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When they can't tell me how. Sounds simple, but a wealth of detail is hidden in that simple question. When faced with an implausible action declaration, ask "How?". By asking, you're forcing your players to: Consider whether their action makes sense. Limit themselves to plausibility - if they can't even imagine a way that could work, then they won't be ...

I just put the index of moves from the book up online: AW-movesindex.pdf It's not the full text of the moves, and it doesn't include any of the limited edition playbooks, but it's a list, at least. I wouldn't object to having a comprehensive list with the full moves online. Maybe I'll steal a few hours from myself and put one together sometime.

One of the potential outcomes of shared stress is intimacy. The sex special serves to indicate a fundamental aspect of character and provide a mechanic for a character's expression of intimacy. Not in any mechanical sense, mind you, but the Sex specials provide one of the clearest possible constructions of how the character views trust and intimacy that ...

Follow the instructions in the playbooks. Step two (after NAME) is STATS, which tells you "Choose one set:" followed by a list of stat arrays that are unique to each playbook. The playbooks were designed so that all the rules for players are in the playbook and the Moves sheet, and the rulebook is really only necessary for the MC. Playbooks are essentially ...

Absolutely. Apocalypse World (AW) is tonnes of fun to play for a single session, but it was actually designed for long-term play. The full possibilities of the character-development mechanics require several sessions to unfold. There are three common lengths of Apocalypse World games. Single session. These are fun, as already mentioned. This is a good way ...

Tie your character to the world. As a new player there is very little you need to know—the game is actually designed so that an MC can run the game from a cold start with players who don't know the game at all, and still make it sing. Your MC will guide the group as the game starts, helping you all step through the short character-creation choices and ...

I laid out the Heralds of Hell playbooks using Scribus, which is a cantankerous piece of software but does the trick and is free. (Other layout options are described here at RPG.SE in the question "What free software can I use for laying out my own RPG?".) I did them in the original booklet format, not the new tri-fold, so I can only speak to that form ...

Here are the traditional reason I would say no to my players and why I shouldn't in Dungeon World: Because doing so would ruin my plans In my head, this is physically impossible or there's not enough time etc. Because the action would cause sudden PvP combat Here's why I would be wrong to say no for those reasons in Dungeon World 1. Because doing so ...

Though @Tynam's answer is excellent, I did want to give an alternative answer. When they ask me, instead of showing me. When we first started playing Dungeon World, I had reservations about my ability not to plan, and one of my players brought up something that I was already doing in the context of Fate that made me feel better about it. Letting the ...

History (Hx) is a measure of how well you know someone. Fictionally this might be knowing secrets about them, understanding how they think, knowing their history of violence and being able to predict what they might do, knowing how to work smoothly with them, and/or knowing how to push their buttons or poke their raw emotional wounds and thereby manipulate ...

My character right now advances every, oh, 2-3 sessions, with an occasional 4- or 5-session lull when I'm hanging back and letting other characters take the spotlight. We play 2-hour sessions, though, so if you're playing 4-hour sessions, advancing every 1-2 sessions is about the same. If you want to slow down - and you might not! - my recommendation is to ...

There's a discussion on creating custom moves that represent difficulty, first thing in the Advanced Fuckery chapter (p. 268-9). You've got the basic idea already, and your suggestions map right on to some of the ideas. To summarise the ways you can made a move reflect a difficult task: You can make a general move that lets you change the difficulty with a ...

Embrace real conflict between the PCs. During the First Session, page 125 Say it with me: there are no status quos in Apocalypse World. What it means instead: it’s your job to create a fractured, tilting landscape of inequalities, incompatible interests, PC-NPC-PC triangles, untenable arrangements. A dynamic opening situation, not a status quo ...

I think AW rules questions can all be answered with "Say yes, roll or have a good reason for saying no." (Okay, maybe not all, but..) Roll doesn't really apply to this situation, so is there any reason not to give those XP? As long as it's a one-time thing, and not a rules-abuse, and won't evolve into one, I see no reason why not.

The best places I've found for this are the Story Games forums, the official Apocalypse World forums, and the Apocalypse World G+ group.

Hit points are more than just a nod to old-school D&D, but yes, that heritage is the only reason they're in the game. The Harm Clock would have worked equally well from a mechanical point of view. It just wouldn't have had the right "feel". For darker fantasy the Harm Clock would be very well-suited. Dungeon World was made to play D&D-style ...

I think History is sort of a confusing term for this stat, because -- as you note -- it can go down, and how do you get less history with someone? What it really means, as per page 103, is how well you know someone. So maybe I met you yesterday, but it was the most important life-changing day you've ever had and I spent the whole thing with you. I could ...

I played an Operator, "Ebb," in an AW game of about ten sessions with three other players, plus the MC. Here's my advice for the first session from the player side. Don't overthink things. Trust the process and go with the flow. You're not going to know who your character is right away. That's okay. The First Session rules are designed to figure that out. ...

I'm the MC that SevenSidedDie was referring to. In our game, we had a Hocus and a Hardholder who were, at times, allies, enemies and mistrustful participants in the advancement of the community they both needed to survive. The way I handled it was with the PC-NPC-PC triangle. I put all the major NPCs in between the two characters. I put the characters ...

I was running almost exclusively Everything World games for the year and a half, so all that follows is based on my own experience. MC moves are the essential part of the rules Lots of new MCs believe that is a usual "how to be a GM" thing and, honestly, text there is quite similar to GM tutorials in other games. But difference is, here "recommendations" ...

Nothing like that exists online. I'm not sure what Vincent would think of such a publication either, since moves are the heart of a playbook. Apocalypse World isn't really about charop anyway, so efficiency isn't an important value for the author or the community. Discovery and synthesis is much more important. The current situation really isn't that bad ...

I just ran my first game of Apocalypse World. Before that, I played in someone else's AW game that ran about 10 sessions. Here's my advice. Read the book. Cover to cover. Don't skip stuff, even if you think you can get by without it. Basically, you should be familiar with the rules so you are aware they exist and can reference them if needed in play. I ran ...

A gang can "die" either by being decimated from harm or, by lack of a strong leader, failing to hold together (page 169). If they're no longer operating as a gang, you no longer need the gang rules. Deal with losses of both sort when trying to reform the gang, e.g., both could easily affect the size of the new gang. There aren't moves for healing a whole ...

I know what you mean. Call of Cthulhu scenarios are always completely explained, planned out, with details on how to guide players through each mystery & investigation. In tremulus, its different. You've got to "play unsafe", and let the story evolve organically. The biggest eye opener for me was when i realized that after reading Call of Cthulhu ...

I've asked a friend who played both games and I'm going to translate his answer for you, adding something myself. Nobody is asked to answer those questions but things that come out during play and fit become the answers. There are similar questions in AW and it is explicitely stated that the GM can't answer them because he would otherwise plan a part of the ...

My 4 bits of advice Vincent Baker's Admonition: At every moment of the game, say yes or roll the dice. Luke Crane's Rule: Don't be a dick. John Wick's maxim:Play dirty! The RPGG Realization:Dice are a player, too. Vincent's admonition makes play so much smoother. If you want them to fail, set a difficulty. If not, let them have it. It's included in ...

No, they don't affect your current Hardholder at all, since you left your old life behind. As the rules for switching playbooks (p. 184) requires you to do, you take with you only the parts of your old life that remain relevant for your new life or are intrinsic parts of your self. As a Gunlugger wandering the wastes, you now have no connection to your old ...

The answer is of course that it depends on the fiction. I would allow any improvements to attributes (i.e. cool, hard etc.) but none relating to the compound or the gang. If your player had sunk several advances into those areas you could allow him/her to take one free advance in building up a gang or a compoind representing the value of experience.

For anybody willing to wrestle with scribus to generate playbooks in trifold format, Patrick Downs (nerdwerds) does not only host a list of the available playbooks, he also has a link to a trifold scribus template. I'm currently trying to use it, and it seems to do the job. (The template, that is. Apart from the part where it's a scribus template: I just ...