Meguey Baker

It can be very difficult to figure out how to make a given genre work, long-term, for RPGs. The traditional swords-and-sorcery fantasy and superhero genres are rare in that they lend themselves to this sort of thing. Apocalypse World managed to make post-apocalyptic genre campaigns work this way by making worldbuilding the first part of play, an interactive process. It is not unique, or first, in the use of this innovation. It is, however, among the best.

It also makes the game more explicitly and frictionlessly about collaborative storytelling than any other RPG I've encountered, and I have more game books for more different games than most game stores these days. I was skeptical, at first, of any system that basically restricts dice rolls in the game mechanics to the players, apparently relegating NPCs necessarily to the roles of third-class citizens of the game (while one of the most rewarding parts of a good campaign can be an excellent second-class citizen NPC or two), but I find that the particular quirks of this game system actually help highlight the significance of NPCs that step into the limelight, especially when one starts applying the rules for PC-to-PC interaction to (only the most important) NPCs with a light touch from time to time.

The thing that most blew me away about the design of this game, though, was the way the system handles character actions, and provides guidance (not strict instructions) for how to deal with the in-game effects of success and failure. It makes the resolution of conflict and uncertainty feel dynamic, lends good tension to a scene, and keeps things moving at a brisk pace. Everything basically takes only as long as everyone wants to spend describing the consensus reality of the game world. The rules are light, flexible, and easy to remember and apply. The book includes explicit reminders that destroying what makes a PC cool is bad, and it provides plenty of guidance for how to make failures significant while keeping the action fun.

One of the key innovations of Apocalypse World is the way it defines character capabilities. It's not so much about the specific strengths and skills the person has as innate abilities. Instead, it's about the kinds of outcomes a person is good at achieving, and the flavor for how the character achieves those outcomes is left up to character concept and collaborative description. Your rolls determine the general scope and magnitude of what one achieves, or of how badly awry things might go, but leaves the determination of what actually happens to reach those results up to the conversation between participants in gameplay.

It's brilliant, and I have found it difficult to let myself get drawn into any game other than Apocalypse World, games based on its system (Powered By The Apocalypse in the parlance of that community, but in my case particularly those that stick to the above-described use of the system, or can be easily ported to the basic Apocalypse World rules themselves), and one other game I first encountered this year called Dread.

I have, in fact, started porting ongoing Pathfinder RPG games to adjusted Apocalypse World rules, rather than continue with the much more burdensome systems under which those long-running campaigns were first launched.

The Bakers have changed my gaming life (via the agency of the missus, who got in on the ground floor with the 2nd Edition crowdfunding campaign).… (meer)