Character 8 - Apocalypse World

 Welcome back to day 8 of the Character Creation Challenge. Today we have another quick one, the namesake of the Powered By the Apocalypse engine, Apocalypse World. So Apocalypse World, like All Flesh Must Be Eaten before it, doesn't really have a "setting" per se. It has a genre. The Apocalypse has come and gone and you're trying to eke out a living in the burned out remains. Was there a war? A plague? A rogue comet crashing into the Himalayas? Your character has no idea. And, honestly, it doesn't really have much of an effect on their day to day life. You're here, the world is shitty, there's gangs of raiders and probably mutants and maybe even mutant raiders and you need to get enough food and water and shelter to live to see another day. Cool, let's make a character.

Character Creation Overview

Right, so we've already covered Masks so the bones of this are going to sound familiar. Every character has six Stats, each with associated Moves:

• Cool. As in "under fire". Rational, clear thinking, calculating. Used to do something under fire.
• Hard. As in "hard hearted". Violent, mean, physical. Used to go aggro on someone.
• Hot. As in "hot as fuck". Attractive, gracious, subtle, inspiring. Used to seduce or manipulate someone.
• Sharp. As in "sharp-witted". Clever, perceptive, educated. Used to read a person or read a situation.
• Weird. As in "look at that weirdo". Psychic, mad genius, uncanny, lucky. Used to open your brain to the world's psychic maelstrom.
• Hx. Meaning "history". Like Rx means Prescription. How well your character knows another. Often asymmetrical as you may know them better than they know you. Used to help or interfere with someone.

Every player picks a Playbook (see? I toldja this would be familar!): 

• The Angel. Medics. Everybody's best friend in a violent post apocalyptic world.
• The Battlebabe. As good in social situations as they are on the battlefield. Sexy and deadly in equal measures. Probably better at getting INTO trouble than getting back out.
• The Brainer. Spooky, weird, with crazy brain powers. Nobody really LIKES a Brainer, but most people are afraid of them. Fear is like respect. If you squint.
• The Chopper. Leader of a biker gang. You have a following but that means you have a lot of egos to deal with.
• The Driver. There might not be any real cities left, but the roads between the ruins are all still there. You have a car. You can make your way through the wastes.
• The Gunlugger. You're good at making things bleed. You are definitely not the most social person in the group, but when the shit hits the fan you're good to have around. 
• The Hardholder. The chopper has a gang of bikers. The Driver has a car. You have a concrete compound. Or an encampment. You have a survivor settlement. You're not very mobile and you have a lot of responsibilities, but you also have a lot of resources. If you can hold onto them.
• The Hocus. The gods, if they ever really existed, have abandoned the world. That much should be obvious to everyone. But strangely, there are some who still believe. The hocus leads a cult of them through the sheer power of their personality.
• The Maestro D'. If you want to run a settlement, you play a Hardholder. If you want to run a social establishment, you play a Maestro D'. Fewer obligations and egos to deal with.
• The Savvyhead. Techies and fix-it types. There's a lot of damaged and broken stuff lying around the wasteland. Get enough of it and you can fix it up or make something new out of the ruins.
• The Skinner. Entirely social characters who are the only ones creating music and art and the things that make life worth living rather than something to just survive.

So you pick a playbook, you assign your stat array and your starting move(s) and then you go around the table asking some questions to assign Hx with the other players (this will be difficult for this exercise, but we'll figure it out).

Pick a playbook

Right, looking over the list I really like the idea of playing an Angel or a Driver. Either would be fun to play in a group and I'd likely pick based on what the other characters are feeling. I wouldn't want to play a Driver if we had a Hardholder since they're kinda antithetical to one another. Not that you couldn't have both in a group, but it would be more difficult than other options. So looking over the playbooks I think I'll pick Angel. They just seem fun and everybody loves a medic! While we're here we can pick our look (literally what your character looks like. Are they big and scary? Small and kind looking? Androgynously sexy?) and name.

Assign Stat array

Every playbook comes with four arrays you can choose from to represent how your character interacts with the setting. Are you Cooler than average? Less Hot than the guy you're sewing up would hope for? Pick one of the four arrays and assign it to your stats. 

Looking over the arrays for the Angel, they all have a +2 to Sharp which makes sense. Nobody wants a doctor who isn't smart enough to patch them back up. There are a couple that are really swingy with a +2 and a -2 to the other stats and while I like having things my character isn't good at, maybe not THAT bad at start (lookin' at you AD&D...). So that helps us narrow it down and eventually decide on the +1 Cool, +1 Hard, 0 Hot, +2 Sharp, -1 Weird array. Pretty decent at most things and more firmly grounded in the "real world" than the esoteric.

Pick Moves

Every playbook has a list of moves and you get to pick a couple at character creation. The Angel lets you pick 2 from the list. Looking over the options they all look fun to varying degrees but for what I'm picturing I'm going with Professional Compassion which lets me roll +sharp instead of +Hx when helping someone because my Sharp stat is likely going to be higher than my Hx with most people and for those who it isn't, I can always choose to roll +Hx. In addition I'll pick up Battlefield Grace which, if I'm caring for people and not fighting I get +1 armor. So that might come in handy here and there.

Gear

While AW isn't really a gear heavy setting, it's something that you'll want to keep track of in an abstract manner here in the post apocalypse seeing how things like clean water and not irradiated food is scarce. The game handles this with Barter. Each character begins with an amount of Barter that they have to spend some of at the start of each session. If they can't or won't then they can gain more Barter by taking Gigs or, as you might think of them, quests. The things you do in the game. Adventures!

In addition the Angel specifically gets an Angel Kit. This is a well stocked (to begin) medkit that lets you patch people up and speed along their (very very slow) natural healing. You can regain stock by Bartering, maybe, if it makes sense that who you're bartering with both has and is willing to part with medical supplies. Otherwise you can always take a Gig to raid an old hospital or drug lab or whatever!

Determine Hx

This is where you go around the table and ask the other players a list of questions and then they ask you their list of questions. This sets your initial History with the other players. The questions are flavored to each Playbook and the answers help you flesh out your characters and their relationships. The questions the Angel asks are:

• Which one of you do I figure is doomed to self-destruct? (that character gets Hx -2)
• Which one of you put a hand in when it mattered and helped me save a life? (that character gets Hx +2)
• Which one of you has been beside me all along and has seen everything I've seen? (that character gets Hx +3)

Everyone else gets Hx +1. At the end of the questioning you ask whoever has the highest Hx on your sheet and ask them which of your Stats is most interesting then highlight that stat. Then the MC (the person running the game) tells you to highlight a second stat.

And that's it. PBTA game character creation is pretty quick and easy and I love it. Oh, also each playbook has a sex move which is...definitely a thing. I guess D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker just thought that Mad Max was super hawt. I dunno. They're all basically extensions of the Hx rules and you can read about them on the playbooks. Our Angel, Rafe, has their playbook here. See ya tomorrow!