Players: Megan, Todd, Joe, Timo

As promised, content! Perhaps not quite as timely as usual, but that’s because Timo is slow as usual. Still, better late than never, right? Right? Bueller?

We’re currently playing a game of Apocalypse world set on a zeppelin called “The Leviathan,” travelling between locations in an Empire recently risen to power by exploiting the psychic powers of brainers, all under an endless red cloud-cover sky, which is, literally, the psychic maelstrom. This is the third session of that game, showing the rescue of a crew member from the clutches of the Empire and the aftermath.

The Player Characters:

-Timo is playing a Savvyhead named Tai, a young woman who grew up on the Leviathan.
-Joe is playing a Maestro’D named Rose, who is currently trying to stir up animosity against her brainer daughter Gams (an NPC).
-Megan is playing Goldie, a chopper who heads up a lost-boys-esque gang of young rouges on gliders.

Important NPCs include:

-Gams, Rose’s brainer daughter who helps run the ship (see above).
-Captain Foster, the young captain of the Leviathan.
-Rolfball, her first mate, a charming and friendly young man.
-Carna, Thuy, and Pamming, Tai’s mechanic crew.
-Princie, a soldier for the Empire (the Empire is called “Six Flags” and their soldiers are called “Grays”) who has been pressganged by the Leviathan.
-8Track and Toodles, a father and daughter team who are muscle on the ship.

We’re also using a wiki to keep our information about the game so far, you can look up details here, if you want to know more about NPCs, the world, etc.

Something to listen for: we decide to do this session using a series of flashbacks and it winds up being an interesting experiment because things in the “past” that happen can’t mess with what happens in the “future,” which we have already established, but the tricksy rolls weren’t always helping out with that.

Interestingly enough, Apocalypse World provides a pretty ready-made solution to deal with such things (since the MC makes “moves” there’s nothing saying that what happens when a character blows a roll has to be physical damage to them: I can always do something bad that’s not physical damage using one of the other moves that’s not “trade harm for harm”) BUT the events around it do show both the difficulty and the payoff of imposing certain narrative conventions on gaming. Fun!

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