 70 pages for just playbooks and like extra stuff
at the end, like indexes, things like that.
So down to like 230, it's still a lot.
So we get to our first piece of art here.
It's fine. It it, it kind of looks as if
you dropped a photograph into Illustrator, did an image trace
on it, and it just creates like a very chopped up shapy vector
image. It reminds me of the way that
John Harper did the the, the, the, the art in Blades in the
Dark. But this is a much more, I want
to say amateurish. Like it it this is much simpler
versus what John Harper did in theirs.
But but it's fine. There's basically no art in the
entire book. They're basically the chapter
headers, and that's about it. And the art's fine.
It's serviceable, It's got some vibes to it, kind of understand
what's going on. Like this one, for example.
Definitely blood on their hands. I do dig that.
Or at least that's all I saw it, sure.
That's not exactly how I saw it, but you saying that I'm like,
yeah, OK yeah I do like the whatever.
The thought is that they chose the entire way through this like
really beat to shit tech face or whatever.
Definitely a high. Point.
But vibe. Vibe.
Really dig it. Here's the thing, man.
This could have been is he? But anyway, so I'm going to do a
quick run through of the basics, as we're going to do a quick run
through of everything else, and we're actually going to talk
about the mechanical bits when we get to them because they're
very few and far between. So just kicking off setting the
setting up the game here a little bit.
So Apocalypse World, nobody remembers how or why maybe
nobody ever knew. The oldest living survivors have
childhood memories of it. Cities burning, society and
chaos Then collapse, the family set to panicked flight.
The weird nights when the smoldering sky made midnight
into a blood colored half day. Now the world is not what it
once was. Look around you, evidently
certainly not what it was. But also close your eyes, open
your brain. Something is wrong at the limits
of perception, something howling, ever present, full of
hate and terror. From this, the world's psychic
maelstrom. We none of us have shelter.
I will say I wish the psychic maelstrom felt more present in
the rules. Yeah, it kind of feels like they
brought it up at the very, yeah, at the very end they go, OK, but
this is how it works, like 250 pages then.
So I think the length of the book makes the book worse
because it takes so long to get to the important parts.
So setting up to play you you find players.
This is a part that I I didn't really.
So it's the one line in here says the game really kicks in
around the sixth session mark and it can go much longer.
If it takes 6 sessions to really get to the meat of your game,
you're not going to play that game with a lot of people.
You know what I mean? Like that kind of reminds me of
the whole like blades in the dark thing where it's like you
won't understand it the first time you read this and I'm like,
well, then you wrote it bad. Like, you know what a.
Weird thing to put in, even if it was true.
First off, if I feel like that about my own game, I might
revisit some things about it. Second off, I if that was true
and I liked my game, I would not put that in my game.
I wouldn't tell you that. I would like reading that I'm
like OK I'm just not going to do this yeah that's that's exactly
that would that would that would that is the first time I would
bounce off this game. If I I'll tell you right now, if
I didn't have to read this for the review, I would have bounced
off this like 8 times. Probably never finished it.
Oh, I didn't. I did not finish this.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, So.
And this kind of starts the whole written in an extremely
casual chatty part right here. Basically it says gather the
supplies that you need, whatever, get some playbooks
together. Playbooks are the characters,
like 4 page character sheets. You need those.
You can download them at Apocalypse World.
Again, that's linked. It's great.
This one's not linked, but it's linked earlier.
Continuing at the basics, the conversation role-playing is a
conversation. We all know that now in 2010,
it's probably good to have this in here.
But again, as part of the basics, I don't mind this being
in here. The rules mediate the
conversation. They kick in when someone says
some particular things and they oppose constraints on what
everyone should say after. Makes sense right?
Again, we start seeing bits and pieces of that like
conversational tone that just gets worse as you go moves and
dice. The particular thing that makes
these rules kick in are called moves.
So there is more than a page in the basic section.
It ends up being a page and a half on, kind of like what moves
are without really telling you how to do moves until the very
end. And this is a perfect example of
what I'm talking about when we go to this page here on page 10,
right? It is an entire page talking
about moves, giving examples of moves having very casual
conversation of moves. And in the last paragraph it
says OK, so each move says which stat the player should add to
their roll. To roll A+ stat, the player
rolls two dice, adds them, and adds the stat.
If the sum total is 6 or less, that's amiss.
If it's a seven or more, it's a hit.
Seven and nine is a weak hit, 10 plus is a strong hit that.
That's two sentences right there explaining what this page and
1/2 is talking about. And the difference that I found
between this book and Blades in the Dark is even though I felt
like Blades in the Dark had way too much writing to explain a
very basic concepts like 10 pages per rule.
What they did though is they actually took the rule out, put
it at the top in bold and said here is the rule.
Now let me talk about it. Now let me talk about it way too
much, but the rule is at the top.
OK, this says, let me talk about this thing way too much.
And at some point, with no actual designation of what I'm
talking about in this 2 pages, a rule will be in there somewhere.
Hope you find it. That's how I felt about the
whole game, that I felt like I had to dig for Easter eggs to be
like, oh, that's a core mechanic of the game.
Yeah, it's like every subheading.
I was skimming under it to find what part of the subheading was
actually like the mechanical part of that.
And actually there's another this same section that you're
talking about. The third from the last
paragraph also has another actual rule in it, but it's like
the third from the last paragraph explains.
You know, take plus one forward or take -1 of them going, it's
like, oh, float, float all that shit all the way to the top, all
the way to the top. And at no point when I got to
the end and I saw all the indexes and glossaries and
everything, I'm like dope. There's going to be, there's
going to be like maybe there'll be like a two page breakdown of
like the core stuff. Nope, Nope.
It's like actively, actively decided to be like, Oh well, we
didn't ride the system. So this isn't, there is no core
part to the game. It's really about the narrative.
And it's like, yes, but here's the thing, like if you give, if
you give a four year old, a couple of four year olds right,
a bag of marbles and say go play with them, sometimes you'll have
more of them, sometimes you'll have less of them, and
eventually you'll have math like that's not helpful.
At all, right. But if you go, here's 1 marble,
here's 1 marble. And you block a bunch of monkeys
in the room with a typewriter. Eventually, you'll get
Shakespeare. Right, like the the war against
like explaining the mechanics in this book broke my little brain.
Like it? Is interesting because like this
is a system like you can say whatever you want and you can
feel however you want. But this when you sit down and
write a game that has dice mechanics, it tied to a
narrative flow like you made the system, like it is in fact.
And even if you don't want the players to in to, what's really
interesting is how much you have to engage with the system and
how little it wants you to engage with the system.
Right. Which is really interesting.
We'll get to some other why I don't like moves later.
But again so moves and dice. That's basically what the
section says and it's a page and a half to explain that and you
have to dig into that section about it.
And the other thing that it does a lot throughout the entire
thing is it never really separates another says here's a
rule. Here's an example of play.
It's just as they're talking, suddenly they'll just break into
what other players are doing and this and that.
So that's another issue, is that there's so many examples of
play, but it's not written as examples of play.
It's written as just like a one paragraph.
Oh, sometimes a player will do something like this and suddenly
there's quotations and stuff. I'm going to be really honest, I
didn't read any of the examples of play in this there.
That's what I'm saying is they're not really example of
play as much as it's just like a continuation of the rant and be
like, so sometimes, sometimes I'll do this, but it's now I
would have much rather like gotten a rule and then add a
section called example of play for how moves work as opposed to
like getting bits and chunks of it like all over the place And
one of the core things about it. And then we'll move on because I
don't want the basics. But this section explaining like
moves is bigger than the section explaining moves in the move
section. And they do that frequently
throughout where it's like here's some parts, but you'll
find it actually really later. But this part actually explains
it better than that part later and it's so redundant.
There's so many redundancies. But here's the another issue I
have So the rules for moves is to do it.
Do it. That's bolded, right?
In order for it to be a move and for the player to roll dice, the
kicker has to do something that counts as that move.
And whenever the character does something that counts as a move,
it's the move and the players roll dice.
So it says usually it's unambiguous quote, UN quote,
like right in. Damn it, I guess I crawl out
there. I try to keep my head down.
So I'm doing it under fire, quote UN quote.
Like Yep. But there are two ways they
sometimes don't line up and it's your job as MC to deal with
them, right. So this is the thing too.
It's it's I feel like the writer was extremely unsure that people
would understand it. So they over explained it.
Yeah way too much. And again not in a blaze in the
dark way where it's like here's like from Adm perspective it's
more of just like here's my thought process like dumped out
over and over and over again. So here's the issue really quick
that I have with Moves and why this book is the is like the
reason I have issues with moves in the way that it's written,
right? So there's my issue with moves
is a common issue with moves in that I don't like the basic move
list because I feel like everybody will just be staring
at the list going, OK, what can I do right, Right.
Like, well, I have to do one of these.
But when you read blogs and stuff, a lot of people are
alike. There's this this thing that for
PBT ads that go well, if they don't trigger a move, they can
just do whatever they want to do, right?
So if you're just walking through the door, you don't have
to roll for it. If you're doing this, you don't
have to roll for it's only when you trigger a move.
So you have to know the moves well enough to know when you
trigger them and all this other stuff.
But like that that aspect of like don't roll when you don't
have to roll is so poorly explained in this.
But this idea of like to do it, do it, and if you do it then do
the moves or whatever is over is is is dumped and dumped and
dumped. So it comes down to the way that
you write a game will intrinsically affect the way
people play the game, right? It's the it's the reason Fivey
writes the way it does to force people to play in the way that
they want them to play it. So in here the moves are
explained in this way where it's like, well, they only, they only
like are triggered when you trigger them.
OK, So you don't have to roll all the time, but then you get
to parts of the game that are literally like, you know what?
You know, you know how to end the session.
You do a move, you know what you do once the game is over and you
have to like highlight other people's stats.
It's a move. Like you literally have like
meta outside of game moves. So it feels like everything is a
move. Like I expected there to be like
a have to get up to piss move. Like it feels like everything
you do, you can't do anything until you make a quote, UN quote
move. But intrinsically very poorly
explained in here is that you don't have that not everything
is a move. So it's like, but if you write
the game where everything feels like a move, then people will
always be looking for a move to do as opposed to doing what they
want and then seeing if they have to roll because it
triggered a move. People will be looking at the
basic move list and going well, I have to do one of these.
So instead of like allowing the narrative to to like, do
whatever you want and if then if it triggers a move, you you roll
for the move it actually becomes, you have to do one of
these moves and therefore your narrative is based on them.
It's like the antithesis of what it actually tried to be.
And that's why I don't like moves.
Uh, huh. Uh, huh.
I'm. I'm here with you.
Oh, absolutely. I I couldn't agree more.
OK, cool. I couldn't.
There's I have no ability to agree more than I do.
Yeah, I also heat tags when we get to that later, but we're
still on the basics. But that was quick.
So that's moves. Then we have stats.
There's six stats, and this stats section is a much better
explanation of the stats than when we get to the stats section
later. Then we get to the Yeah, it is,
yeah, yeah. So the redundancies throughout
is crazy. So the stats are cool, which
means cool under fire, rational, clear thinking, and you roll.
Plus, cool to do something under fire.
I love. I love that that explanation is
right there. This is what I'm talking about.
We needed more of this very clear, concise language on how
to do the things that you're supposed to be doing right.
There's hard, which means hard hearted, violent, aggressive,
strong, willed, mean. And then you roll.
Plus hard to go aggro on someone and the go aggro on someone is
bolded because that is a move you do later.
Hot means fucking hot. Attractive, subtle, gracious,
sexy, beautiful. You roll hot to seduce or
manipulate someone. Sharp, meaning sharp, witted,
clever, smart, et cetera. You roll plus sharp to read a
person or read a situation. Everything I'm saying at the
end, you roll to do something. Those things are move weird,
meaning a weirdo, psychic genius, uncanny.
All that stuff. Roll plus weird to open your
brain to the world. Psychic maelstrom and history
meaning history. It's HX like prescription
diagnosis, particularly shared history.
It's the history with other characters.
I do really enjoy that mechanic and we'll get to history later.
I thought that one was interesting.
And we'll get to it. When you're doing character
creation, like the setup for it, how it's done.
But I'm like, OK, that's cool. Yeah, that's very narrative.
You know, that's a good leader. I really like that.
And it is how you advance is your history with with other
people and things like that. So because you don't really
advantage, just improve a little bit or do things a little bit
differently so that those are the the, the, the stats and the
core kind of core moves to go with them.
The maximum for any status plus three, the minimum is -3.
Most will be in a -, 1 to +2. And there's a notation here that
says cool -2 means that your cool is -2.
Weird equals 0 means that you're weird is 0.
There's a lot of fucking algebra on this where I'm like there's
too many letters that you didn't need.
You could just say it, it's fine.
History plus one. That means that your history
with someone is plus one. Some rules call for you to
modify your stats, in which case the modifier appears before the
stat name. So plus one Cool means you add 1
to your cool -2. Weird means you subtract 2 from
your weird. So there's a difference based on
like, whether you're just modifying the specific role
you're doing versus modify, or what your actual stats look
like. That's not that complicated.
It's fine. Each chat, each player
highlights two of her character stats, one chosen by another
player, 1 chosen by you. This is another part that that
that we'll get to the MC1 chosen by you, the MC.
The character's development over time depends on her highlighted
stats. For details, see the Character
creation chapter page 70, which is hyperlinked, and the
improvement chapter page 258. Why is it listed three times?
And Y is one of the best explanations for how to actually
do that in this section right here.
Because I when I got to highlighting stats later, I had
to be like, wait, why do we highlight stats again and
literally like do like a like a like a control F to like find
highlights. So I could find this and it's
all the way up here. Yeah, so gear, another crap.
You have gear. It has tags.
I don't like tags. We'll get to tags later.
Harm and healing. Things get harmed and things
heal. And there are clocks, and this
is the worst way I like clocks. It actually uses like the
numbers on a clock, which makes no sense to me.
But you can harm stuff and you can heal stuff.
There's exactly where I needed some art, like clock example
art, you know? Yeah, well, especially early on
if you're hitting the basics to to do a little bit.
But there's also times where they give you the little art
that they do multiple times or in the wrong section.
Character improvement. You mark experience mostly based
on history or through moves in your history with other people
affects your experience bubbles. And when you get enough
experience bubble, you can improve your character, which
lets you, you know, adjust things on your playbook.
That's character improvement, timeline of play.
There's the play pre play prep, which is you getting our shit
together. There's the first session which
is really just character creation and their subsequent
sessions. I know that the whole the the
thing about like it takes 6 sessions to get going.
I don't think so. I think it really takes.
I know that they wrote that, but like from from reading this it
sounds like it really takes maybe like 3.
The first one being character creation, the second one being
there's a session you're going to talk about later where
basically you just spend a whole session just kind of like
walking around interacting, getting to know people so you
can like build narrative in the world.
And then the third session where you really kind of get going.
So I would say 3 sections, but that doesn't feel like too much
because. One that feels fine, That feels
like normal, you know? Yeah, there's a whole page of,
like, why to play. I do.
I do like to play was the interesting section.
You know, just to have, you know, Yeah, so #1, because the
characters are fucking hot. That's cool.
A lot of this game is just like, it's the apocalypse and it's
kind of a movie. So everyone's buff and hot and
sometimes they fuck and they kill shit and I'm like, cool,
I'm down, I'm down. Like, let's see how it goes.
That's a thing, yeah, because hot as they are, the characters
are best and hottest when you put them together.
Rivals, lovers, all that stuff. 3.
Because the characters are together against a horrific
world. They're carving up their little
space of hope 4. Because they're together, sure,
but they're desperate and they're under a lot of pressure.
5 because there's something really wrong with the world, and
I don't know what it is. The world wasn't always like
this, blasted and brutal. There wasn't always a psychic
maelstrom. So how do you figure out what to
do? That doesn't really explain to
me like why I want to play the game that explained to me like,
but not it does, but in a way that I I expected to just be
like why would you play this game versus other games?
But this is more of just like what are you doing when you play
the game? Like, right.
You know you're being hot and you're being put into shitty
situations and you're seeing if you can find hope in it, you
know? And that's cool.
I dig it. Like that's I like that that's
in the basic section and that's in the basic section.
So cool rundown of the rules. But it's weird because there are
parts of the quote UN quote basic section that explain rules
better than the sections explaining those rules.
And we're gonna get to the sections.
And I'm gonna be like, this is worse, actually.
Yeah. Another piece of art here.
It's a a buff chick with like, a a short haircut walking out of a
a car holding a machine gun. Dope vibey.
I I you know, I dig it. This is the playbooks.
Are we? Hey, we're hitting this now,
right? I don't have any idea.
Maybe, Yeah. OK.
I mean, they're not really like. They're just like a short blurb
on each one. It's oh, and then and then it's
kind of has all of them. Yeah.
So why don't we do like just like maybe skip the the
narrative or the type of part and just go with like the
italics maybe on each one. So we people explain like the
the, the, what, what, the class, what the archetypes actually
are. Also an interesting thing here
is that that short blurb. On each one is actually also on
the the the like playbook like a stat page.
It's really funny. It's like written here and then
like, so you're looking at the Angel right now, Which what page
is it on 16? It's also on page 23, so so if
you're going to have playbooks in this part, I think this is
the part you have and you take the actual character sheet
playbook and put it in the back. And put it in the back.
Totally. That makes a lot of sense to me.
Yeah, you want focus on on one, well, let's let's let's focus on
one for like actually reading through the character sheet.
But do you want to just do like a, the the quick maybe like
mechanical blurb at the end of each one.
So we just know all of the all of the archetypes, yeah.
Or even just say like angels are medics, battle waves are this.
You know what I mean like. Angels are medics.
Yep, there we go. Yeah, Battle Babe is like a like
a high social acumen warrior. You know, fighter.
You're a sexy, sexy warrior. There you go.
I don't know what a brainer is. Was a brainer spooky weirdos?
Yeah, just weird. Powerful but strange.
The Chopper, a leads biker gang, which fairly interesting.
They're powerful, but also their power is power is external in
their gang, which is a kind of a cool rule thing that we'll get
to. I always skimmed that one.
I was like, oh, OK. I kind of like the gang.
Interesting. The ones that have like
ingrained power, like the chopper and the hard holder,
that like come with a gang or come with a hold or something
like that. It's interesting that.
You can pick a character that comes with so much as like a
base character because clearly there's a a balance changes, you
know what I mean? It's interesting, yeah.
And I've played another PBTA called I referred to earlier,
called Broken Wealth that has very much the same thing.
It's like each of the character played books is like its own
like epic thing, and they're a little unbalanced.
And I kind of feel like this one's like a little imbalance as
well. Fuck.
Fuck balance. I mean, for a game that's going
to be narrative, I take no issue with that.
Because, yeah, it's supposed to be narrative, right?
Like the character I want to play maybe isn't this powerful
gang leader, maybe I want to play the next one, the driver
that's like a high mobility driver, you know, And vehicles
are like a thing here. Very much so, yeah.
Yeah. Got one of my favorite parts Is
way at the end where it talks about, hey, so someone told me
that 50 years after the world ends, gasoline evaporates.
Oops, I don't care. Like, pretend it's like a
diesel. I'm just like, that is the best
way to approach that to just be like, I hope it's a game?
Yeah, I don't give a shit. Yeah, I don't see that
realistic. So yeah, good to know about that
50 year life on gasoline though. Yeah, so driver drives high,
mobility comes with the vehicle gun lugger.
Can you guess what the gun lugger does, Ryan?
They probably lug guns is my question.
I'll say that I do appreciate the fact that you can read the
name of the class and be like I know what that class does.
Yeah, yeah. Especially for apocalyptic.
Yeah, Game. After the gun lugger, we have
the hard holder. Heart holders are landlords,
warlords are governors. They have little strongholds.
They got a little, They got land.
And the Hocus is a weird, culty person that has more of the IT
has more of the peripheral moves than anybody else.
They're pretty much all for the Hocus.
So yeah, if you want to be a weird supernatural person, cult
leader, the Hocus for you and of.
Course there would be in the apocalypse.
I mean, yeah, absolutely. The Is it the Maestro D?
Bro it broke my brain. I'm like I I googled maestro DI
can find nothing called maestro D and what kept popping them.
It's a maidor DA Maidor D, yeah. Yeah, I don't understand why
it's called a maestro. DI really don't understand.
Is it supposed to be like a like a play on like you're a maestros
and you make things like like you you?
Bring a lot of people together to do whatever.
But I just kept reading as Major D cuz I was like, that's what
makes sense of major D is called an establishment.
Yeah, you pretty much run an establishment.
And I think what I do see here is it's very much like the hard
holder, except if you want it to be sexier with fewer
obligations, which okay. Cool.
I love that. Basically like you run like a
like a drug den or a club or a strip or a strip joint or
whatever. But like the hard holder is like
basically a Fort. So you have to deal with all the
Fort shit. But the major D, it's like a
club. Like if you really just want to
grab the money and run like who gives a shit?
Like that's that's that's your thing.
I really dig that. There's like the hard holder for
someone who wants to like because if you do, the hard
holder. You're basically like this is
not a mobile game. Your whole thing is built around
the Fort, but with the with the mater D you could like start it
like a strip club or whatever and maybe able to come back to
it, but it doesn't feel like you're tied to it nearly as
much. So I I really like that.
I think it's neat. Yeah, you too.
And then the is the savvy head the last one?
No, it's not. There's the Skinner upside.
Savvy head is your like, support tech person, powerful reality
bending. Yeah, same school.
And then the Skinner Skinners are pure hot.
This is, this is your face. You know, your manipulative face
character. Yeah, yeah.
And then we have a list of the basic moves right here.
For like the for like the first of like 8 times.
Yeah, a very great concise list. I actually didn't count the
moves. Well, I mean, they're the basic
moves where there's 1000 more, yeah.
So 1010 basic moves and that's including session And and they
all are kind of like self-explanatory.
But we're going to explain them anyway here in a little bit,
yeah. And then we have the actual,
like mechanical playbooks. In a place that I done on page
22 for like 50 pages it's so weird put these in the back
like. This book is just such.
It's so weirdly put together in like in a short thing like a
Zine or whatever. When things are kind of like out
of order, it's not a big deal because you're only reading like
30 pages. But when you're reading 300
pages, having things out of order makes it so hard to parse
what's important and what's not, and that having things not
written in the way that, like the the game flows.
Like it should be the basics, the all the moves, harm and
healing gear and crap. Like the things that actually
really affect play. And then if you want to do like
the MC section we'll get to a little bit like put that like
start with the second-half the game.
That's more about running the game.
You know what I mean? Like, it's just but it's so
interspersed, so again, chopped up and so many times there's a
just randomly a core move is like tucked into a subsection of
a subsection. It's like, yeah, anyway.
Did you want to run through one of these now or maybe like later
once you read more about, like, what's going on?
Let's run through the battle babe real quick, because I feel
like that was the one we said that we were going to focus on.
Yeah, So the character sheet, the playbook, right, it starts
with all of them. The first page I think is
exactly the same for all. It's your basics like your name,
your look, your stats, your history.
And then it has your character. Special S battle babe special.
I'm right under the history pardon me section if you did
another character have sex nullify the other characters sex
move. Whatever it is just does not
happen. That's right there.
Sex moves. Your special move is a sex move.
Yeah, Yeah. And then there's your harm clock
bottom left and then the improvement section.
And that's the first page, The second page I.
Will say real quick, I do like on this on the stat section
there's it lists the moves that are associated with that stat
next to the stat. So that does make it a little
bit easier when you actually have the playbook in front of
you. I agree to to kind of associate
that and the little sections to like highlight and whatnot,
yeah, So the second of is it 4 pages, the second of the four
page playbook, It really is like a playbook like, you know, it
tells. You not a play sheet playbook
for sure. It tells you in the first
session part, which we'll get to to have printouts for these.
And I'm like Oh yeah, you most definitely need printouts for
each of these because it's unplayable without that.
Yeah, so the Babble Babe has the blurb.
You read it if you if you want to, but also get the book.
And it has Battle Babe moves, which are the like specific
Battle Babe moves. I don't want to read them.
It's dangerous and sexy. Ice cold, merciless visions of
death, perfect instincts and impossible reflexes.
Yeah, you just, I think you picked like maybe 2IN character
creation. We'll get to that in character
creation, yeah, I think it's something like that.
We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll come back maybe and then custom
weapons, firearms and hand weapons a little.
Just like a little place to write down your custom weapons,
gear and barter section and then a barter section that explains
how barter works, which we'll also look at later on in the
book. Actually, super OK with this
being here in the Playbook too. And barter is like an optional
thing. If you have a world that doesn't
make sense for bartering, there is no bartering.
But I do like that it's there. Oh man.
On the last page of the Playbook, you have the Creating
a Battle babe, which arguably maybe not the last page of the
Playbook, but what do I know? Yeah, name stats, gear, look,
moves, history. Yeah, it's here.
Yeah, I yeah. Well, actually putting it
together should be like the first or second page.
I agree so. Yeah, so I don't know, it's it's
just again, it's just weird how this whole thing is put
together. But yeah, so it's a four page
character sheet, which is fine because a lot of it is just
explaining right, which I think is really good to have in front
of you. But honestly, I think it's a
strength, that part. But here's The thing is like, if
you're going to have this much information here, you know what?
I would. I would chop off this entire
barter section and you know what I would have right here?
The section up at the top where it talks about stats and then
gives you what the stat is and what move you roll for that stat
and what it normally is would fit.
Would literally drop right into this exact amount of space, and
I would much rather have right in front of me a quick reference
to. Like the moves that I need to do
then something like water, which is an optional rule.
Yeah, I mean they're they do have this, the moves next to the
stats already, right? Yeah, but a little bit of an
explain. I mean, if you're going to use
this space for something, I would rather have it be for that
to give me, again, another little low break.
Yeah, I could probably think of another.
There's several other things that you can do with that space.
I agree. Yeah.
So that's the playbook. I do think the fact that it has
explanations for stuff is actually the strongest part of
the playbook. Yep, I think it's placement in
this book is the weakest part. Why?
Why are they? Why are they?
Why are they 50 pages of
playbooks? Like 20 pages in?
Put them at the back of the book.
Put them in the back of the book.
Like, I get it in the context of, like, we're talking about
character creation, but like, you already have blurbs for what
they are. This is more of a resource
management thing than it is like a necessary thing to read right
now. So stick it in the back, yeah.
So, yeah, moving forward. I'm I'm trying to.
I know I'm scrolling down too. I'm like, Jesus, what page am I
on? Yeah, bookmarks.
Here we go. Character creation.
There we go. Page 70 Character creation.
Yeah. So a big thing that it's going
to say here that it also says in in the first session, is that
you want to print out the players reference sheets and put
them on a table where everyone can reach them, pass them around
to do that should help. Yeah, print out your play
sheets, threat mat, threat sheets, all that stuff.
Oh yeah. One thing that I do like about
this is that they're they're kind of like epic characters.
Like there's only one of each, you know like everyone picks 1
character and I really like that.
I I like that there's a little bit of spread each characters
they're they're the one that thing, you know.
I do think it's a strength of this narratively.
Absolutely. The part where it's like there's
other people that might be healers and someone might call
them Angel, but. You're the Angel.
They're not. You're the Angel, you know?
And I like that. And I've seen that adapted in a
lot of PBT stuff, but I'm like, oh, that's cool.
You're like, you're the sorcerer, you know, like
everyone else maybe uses magic, but you're the magic guy.
Yeah, I do dig that. It's definitely.
It definitely feeds in like the the cinematic.
You know, kind of totally the strong point of this say this
first and often I can't even remember what this part says.
Honestly to the players. Your job is to play the
characters as though they're real people in whatever
circumstances. They find themselves cool,
competent, dangerous, larger than life, but real.
Yeah, And then the job is the MC is to.
Be the world. Yeah, yeah.
The apocalypse. It happened 50 years ago.
No one really knows there's a Psychic Maelstrom.
I'm Stats. You have y'all heard about stats
yet? But second time, actually I
think this is the third time because we skimmed through at
the end of the playbook section, it actually has stats again and
basic moves on page like 66 or something like that.
Yeah, stats are here. One of the things that does add
here is that like they usually they'll cap out at -3 or +3, you
don't go higher or lower than that, and that they can
occasionally get an extra point. I guess just circumstantially,
yeah, basic move introducing basic moves, which is the second
or third time it's referred to. But this is not the basic move
section, because that's coming. And we can do we we can get it
in the basic move section, Well, we'll get there.
There are special moves, there's character moves which are like
character specific vehicles and prosthetics.
When you're creating vehicle, it basically gives you a list of
frames to pick which will affect the stats.
I pay a list of strengths which are a bunch of tags, a list of
looks which are a bunch of tags, a list of weaknesses which are a
bunch of tags, and then battle options which are according on
your frame. You basically get like some
pluses for whatever framing pick.
Like if you pick a compact vehicle it gets 2 battle options
and you pick two of these. You can't just pick the same one
twice until I blow up. So you can be like yeah, I have
a fucking fast as fuck buggy bro.
I got +2 speed, yeah, and then specialize.
It talks about vehicles on prosthetics here, but then when
we get to gears and crap, we once again talk about vehicles
on prosthetics, but explain in a different way with some of the
stuff you need and some of the stuff that you don't need.
Perfect. RAM Yeah, there's specialized
vehicles, cuz one of the character classes is like the My
other car is a tank, which gives you special options.
Then there's creating prosthetics, which is the same
as as the vehicle. Essentially it's a bunch.
It's a bunch of tags, yeah. And then setting expectations,
which is just talking to your character, your player
characters, your PCs, and setting expectations, which is.
Great. It's like you should do that.
This is the part that, like, I think now would just be like,
you safety tools, you know? Yeah.
Have sex. Sex moves.
Yeah, there's that. And then introduction.
I'm going to go around and introduce your character thing
and. I will say to to wind back just
a little bit to the last one, like this is exactly what I'm
talking about. There's like 10 bullet points,
but like some of them are like talking about rules.
And then the very next one is literally like like randomly,
like asking a question if it's a player and randomly like talking
as if you're the MC. It's just like, mm hmm mm hmm.
Hey see where it says this or whatever It literally says this
is what the the the book actually says.
Hey see where it says you have oddments where 3 barter or
whatever. Is there some medium exchange
you all like It's literally being like you should talk this
way but then it also talks that way back to you.
It's just such a weirdly, I just, hey, I don't know, you
like that, buddy. Talk to me like a book.
Yeah. And then there's, you know, the
introduction, which is going around circle and introducing
your characters. And there's a little bit more
introduction than some games that I would run because the
history is a stat here. And that's actually, I think the
next section is is history, yeah.
And so your player character basically goes around in the
circle and decides, is it whether or not that character,
they trust them or don't trust them, and they give themselves a
bonus or a negative to their history, which I think is really
interesting. It's cool to go around be like,
huh, that's an interesting character.
My character wouldn't trust that guy.
Very. Much, you know?
Yeah. Well, it's not even just on
trust too. It's a it's also on like how
well you know the people just in general.
So it's like I we we've been in a gang forever.
Let's add a + 1. Or like, I just met you and I
don't like you, so we're going to do a -?
1, you know? Yeah, very cool.
You leverage that later on, which we'll get to when we ever
get whenever we get to moves. Yeah, crazy.
Oh yeah, and here's highlighting stats.
I don't know how I missed this part because I actually did not
read this highlighting stats section.
Yeah, this is like the third or fourth.
This is one of the three or four instances that we'll talk about
highlighting stats, but in a completely different way than
two of the other ones. Yeah, you go around the table
one last time. Each player finds the character
her character knows best or the highest history on their own
sheet, and then that character says which stat is most
interesting to her and highlights.
Well, that's so that's important through through the entire thing
with the highlighting, the stats, like as you build your
histories with people like at the beginning of each section,
like if I know history, if I have most history with you, you
pick a stat for me to highlight. And then the MC also takes
another one. Everyone gets two every session,
and then you mark experience whenever you roll the stat that
was highlighted. So that's literally how you
advance or improve in the entire game is by.
Rolling for the stats that other people highlighted.
So if I want to be like, well, I feel like I want you to be hard
today like I. Check hard for you, right?
But if it's like, well, I feel like you want to be cool and
then MC could also be like, well, I think we're going to be
doing a lot of cool stuff today and I want you to improve so all
mark cool for you. It's really interesting.
Because even in the example of Polly we'll talk about later, it
literally says, hey, it says that you can literally ask like,
hey, can you highlight this stat for me?
And I'm like, if you're getting to point where you're asking,
I'm gonna highlight the stat, just pick your own fucking stats
to highlight. Yeah.
But it also then says the Mt goes, Nah, I'll highlight this
one instead. And it's just like, then what
are we doing? What are we fucking doing?
So. The next section is the Master
of Ceremonies, which again, I don't understand why this is
here. I don't understand why this is
like the third or fourth thing. This is literally like a whole
chapter on like directly written for the MC, the Master of
Ceremonies, which is basically your GM.
I think my issue is that or merely after this we have the
first session section which should in fact be in this
section like with the like that's.
What I'm saying like the book really needs to be parsed into.
Like a Master of Ceremony section, which is like half of
it because you're literally talking specifically to the
Master of Ceremonies, the MC and the player section.
But why is the entire like MC section in the middle of what
the players need, both before and after it?
The sections are just poorly, poorly, poorly put together.
Again, when a book is shorter, it doesn't matter as much
because it's not as hard to get to those things.
But it's 300 pages. It really matters because you
have to get through all those pages to get to the other stuff.
So the Master of Ceremony is Quick Breeze through this MC
that is Apocalypse World's GM. There's a million ways to GM
Apocalypse Rules calls for one way in particular.
This chapter is it. Follow these as rules.
The whole rest of the game is built on this.
So it says you have to read this section and play it exactly like
this, which is so weird to me. As far as, like, TTRPGS go to be
like this is how it has to be. So your agenda.
Make Apocalypse World seem real, make the player's characters
live. It's not boring and play to find
out what happens. And then there's so much
talking, so much talking in such an extraordinarily
conversational way. It's just it makes it, it makes
it difficult to not again bounce off of this.
Don't pre plan a storyline. It says don't do any of that.
But then there's so much prep that it talks about doing and
like so much other things to do. So it's it's weird kind of like
don't do this but like kind of do it a little bit.
You know play to find out what happens.
Always say these things what the principals demand.
What the rules demand, what your prep demands, and what honesty
demands. This is a section that's I think
put together a little bit better than other sections, even though
I think there's too much talking, because at the very
least the important things are bolted at the top of the
sections. That is nice.
So that is nice. So Apocalypse Worlds divides a
conversation up in a strict and pretty traditional way.
Player's job is to say what the characters say 1st, and
exclusively to say what the characters think, feel and
remember secondly. Answer questions.
Your job as MC is to say everything else.
Everything about the world, blah blah blah.
You're the MC. Always be scrupulous, generous
with the truth. Play the game.
Don't hide shit from people. Give people.
Be a fan of the players. Do all of that.
That's what it basically says. And then it has the principles.
There's a lot of principles here.
Barf 4th Apocalyptica. OK, address yourself to the
characters, not the players. I do like some of these
principles. I think they're really good.
Make your move, but misdirect. Make your move, but never speak
its name. Look through crosshairs.
Name everyone. Make everyone human.
Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.
Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards.
Be a fan of the players. Characters.
Think off screen too sometimes. Disclaim decision making So.
Barf 4th Apocalyptica just means be very narrative with
everything that you're doing. Like make them make the world
feel real. Dress yourself to the
characters, not the players. I really like this if you want
people to engage more with the game narratively.
Address their player. Don't say Hey Hunter, what are
you doing? Say hey Billy Bo, you know, Mesh
Nuggins. What are you doing?
Which is the exactly name I pick.
Yeah, which is why, which would encourage you to respond as your
player, which will keep people in the narrative more.
It's a great rule to have for all people, not role-playing
games because you are role-playing.
Sounds a good one. Make your move, but misdirect.
I don't mind this one, it's fine.
It basically says like do stuff, but then do other stuff so you
have real world reasons for picking a move.
But then the consequences and things that come from that move
should always create more Make your move, but never speak its
name. I like that too.
So if there's a move called Announce future Vadnais, don't
say, OK, so now I'm going to announce Future Vadnais.
Of course you're not gonna do that.
You are the narrative. So, like, you should really play
as if you were the narrative. Don't let the mechanical side of
the MC side. Like overtake the the game.
Because again, the way you write a game, but also the way that
you run a game will encourage people's style of play.
So if all you're doing is saying move names, that'll encourage
people to say move names back to you.
You know, look through crosshairs.
Basically it says start making, start with everything being a
threat. Like always.
You know, that might not always be what you eventually do, but
look at it that way to start. It's Apocalypse World.
Shit's fucked up. So think about burning it down,
blowing it up, or bearing in a poison ground, and then if
that's not the right thing to do, peel it back a little bit.
Name everyone. Make everyone human.
I do like this section. It's too fucking wordy.
But it basically says, like, NPCS are a huge chunk of the
world, so make those NPCS feel real.
And it also says NPCS are just not that complicated.
If you have some dude who's evil just because they feel like
being evil, that's fine. Like, not every NPC in the world
needs to have a a novel as a back story.
Just make them be what they are because it's much easier to
engage in a tabletop role-playing game when you're
really engaging with what amounts to like archetypes as
opposed to like these very deep people for for important NPCS
obviously have more depth to them, but not every single
person in the world needs to have that.
But every single person in the world should have something is
what it really says. And it also talks about these
PCNPCPC like triangles, whether it's a love triangle or not.
There's a really good example here where it talks about the.
At some point about A1 character wanting an NPC for one thing and
another character wanting the NPC for a different thing, and
the interactions that can become PC versus PC when they're both
vying for the same thing but for for different reasons.
So that's a that's a really cool thing to do is this triangles
that's provocative questions build on the answers that's
self-explanatory. It explains a lot that respond
with fuckery and intermittent rewards.
As in fuck around with not fuck over.
This is when you barf, barf, apocalyptical on to someone's
answer, but do it all the time. And then how about an example?
Again, there's just so much writing about this very casual
over explainee. Like, here's just examples
throughout, and I like that there's examples throughout, but
like, they're so scattered that it makes it so unconcise and
difficult to parse every time. When it's like I just.
I just want to know what the rule says.
And you have to read through so much to get to it.
Please just tell me the rule. Be a fan of the players.
And this is the MC section, so this is the part that I don't.
I don't mind over explaining the MC section.
I'd like examples of play. This is the part where all of
that should be. The problem is this is how the
entire book is written. Like when you're explaining the
rule, just please just start at the very least with giving me
the rule, and then explain too much if you really feel the need
to. But in the MC section.
I'm fine with this, but that means so much of this book, just
like in Blades of the Dark, should have been shunted off of
the rule section and then just put into the MC section.
You know, be a fame of the player's characters.
Obviously you should always be that if your adversarial.
This ain't the fucking 80s. Don't be a fucking douche.
Think off screen, too self-explanatory, sometimes
disclaimed decision making. In order to find out what
happens, you'll need to pass decision making off sometimes.
Which I do, I do find interesting.
One of the things I do like about PBTA, put it into the NPCS
hands, put it into the players hands, Create a countdown, Make
it a stakes question. So basically, you don't always
have to make every decision, Make the decision something that
needs to be interacted with, something that needs to be
determined by the players or by other people.
Basically, don't make major decisions if you don't have to.
Put it into other mechanics or people so that the decision
always feels like it comes from the players.
And then another breakdown of all of the another list of all
the principles. I I don't mind some
repetitiveness, but it literally starts the chapter and is a
chapter with the same list. I think it's hard because
there's already been so much repetition that even when even
in the place where maybe the repetition has value, it's like
you're kind of tired, You got tired of it already.
Like, oh. So tired of it?
Come on, man. Then there's a whole list of GM
move. Separate them.
Capture someone. Put someone in a spot.
Trade harm for harm. Announce off screen.
Vadnais now it's future Vadnais. Inflict harm, Take away their
stuff. Make them buy.
Activate their stuff. Downside.
Tell them the possible consequences.
Ask an opportunity with or without a cost.
Turn them, turn the move back on that.
Make a throw a move after every move.
What do you do? So much of this this is, This
is. Often throughout I was like,
that's not a move. I don't understand, but this is
the part where I'm like, these aren't moves.
Some of these are just principles like I don't like.
There was such an emphasis on like, the creation of this idea
of moves that I feel like it's just too much.
Like, I think, I think it started really good and it went
way too fucking far. Not everything is a move, but
they make everything a move in here and it makes it hard when
you want to do something. That's not necessarily a move
because you feel like there's so many moves.
Everything is a move. So you have to figure out how to
move. You know, we've, we've talked
about this with other games, especially 5E.
It's just like you when you create the box, they're going to
color within the lines, you know, like they're not really
going to step outside of the lines because you've written it.
In a way. They're like, even me playing a
PVTA. I'm like, oh, I'm looking for
the moves to do, you know? It's and that's the thing and
the GM, I guess it's a little bit you know, because the GM's
play does need to be a little bit more structured because
you're running the game. So I don't mind the moves as
much for that. But when and I like the moves
for special stuff, I like moves for powers and things like that.
But for basic shit. When you have 10 basic moves,
you're like, well, everything must follow into a basic move
then. So quick run through of of of
the GM's basic moves, announce off screen Vadnais OK that.
You're announcing no examples of your moves.
Separate them. OK, you separate them, Capture
someone, you capture them. But here's the other thing about
the moves, right, is that in the players moves, there's always
like a 7 to 9, like 10, plus like 6 or less.
But in the GM moves, quote UN quote moves, it's not.
It's really just like an option of something that you can do
narratively. So.
I guess calling it a move because but that then also makes
your brain go wait, But our moves like this or moves like
that, and it's different. It's a GM and player, but it
still makes it more difficult to parse trying to understand the
game. But this list of moves is a good
thing for anyone to just write down for any game, because these
are all just like, cool narrative points.
That you can use in your game. Separate someone, capture
someone, put someone in a spot, trade harm.
There's a section later in the harm section where it talks
about trading harm and how that works, inflicting harm.
Also there's a section later talking about that take away
their stuff. That's a great.
A lot of these are really just like choice mechanics, you know?
A lot of these I've read from Source of Victory where it
breaks down a lot of this stuff and like creating player choice,
create narrative, do things that way.
So taking where their stuff is a great one.
Separating people is a great one.
Make them buy. So if they need something,
encourage them that they have to go buy it.
Then they have to go to a whole different area and encourage,
you know, people's barter and stuff, activate their stuff.
Downside. So a cursed item, make it
cursed. You know, make the curse pop in,
tell them possible consequences. I do like that where it's like,
Are you sure you really want to do that?
This is what's going to happen? And they're like, actually, no,
I don't want to. Offer an opportunity with or
without cost. Turn their move back on them or
make a threat move and we'll get to that later.
So those are all the things you can do as a gym.
Obviously you can do more, but those are cool breakdowns.
I again, I don't mind that section for moves in here.
I dislike the basic moves, rules and prep.
The game's rules give you things to say, Yep, they do.
And then there's a whole section on a few more things to do,
which is just a section that I just don't like.
These aren't principles or moves.
They're just good practice and I recommend them.
Then don't put them like, then don't put them here or like, I
just don't understand like in the MC section.
Again, I don't mind this nearly as much.
It's basically just like, But again, you you get to parts in
here where it's like, I don't think this is a section yet, but
it literally goes in my home game.
I usually do this then just say to do that.
Like people can parse that, they if it doesn't work for them,
that's fine, you know, you know it's whatever.
And then and then and then and then we get to the first
session. First session, you know it is.
It's basically like a session zero, almost like it is a
session 0. That's all it is.
Yeah, it's it's session zero. It's.
Prep Well, well, yeah. Well, so the first session,
yeah. Is character creation.
Yeah, yeah, it's character creation.
And it's also time for you as the MC to prep based on what
your player characters pick as their characters.
You do the history thing. Did I take notes in the section
look at me. I didn't.
It literally says it might it might just say it's a sub res
for session and then it's blank. I, you know, I had a hard time
reading this book because there's so much conversation.
So I really did jump around like quite a bit.
But yeah, there's this weird part like during the first
section session, where it's like, you tell them like, OK,
your setup's easy and you're done.
But now I got to sit here and set up a couple of you groaned.
I do. This is exactly what I'm talking
about. Like, why do we?
What the fuck are you doing there?
They're literally, they literally wrote into the book
like an extremely casual conversation between MCS and
players, but not in like a like, an example of how the first
session might run. It's literally just written in.
So like, the rules and things you're supposed to do are
suddenly like interspersed with like random quotations of like
casual conversation and then like.
I like, I just don't like exactly what you said.
A couple of you groaned. I can hear you from way over
here. Oh, great.
Getting to know the characters. That's a recipe.
It sounds like like it's it's like a it's like a it's like
fucking Jack Kerouac, like fucking inner monologue.
This isn't like Tropic of Capricorn.
Like it feels like it feels like just almost like what's it
called when you just like blah you're trying to thought down on
the paper. You know what I mean?
Oh yeah. It's like a.
It's a writing activity. It's.
You know, people out there know what we're saying, but basically
that's what it feels like. It feels like they were just
like writing. And they're like, oh, sometimes
they'll say this. Like, it's just so like there's
a much technical writing is bad, but not enough is just as bad.
Yeah. Yeah.
It talks about like, you know, it's your job as the as the MC
to create this like fractured tilting landscape of
inequalities, PC and PCPC triangles, all that.
All that good stuff. Yeah, after that's first.
And always do everything 1st and always do everything it says to
do in the Master of Starting My Way's chapter.
Do all of it. Do this is crucial.
Let's just follow the characters around for a day.
In Apoxis World, that's automatically dangerous.
It's automatically a bad day. I think I disagree with that.
I mean, I'm. I don't know.
Yeah, just because it's the first session, whatever.
You're still actually playing the game.
The the thing about this tone of like, yeah, whatever.
You know, it makes me internally also feel like, yeah, whatever.
I guess. You know what I mean?
Like, they're not taking this shit seriously.
Like I'm not fucking taking it seriously, you know?
And I know we joke about longer books.
I read Lancer, so it's not that, just that this is a long book,
you know, it's just. It's the way it's.
It's just the way. It's the way it's written.
Yeah. Yeah.
MC the game, bring it. Especially do these, which are I
think exactly the MC things. Right.
Yeah. Bar forth.
Apocalyptica Springboy of character creation and ask
questions all the time. Good, good stuff.
I think there's good there's definitely good stuff in here
and it's going to go and give us a description of all of those
things that we just that are in that list.
I and A lot of this is a recap of the previous section.
Kind of. I mean, it's basically going
through like GM principles and stuff until you get so far.
There's a little bit of divergent or there's a little
couple of different things, but like, it still is very
referential to that previous, yeah, yeah.
Until you get to the part at the end where it talks about the
threat map, which I'm like, I don't.
The very next section is Threats, so I don't understand
why. There's literally like 2 pages
in the first section session that talk about the threat map
and if you notice the example threat map.
That's in the first session section is the exact same
example threat map that is almost immediately used in the
threat section. So once again, why are they in
both parts? Why are they explained
differently in both parts? And like what's like, I don't
understand why it's not like work on the threat map.
See the Threat Map section? Like, there's just like 3 pages
we don't need when we're seeing them again in like 10 days.
It's really interesting. It's literally.
I mean, it's immediately after. Immediately.
Yeah, So. I mean, we need to talk about
threats when we get to the threat section, but I just don't
understand why that's in the first session section.
Like it just makes, I think referring to it and being like,
hey like work on threats and maybe a couple of notes, but
hey, see more in one page. Yeah, yeah.
It's just it's it's it's just really it is what it is.
So after the first section, once again it's like really weird
tone, not like immediately after.
Give it some time to sink in. That's literally a quote.
That's a quote from the book. Not like time.
Really. What?
What I don't know. Like, I felt like they were.
Like, I felt like they were like maybe trying to go over some
type of like character thing, but it literally just feels like
the creator, just like again, like just.
Like, I can't remember what it's called, just like just just
spewing forth like a train of thought onto the page and they
literally just wrote in such a capital way.
Like you remember the part where we talked about earlier or
whatever. Do that thing like that could be
a quote in this book, yeah. After it basically says after
the first section to just go back over the session in your
head and review things that happen and create new threats
and like MPC and like forward think.
Which is great advice to put in the maestro, the MC.
Section Weird that it's in in this section.
Well. This is for the MC.
Which then why not just put that all up into the MC section?
That's what I'm saying it is for the MC.
But yeah, yeah like here's The thing is MC first session and
threats, the so those 3 sections are all MC stuff and then we get
to moves, which is general, like we should have taken moves and
boost them all up. This should actually be at the
towards the end of the book. All of it should be at the end,
yeah. MC section, threat section,
playbooks, like all of that. Like there needs to be a really
big separation between stuff players need and stuff MC needs.
But again, it feels like the AMC stuff is like stuff right in the
middle of the sandwich of what the player needs, which forces
the player to read the whole fucking book.
Like, I don't know. All right, getting 2 threats.
Let's cruise through threats real quick.
There, There they are. They are threatening.
That is it. There's a whole page here just
talking about creating threats and doing threat stuff.
There are essential threats. And among the threats you create
after the 1st and 2nd sections, be sure to create your essential
threats. They are for where the PCs are
created as a landscape for any PC gangs, create them as brutes.
For any NP PCs and other NPCS, create them as brutes.
We'll get to that. In a section.
Again, it's whatever. So to create a threat to this
name, name it and copy it. Copy over its impulse, describe
it, and list its cast, if any. You place it on the threat map.
If it's in motion, Market's direction with an arrow, list
its stakes, questions if any. If it's connected to other
threats, list them. And if it calls for a custom
mover countdown, create it. So there's a threat sheet here.
Which basically gives like what it's called, what kind it is,
what its impulse is, what its description cast is, the stakes
written down for custom moves, It's countdown clock.
And then like a little mini version of the threat map, which
we'll get to in a second about, like where it might be and
whatnot. And there are seven kinds of
threats. There are warlords, grotesques,
afflictions, brutes, landscapes, train and vehicle.
Those are the different kinds of threats you can have on the
threat map. Warlords are exactly what
warlords sounds like. They're dictators, slavers, all
those kind of things. They are the the bad combatting
people. And then there's a whole list of
threat moves that warlords can do.
Push the battle moves, outflank someone, attack someone
directly. Hugely.
There's like 10 things for each one.
I'm not going to go through all of them, just going to go
through like examples. That's exactly what it is.
Warlords act primarily through their people.
OK, grotesques are always human. It says they're always a person.
Not a monster, but they are now grotesque, like cannibals,
mutants and things like that. There's a whole list of threat
moves for them. There's afflictions, which are
diseases, conditions and things like that.
Once again, there's a whole list of threat moves for them.
Brutes are a group of people, with or without a leader, acting
in crude, perhaps provisional concert.
So hunting packs, things like that list of threat moves.
For brutes there's landscapes, which is natural or constricted
landscape. You choose the kind.
There's prisons, breathing pits, furnaces, mirages, a list of
threat moves. For those, there's terrain,
which is precipice, a wall, an overhang, something in the way I
don't understand really. Terrain is a little different
than landscape, I think, because landscape is more of like kind
of specific places in the land, like specifically like a
fortress, a maze, a prison. Terrain is more like I set a
wall, a precipice, things like that.
So. The names can be a little bit
confusing on that one. There's vehicles, which we
talked about before. There's different types of
vehicles and once again a huge list of threat moves that you
can do with vehicles. I don't I I don't again for the
MC section on threats, I don't mind this because it really
breaks down like what you can do in like an interesting way.
So like you know that for vehicles, if they're vicious and
the A move is swerve across the road though.
So it's like OK, it it really is just saying narratively all the
different things you can do. So again, it makes moves.
Feel like they can be pretty much anything.
Threat moves. This is the course of this game.
Anything's a move. Yeah, pushing a move just means
saying, for instance, hey, this is a charge situation.
I think somebody should read it who wants to, or he's acting
kind of weird, don't you think? Want to read him Or there are
like 50 of them roaring and swinging their meat knives and
rushing in a car. Do you want to fight or hold
your position or ditch out for what?
Like, but so that really didn't explain to me what pushing is at
at at all. And that's really one of the
first and only times they really talk about pushing.
Like pushing the role means pushing a move means this is
more than just a regular situation and more than just
regular shit needs to happen from it, right?
Yeah, I'm trying to say hold on. I have another PBTA game over at
the same time and I know there is pushing in this one.
Where is it push? Look at that.
It's got, it's a, it's a couple paragraphs and it's got bolded
top when you attempt something particularly.
Yeah. OK, cool.
Right. Yeah.
It it's again like it's just all the rules are so
conversationally written into the thing.
That they're at no point are they pulled out and explained in
any meaningful way. It's more just like ranted at
you and you're you're you should somehow in these two pages, by
the context of the rant, understand it.
It's It's also funny because like this one page has A1 bolded
thing, which just is almost out of context and it's just a weird
bolded thing. And I'm like, I'm so used to the
first time we go through a game, I'll skim it and they'll read
everything that's bolded. Because usually that's like the
core mechanics and this one was like display the contents of a
grotesque heart. Like, what the fuck are we
talking? About exactly, exactly there.
There is no nothing about the way this game is written that
gives you the important parts as if they're important.
Like the only things that are bolded in the entire thing are
moves. Every move in this game is
freaking bolded. Like, that's really it.
But not the rules. They're not even italicized.
They're very rarely separated into parts that are more
parseable. It's just like, again, pushing
is an important thing, and it's just randomly at the beginning
of like a like a a page here, but no real explanation almost
immediately just goes into some examples, but no real
explanation, like at all. Like, I don't know.
I mean the the game is explained through a series of
conversational examples, not through any technical jargon
like pretty much at all as what it comes down to.
So it's all supposed to be just contextual understanding.
So an editor and a dev editor that does a little bit more
technical writing would have been really good for this
because I'm I'm I'm getting the point.
We're just like we're just skipping stuff.
I don't even care description and cast you describe stuff like
describe the stakes like I mean so the threat map is an
important pit here. I don't mind the threat map.
I think it's kind of interesting.
I don't think it it it's interesting.
So and and countdown clocks, custom moves, I thought.
We would get to the the threat map.
Oh, example threat maps. Again, this is the exact same
threat map as what's under the first session section, literally
like in the previous section. So when you look at the threat
map, because that is an actual core part of the game, that
should be explained a little bit better.
You mark the map, you mark the map, the threat's location, and
if it's moving in its direction, so the innermost circle is the
PCs, their gangs are holding their vehicles.
Then there is like a second of the first ring.
Of threats that are near the PCs.
The outer ring is threats that are AT and pass the PCs
horizons. And then there's notional
threats which are rumors, fears like hereby monster section or
whatever. And then marked on the map there
is north-south, east, West. So it's actually like physically
what's on the map. But then there's also U&D, which
is up and down for threats above and below the characters.
OK, OK, there's I, which is inside for threats within local
landscapes and populations like cult's disease and the
parasites. And there's O, which is outside
for threats originating in the world, psychic maelstrom, or
even elsewhere. There's too many of those things
when we get to tags, when we start talking about like N, -, 1
inside, plus this like, it's just like it created all of this
stuff that could be better explained through other things
like like, I don't. It is so bizarre.
Like I think conceptually I like the threat map.
Like until you add the IUDO like I'm like you know making a map
and like having a threats like mapped out and like where they
are in relation to you and like moving towards your way.
I'm like very cool. And you're like, yeah, yeah,
then that part, no, I'm, I'm out, so.
Yeah dude, as soon as I think they just wanted to fill in the
parts of like the the thing 'cause if you, if you on the
same map, have directions and which threats are.
Right. But interspersed between those
directions, you have these like, kind of like conceptual ideas
like diseases or things like that.
Like, what if what if something's northeast of me?
Oh, no, it's only sorry. It's only north or east of you.
Like there is no. So you you have both a
directional map and a conceptual map in the same space.
So I don't like divided up. You could see two threat maps
being cool like a. I think either either have two
threat maps, right? Or for like use a threat map as
an actual map. OK, so like keep your locations
on there and then keep the circles be the things that are
important. But these like conceptual bits
like like local landscapes and and threats originating from
psycho, psychic maelstrom and things like that, Things that
are up or down or whatever, just put a list underneath, yeah?
Just do 1234 underneath the map for the things that aren't
actually location based and if it is a location based thing
like the cult is to the north and it's outside then put it
there. But if it's not northwest, so
just. Right, that's I don't.
I don't like this overlay of both conceptual and and physical
in the same map. When it it's it's weird.
Because it can cross into both, just either just have two
separate maps, 1 for more conceptual, one for more
location based, or just put it underneath because there is a
list of things underneath the threat maps when you actually go
down to the threat map. Or you don't even need to do
that really, because you can actually just number the threats
and and and write it on their little threat card, right?
Because you're supposed to put a little dot where that threat is.
But again like. To me, the threat map is a
physical location map and that's the what works better in my
brain. But when you actually look on
the thing here, so the other thing that's interesting about
the example map, right? Do you see anything written in,
up, down, in or out? There's the one thing in in,
right? One there's like one thing
written on one example for like what's out.
It says angels hunting pack. So like and the in and out isn't
like, so it's just like OK. But there's nothing written all
up, down or any of these. So it's like you put it on the
map and then in none of the explanations, like none of the
examples are any of those sections even actually used
except for one which is used. The same thing is used twice on
two different examples. So it's just like you don't even
give an example of like how those things are really
applicable, but there's like an I wonder section underneath.
So like, why wouldn't there just be like?
Conceptual or like things to keep track of.
Or like, you know, outsider threats or or whatever.
Like this disease is present. You know, like it just doesn't
make sense to me that like you create this thing, put these two
random like things together and then don't even give examples
when the whole thing is based on conceptual examples.
So I'm countdown clocks. I'm going to go through count on
clocks and then we're just going to start skipping the rest of
this book because I just can't. So countdown clocks.
I don't like the way these work. I like clocks.
Yeah, I got it. And then the so the way
countdown clocks work, I don't even think they're explained
here. We, I think we can just get to
it later. They're not even like like no,
this isn't in the part. So they kind of explains
countdown clocks a little bit around the clock notes things
will happen before 9:00 that thing's coming but preventable.
So this is countdown clocks in the context of like as the
threats approaching. But like not in the way that
like HP works or anything like that.
I don't mind the way it works but I also don't I don't need
like the numbers on them. Like I like clocks written out
more like tracks kind of like the way Necroniolus does.
Like if I want if in eight in eight rounds something's going
to happen I'll make an 8 round clock and mark a segment off
each time. It's really, I don't know, I I
don't necessarily like the way clocks work in this but we're
not going to talk about them right now So that's the end of
threats moves snowball. This is a whole huge section
that just says. That when you do a move,
sometimes it triggers another move that triggers another move.
It's literally the whole thing that that could literally just
be like a tiny paragraph. That's it.
Instead, it's 123-4567 seven pages to just be like sometimes
moves triggers other moves. That happens.
You can have a series of moves. This like, I want to love this
game. The core mechanics of it, like
the PBTA style game is like my favorite game of reading this
book. It it just it's breaking my
brain and it's so frustrating because there are no core
mechanics. Do not make something PBTA just
by the way. It just, it hurts my soul like
I. That's what's so frustrating.
The same thing with Blades in the Dark, where it's just like I
feel like there's such a good system that mixed into just such
a bad book and it just. And it's really, really
frustrating because and it's also so hard to sit and read
like, like both of us. And this isn't, you know,
terrible ADHD. So like having to sit down and,
like, really force yourself to try to parse something, it it
makes it so frustrating. And it just builds up this hate
in me so that, like, I might love something, but they're like
the way that it's, like communicated to me makes me just
hate it, you know? And it's hard.
It's weird because like right now I'm for fun reading like the
Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson, which are like 1200
page, densely packed books. And I have a fine time reading
those, you know, and I've read Lancer and I really enjoyed it.
And I've read Broken World, which is another fairly thick
PBT book, and I really like that.
I don't like how this one's written.
So I'm not going to blame my ADHD on this one.
I think physically, the way that last classic that we did, I mean
I'm like blades, blades are the one that the way that physically
was written also is just hard for me to break up.
This one's has a lot more space and there's a lot more like like
breathing room. I just don't like.
I just didn't like reading it. I just, I want to we keep going
over these like classics, right, that so many systems are built
on. Right.
We're doing a possible story now.
We did Blades in the Dark, we did Black Hack, and just every
time I feel like we just get to the progenitor of these massive
trees of games in our system and they just don't like the
original game. And a lot of it just comes down
to like how it's communicated and it's just frustrating and it
makes me also go, you know what? There's a maybe there's a reason
that there's like 50 PVTA games and I've never heard of someone
playing Apocalypse World, you know what I mean?
Like, I've never heard someone say black hack, but I've seen a
lot of black hack hacks, so you know, yeah.
Anyway, PC versus PC, it happens like, guess what?
It all works the same as everything else.
That's that's basically all it says.
Then we get to the basic moves. OK, so we're talking about 136
pages in. We're actually going to finally
talk about the what amounts to the core mechanic of the entire
game and the 4th time, Fifth time, sixth times.
It's mentioned and written in a different way than every other
time. Yeah, it actually has
explanation, which we're not going to read all the
explanation for everything because we don't need every use
case for everything but the basic moves.
This is a partial success system.
Oh yeah, I thought I was doing basic moves.
Go for it. Oh, I just didn't read snowball
moves because I read all that text.
I saw the text and I was like, no, but basic moves.
Yeah, it's you roll 2D6 plus stat and then, you know, six or
less, miss seven or more, hit 7 to 9, weak, 10 plus strong,
right. That partial success system, the
first basic move is act under fire.
It's basically when you do something, when you're in a high
pressure situation, you're going to roll plus cool.
That's it. You know, under fire.
Fire is anything. You're under pressure.
Yeah, let's act under fire. Yeah, perfect.
But then but then there like so the the core mechanic of all of
this comes down to like the mixed success aspect of it.
So. On A10 plus you do it.
On a 7 to 9 you flinch, hesitate or stall.
The MC can offer you a worse outcome, a hard bargain or an
ugly choice on a miss. Be prepared for the worst so
every move has the the staff that you roll, and then it has
what happens on A10 plus on a 7 to 9 and on a complete failure.
Some of them have like a list of things that you can get pick.
Three. Pick two.
Pick one. Yeah, yeah.
And I I have seen that used in other ways that I liked and.
I'm moving on to like, here's The thing is, like, I like that
that core right there is my favorite.
It is mixed success. But the way I like PBTA is like
World of Dungeons. Because what I want, right is
you roll a stat, right? You got 7 to 9.
So now there's a you hit, but there's a complication, and I
come up with a complication. Based on the narrative that's
happening and we move forward, yeah, yeah, that that's that.
That's it. But you don't need a list of 10
ways in order to be to choose which stat you're going to roll.
And I don't necessarily need a huge, like list of the possible
pick twos, pick ones, pick threes.
I like that. But I like that in the context
of like there's a Powered by the Apocalypse written by Somebody
Else section later where it's like casting a spell.
It's like dope okay. Here's, here's what I want from
a move is like when there is some type of like like a power
being used or a special being used, something that in that
specific instance requires more. That's cool.
What I hate are these basic moves or it's just like okay,
like I want to just do some shit and it's like okay.
That sounds like you're doing it.
Cool. So roll cool, and then see what
happens. But like the list of basic moves
funnels all narration into 10, it really does.
It tells you exactly how to play this game.
This. These are the boxes.
These are the lines that you're coloring inside of.
It's. Too much structure for the basic
moves of the game, for advanced moves, for peripheral moves, For
other things like that I don't mind.
But for the structure, for their apparent intent behind this,
Yeah, and yet somehow still not enough structure when writing
this down. OK, so our next move is go
aggro. When you go aggro on someone,
you're going to roll plus hard on the 10.
Plus they have to choose one, force your hand and suck it up,
cave, and do what you want. On a 7 to 9 they can choose one
of the above or one of the following.
Get the hell out of your way. Barricade themselves securely
in. Give you something they think
you want or tell you what what you want to hear.
Yeah, and I miss. Prepare.
Prepare for the worst. Yeah, and this is a weird one.
The list is weird. So I mean, but that that the
going aggro one is kind of the like the standard for the most
part like example of the rest of the moves where it's like.
You because it. But it also is weird because it
says on A10 plus they have to choose one.
So you go aggro on someone, they they keep one of those things.
Yeah, which? Weird.
Basically, the moves feel like scripts to me.
That's what it feels like, where it's like I can't just do what I
want because as soon as I trigger a move, it's all
scripted out for me. Like including the snowball
thing and you do this. What triggers this?
What trigger this? It feels, you know what it feels
like. It feels like a choose your own
adventure book. Suddenly, as opposed to playing
a game, you know, where it's just like as soon as the move
triggers, you're just along for the ride and maybe you get to
make a few choices, but eventually it rolls out the end.
And it's like to me, I think the, the, the, like the.
Trying to get rid of the process of choice comes down to having
no choice at all. Like, maybe you get to pick one
or two things every now and then, but for the most part, as
soon as the move is triggered, you're just following the
script. Yeah, there, this is.
This is very much on the other end of choice paralysis.
Yeah, the next move. Sucker someone.
But but sorry, real quick because under each move, right.
So that that by in and of itself, that's enough for me.
I get it right. So then, but underneath go
aggro, there's literally 3/4 of a page talking about it.
There's an at least at least these examples are actually
marked off as examples, which which I'm fine with, it's
actually marked as examples. It's not just conversation
within the rules context. But then that's another like
half a page, and then there's a huge paragraph on example of a
mistake and a correction. So like, I don't necessarily
mind this stuff as much, especially the examples and the
other part of the examples, but so many of the rules.
Are written mechanically where I'm like, OK, I get it.
And then they give me 10 paragraphs with more contextual
explanation. And it's like that's been the
problem the whole time, is there's too much contextual.
I do this, but sometimes I do this and sometimes you can do
this instead. Instead of just giving me the
rules and giving me the examples, you know, every page,
every move takes like 2 pages, 3 pages.
Uh huh? Yeah, I'm in agreement.
So sucker someone. Which, you know, yeah.
So the sucker someone, we're you know what, guys we're going to
keep going. We we you're getting how this
works. We're just going to move
through. Sucker.
Someone is like when you attack someone who's unspecting or
helpless. Perfect in battle.
Let's see, when you're in battle, yeah, that's when you
use the battle moves. You can seize by force, which
you're going to roll plus hard. And then you get to pick from a
list of things again. After that you have Yeah, sorry,
I'm laughing at our chat. Seduce or manipulate?
It's when you seduce or manipulate someone, you're going
to roll plus hot for how hot you are.
And yeah, that's that's that one.
Well, so we can explain this one just a little bit more, because
this one's an important core mechanic of the game.
Is this is when the sex comes in?
Yeah, this is when the sex comes in.
So. Yeah, so basically when you're
the whole point of sex in the game is not just, like, just
just banging, right? The whole section here talking
about it is it's leverage, right?
So, and that's all point because the sex moves fall under seduce
and manipulate, blah fast talk, whatever.
So you really only use sex in the game when sex is leverage,
where it's like, OK, you want that thing?
Like I'll fuck you if you give it to me.
You know what I mean like. Yeah, just like real life.
So it's interesting the way that it works in here and it
specifically says over and over again that for like just go
black, like you don't need to to act all this stuff out.
I mean, I guess if you really want to have that kind of game,
you totally can. But like the it's specifically
about gaining leverage and using leverage and also about creating
history with people. So when you have sex with
someone, your sex move comes in. And for the most part.
That talks about whether you get history with someone and a move
that you can do based on the history that you get or
affecting the history you get with someone, which affects your
improvement. So the sex moves, if you use
them, directly, affect your improvement in the mechanics of
the game. So yeah, that's are we, dude?
I don't know. Yeah.
I'll just run through the rest of base moves because I think I
was going to do these first anyway.
So I've read these like really diligently.
So read a stitch. When you read a charge
situation, you roll plus sharp basically.
That's just understanding what's going on.
That's important for a lot of the things.
When you read a person, it's exactly the same thing.
It's you read person in a two different moves.
Because it's a situation in a person, So one, yeah.
So but The thing is like you roll for sharp on both, but like
what you get from the list of questions is totally different.
So like that is very true. What's?
The best What's the best escape room?
What's who's vulnerable? Things like that is, is the
situation? And reading a person is are they
telling the truth? How are they feeling?
Like what's going on? So again, each of these has a
series of things underneath it and this is different though
because you can hold right, which is something we haven't
really talked about yet. So on A10 plus you hold three,
which means when you interact with someone you get a one for
one. So basically you don't
immediately have to to use those holds, but you can use them as
the situation plays out. So if I'm reading you and I roll
plus sharp, on A10 plus I roll, I hold three.
So as our interaction plays out, I can you can say something to
me and I can be like, OK, I'm using one of my holds.
And the MC tells me, are they telling the truth?
And then as the situation continues to play out, I can use
another one of my holds to say to ask like what their intent
is. So this move is different
because of the holds, which is not something that's really
explained well on like how the holds work and things like that.
It's not. And I would still argue that
this is the read person and read stitch is just one move that has
two different lists based on whether or not you're reading a
period. Like, I mean it is, but like,
yeah, it doesn't need to. Yeah, yeah.
I don't, I don't, I don't disagree.
I think, I think you know, because they feel they need to
have all the examples and stuff, which again, I do like, but it's
all the talk afterwards that makes it a little bit different.
But yeah, I mean you could, if you're just going to have two
different lists anyway, then it's OK to break it in two for
me. But again, yeah, it is the exact
same move. Well, it is.
And then there's a whole other section that says reading a
stitch or a person. Or a person.
Like what? Yeah.
So you could then just have it in there, right?
And then open your brain. Open your brain to the world.
Psychic maelstrom. Again, I wish that came up a
little bit more, but it really talks about giving good detail
to the impressions of things that are happening.
There's not really a list of things underneath the open the
brain section. It's just a lot of explanation.
And examples about open your brain to the psychic maelstrom,
There's Help or Interfere, which is really weird and kind of
weirdly explained because it is weird.
But it's when history really comes in and is usable.
And it's interesting that you can, like, help your buddies out
or you can be like, Nah, I'm going to fuck them over, You
know, you can give them negatives.
And I kind of like that. Yeah, this one's interesting,
but it is, it has a little bit of like a retconi aspect to it.
So it says. Helping your interfering your
role history like you said on A10 plus they take +2 help or -2
interference to their role. On a 7:00 and 9:00 it's one or
less. But like the example play
literally says like my PC is trying to shoot your PC, your PC
runs behind a a barrel right? And.
Like the response is, well, I wouldn't let you just do that.
So it's not like you can have a move stop a move because it's
not really opposed rules in it. So what you would do instead is
I go to shoot you. You respond by running behind a
barrel. I respond by rolling
interference to make your run behind the barrel move like act
under fire. Have negative points to it so
that my move then comes back into having a more likelihood to
hit you. So it's it's kind of like that
snowball thing. So you have to like do a thing
to do a thing to do a thing to go back to the first thing to
see how well it works. I don't mind that it sounds like
it's a thing that I wouldn't like.
But I don't mind that because there I think that's a much
better way to do it than like or it is an alternate way to do a
polls rolls that I don't mind to just be like you do a thing, so
I do a thing but. I make it a little harder for
you, so then my thing works a little bit better.
I don't mind that one. And I do like when history
actually comes into play. Mutual interference.
That's what I was basically talking about, lifestyle.
I don't understand why this is a move.
Like at the beginning of a session, spend one or two barter
for your lifestyle. Why is that a move?
Just like, be it like everything.
Everything's a move. Everything.
Everything is working gigs. That's I think need Jingle
during a session is a move and it's just like okay.
Then literally just say you can work gigs.
That's apparently a move. The session in move is a move.
This is what I'm talking about. Get to a point where like moves
don't mean moves don't mean anything.
The word move has lost all definition in my brain.
Like I several times have thought about the session end
move while we're doing this and like and I've I've we've so much
else going through this that I've forgotten about and then we
got into like Oh yeah, so yeah we're the ending the session to
move. That's what I'm saying.
Like, by making everything a move, you make moves
meaningless. Like I just and especially
again. This feeds back into the idea of
like, I feel boxed in by too much structure of the basic
moves. And then the response is always
well, not everything is a move and it's like, but everything in
the fucking book is a goddamn move.
Like the way it's written, you can't do anything without it
being a move, even though like in one tiny sentence it says if
it's not a move, don't do like only only things you do that
trigger moves, trigger moves. And it's just like, well, when
everything's a move, everything is a move.
So the end of the section is important.
So it says choose a character who knows you better than they
used to. If there's more than one, choose
one at your whim. OK, tell that player to add +1
to their history with you on their sheet.
If this brings them to history +4, they reset to history plus
one. And therefore mark experience.
Because don't forget, when you mark 5 experience you get to
improve. If no one knows you better.
Choose a character who doesn't know you as well as they
thought. Or choose any character you
whim. Tell that part to take -1 to
their history with you on their sheet.
If this brings them to history -3, they reset to zero and mark
an experience. So if you know someone really
well or not well at all, you still get the mark experience.
If you forget to do this at the end of the session, do it at the
beginning of the session. That is the end move.
Again, I don't understand why it can't just be like mechanic of
the game, but the mechanic of the game is that everything is a
move. So there you go and there's an
example for that, which is fine. And then that is the list of
basic moves. Hey, and you know, we're halfway
through the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peripheral moves, which are other moves.
These are basic moves that come into play less commonly or
optionally or that might not come into play at all.
Yeah, oh. Harm and healing moves.
But then there's a whole harm and healing section.
Yeah, so yeah, harm and healing. Yeah, you real harm when you
suffer harm. And it's a list of things you
can choose. Yeah, yeah.
And then there's a bunch of examples.
And then after that is barter moves, which is optional because
maybe your world doesn't have bartering because it's too
apocalyptic or whatever, and it's interesting, I guess.
And then there's insight, which you probably won't have by
default, but if you have a Hocus follower that they might grant
it, Yeah. And then you have Augury, which
is another thing that you probably won't have.
The Hocus follower might give it to you.
So again, why aren't all of these moves up into the
character section? And then you can just put the
moves that are specific to Hocus underneath the Hocus section.
Like, I don't know. Actually the first time I read
through this, I was like, we are all these just Hocus, you know,
like. Half of them are, yeah.
Oh wait, then we get to chain. Chain highlighted stats again.
Weird. For like, the fifth time here,
yes. A peripheral move like beginning
of any session move like. I just don't understand this is
the part where it's. What's so funny is that like
because this is here, that means that changing highlighted stats
is a. Move It is because everything is
a move. Don't forget page 163 because
I'm going to reference page 163 later.
Let me write that down. Oh wait, why?
Oh, you'll see. OK, cool.
And that's all the peripheral moves, right?
Yeah. And then we get to Daggle Moves,
which are all. Important and should be not on
page 166. Yeah, so exchanging harm, which
is hurting. Things but this is this is this
is a move, but it's it's it's also, like, literally a core
mechanic of the game, right? Inflicting harm and suffering
harm. This is what I want to see.
Harm. Equal weapons minus armor.
That's a rule. That's a mechanic.
That is a thing that should be important in the game before
page 166. Yeah, you listen.
You inflict harm equal to the harm rating of your weapon,
minus the armor rating of your enemy.
You suffer harm equal to the harm rating of your enemy's
weapon, minus the armor rating of your own armor.
Easy. It's the most actually.
Rules rule that in this whole thing, it's like, right at the
top. It just says, hey, by the way,
it's just harm equals weapon minus armor and you're like, oh
amazing, A. Short brief example for how it
works and then boom, you're good.
Yeah, it's weird and correct me if I'm wrong, but there's not a
straight like attack move, right?
No, not really. Because and this is another
thing, when we get to seize by force, which is the next thing,
there's a lot of explanation where it says like the default
battle move is seize by force. And I'm like, I don't understand
how that's the default. Like I just want to punch you in
the fucking face. But it's always like, well,
you're probably always fighting for something.
So try to seize by force. I'm like I just don't understand
how like. Maybe in the apocalypse world
where like you're really only ever like vying for stuff or
something or like a person or things, maybe that's kind of
like the default. I just don't understand how like
inflict harm isn't like the default move because but it also
says seized by force. And then you get to the
variations, which is assault a secure position, Keep hold of
something you have, fight your way free, defend someone else
from attack. How are those seized by force?
How is? You know what I mean?
Like you fight your way free, seize by force, or you're
seizing your freedom by force. This is one of the ones where
I'm like, this one feels, she warned.
Yeah, I I was just looking at that.
I have broken worlds open at the same time because it's not like
Patrick World's like it is actually very powered by the
apocalypse, like it has moves and everything.
It's still in that very learning fashion.
And they have a default attack move, which is just called Reach
Heaven through violence, which is like, yeah, when you're
attempting to strike to have a foe.
On this is what you do, yeah. What are you trying to?
Yeah. But seized by force.
Under seized by force, you get to pick one of these options and
it is like you inflict harm, or you suffer less harm, or you
take definite and undeniable control, or you impress.
This may or frighten your enemy. Only one of those things,
literally one of those things of the four listed has anything to
do with actually taking control of anything.
Yeah, what a weird thing to call that.
I mean, there's so many fucking moves.
Like, why not just create one more and just be like, yeah, you
know, Takedown Enemy, you know, or whatever.
Or don't call this seize by force.
Call it attacking someone and then aggressive action,
aggressive action and then one of the four things underneath it
could be see something by force. Because only one of like, it's
just, this is what I'm talking about.
Like I do really enjoy this game and it's so frustrating to me
that the book is so unenjoyable to read.
Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty rough, yeah.
Variations. There's APC versus PC again.
And yeah, uh, huh. There's single combat which you
know to do, which is like a duel, you know.
I do like this one. I do like this one.
Yeah. Yeah, you're going to roll plus
hard. Go ahead, Ryan.
No, no. Yeah, go on.
OK, you go roll plus hard. Yeah, you're sorry, you're
exchanging harm. But first roll plus hard.
On 10 plus both. On the 79, choose one.
And on a miss your opponent chooses one against you.
So it's either inflict harm or suffer little harm.
It's it's either you take a harm or give a harm.
But it's interesting because on 10 Plus both happen, which I'm
like, oh OK. Yeah, I I dig that.
Because you can. Like I roll, you roll, I roll,
you roll, and like I can. Like any of those things are
interesting ways to do it. This is like one of my favorite,
like moves in the whole game. It's like so simple and
straightforward and it really makes sense picking one or the
other and having to be such a small list like I'd like.
That to me is the basic like attack move, yes, Yeah, it kind
of way more is actually, you know.
Yeah. Like, I just want to punch you
in the fucking face. Like, I just want to shoot you
because you're pissing me off. Like it's Apocalypse World.
Like, I don't always have to have a reason to do my shit, you
know? Oh, you know, Ryan, that was in
the bad mood before a show started.
But we'll going through this with you has been very
enjoyable. My blood pressure is like 180
right now. Yeah, so some more, some more
combat moves. Yeah.
You have lay down fire, which is kind of like a cover fire
support fire move, which is is cool.
You're going to roll plus hard. You have an Overwatch mood, a
move where you you were standing in Overwatch and you roll plus
cool for that one and then like on 10 plus you choose one.
Yeah, keep an eye out. You're you're looking out for
what's coming. Everything's a move, man.
I mean, there's so many like, oh, hey, I want to look out for
for potential enemies. Oh, well, let's keep that's a
keeping eye out. So.
But they're all over that. Then you have subterfuge moves.
Yeah, you can. You can bait a trap.
You can hunt prey. Escape a hunter.
You can do PC cat versus PC mouse turn, you can turn the
tables on somebody, and then you got Rd. war moves.
Ryan, just in case there weren't enough moves yet.
There's boarding a vehicle. There's out distancing another
vehicle, There's overtaking another vehicle, dealing with
bad terrain, which is a move shouldering another shoulder,
another vehicle. And then there's like V harm,
which is like harm to like a, like the vehicle is like massive
frame and the car's handling. Yeah, and those are all things.
But don't worry, Ryan. I I know you were worried that
we were done with moves, but we're not.
Because next we have character moves and these are all going to
be character specific moves that we're not going to go through
because we just really don't need to.
They're. All listed.
Yeah, they're all, they're all listed on the sheet.
Yes, absolutely. They're all on the play sheet.
They're also all here and that's that's where you're you're on
182 is where it starts, right for that section.
I'm just, I'm just looking real quick.
Yeah. And it ends on 200, so there you
go. 20 more pages explaining the things that are already listed.
Yeah, all right. Harm and healing.
Let's get through this. So this is like the fifth time
you've seen harm and healing. So let's talk about harm and
healings more. How might a character suffer
harm when the role fucking says it does?
Because everything is a role. Like I I don't like that's, but
it's bullet points of of examples.
How much harm. It's always weapon harm.
Like minus your armor, that's listed as one of the actual only
things that's actually corely listed.
And then it goes into another example.
But I listed an example just within the text and that's how
that happens. So it has a list of the type of
harm that you can do from zero to 5 S like grappling and
dragging and stuff like that is 0 harm.
One is like a fist or a punch. Two is a guy with a hammer.
Three is a guy with a shotgun. 4 is a grenade.
Five is like a big explosion because at 5 you're basically
dead. When APC suffers harm things
happen. So getting shot harm equals the
inflicters weapon harm minus the suffers armor If the weapon has
armor piercing, ignore the armor so it really comes down it it
breaks down a lot of this into like extremely easy mechanic of
just it's harm it's it's weapon harm minus armor and then that's
what you get. And then it talks a lot about
like all the different segments of the clock, which I mean we'll
we'll we'll get to more clock stuff at some point.
I think there are hard moves when you suffer harm.
Suffering harm is a move. So this is different.
This is different, right? Then actually like doing harm to
someone from another move. So it's a move that triggers a
move. So if I if we're in single
combat and I do harm to you, we can roll, suffer hard, move.
I actually don't mind this one a little bit because it really
comes down to adding more unpredictability and stuff to
like the harm that's actually suffered to you.
So did you like the list of stuff and like how it can
narratively interact? But like, I feel like the
execution leaves a lot to be desired and I feel like maybe
this, maybe not suffer harm. Like every time.
I don't know. There's something here for sure,
yeah. You don't have to do it every
time, I guess as AGM as an MC. You can do it, but this is the
interesting thing. When you read, it says when you
suffer harm, roll plus harm suffered after armor.
If you're wearing any on A10 plus the MC chooses one, you're
out of the auction. It's worse than it seemed.
You choose two on 7 to 9, which is a different list.
You lose your footing, you lose grip on whatever you're holding.
On a miss, the MC can nevertheless choose something
from 7:00 to 9:00 anyway. If she does, though, it's
instead some of the harm you're suffering.
So take -1 harm. So like, choose a list of stuff
you can do on 7:00 to 9:00, but then you can just do stuff
anyway if you want. Sure.
So it it, it basically just adds like a little bit of a wrinkle
to to what's going on. But you know what I would do
with this is just like tie it into any harm.
Like you don't have to roll again to do it.
Like if you got hit with harm on a roll that was between 7:00 and
9:00, you can just pick two from the seven and nine list.
If you got OK harm, that's a 10 plus.
I like that. Pick from the 10 plus list like.
Just put them together. Why are you rolling a second
time? Yeah, that's that I like a lot
more. Yeah.
It's like, dude, we can eliminate some of these, some of
these roles especially. It's like so many moves lead to
other moves that just lead to other.
Like it's we're just we. Went through the whole
snowballing move section and like the snowball, it's like 10
things down. And I'm like, you could just
eliminate some of those and you could just.
And if it does take that many, that's fine, cool, whatever.
But like, I don't know that that there's ways that this can be
parsed down simpler when life becomes untenable.
Is the section when the character's countdown hits 12
midnight, her life becomes untenable.
So you can choose options and these are on the character
sheet, but like how they come back and that's the player's
choice on what they want to do. So like when you hit basically
you're dying. You can either come back with -1
hard so you lose some stat you can come back with plus one
weird to a Max of three. So because if you basically
close to death, you get weird. Or you can choose a new change
to a new playbook. Right.
Or just die, and then you can just choose to die and just do
something different. So I again, I here's the thing
about this is like, I don't. It says when life becomes
untenable, these things happen. This isn't a move.
Crazy that it's not a move. Maybe it's supposed to be listed
as a move, but this is just an explanation of a mechanic of the
game. Crazy that you can explain the
mechanic of the game without it being sorry Ryan, everything is
a move, so. Yeah right.
Everything is a move. It's just it's crazy.
When an NPC attacks, they inflict harm.
When NPC suffers harm, guess what?
They do harm to them. This is an explanation of the
NPC clock for the countdown clock.
So basically, I don't know if we've missed the PC countdown
clock section earlier, but basically it's split into 123456
segments, right? So but if you actually look at a
real clock, it's from 12:00 to 3:00.
So 1/4 of it is your first segment, 3 to 6 is a segment,
and 6:00 to 9:00 is a segment. So 3/4 of the clock is 1 segment
each. And then from 9:00 to 12:00,
it's broken into 123 segments, right?
And anything prior to 6:00 PM for APC?
So the first two segments basically just heal with time,
like, get enough rest that'll go away.
So it's kind of like just your default 1-2 hit.
That's fine. Anything after six, like from
6:00 to 9:00, requires some type of healing.
And really anything after nine, like, requires healing and
you're kind of fucked. Yeah.
And it oh, yeah, it gets worse with time.
So that's kind of how it works for the PCs, but for NPCS?
Really, they die potentially by the 2nd segment, so from three
to six, and definitely by the 3rd segment from 6:00 to 9:00.
So if they have no armor and you hit them with something that
does 3 harm, they're just dead. But APC could take up like 5
harm and theoretically not really be dead.
I like that once it hits like the 5th segment, they're
basically or even the even the four segment, they're dead.
And you're just fucking up their body and like the 5th segment is
just bodily destruction. So like if you do 6 harm to an
MPC with no, you basically blow their body to bits.
So that's that's MPC. What sex move is that?
That would be probably the Battle Babe sex move.
I think it's just the orgasm to oblivion.
So yeah, and what I just said is explained here a little bit
more, using a gang as a weapon. And the the size of the gang
matters. So it's just the way that using
gang content always matters. Yep, of course, especially in
this game, it's the sex move. So this one's a little bit
different because the way the gang suffers harm is really just
like how many of the gang die and how many are surviving.
So and that's broken down into the one through 5.
Harm does gang all together. It's kind of like a morale
thing. Using a vehicle as a weapon is
listed here, which is fine, and it talks about the vehicles like
clock. This is kind of a little bit of
like. NPC stat block harm kind of
damage, Vehicle harm is listed here.
When a building suffers harm, is listed other kinds of harm.
Psy harm. The symbol right here is Psy in
the Greek alphabet. So this is psychic harm.
When you suffer psychic harm, there's a list of things that
can happen, but a lot of them are very similar to just When
you suffer any kind of harm, you're out of the action.
Like you know you're you lose track of something.
It's pretty much the same. It's just psy harm.
But then we get to things like S harm and D harm.
Hey, do me a favor. Roll hard for D harm.
Like I don't understand the reason for this.
Like's harm means stun, D harm means deprivation.
Just say harm that stuns them, harm that deprives them.
Like D harm air D harm warmth D harm cool is heat stroke, copper
thermia asphyxiation. I just, I, I, I just think that
sound like there's this weird influx of letters 219 pages in
you know and then we get to it is interesting how it really
clicks on suddenly here it's like.
And if this is that important, again, harm and healing should
be way earlier in the book. It's a it's.
It's a Realistically, kind of, again, a core thing is just.
If you've taken harm and if you're alive, you know it's it's
funny how like the arc of my caring about this has really
where where we are in this book. It's like, man, at this point
I'm like, God, I don't, I don't care about these rules at all,
man. And.
What's crazy is we're two hours and 20 minutes in and we haven't
read 80% of the words I know. Yeah, so.
Yeah, healing by an Angel. It talked about the Angel's kit
and everything. They use it to stabilize and
heal someone. At 9:00 or past.
You have to roll plus stock because it's the stock you have
in your kit that you can use to heal people.
And then based on what you roll, you get to choose like one or
two different things. I do think this is really
interesting. So like the list is like they
fight you and you have to narco stab them.
How long will they be out? I like that the pain and drugs
make them Babble the truth to you.
Ask them what secret they spill. This is what I feel like moves
should all be like, right? Like things that are just basic
mechanics just be basic. Mechanics, yeah.
But things that are like moves should be this kind of narrative
thing. But again, a basic mechanic
should just be explained as a basic mechanic.
Like harm to me is just, but you just roll a stat and do fucking
harm. That's a basic mechanic of the
game. It doesn't have to be a move.
A move to me is this exact thing.
Choose a thing like they respond well to treatment.
Recover one stock. They're at your complete mercy.
What do you do to them? It's creating these narrative
things going forward. It's open-ended.
Yeah, it's not just like B happens.
So B happens to like. I mean like.
Again, I didn't make PBTA. This is the game that started
it. I just think it's one of the
worst PBTA I've ever read. If there's no Angel, no healing,
you're shit out of luck. That's what it says.
There's a particular NPC medic. They can do it.
There's an NPC medic, like whatever gear and crap, OK, you
can barter. That's the thing that you can do
if you want to. There's a move for it.
Descriptive tags. I'm not a huge fan of tags.
I think people enjoy them. I again, I feel like it's it.
It provides too much structure. Or I maybe it's just even just
like I don't like the way they're written.
I don't even really like the word tag.
But here's my thing is I like tags and there are two minions.
Yes. Yes.
Oh my God, yes, there's just too many.
Like, yeah, I don't understand how I'm supposed to know.
Like I know we're supposed to use reference sheets, but here's
the thing once again. If I'm playing a game that I
have to stare down at to read a script from to like look to see
the 10 moves that I have with my 6 stats and my 20 tags, when am
I playing the game? It sure seems like everyone
needs their own like GM screen for this, you know?
I want to hold players though my player book is 4 pages long.
I know as I'm saying like it's you could just every single
player character has their own GM screen of just like here's
the stats, here's what I can do here what tags means, you know.
Here's my basic move and here's my character specific.
Where's the Here's my special and peripheral moves.
Yeah, it's just so. Anyway, so the way tags work, I
don't mind this. I feel like this is more
mechanical. Which finally, thank God,
writing A tag is not a move, except that everything is a
move. So basically it says this is the
way the tags work. There's three categories, right?
So in the listings that follow you have plus parentheses tag.
Like valuable, infinite or whatever means you simply.
No, no, no, no, no. Let me get to it.
So first, the plain mechanical second constraints on when the
characters can use them, and 3rd cues recommending something for
you to say about them. So let's just look at an example
and we'll say that so and then we'll come back to some of this
other stuff that just drives me up the goddamn wall.
So for example, if you look at a.
A big knife. No, no.
Let's say a revolver, right? It's to harm.
So harm is listed first, Then you have close, reload and loud.
Those are the three tags. And in the order of the way that
you can understand what those tags mean.
This is something that I think is kind of like you get pretty
quickly. This is one of the ones where
I'm like, OK, I get it. So the first is mechanical.
So close is a mechanical thing. You can only use it when you're
close. The second is reload.
It's a constraint on what the character can do, which means it
requires you to reload it. And the third is the queue,
which recommends something about what you say about it or how it
goes. And it's loud.
So mechanical, the constraint. And the queue pretty much
narratively on how it works. So again you get close reload,
loud. I don't mind that I'm OK with
that. I like that it's got a little
bit of a structure to it. Yeah.
But here's my not favorite part is all of the fucking tags that
go with it. Like range tags in armor plus in
armor in minus armor plus in armor plus minus plus in choice.
Alive AP 80 applied area, auto fire braced, close, close, far
in placed far hand. High tech, implanted, infinite
intimate. Loud, messy, Refill, reload,
Remote Sr. slow tag, valuable, worn, implanted.
It's 3 pages of tags and I know they're not always going to be
applicable, but like I just feel like a lot of that can just be
constrained down and then just given a little bit of context to
separate them a little bit. I even think like getting rid of
like a list of tags and making a more open-ended things like hey
each weapon's going to have these tags like a like like you
the in the order you said. You're like 4 examples of each
where we normally would put with these weapons, but your table
can decide like its own tags for its own weapon and what that
means right? Like.
Yeah, but here's the other thing too, right?
So this whole book is, again, contextual examples.
But when you actually need examples, it's not explained at
all. Like at all.
So for example, there are like 50 fucking tags we just went
over, right? And then you get to a section of
weapons and armor that talks about common firearms and other
common weapons, and there's an entirety of maybe like.
Five of those fifty tags, There's no explanation of like a
more complex tag, you know what I mean?
There's not like anything that talks to me about there's like
one that uses infinite, but there's nothing that's like,
give me something that's like reload, remote slow.
You know, there's none of like, well, reload, yeah, but you know
what I mean? Like it basically everything
comes out to harm a distance. And if it's loud or quiet, and
that's pretty much it. Armor.
It exists. Fashion Armor.
It gives you one or. Two, armor is more serious, and
three, armor is basically a fucking bomb suit.
That's it. There you go.
That's armor. And guess what?
It reduces. It reduces incoming damage.
There you go. It gives you a whole way to do
custom firearms and how to build them.
Which, guess what, this is all on the playbook sheets.
I don't understand. That's another thing that's on
the playbook sheet, like for every character is like how to
set, how to build a custom firearm.
It seems like a weird optional thing.
There's specialty gear. Which is like kits.
And so then, guess what we do for all the specialty gear is
Yep, that's right. We list them for every
individual character instead of just being in a character
section. Not, not.
And not everyone has one, right? You got Angel gear, brainer
gear, Lux gear, bikes, cars, things we've gone over a bunch
of times already. Battle vehicles, I can tell you
right now, I think this game is getting a high score.
A whole section on prosthetics here.
Different than the prosthetic section we went over earlier,
but exactly the same it literally.
I'm pretty sure they just copy pasted it, Workspaces, whatever.
I'm not even worried about it. Gangs.
Descriptive tags for gangs and how they work.
That's not in the gang section. Earlier when we talked about
gangs, oh, that's not in the gang section.
Earlier that's. So weird, using gang as a
weapon. I don't know because it's under
a healing and harm section earlier.
But we're not. We're talking about gang as a
gang completely. This is what I'm talking about.
There is no thing where I can go to and say, OK, how do gangs
work? Go to the gang section.
I have to go to four or five different sections to get the
contextual understanding of the entirety of how gangs work.
This is what I'm talking about. Like it just it makes my brain
hurt so bad. Creating a gang is a threat.
Maybe in the threat section when we talked about gangs, it's in
there. It's not.
Surplus and one I don't know. Followers, holdings and
establishments. They exist.
Hard holders holding their wealth and all the things that
can come from that. Cool.
It's down here in gear and crap, which is fine.
It can also be in the hard holders section.
This one is like 6-7, eight fucking pages long for
establishing that and all the things you can get from it.
That's fine. Whatever.
Improvement. Last really important part of
the game. Prescriptive and descriptive,
right? So.
Prescriptive. It changes the character's sheet
meaning. It changes the character's
fictional circumstances and capabilities, right?
That's the game's experience and improvement rules, right?
Descriptive. When the character's fictional
circumstances or capabilities change naturally within the
character's fix in the world, the player can and should change
your character sheet to match. I love this section.
This is a great fucking section. This is really interesting.
I really enjoy it. The examples here are actually
really good. So, for example, it says Bran
bolts a machine gun to his Jeep. I tell us players at Stats, you
actually have changed the game and changed mechanically and
narratively, the game, the the holding takes in refugees, and
some of them naturally gravitate to Keeler's gang, doubling in
size. I tell Keeler's player to change
the game from small to medium, narrative and mechanical,
prescriptive and descriptive. I like that it's a mechanic.
It's not a move. Fair's fair.
Fair's fair, though. Keeler hits her.
Fuck this shit. Roll with a 7 to 9 and I tell
her she can ditch out. But she'll have to leave her new
bike behind. She's easy come, easy go.
I, I again, I really like that. Like there's goods and bads with
like the decision that you make and with your improvement and
things like that, so that you can change a lot of the things
that are affecting your players, your hard hold or if you decide
to just leave your hold, that's a huge thing, right?
Experience. So a player marks experience
when she rolls a highlighted stat.
Her history when someone resets or a move tells her to, which
we've talked about numerous times already.
I'm OK with it being here, but this is the only place it should
be. Mm hmm, not going over that
changing highlighted stats. Remember when I talked to you
about what was that page number? 160 something. 163 OK, you see
this section changing a highlighted stats at the
beginning of any session it starts.
The last line is Gee, what a pal.
All right. Let's go to page 163.
Is it the exact same thing? At the beginning of any session.
Gee, what a pal. It's literally copy pasted 3/4
of a page from one section to another section.
That's that's actually crazy. Like at least with the other
stuff that's duplicated, you're like, OK, I it's slightly
different, I guess that. I mean, that's not good, but
it's the same. It's.
Explained in a different way at least.
Or addresses it slightly, but you don't need to address it
four times. But it's literally just copy
paste it 3/4 of a page from one section to another section.
Weird dude. What?
Just say You can find it here on page 163.
If you're talking about that, just say you can find it here.
There's already so many indexes and hyperlinks, inline
hyperlinks to other sections and things like that.
Why have the literally the same words filling 3/4 of a page on
two separate pages? Like that is the that is the
epitome of what drives me nuts about this book.
Character improvement. You fill 5 circles, you improve,
the improvements are listed on on each player's character
sheet, you get more stuff that happens.
Retiring a character is fun and interesting though.
I do really like this whole section.
So basically retiring a character means put them in
safety for multiple reasons, as in like they can still remain an
NPC in the world, and basically. Like if you choose if you get to
1 where you can retire character, they are in safety,
which means that they're not just going to be killed off for
a story beat by the by the MC, and the MC is not going to
suddenly turn them evil or do some like random shit with them
just because it's fun or interesting like the character
is safe. You can retire the character
safely, knowing that this person you've invested all this time
and effort into is going to live in the world.
With what they were doing. And that's fine.
I like that reassurance within the system to just be like, OK,
you retired the character, suddenly it's mine.
So I'm just going to murder him. No, because I would have just
kept them and I could change the consequences of it.
So if you really get to the point where you're tired of
character, they can just live in the world.
They can even NBC you go back to and you're just, they're just
going to be left alone. And I like also just throwing
this out there. If you're playing a game and
you're in in a different game and you want to retire a
character and you're game master, is like, yeah, I fucking
killed them or now they're the bad guy.
Without talking to you about it, your game master's a Dick.
Yeah, play a different game Master.
That guy's an asshole. The best way to deal with
problem players and and GMs you don't like is don't play with
them anymore. I hate.
I mean hey, that's been my method, so.
Here's an essay on how to deal with problem players Don't.
End of essay, all right. Playing two characters?
I don't mind this. Basically that's one of the
options that you can do when you when you hit your Max, you can
play AS2. And says why not MCS play with
like 30. If the player character wants
two or three or four or five go for it.
And they they choose new or they choose new histories, they do
all of that. You can change your character
type, which is another thing I really like.
So basically, for example, the player keeps her old character
book for reference and transfers her character into the new
playbook. So you keep everything intrinsic
to yourself, which is your stats, your moves, everything,
your improvements, all the things you leave behind.
Everything belong to your old life.
So, for example, if a hard holder becomes a driver, she
leaves. Everything that has to do,
they're holding behind. And then you get everything
belonging to your new life. So if you do become a driver,
you get a car. So I I really, really love that.
Where you just be like, OK, I've improved to the point, but I
want to do something totally different.
I'm going to suddenly become an Angel.
So I've learned how to become a medic.
I leave my Maestro D sex club behind and I become an Angel
because I want to go help people.
I want to heal all the syphilis that I spread.
You know that that. To that.
I really like that as a mechanic.
I like that advancing moves. It's a thing that can be done.
Yeah, sticks of the moves that you do.
This is interesting. It's interesting.
I don't know how I feel about this one.
Of all the things that I'd like and dislike, I don't know how I
feel about this one. One of the things you can do is
advance three moves as a move when you hit your Max
improvement right, or when you get to the the the five, or
whatever. There's six total you can do, so
you can do that move twice. You can choose three, then can
choose the other three. So six out of the 10 can be
advanced, and basically what that means is 12 plus.
Basically you can create on 12 plus now, so it's the same
thing. So for example, doing something
on a fire works all the same way it did but now on a 12 plus.
You transcend the danger, the pressure, the possibility of
harm. You do what you set out to do,
and the MC will offer you a better outcome, true beauty or a
moment of grace. So basically, once you reach Max
improvement, you can choose a move where you make you give
crits to three moves, and then you can choose that again to
give crits to three other moves, for a total of 6 of the 10 moves
you can now crit on. And it basically makes
everything great and golden for you.
That's interesting. I like that.
I do like that. You know what thing What I like
about this section more than anything is it's all mechanics,
yeah. Explained as if they are
mechanics. Notice how concise these are.
Bolds italic explanations. A quick example and then moving
on to the next thing. This is one of my favorite
sections in the game is the improvement section because it
really just tells me what I need to do and how to do it.
And advanced fuckery. You know what?
I don't even, I don't even care. It's just it's just, it's just,
it's just there's just other moves.
It's just random other moves. It's just a bunch of random
other moves. That's that's what it comes down
to. There's different different
character types that you can make.
There's love letters that can be read.
These are all just like random ass moves.
That's what it comes down to. Powered by the apocalypse.
There's all section here of other people's moves for others
games brought into this. So Ben Ray used Apocalypse World
in a zombie game. So here's a move that they used.
So these are examples of non apocalypse world moves for moves
and I I like so much of these better than moves in a game
because most of them are special moves or or powers or things
like that versus the basic moves of the game.
And I've said this over and over again.
I hate the basic moves. I like special moves or powers
or things like that. A good example of 1 is literally
like There's one that's literally like cast a spell,
right Magic use cast a spell. Tony Dowler, right.
Apocalypse World based dungeon crawler magic user cast a spell,
User intelligence. Arcane magic comes from the use
of formula ritual or the magic user's own life force.
Roll on a 7 to 9, choose one. On A10 choose two.
The spell is not forgotten. The spell is a powerful effect,
so you maximize your dice. The spell has a large effect, so
W range, duration, or number affected, and the spell does not
misfire. Those are your options.
That is using it as a power, as something that directly affects
the situation that you're currently in with with clear
narrative like and input and then things outside of of the
things. Again.
It's not just like I want to do like a basic thing that would
run run behind a wall or whatever, so I have to have all
of these things. It's just.
So many of these, in my opinion, are used better in the game that
they're talking about. It talks about the moves
architecture. So we're 281 pages in and it is
now telling us how a move is put together.
OK, you. See why I'm frustrated people
here? Here's a quick look at the
structure of Apocalypse World move.
I don't understand why after basic moves it doesn't go
directly into moves. And this isn't the first part of
the move section where it tells you the structure of how the
mechanic of how a move actually works and how they're built.
It says you do stuff and then you do some other stuff.
I mean the the the all moves take the form of win, blank then
blank. Why is that not one of the very
first things written in the entire book?
The whole thing, everything is a move.
So let me tell you how moves work on one of the last pages of
the game. Like so for example, when the
character acts, then roll right, when circumstances dictate
right, then activate something's tag.
This would have been really helpful forever ago.
And this is under the advanced section, Advanced of all
sections. Why is this under the MC
section? I know that's what I was
thinking. Like why would it be here and
not? I mean, it was like so much of
this book. I'm like, why isn't this in the
MC section? Also, why isn't the MC section
in the back of the book right before?
Yeah, anyway. Ludiography.
I like this. This is a great thing that that
that Vincent Baker does. I think with a lot of their
stuff. It really talks about like
everything involved with the situation, the play testers.
Again, if you notice, Adam Coble is like the first one on here.
He literally is one of the dudes that wrote freaking Dungel
World, which is one of the first ones.
John Harper is listed in here right there.
So like a lot of the people that originally came up with like the
first batch of PBT as after this were involved in this to start
with. Game Influences.
There's AB and I do really like where it specifically says, like
history is based on The Mountain Witch by Timothy Kleiner, Stakes
is based on Trobe from Ron Edwards.
I really, really like that. Because, you know, what that
makes me want to do is go read all of these games.
Like I want to go read Primetime Adventures and Shadows Yesterday
and Sorcerer, Sorcerer, Soul Extreme St.
Luge. Listen.
The character sex moves were inspired by sex and sorcery.
Yep, I want to go read. I want to go read some sexy, so
sexy other stuff. So I really do like that.
Media influences like, etcetera, etcetera.
They're literally sex Ed things to go read.
Books. Changing bodies, Changing lives.
Ruth Bell, 1998. That's interesting.
There's the countdown clock, which basically says like.
You know the the it's in the 80s.
We all knew about the countdown clock.
We all know about that gasoline. That's the section I was talking
about all of that. And that's the end that oh the
indexes. So I I like this.
This is a great this is great in in PDF form.
It's not going to be super helpful in I guess in book form
except if you're flipping and flipping and flipping.
But like every single move that's listed here, even
character moves and everything is indexed and hyperlinked.
So thank goodness there's at least that in the PDF.
Thank goodness there's that. There's character moves by stat
are listed by stat and then hyperlinked I.
That's great. That's very necessary.
Yeah. The no stat character moves
listed and hyperlinked, which I really like the topical index,
which is basically just a repeat of the table of contents.
But it's all listed specifically in hyperlinked, which is really,
really great. The one thing that again I was
hoping for and didn't see when I got to the end of this, because
now we're just set thin the end. It's just like a two page
breakdown of just like how the game works, no?
Like at no point do you or is there any any breakdown of like
this is what A roll does. If you hold, this is a hold.
If you go forward, this is go forward.
If you oh wait, you never touch backs on touch back on that
except that one little section where it's in the middle of
something else. If you get harm, then this is
how harm works. If you get healing, this is how
healing works. You could do all of that in
maybe a two page spread. It's just a breakdown of the
core. This is a run through for the
players on how it works, but it's not here, it's not here and
that's it. So we're going to get into the
review scores, so. 5 metrics for those who don't know.
We give 10 points, up to 10 points for each.
Art and layout is the art and the layout.
Usability is how usable the book is.
Rule set is the rule set and and if we like it and if it's you
know whatever originality is, how original it is.
Value is bang for your buck and total score of up to 50.
Art and layout. There is no art.
There's no art.
The cover is great. There's maybe like five other
pieces. So really and the pieces are
fine. They're basic, it's whatever,
but it's fine. I think.
I think much more art and much less words would have made this
much better book. The layout is fine.
I mean, it's readable the whole way through.
I think the the lack of that's that's in usability or whatever.
So just visually the layout is adequate at best.
The art is adequate at best. I don't really have anything
good or bad to say about it, so I think this is a great example
of the five. It's a perfect example.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
Again, I have nothing good or bad to say about it, so it's
bang average score of A5 usability.
OK, here's here's where my brain breaks.
Yeah, this is a hard one. Like so you go you want to go
first. Oh yeah, it doesn't matter.
We're probably hyperlinked to Hell, there's an index that's
incredibly usable. There are bookmarks everywhere,
but there is if you want to look up a rule.
It's probably in three or four different areas, and each one
gives different context to that. Rule.
Yep. Yep.
I mean, and it is listed in the real book.
So you can flip back and forth the back and forth and the back
and forth if you want. But again, yeah, when you go to
the indexes and you actually look up, like if you look up
harm, poor a hempley. Actually, let's just go back and
this will give a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
If you go to page three O 4 and you look at harm three O 4 and
you look at harm OK. I'm all the way in the
beginning. OK, so for example, if you want
to know all about harm, right, you look at page 12 through 13,
page 150 through 60, page 166 to 179, and page 2O2 through 2/19.
It's interesting in putting together this index that they
that they didn't go, huh? Hey, do you think that that's
weird, that it's so many different?
Yes, look at highlighted stats. Highlighting stats is such a
basic it's such an easy mechan you literally just like someone
else picks one for you, MC picks one for you.
So why is it on page 12/13/77 through 78163, two 59 and 260
and then underneath it says changing highlighted stats 163
and 260? Those are the 2 pages that are
literally exactly the same, just like copy pasted.
OK. So it's it's.
It's frustrating in that like you just said, like the tools to
navigate the book aspect of usability for the PDF.
Amazing. Like like all everything.
You need one step below Torika and the fact that like just
about everything in there. Every link, every reference to
another page. Every everything is linked.
Indexes. Navigation like crazy.
Actually reading the book and understanding everything is in
the order in which the book is set up as well.
Makes no sense. I'm going to say that this is
for me is A5. Dude, you're being nice.
I'm being very nice. I'm.
I'm OK with this being a four dude, OK?
I'm OK with this being a four as well.
I think this. I think it's hard because the
usability tools that we usually like really harp on are there.
But the book itself is just a mess.
And I mean, honestly, me is a four really.
Because also, if you go look for that rule, it's a wall of like,
just conversational text. I'm just like, what the fuck are
we doing, man? That's what I'm saying.
And. And again, in order to get all
the context you need for how the rule works, you have to check on
three different pages, like on 3 different sections.
I had that whole discussion with somebody you know.
I thought about this one in my head probably more than any of
the rest of them, where I'm just like the tools to navigate this
book are so good in the people specifically.
But actually using the book breaks my brain.
Like the rules of this book are maybe 4 pages realistically
broken down into just the core mechanics of it.
And this is a 304 page book. It's it's just like I I I first
personally was like a 5 sounds good for this but my negative
feelings so override my positive feelings for this.
That I just. I just can't give it a positive
score. I think like it hurts.
I think, I think that's I think that is valid rule set.
Now, rule set, and this is the actual rules of the game.
Not like all of like I in my mind, I'm cutting off all the
conversational text entirely. I'm literally just looking at
the core mechanics of the rules and seeing how I feel.
I'm more positive than negative on the rules.
Again, 2D6 mixed success is my favorite rule set.
My favorite way to play games is based on would not exist without
this book. You know what I mean?
Like that. It has to come into it.
I think the system at the time in 2010, I think if we read this
in 2010 without reading any of the PDS we read before would
blow our goddamn mind. And I honestly hungover, I
wouldn't even be able to understand it so.
But you know what I mean? Like in the context of this, but
like, I can understand why it won awards.
Because when I when I I did go back and look at like in games
that were out at the time, things that were going on.
I read a lot of blogs about like, what it is in response to.
Again, I've talked to Aaron Aaron King again, Buy all their
stuff. About the context of situations
that were going on at the time, like moves, and I've read a
bunch of Aaron's stuff about like the the Not Just Patrick
World, there's another book that's like all moves.
So I think not the time when it came out this was fucking ground
breaking. And it's it's hard to kind of
parse that from what we know because so many things that
exist in the way that we play games now exist because of this.
So the time it blew shit away. I think that so I.
Like, I think I love a lot of it again, and I'll say this over
and over again. I don't like the basic moves.
I think that not everything has to be a move.
Everything is a move. That's my that is the biggest
issue. Listen, dice mechanic, great.
The way stats work also pretty good.
Good. Like.
Yeah, too many moves. Too fine?
Yeah. Not everything has got to move.
Things are just some. Some things are just mechanic.
Why is session into move And again also there's just blurred
lines with the moves as well like I like they're.
I don't know, I'm very unsure about some of them and where
they crossover. I think that this is a is.
What do you think of this one? Like I said, it's hard like I
do. I There are parts of it that I
think are fucking genius and I love.
And there are parts of it that just break my fucking little
brain in ways that I don't enjoy.
It's just it's it's hard. This is a really good point.
It is. It is obviously above average
purely for the innovation of it, but not that far above it
because I think it's just too bogged down with too many moves
and too many tags and too much and you know.
Because this is the problem that I have with the system in
general, right is I have. Played and read a shit load of
PBTA S and I'll say this again. This is my least favorite PBTA
I've ever read and it is literally the progenitor of the
entire system. How can I read a game based on
this game that is better than this game and does the things
this game wants to do in a better way?
Or I don't even want to say better because we have to then
look at like contextually like what the creator meant when they
were creating the game Again, they didn't.
They didn't go out to write a system in Apocalypse World, just
the systems that have come since then I think are.
People have explained them especially in a better way, like
Aaron King explaining how BBTA works in Patrick World explains.
I know how to play this game better by reading a different
game. I actually definitely also know
how to play it better because of Patrick worlds like.
Babes in the Woods Too, from Broken World.
It's the one that I I've played previously.
I ran a group through it before. I know how to play that one
better after going to. Patch Monster Monster of the
Week is another great one. It it is all of this this is big
with better with the rules explained better so but so this
is rule set which definitely comes into how the rules are
told to you. But at the core of itself.
I mean, I I have to very I honestly have to at least give
this A7. OK, with the seven for this one.
Yeah. Because again, it is a
progenitor of everything. And even if I don't like the way
the rules are communicated to me, I still really like the most
of the rules. Yeah, originality, I mean this
has, I mean like mechanically changed, yeah.
Like post, PBTA is the thing. Like there is before PBTA and
there's after PBTA in in the context of gaming like it, it
has to have an insanely high score because it innovative.
The way we play pretty much every single game, yeah, it
really did. At least some aspect of it.
Tags moves like it just there's the tag moves.
You know, tag moves. Yeah, the sex.
You know, sex moves it do sex. It wasn't for this game we
wouldn't have sex in. Games.
Yeah, you know, But yeah, so like it, it's got to be really
high score because it changed. I mean, it won awards for its
innovation, you know what I mean?
Like it. It innovative.
Every I don't TDRBGS now would be entirely every single one
written would be entirely different.
Because I'll tell you right now, even if you've never read a PBTA
game, guess what? You probably have.
And A and a game you've read has has the creator has read a PBTA
game. So from the original, it has to
be if you're not like, even if you're not playing a PBTA game,
they've your career has probably read Apocalypse World or another
PBTA game and been inspired by that to create some kind of
partial success, you know? Yeah, So, I mean, it's got to be
really. It's got to be.
I mean, it really does have to be a high score.
You know what I mean? Like it does.
Yeah. Like, I'm talking like probably
like a nine dude. Like, if you really think
historically, contextually, Yeah, I think contextually,
yeah, give it a yeah, throw the nine, you know, at least get a
lot of two high scores there. And value in value.
Yeah, so value it is. Go ahead.
No, go for it. Yeah, the book's 40 bucks for
print, right? And that's from what's the
website link to it? Where did you find it?
I found it from Apocalypse World's website and then it
links you to Heart of the Deer in a Corn.
Yes, great website by the way. Definitely check out Heart of
the Unicorn. It's where I also bought the The
Belonging Between Belonging game that we'll read the original 1.
Great, great website. Definitely check out Heart of
the Unicorn. There a lot of stuff on this
website that's pretty good stuff that I have not.
Really good shop a lot of other places, yeah, And then you can
get the PDF on Itch and drive through for like 20 bucks.
Yeah, plus a lot of the the when you get the PDF two you get more
than just this you get. And that's great for players
especially. There's all of the let me look
at my Dropbox for for everything that I got when it comes to this
because you also get the reference book, which is really
just a a reference for like all of the characters.
So it's all of the character sheets, just that whole
basically character section. Pulled out and then the list of
the character moves, the threat map basically, honestly, what we
should have just read pulled into its own thing.
And then there is also the playbooks themselves, the
extended playbooks broken down so you get more, so the face,
you get more characters. It's like 6 or seven more
characters. So on top of what you get, you
get more than just the PDF with it.
You get like a a player, book, book and then I would say that
it's it's above average for value for me.
I'm giving it like a really good solid 7.
Yeah, 7 works for me. So that's where we're at.
So did not love this one. Oh, I had an amazing time going
through it with you, so. So 32 that is what we have for
Apocalypse World. Just to sum up, I mean the
faults realistically is just, I just I cannot stand the way this
is written. Like I think it's it's an issue
of like age right? Like I I feel like tabletop game
writing has been developed a lot in the past few years.
I mean especially especially since 2020 with this massive
push where like every like not everyone but a lot of people are
putting out their own indie games because everyone was stuck
at home. And we're all doing this online
and so the writing is really dialed in, the dev editing is
really dialed in. Also people have dev editors and
editors, but I think a lot of the issues are of of the time
period was made. Yeah, I think the second biggest
issue, and I probably think it's the very first biggest issue is
that from what I can tell, there is no editor.
Yeah. And got it needed one.
It needed one so bad. It needed one so bad it needed
someone to just be like, OK, you've said that five times
already. Let's condense that down.
Let's rearrange the chapters, because this book would be fine,
but I would just chop out like like 4050% of the words and I
would completely rearrange the sections, right?
And that would make this that would jump the score up like
fucking like 6-7, eight. But the the the usability would
go through the roof. Right.
And then as far as art and layout, whatever, it's wordy if
you want to keep the same page count.
I obviously we want more art in a in a book because when you
just have walls of text and walls, at least it's not 2
columns, but there's also no bolds.
It's just difficult to read. It's difficult to parse.
It's it's rough. And that is Apocalypse World.
Let's pick the next great game that inspired 10 of the games
that we can fucking hate when we're done reading it.
I don't know what the next one is, but let's see.
Yeah, maybe. Or maybe we won't do that for a
while because it sounds awful. Yeah, so.
But our next episode next week. What we doing next week, Ryan?
I have no fucking clue. I mean, you can play last movie.
My blood pressure is so high, my brain's not working.
So are we talking about the thing we're doing on the 15th?
Fuck, yeah, OK. What were you on 15th, Ryan?
Well, what are we? What are we doing?
Is today the Sunday before the 15th?
Yeah. Oh, OK Well, then we're going to
have Max Moon on once. Once again, they are in the
midst of the combined. And volume three of the Abyss of
Hallucinations. So they are going to come on and
they're going to run an adventure from Abyss of
Hallucinations For us here on the show Wednesday the 15th.
Super, super, super excited for that.
Max is an amazing person, an amazing creator.
Abyss of Hallucinations is something you should back
immediately. We have personally got to play
with Max giving us before, but it was off stream and it was
super cool. It was.
It was a Cyborg adventure. We just did that for fun.
Which is would be nice to do sometimes, but Max is going to
come on, we're actually going to stream it.
We're going to talk about Abyss of Hallucinations realistically
go by that, go back that. It's really, really fantastic.
And I think after that is the 19th.
Yep. And we're going to be doing
Planet Fist with Junkie Games. Jess Levine, really excited to
go over that. Talk about that a little bit
today on the Kickstarter episode, which will drop
tomorrow, which means it'll be before this one.
Really excited for that. It's like if Fist was a
narrative tactical war game that uses 2D6 plus stat.
So really excited for that. It'll be a nice.
Yeah, it'll be a nice version of what I what I like about games
are based on PBTA. So those are the things we got
coming up, a lot of stuff coming up between now and the end of
the month and the end of the year.
We are going to be doing a year interview again this year, so
we'll get to that. But we're going to stack a lot
of stuff in the next couple of weeks, probably be done by the
2nd week of December and then just get prepped for for the end
of that. So that's it.
That's our episode. Find out our links at our link
tree slash the weekly scroll. We'll put links to the meal
training for Meg Baker at the bottom and links to all this
stuff and. That's all I got.
That's all I have as well. All right, we will talk to you
later. Have fun in in your apocalypse
worlds, people. Sex movies.