2011-10-03 Apocalypse World

The End… Today we played our second session of Apocalypse World. I think I like it. There were many things about the game I suspected I would not like:

The End…

Apocalypse World

The rigid *character creation* allows you to pick a very specific kind of character. In terms of D&D, you’d pick a class, a typical attribute distribution, a skill package, a name (from a list!)—it’s really very rigid. In the end, however, I enjoyed it. I guess a rigid system is very similar to a very simple system (like Labyrinth Lord).
The *obscure attributes* like Hot, Hard, Weird and the rest of them are often tricky to picture. Eventually it all works out because the character sheet will list the “moves” you can do with the respective attribute.
The *rigid list of moves* players are allowed to choose from seemed very artificial. I feared it would play like D&D for Dummies. In the end, however, it feels quite flexible. On the contrary, by listing common actions and the required skill test, it’s actually easier to pick a move and continue playing.
I *don’t like the post apocalyptic genre*. I don’t remember seeing any movies in this genre. I don’t remember playing either Fallout or Wasteland.

Labyrinth Lord

I liked the *barter* system and the way *successes* are described. Essentially you can have partial successes and full successes for every “move”—and many of the move descriptions also have a list of four or more items with a partial success meaning “pick one” and a full success meaning “pick three” from the list. That’s awesome.

I think our Indie game night will play Apocalypse World for another one or two sessions before switching to something new. I’m not sure I’d want to play it again, but I’m interested in playing Dungeon World, now. 🙂

Dungeon World

#RPG #Indie #Powered by the Apocalypse

Comments

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The moves in AW say: “Here’s the fun”. And IMO they deliver pretty well so far. After peeking into Dungeon World I’m not sure that its moves are as dense packed with fun. In fact I am a little skeptical that DW’s one-to-one translation of D&D is a good idea.

I would like to play another two or so sessions of AW where I will try to let the game shine more in some aspects I neglected until now. The game text is full of examples and descriptions of how it should be about the PC’s interacting with the post apocalyptic world. But it lacks concrete tools to get this interaction going if the players do not set their PCs up like that. I am resolved to use aggressive measures to get the “interaction” to the PCs if necessary... I hope it works.

– lior 2011-10-07 11:21 UTC

lior