bluegargantua (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bluegargantua) wrote2014-09-30 10:01 pm
bluegargantua) wrote2014-09-30 10:01 pm
Entry tags:
Freedom's Ring -- Session 1
Hi,
So our gaming group has switched to a new game. This time we’re doing Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker and I’m running it. We just went through our first session and here’s the write-up. Unlike last game, I’m not going to do this in character, I’m just going to give an overview of what’s going on.
Setting: So imagine the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A strip of sand two miles wide stretches up and down the coast in both directions. The punishing storms of the apocalypse have soured the coast down to this flat waste. Further inland, nature makes it’s stand in a dense jungle forest. Out at sea pirates roam from their base looking to raid and enslave. To the West lies the ruins of a city. At night mysterious lights appear even though no one lives there.
All along this flat waste is a reef of wrecked ships. Cargo ships, tankers, river barges, tugs, pleasure yachts, port and dock buildings and gear all smashed up into a rusting heap. Rich pickings of salvage, but exposed to the elements and pirates and lacking in food and water.
Near one edge of this salvage reef, nearest to the city, there’s a small fortress. Before the apocalypse, it was a prison complex. When the first apocalypse storms hit, they drove a cargo ship right through the walls and into the central prison structure. The prisoners were free but there was nowhere to go. The ship turned out to be carrying grain. There was food and, more importantly, a chance to grow more. The top decks of the cargo ship were turned into makeshift gardens. Over time, their agricultural skills grew and the prison attracted people who joined with the prisoners or wound up in the shanty town that spread out around it.
These days, the prison complex as a whole is called Freedom, the central building impaled by the ship is called the Cage, the ship itself is called Plenty and the community surrounding Freedom is called Prosperity. The rulers of Freedom collect tribute from Prosperity in exchange for food and general protection from the pirates. Freedom’s rulers, however, must pay tribute to the Krewe -- beings (not people, certainly not people) who come from out of the City to demand some weird tribute or to replace the Warden.
When a new Warden is required, the Krewe arrive. The old Warden (if alive) will return with them to the City. Five citizens of Freedom who hope to become Warden step forward and take a slice of cake offered by the Krewe. Each slice has a token in it. The person who gets the slice with the baby token is the new Warden of Freedom. The others have different fates.
The Characters:
Warden: Warden is the title and the name of the man who rules Freedom. The current Warden wears the traditional uniform -- an orange jumpsuit, bedecked in beads and flashy jewelry, carrying a swagger stick and wearing a fancy hat. From his throne (the electric chair in the old execution chamber), he exercises his largess, giving free reign to the people of Prosperity as long as they don’t threaten his rule.
Before he was the Warden, he was Chako, a member of T-Bone’s biker gang that acts as security in Prosperity. When the Krewe came both he and his father took a slice of cake. Chako became Warden, his father died gruesomely in the salvage reef.
Ponch: Ponch is the Chief of Security, his riding leathers glossy and authoritative, his eyes hidden behind mirrored shades. His gang rides around Prosperity on their dune buggies looking out for serious trouble. When he was younger, he and Chako ran together in the gang. Ponch was looking to take out T-Bone the leader, but Chako talked him out of it -- the gang backed T-Bone not Ponch. The time wasn’t right. Eventually the time was right and Ponch took over. When Chako became the Warden, he had a solid right-hand man off the bat.
Skel: A bone-white, gaunt woman hidden medical scrubs and a mask, Skel is the Chief of Intelligence. She mostly gathers that intelligence by probing the minds of those brought before her. Skel is a brainer, a psychic freak who take meticulous notes on the reactions of those who come into her presence. She came from out of the forest to escape something there a few years ago. The Warden was suspicious of her, he thought she may have been responsible for his father’s death, but that issue has been laid to rest and now she serves as the Warden’s most feared tool of control.
Tai: Just a young girl out of Prosperity, the salvage reef always called to her. The rusted, ancient equipment whispered softly of function and purpose and utility. She could see them whole, knew just how to restore them. She set up a small workshop and trudged out into the salvage reef to see what she could find or fix.
The Warden heard of her unique talents and invited her into Freedom as Chief Engineer. Now she works aboard the Engine Room of Plenty provided with room and tools and resources to produce much needed technical gear for the holding. Better able to cope with machines than people, Tai finds her surroundings to her liking.
Session 1:
Early Morning:
The Warden wakes up in his quarters high atop Plenty and looks out over his holding and the surroundings. He has a good breakfast and heads down for the daily stand-up meeting with his ring.
Ponch stumbles out of bed and picks up the overnight report from Lance, his second-in-command and night-shift chief. Grabbing some very strong Chicory tea he heads off for the stand up.
Skel awakens in her lab/home/infirmary and dismisses last night’s experiment, a farmer named Krin who’s dismayed about returning home to his wife. Skel makes a few notes and heads off to the stand up.
Tai is working on some small projects when the intercom speaker in her workshop -- a device she knows isn’t hooked up to anything -- starts playing faint, static-y strains of jazz music. She dismantles the speaker and it finally stops. Unsure of what that all means, she heads off to stand up.
Stand up:
Joining the ring at stand up, is Monk. Monk is the Warden’s majordomo working in Prosperity. The Warden has an extreme hands-off policy regarding Prosperity. So long as people aren’t coming after Freedom or any of his people, the Warden doesn’t care. To handle matters of justice in Prosperity, most people turn to Monk as a magistrate to settle the issue. If they don’t like that, they can always take their case before Skel who will brain probe both sides in a case and make a report to the Warden for him to make a ruling. Unless you’ve got the money to go straight to the Warden, most people deal with Monk.
Monk’s here because Vega, a wealthy industrialist in Prosperity who makes munitions, is reporting that one of her salvage gangs have gone missing. She’s demanding some help from Freedom and is petitioning the Warden, through Monk, to provide guards for her salvage crews. The Warden decides to have Ponch go pick up Vega and bring her in for a chat.
Ponch reads through Lance’s night-shift report and only then discovers that Skip died early this morning. Skip is in charge of Freedom’s water filtration plant. Crews haul water to a former cargo barge that’s been converted to distill the water and purify it. The water is later distributed out. Freedom also depends on large rain-catchers that fill up during major storms. But there haven’t been any storms in a while (which is a bit of a blessing really) and Freedom is dependent on the water plant. Wardens sends out Tai and Skel to check things out.
At the water treatment plant:
Tai and Skel make their way over to the plant. The other workers are all sort of milling around unsure of what to do. As soon as they see Tai and Skel they get agitated. Two of them Dow and Isle step forward as the next-highest ranked workers in the plant. Dow was coming on-shift and discovered Skip’s body. Skel decides to go take a look at Skip while Tai goes off with Dow and Isle to review the plant.
Tai communes with the distillation equipment and discovers that it has been hastily, but properly shut down and that the water is contaminated with something that’s getting past the filters. This seems like a pretty easy fix -- dump all the water here, scrub out the system thoroughly, and haul in a fresh supply of water. Preferably from somewhere different than where they’ve been hauling it in from before. Tai takes a sample of the water back to the lab.
Skel checks on Skip’s body. He’s obviously dead, but doesn’t appear to have died from violence. Skel opens her mind to the psychic maelstrom and determines that Skip realized something in the water was bad and shut down the plant to stop further contamination before he succumbed to whatever was in the water.
Skel and Tai compare notes. Tai has the crew dump the water. They’re at loose ends until new water can be brought in so Tai has them return to their homes. Skel wants to bring Skip’s body back to her place for an examination and they commandeer a golf cart to do so. They return to Freedom.
A meeting with Vega:
Ponch grabs three members of his gang -- Packard, Rash, and Sky Boy. They grab onto his personal dune buggy and they wheel out of Freedom and around to Vega’s place. Vega lives in a mansion made out of shipping containers wielded together. The mansion sits on the north side of Prosperity on the other side of Freedom. This puts the bulk of the prison between the ocean and pirates and storms and provides the most protection.
Outside of Vega’s place, Ponch pulls up and talks to the guards. They’re armed with what are essentially BAR rifles, automatic rifles with a small clip of ammo. One of them ducks in to check with Vega and then shows them into her office. Vega’s office is up a flight of stairs and is a series of 3 containers wielded together on the east and west walls are large, single pieces of unbroken glass (with storm shutters to protect them). Vega sits behind her desk and restates her case. Ponch notes that he’s here to bring her to the Warden. “Is that a request or an order?” she asks. “Right now, it’s a request,” he says. Vega goes along with Ponch and he lets her cool her heels in his office until later in the afternoon.
Afternoon meetings:
In the afternoon, Warden first talks to Vega. She reiterates her demands. Warden promises to help her out if she sells her next shipments of munitions to Freedom at a discount. Vega agrees and Ponch takes her back to her house where she tips him a box of shotgun shells.
Next order of business is the water plant. Tai and Skel explain what happened. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that water is going to be real tight for the next several days. Warden dispatches crews to go find a new source for water (and take some samples from old and new spots to determine if the contaminant is present in the water from the river or if it’s a deliberate act of poisoning that happened on the way back to or at the water plant. Warden also promotes Dow to head up the water distillation project. Finally, Warden summons Monk to let him know that water restrictions are in effect. Monk isn’t happy about having to deliver the bad news, but he’ll do it anyway.
* * *
And that’s where we called it. The character creation in Apocalypse World is fun and it really helped gel up backstories and flesh out the world as we went along. We probably spent as much or more time on that as we did following folks around and seeing what happens.
Now that the first session has got the pot stirring, I get to turn up the heat. We’ll see just what makes these bad-asses tick.
later
Tom
So our gaming group has switched to a new game. This time we’re doing Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker and I’m running it. We just went through our first session and here’s the write-up. Unlike last game, I’m not going to do this in character, I’m just going to give an overview of what’s going on.
Setting: So imagine the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A strip of sand two miles wide stretches up and down the coast in both directions. The punishing storms of the apocalypse have soured the coast down to this flat waste. Further inland, nature makes it’s stand in a dense jungle forest. Out at sea pirates roam from their base looking to raid and enslave. To the West lies the ruins of a city. At night mysterious lights appear even though no one lives there.
All along this flat waste is a reef of wrecked ships. Cargo ships, tankers, river barges, tugs, pleasure yachts, port and dock buildings and gear all smashed up into a rusting heap. Rich pickings of salvage, but exposed to the elements and pirates and lacking in food and water.
Near one edge of this salvage reef, nearest to the city, there’s a small fortress. Before the apocalypse, it was a prison complex. When the first apocalypse storms hit, they drove a cargo ship right through the walls and into the central prison structure. The prisoners were free but there was nowhere to go. The ship turned out to be carrying grain. There was food and, more importantly, a chance to grow more. The top decks of the cargo ship were turned into makeshift gardens. Over time, their agricultural skills grew and the prison attracted people who joined with the prisoners or wound up in the shanty town that spread out around it.
These days, the prison complex as a whole is called Freedom, the central building impaled by the ship is called the Cage, the ship itself is called Plenty and the community surrounding Freedom is called Prosperity. The rulers of Freedom collect tribute from Prosperity in exchange for food and general protection from the pirates. Freedom’s rulers, however, must pay tribute to the Krewe -- beings (not people, certainly not people) who come from out of the City to demand some weird tribute or to replace the Warden.
When a new Warden is required, the Krewe arrive. The old Warden (if alive) will return with them to the City. Five citizens of Freedom who hope to become Warden step forward and take a slice of cake offered by the Krewe. Each slice has a token in it. The person who gets the slice with the baby token is the new Warden of Freedom. The others have different fates.
The Characters:
Warden: Warden is the title and the name of the man who rules Freedom. The current Warden wears the traditional uniform -- an orange jumpsuit, bedecked in beads and flashy jewelry, carrying a swagger stick and wearing a fancy hat. From his throne (the electric chair in the old execution chamber), he exercises his largess, giving free reign to the people of Prosperity as long as they don’t threaten his rule.
Before he was the Warden, he was Chako, a member of T-Bone’s biker gang that acts as security in Prosperity. When the Krewe came both he and his father took a slice of cake. Chako became Warden, his father died gruesomely in the salvage reef.
Ponch: Ponch is the Chief of Security, his riding leathers glossy and authoritative, his eyes hidden behind mirrored shades. His gang rides around Prosperity on their dune buggies looking out for serious trouble. When he was younger, he and Chako ran together in the gang. Ponch was looking to take out T-Bone the leader, but Chako talked him out of it -- the gang backed T-Bone not Ponch. The time wasn’t right. Eventually the time was right and Ponch took over. When Chako became the Warden, he had a solid right-hand man off the bat.
Skel: A bone-white, gaunt woman hidden medical scrubs and a mask, Skel is the Chief of Intelligence. She mostly gathers that intelligence by probing the minds of those brought before her. Skel is a brainer, a psychic freak who take meticulous notes on the reactions of those who come into her presence. She came from out of the forest to escape something there a few years ago. The Warden was suspicious of her, he thought she may have been responsible for his father’s death, but that issue has been laid to rest and now she serves as the Warden’s most feared tool of control.
Tai: Just a young girl out of Prosperity, the salvage reef always called to her. The rusted, ancient equipment whispered softly of function and purpose and utility. She could see them whole, knew just how to restore them. She set up a small workshop and trudged out into the salvage reef to see what she could find or fix.
The Warden heard of her unique talents and invited her into Freedom as Chief Engineer. Now she works aboard the Engine Room of Plenty provided with room and tools and resources to produce much needed technical gear for the holding. Better able to cope with machines than people, Tai finds her surroundings to her liking.
Session 1:
Early Morning:
The Warden wakes up in his quarters high atop Plenty and looks out over his holding and the surroundings. He has a good breakfast and heads down for the daily stand-up meeting with his ring.
Ponch stumbles out of bed and picks up the overnight report from Lance, his second-in-command and night-shift chief. Grabbing some very strong Chicory tea he heads off for the stand up.
Skel awakens in her lab/home/infirmary and dismisses last night’s experiment, a farmer named Krin who’s dismayed about returning home to his wife. Skel makes a few notes and heads off to the stand up.
Tai is working on some small projects when the intercom speaker in her workshop -- a device she knows isn’t hooked up to anything -- starts playing faint, static-y strains of jazz music. She dismantles the speaker and it finally stops. Unsure of what that all means, she heads off to stand up.
Stand up:
Joining the ring at stand up, is Monk. Monk is the Warden’s majordomo working in Prosperity. The Warden has an extreme hands-off policy regarding Prosperity. So long as people aren’t coming after Freedom or any of his people, the Warden doesn’t care. To handle matters of justice in Prosperity, most people turn to Monk as a magistrate to settle the issue. If they don’t like that, they can always take their case before Skel who will brain probe both sides in a case and make a report to the Warden for him to make a ruling. Unless you’ve got the money to go straight to the Warden, most people deal with Monk.
Monk’s here because Vega, a wealthy industrialist in Prosperity who makes munitions, is reporting that one of her salvage gangs have gone missing. She’s demanding some help from Freedom and is petitioning the Warden, through Monk, to provide guards for her salvage crews. The Warden decides to have Ponch go pick up Vega and bring her in for a chat.
Ponch reads through Lance’s night-shift report and only then discovers that Skip died early this morning. Skip is in charge of Freedom’s water filtration plant. Crews haul water to a former cargo barge that’s been converted to distill the water and purify it. The water is later distributed out. Freedom also depends on large rain-catchers that fill up during major storms. But there haven’t been any storms in a while (which is a bit of a blessing really) and Freedom is dependent on the water plant. Wardens sends out Tai and Skel to check things out.
At the water treatment plant:
Tai and Skel make their way over to the plant. The other workers are all sort of milling around unsure of what to do. As soon as they see Tai and Skel they get agitated. Two of them Dow and Isle step forward as the next-highest ranked workers in the plant. Dow was coming on-shift and discovered Skip’s body. Skel decides to go take a look at Skip while Tai goes off with Dow and Isle to review the plant.
Tai communes with the distillation equipment and discovers that it has been hastily, but properly shut down and that the water is contaminated with something that’s getting past the filters. This seems like a pretty easy fix -- dump all the water here, scrub out the system thoroughly, and haul in a fresh supply of water. Preferably from somewhere different than where they’ve been hauling it in from before. Tai takes a sample of the water back to the lab.
Skel checks on Skip’s body. He’s obviously dead, but doesn’t appear to have died from violence. Skel opens her mind to the psychic maelstrom and determines that Skip realized something in the water was bad and shut down the plant to stop further contamination before he succumbed to whatever was in the water.
Skel and Tai compare notes. Tai has the crew dump the water. They’re at loose ends until new water can be brought in so Tai has them return to their homes. Skel wants to bring Skip’s body back to her place for an examination and they commandeer a golf cart to do so. They return to Freedom.
A meeting with Vega:
Ponch grabs three members of his gang -- Packard, Rash, and Sky Boy. They grab onto his personal dune buggy and they wheel out of Freedom and around to Vega’s place. Vega lives in a mansion made out of shipping containers wielded together. The mansion sits on the north side of Prosperity on the other side of Freedom. This puts the bulk of the prison between the ocean and pirates and storms and provides the most protection.
Outside of Vega’s place, Ponch pulls up and talks to the guards. They’re armed with what are essentially BAR rifles, automatic rifles with a small clip of ammo. One of them ducks in to check with Vega and then shows them into her office. Vega’s office is up a flight of stairs and is a series of 3 containers wielded together on the east and west walls are large, single pieces of unbroken glass (with storm shutters to protect them). Vega sits behind her desk and restates her case. Ponch notes that he’s here to bring her to the Warden. “Is that a request or an order?” she asks. “Right now, it’s a request,” he says. Vega goes along with Ponch and he lets her cool her heels in his office until later in the afternoon.
Afternoon meetings:
In the afternoon, Warden first talks to Vega. She reiterates her demands. Warden promises to help her out if she sells her next shipments of munitions to Freedom at a discount. Vega agrees and Ponch takes her back to her house where she tips him a box of shotgun shells.
Next order of business is the water plant. Tai and Skel explain what happened. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that water is going to be real tight for the next several days. Warden dispatches crews to go find a new source for water (and take some samples from old and new spots to determine if the contaminant is present in the water from the river or if it’s a deliberate act of poisoning that happened on the way back to or at the water plant. Warden also promotes Dow to head up the water distillation project. Finally, Warden summons Monk to let him know that water restrictions are in effect. Monk isn’t happy about having to deliver the bad news, but he’ll do it anyway.
And that’s where we called it. The character creation in Apocalypse World is fun and it really helped gel up backstories and flesh out the world as we went along. We probably spent as much or more time on that as we did following folks around and seeing what happens.
Now that the first session has got the pot stirring, I get to turn up the heat. We’ll see just what makes these bad-asses tick.
later
Tom