Everything Is Horrible

Actual Play, Apocalypse World, A-something something.

Solitaire: Juggernaut.
Angler: Chopper
Jay-Nee: Angel



Episode 1.

Scene opens with an aerial view of Jaynestown.
It's a stinking shantytown of derelict boats and scavenged wood, floating in the sea like the corpse of a forest.
Camera pans over rotting wood, rusted metal and dead fish, before fixing on the waterline.
A jet-ski zooms past.
Riding it, whooping and hollering, is Angler, current leader of the Crimson Tide, nefarious gang of lady pirates on jet-skis. She attempts a flip, and narrowly manages to not impale herself on a post. Tries to look as cool as possible.

Elsewhere, Solitaire, sans suit, is prowling Jaynestown, attempting to reassure himself that everything is in order.
Inevitably, this is not so.
He quickly finds Gang Member Joyce, busy hurling invectives and shoving Known Merchant Plank.
Solitaire diplomatically inveigles himself into the confrontation with a subtle " ...You two appear to be having a problem."
Threatening the violent gang member into calming down fails, and she advances upon The Chump, gutting knife at the ready.
(Shit, I need my guts!)
The pale, skinny Solitaire perfectly executes some kind of fucking CQC, Spetnaz, melee expert disarming move right out of some manual, leaving Joyce on the floor, with a face full of board.




Elsewhere, in her infirmary, a Random Concerned Passerby informs Jay-Nee that Solitaire is fighting the Crimson Tide, and there might be some money in it, eh?
Lured either by the promise of wealth or the lure of healing to be done, the Angel makes her way to the CONFRONTATION SITE.
Rapid mental skills reveal that The Chump is clearly in control of the situation, there is a scary gang member at his feet spitting bits of wood, and he has a big gutting knife.

Hostilities briefly halted, it is revealed that the Crimson Tider (Tideress?) claims to have been sold a nonfunctional pistol by Plank.
The gun is indeed broken, as it fails to fire when Joyce casually pulls on the trigger on Plank.
A fresh gun is demanded.

Then Angler arrives, and Joyce is forced to retell her entire, enthralling story. Again.
Also fires (again) to no effect on Plank to demonstrate her point, which unsettles the man.
She, however, neglects to mention that she was beat up by The Chump.
Plank agrees to get a new gun, as being murdered by a gang of crazy lady pirates is not high on his priorities.

When a new weapon is provided, Angler realises that, yes, Joyce is going to test it by trying to shoot Plank again, and manages to avert the death by cunningly a dead fish into the air as a target. Plank runs away, because fuck, people are firing guns! The gang cheers, because whoooo guns!

And then all is resolved, which is determined to be boooooring.


So Angler conspires with Jay-Nee to trick Solitaire into accepting to be... Examined, in order to get the Angel into the mood for tapping the Maelstrom for a sweet Old World loot location.


"Jay-Nee examines The Chump.

She sees the... horrific mutilation of his upper spinal column.
All those gleaming ports, jutting out like steel towers.

Down along the hills of his remaining spine.

Along the tracings of veins in his back, little subcutaneous rivers of blood.

The hills that are shoulders.

Here and there, the scars inherent in the people in his profession, and his past.
And there, that blemish, that freckle, that discoloration... is not. it's untouched. Unharmed by the horrors that crawl over this body. There, that place, behind that hill, ear that building, past that river... That is the place you want. "

Angler, for her part, playing the role of assistant, receives the following delight:
" Stands there, just watching Jay-Nee zone out.

The movement on fingers on flesh is almost hypnotic.

Doesn't even notice Solitaire's faint twitching.

Fingers, going around and around, forward and back, forward and back...

The deep rolling of the sea reaches your ears.

You can hear the crash of waves.
See the spray.

Taste the salt.

The salt... The salt.
It crawls into your mouth, fleck by fleck, chunk by chunk, filling your mouth, draining the fluid from you. Spit, blood, tears, sinuvial fluid. You feel your organs withering, your flesh flaking off, you - And you wake up, shaking. Nothing has changed, except Jay-Nee maybe making a satisfied noise. You carefully put down the scalpel. "

Solitaire merely tries to go to his Happy Place, which is in fact his HVR-16 Crisis Suit, so he pretends to be elsewhere while ladies with doctorial implements zone out over his seminaked body.

Following Jay-Nee's vision, the Gang+others head out, stopping at the reclaimed oil rig and associated town-on-a-cargo-ship combo known as Perdido.
They stay the night, but in the morning, Gang Member Cherry is nowhere to be found.
Tracking and tracing is done, eventually placing her as having been last seen by a mysterious old woman known as Sierra.

Cherry, and Sierra, are located in a small pungent shack on the deck of the cargo ship that houses the civilian part of Perdido. The party is unsettled by the apparent kindness and benevolence of Sierra, who claims to be only interested in Cherry's happiness and welfare.
She is taken back by Angler with little difficulty, and the party prepare to leave Perdido, and reach the mysterious location lodged in Jay-Nee's brain.






So, first session. Just making stuff up. I really like the idea of the Angel tapping the Maelstrom by just performing a nice routine examination.
I really don't know how to adjudicate the negative effects of Help (being exposed to Fire, Danger, Retribution or Cost) in a social situation, let alone one where you opponent is a nice old pacifist lady.

The Juggernaut didn't even do anything in his Suit, and therefore was more awesome for being The Chump.

THE BIG SCARY GIANT ALSO FEAR

This is a thing that lives in the dark under the mountain.

It is the Big Scary Giant.
It's a Giant. That is Big, because it's a Giant. It's also scary.

Its scary because that's how it hunts.
Fear is not what leads it to prey.
Fear is what kills the prey.

It's a psychological hunter.
It hunts your psyche.
It finds the things lurking in the dark corners of you mind, and will pull out from the darkness that's all around you.

It has mastered its fear, learn the language of terror, the tongue of the dark, the secret words of the skittering things behind your eyes.
And so it commands yours.

You will know that the Big Scary giant is near, because the darkness will move.
Also you'll be hit by big fucking rocks, because it's a Giant.

Should you prove worthy, and conquer your own fear, you will be accepted heartily as a fellow survivor of the dark.
If not, you'll be eaten and made into delicious sandwiches.

Because it's a Giant.

I was going to have the BSG summon up character related shadowy Fears for them to battle, using mental stats instead of physical ones.

Except, that's dumb.
Then again, fear is dumb. Why are Fighter, Barbarians, rogues and the like so vulnerable to fear?
Yes, a divine character would have faith to guard them against fear.
But the fighter and barb, as Thugs, stare into the face of horrible giant monsters ALL THE TIME.
The rogue has nerves of steel, because sneaking around is REALLY SCARY.

Fear as an effect is rubbish. You don't just tell someone "You failed you Will save, you are afraid of the Dragon." And then they heroically overcome their fear by rolling again.
No! Bad!
They should be afraid of the Dragon because it just bit the fighter in half or used magical halitosis to disintegrate half the people you know. And then you heroically overcome your fear by attacking it and dying horribly to a Dragon.
You should be afraid of the awful twisting murals of the Bone People because of the awful description of warped cartilage and sultry, teasing bones bulging and twisting along the walls of their dusty temple, not because your Master Of Rules says "You look at the wall? Here is a +26 against your Will. Hit? You are scared." (and you should be worried when the DM spends twenty minutes describing something horrible with evergrowing enthusiasm)
Characters are immune to fear when players are immune to fear. Scare the goddam players.

The Fears that the BSG brings out of the horrible twisted bad black realms of the nega-mind dark should be something that the characters are afraid of. Your cleric is fighting a vision of herself alone, without her thirty-six dead gods whispering advice. Your Paladin sees the world dead and cold, in the grip of A Bad Thing. Your druid sees that necromancer that ruined all she knew.

Maybe the party fights Fear in their own way.
The fighter punches it. Or bites it. Or hits it with an axe, because it's the knowledge that he is big, tough and horribly dangerous that gets him through things.
The Cleric … Prays at it. Demonstrates Faith.
Druid... fuck knows. Reasons with themselves? Just snubs it?
Rogues... Gaaah! Something!

Fuck it, how about we just ASK THE CHARACTERS how they face fear. How do they deal with it.
And let them do that.
(don't ignore the fear, it won't ignore you).
Maybe they drink it away.
Maybe they sing songs or work out.
Get a half-dozen Adventurer Freaks working out their fears in a big, dark cave, while a Giant lobs rocks at them.
Good times.
(actually maybe that's just Blades in the Dark)