Tales of Albion: An Apocalypse World Campaign Journal

[Balmas]

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If you’re lucky enough to know one of the Ancient ones, you might be privileged to hear tales of the times before the End—tales of when there were entire buildings filled floor to ceiling with nothing but food, and a person could go their entire life without ever being shot. They’re fantastic stories, especially in the context of a dead and dying Manhattan. But what nobody knows—nobody can answer—is how it came to this. How the Bronx sunk into the sea. Why Queens is locked to us forever. Why Jersey taunts us with visions of prosperity from across an irradiated river.

But we’re New Yorkers. And New Yorkers are hardy folk.

Welcome to Tales of Albion, an Apocalypse World campaign journal. Here, I’ll be compiling and sharing my first forays into GMing a game of Apocalypse World. I’ve been a player in multiple games in this system before, but this will be the first time I’ve sat on the other side of the screen.

For those of you who’ve not played the system, Apocalypse World (henceforth AW) is a highly streamlined pen-and-paper roleplaying game designed from the ground up for emulating a Mad Max / Fallouty kind of feel. Resources are scarce, inter-player conflict expected, and everything you see is either a target or a threat.

A GM in this system (or Master of Ceremonies, as the game calls it,) takes on a much different role than what a person raised on D&D might expect. A D&D Dungeon Master is responsible for authoring the world—the town, the adventure, the villain, the dungeon, the monsters—from whole cloth, usually singlehanded, and then the players interact with the world the DM has created. In Apocalypse World, the MC takes on much more of a role of a referee; the players create the broad strokes world, the threats, the interpersonal relationships between PCs and between PCs and the threats they face. One of the explicit rules of the system is that the MC should not go in there with a story they want to tell, as that’s a surefire way to fail. My job, as the MC, is to make the world seem real, make the characters’ lives seem real, and play to find out what happens.

With that in mind, let’s jump straight into introductions.

Perhaps the central figure in our little drama is Barbecue, the king of Albion. Barbecue is a Hardholder, a playbook archetype that centers around the rule of a settlement through an iron fist and a handy army of goons. (Think Immortan Joe, and you’ll be pretty close.)

Albion, in this case, is not England, but the crumbling remains of the Empire State Building—specifically, twenty-five floors that are still standing. It is, in many ways, the center of Manhattan. It contains a market, walls that make it nearly impregnable by outside assault, and a weapons factory painstakingly collected from the wastes and reassembled piece by piece. Pair that with its fortress-like construction, its quick access to both power and water substations, and the convenient access to the subway tunnels, and any gang would want to take it for themselves.

In other words, it’s the target of every gang south of the now-submerged Bronx. Even the Marconi Syndicate, their current ally and trade partner, is maneuvering for an Albion takeover. And from within the depths of Albion come rumblings of what could happen if the gang is ever displeased with the direction their leader is taking. Barbecue has compensated for this last one, at least, by setting himself up as the sole provider of food to Albion.

That factory was installed by Specter the Savvyhead. As a savvyhead, Specter is the resident tech wizard, capable of building anything and everything if fed enough time and resources. Technically, Specter is not an Albion resident, instead preferring to live in a subway-tunnel workshop underneath a nearby museum. In theory, Barbecue is paying for Specter to develop a nuclear bomb; in practice, Specter is more occupied with completing a cloaking project for a competing gang and tinkering with Stumpy, the disembodied talking head of a pre-End battle robot. Nevertheless, he is perhaps Barbecue’s oldest confidant and friend.

Blastershell, on the other hand, is a relative unknown and Albion newcomer. As the Battlebabe, they represent a disruptive androgyn-fatale force in the highly regulated Albion. Not much is known about Blastershell, save that they’ve already proven a thorn in Barbecue’s side by stealing food and trading in weapons for information on the Blackout gang.

The final actor in our little play is Rictor Von Scale, the Brainer. As the nephew of Don Jesus Marconi, he’s a useful pawn for the Marconi Syndicate: prestigious enough that his murder would provide a casus belli for an invasion of Albion, but not so important to the Syndicate’s succession that his death would be terribly inconvenient. Knowing that he has no hopes of ever taking over the Syndicate on his own, Rictor has taken to using his mindrape powers for his own agenda.

There is also a fifth PC, a driver named Mustang. The Driver is the Mad Max of this system, most at home behind a car’s steering wheel and with a horizon to chase. In this case, Mustang is an urban legend, a gang cryptid, a vigilante devoted to saving outlying communities and driving off into the sunset. However, as the player is moving to Scotland after the first session, Mustang is quietly moving to Elevated NPC status.

But these are only the PCs. And as I said above, the PCs also create the threats that they face.


Perhaps the largest of these, purely by numbers, is the Marconi Syndicate. Located to the north of Albion, the Syndicate owns the single greatest source of food in Manhattan: Central Park and its acres of farmable land. Currently, Albion and the Marconis are allies—Albion provides weapons and ammunition to the Marconis, and in exchange the Syndicate provides enough food to feed a hold with three hundred people in it. Both sides know that this delicate balance will last only until the Marconis feel they’ve accumulated enough weaponry and slaves to take Albion without immediately falling prey to either of the other major gangs.

Those other two major gangs would be Ouroboros and Blackout. Ouroboros is, in essence, what you get if you take a biker gang and filter it through sixty years of oral tradition and a tribal structure. Each tribe of Ouroboros is a family of nomads, only united by their desire to hold onto their monopoly on gasoline. Blackout, on the other hand, is largely a mystery. Rumors abound that they are secretly the remnants of the government, or a Vault-Tec analogue holding Manhattan prisoner. Either way, their fortified Brooklyn Bridge home is one of the only ways in and out of Manhattan—and they aren’t sharing it.

But of course, the major gangs aren’t the only threat. Unaffiliated gangs—Beaters, in Albion parlance—roam the wild, plundering, raiding, and scavenging as much as they’re able. Divided, they’re not a threat to any of the major gangs, but they’re a constant worry for people traveling between them.

Almost as bad, though, are the Stingers and Barkdogs. Stingers: because when Cazadors aren’t bad enough, you can upgrade to the six-foot-tall mutated tarantula hawk wasp that also happens to be attracted to electronics. Barkdogs are admittedly a joke suggestion that got taken seriously: a werewolf-sized dog capable of barking loud enough to cause tissue damage. (We play at a house with a very excitable bulldog-mix, who is the best doggo.)

As part of character creation, each player character takes turns going around in a circle and establishing relationship details between everyone. This is meant to tie people together, and measure how well each person is able to help or interfere with other players’ actions.

Going down the line quickly:

Blastershell has helped Mustang out of trouble in the past
Mustang has caught Barbecue staring out towards the horizon, dreaming of the day when he owns all of Manhattan.
Specter has been friends with Barbecue since before he even set up Albion, and helped Barbecue to transport his weapons factory from the wastes into the depths of Albion.
Blastershell has been caught stealing food from Barbecue before.
Blastershell is able to relax and trust around Rictor and Mustang, but not Specter or Barbecue.
Despite the above, both Mustang and Barbecue have occasionally used Blastershell as a useful infiltrator and enforcer in the past.
Specter finds Blastershell to be the weirdest person he knows, and also probably the biggest potential problem. This is saying something, since he also spends time with Rictor.
Rictor has been watching Barbecue publically in his role as Marconi Ambassador, and Specter in secret.
Barbecue despises Rictor, resenting him as a symbol of a foreign aggressor.


Players have also messaged me details about their past involvement with the gangs.
Mustang has done work for Ouroboros in the past, and is reluctant to pick a fight with the people who give him his gas.
Blastershell has a bone to pick with Blackout, and will more readily trade her goods for information on them than for anything else.
Specter was raised and taught engineering by an ex-Blackout agent. It’s been at least twelve years since they last saw each other, though.

Soon: Session One and Two notes!

[Bubzors]

I love AW!! Only got to play in 2 short campaigns, but I love the feeling of it and the streamlined design. I need to get another group together.

Good luck, look forward to reading this!!

[Balmas]

I just got home from Session two, and hooooly crap I love this group already. You've never seen such a pack of cagey, manipulative, but good?-hearted gits in your life, and they're going every which way. I'm going to have to re-listen to the recording of that session so I can get my notes straight.

Anyway, Session One!

Sessions One
The MC chapter on how to run the first session suggests that you run through a small teaser / tutorial session where you use what the players have generated. However, after about an hour’s worth of character creation and another hour and a half of back-and-forth questioning and world-building, we were left with only a half hour in which to play—basically, enough for two scenes’ worth of content, but not much more. As such, Session One is essentially a continuation of the Character Creation session and I’ve chosen to lump them together in terms of events.

Let’s start with Mustang, Blastershell, and Specter all blasting along one of the few roads not covered with skyscraper debris, slewing across the road to avoid the hail of bullets from a pair of Beater motorcycle teams. The PCs have just picked up a Supply Drop—a local colloquialism for crates that, from time to time, “spawn” valuable and rare items. These supply drops are always in the same place, but whenever they start to beep, it’s always a race to see who can manage to get there first and get out with the loot before other gangs arrive. In this case, they weren’t quite fast enough to get out unscathed; each motorcycle pursuing them has both a driver and an SMG-wielding gunner.

In hindsight, I really should have prepared better for vehicular combat. After all, when discussing the game beforehand, I already knew we had a Driver. Unfortunately, I wasn’t up to snuff on all the vehicle combat rules, and so played a little fast and loose with the chase rules. That sees one of the motorcycles falling prey to Blastershell’s sniper rifle, but not before its gunner jumps across to Mustang’s mustang.

Fortunately, Mustang is pretty darn good at driving, and manages to sideswipe the remaining motorcycle into a particularly sharp pile of debris. Mmm, mmm, road pasta. The last Beater—the one clinging to the Mustang--gets thrown from the car in the violent movement, and is quickly put down by Blastershell. That leaves them home free to find a safehouse, lick their wounds, and go their separate ways: Specter to his workshop, Blastershell to Albion, and Mustang into the sunset, Mustang’s player into Scotland, and out of the campaign.

Blastershell and Specter discuss Blackout on the way, and Specter drops a bit of free information on Blastershell: he’s making a cloaking device for Blackout.

(In private messages, Specter lets me know that this is because Specter’s mentor—an ex-Blackout agent—is being held hostage. Specter delivers the cloaking device, and Blackout lets his mentor go.)

At his workshop, Specter uses his strange tech-based psychic powers and has a vision about the item’s history—he sees it being put together in a dimly-lit lab by a tech named Pepperidge, before being packed into a crate marked with Blackout insignia and dropped hundreds of feet to the surface.

Shrugging, he puts the thought aside and devotes himself to tearing the thingamajig—a powerful battery, it turns out—apart, so he can reverse engineer it and create a more portable version for his stealth suit.

Cut back to Albion, where Rictor is wandering the halls near Albion’s larder. Barbecue keeps the larder under lock and key—several locks and keys, actually—so he can preserve his food monopoly and reward those he likes with the rare privilege of eating meat. That’s all the more cause for alarm, as all of the locks have been defeated—chains cut, locks drilled, bolts shot back—and the door hangs ajar.

One of Barbecue’s lieutenants, Clarion, passes by and notices both the open door and Rictor. Assuming the worst—she hates Rictor’s guts, and itches for any excuse to see him gone—she runs to tattle to Barbecue. Unable to persuade her—or get a grip on her with his violation glove and mind-control powers—Rictor sighs and retires to his quarters.

By the time Clarion fetches Barbecue and they fetch Rictor, whoever opened the larder vault is long gone. They inspect and find that sacks of grain have been spilled and ignored, but that an entire calf has been lifted off its meat-hook, and a trail of blood leads to the elevator.

When they follow the trail of blood, they eventually reach the market, where an impromptu festival is being held. Drinks are being poured, people are dancing and screwing, and above it all hangs the calf. Two of Barbecue’s guards, a Bert-and-Ernie pair called Bill and Brace—stand ready with a chainsaw, dismembering, carving, and distributing the beef.

Then someone in the crowd notices Barbecue, and nudges his neighbor. A wave of scared silence spreads through the marketplace like a ripple through a still pond.

Read a sitch, I prompt, and Barbecue absolutely tanks it with double ones. Snake eyes. Hard move time. I choose Separate Them; Barbecue takes his eyes off of Rictor for one second, and when he turns back, Rictor’s gone. A two on Read a Sitch means he still gets to ask a question, though, and Barbecue wants to know the true location of the weaselly little snot who did this.

And there he is—a stranger that Barbecue doesn’t know, dragging Rictor through the crowd and around a corner for a hurried conversation. What’s more, he’s dressed strangely; Albion is located in what used to be the Garment district, so there’s more than a few people in Albion who know their way around a needle and thread. This guy, on the other hand, looks like his clothes haven’t seen a needle in the past fifty years.

Thing is, Rictor knows this guy. He’s Dustwich, a minor gofer for the Marconis. In between his tears and blubbering—because holy crap, Dustwich just had the nerve to touch the nephew of the Don, he’s so screwed when he gets back, and that’s if the casual mindrapist doesn’t do something to him, please let him live—Dustwich gets across that he was given a note in the night to infiltrate Albion, and start distributing food to the common people.

A two on Read a Sitch means that Barbecue gets the answer he wants but has to prepare for the worst. In this case, that takes the form of the crowd looking between the king who hoards food, and the stranger who dealt out a whole cow’s worth of precious meat, and decides to close ranks against their king. Even Barbecue has to admit that he and the three guardsmen present aren’t going to be able to do anything against that, and feigns that it was on his instruction that the cow was brought and shared out. The tension goes out of the crowd, the party resumes, and Barbecue orders his guards to bring Rictor to his throne room on the 25th floor.

Around this time, Blastershell makes it back to Albion, and goes to talk to one of her black-market contacts. Winkle is a dress vendor, but she’s also the social heart of Albion; if there’s a rumor going through town, she’s heard it.

Rictor, spotting Blastershell, decides it’s time to put his plan into motion, and uses his violation glove on Dog Head, a random slob in a food coma. Normally, brainer mind-control powers require time and intimacy to work, but the violation glove is a particularly nasty bit of kit that trades subtlety for speed. Doghead gets a needle of mind-control boosters jabbed into his side, and Rictor’s voice in his head snarling at him to deliver a message to Blastershell: here are the plans for when the next Marconi food shipment is arriving. Make sure it doesn’t arrive, keep what you want, no witnesses, kill the messenger.

Blastershell takes pity on the hapless Doghead, and decides to take him out into the wasteland with her. Doghead has just been stabbed with a Violation Glove and mindcontrolled into delivering a pants-wettingly suicidal message, and doesn’t take too much convincing to believe that skipping town is probably the best idea.

Barbecue has been gathering his guards in the meantime—one squad at the base of the tower to prevent escape, one on the floor below the throne room, and Clarion sent to Rictor’s room to retrieve him.

Keep in mind, Clarion has been antagonistic towards Rictor this entire time. She’s terrified of him, but also it feels like she might have some family baggage towards the Marconis. I don’t know what or why that is, but it means that when Rictor refuses, Clarion is overjoyed. Rictor won’t come when called and demands that Barbecue come to him? Oh, that won’t go over well, and that means that she’s probably going to get a chance to get some cheap shots in on Rictor.

Barbecue is not amused. Insulted at being given orders in his own home, Barbecue directs his gang to seize that gangly weasel and bring him to the throne room by force. Protesting, Rictor is brought, and the two have it out: food is stolen, and here’s Rictor talking to a stranger, are you really going to pretend that this isn’t the Marconis breaking the treaty? Angrily, Barbecue demands that Rictor go back to the Marconis, and bring them a message: for their breach of treaty, they’re getting only a quarter of the normal amount of guns. Go take that message to your masters, Rictor


So, as session one ends, war is brewing in Manhattan, supply shipment sabotage is being planned, and Barbecue’s only real ally is busy plotting how he can give stealth technology to the enemy.

Have I mentioned before that I love this group?

[Balmas]

Whoof, it's been a while, hasn't it? I think I'm just this side of the 45th day since posting, flirting with but not breaking the thread necro rule. Yeah, executive dysfunction and perfectionism are not a good pairing.

Anyway, it's been six weeks, so I have three weeks' worth of content to sort through. This is just a barebones notes on session three--I was hoping to flesh it out more, but in the end it just meant I never started typing. So, have it!

We need to focus some more on Specter, as he didn't get a lot of screentime in session 1. He goes back to Albion, and asks for work / help. Barbecue agrees, and asks him to find out who stole the dough. Through a Savvyhead power named Things Speak, Specter is able to inspect both the door and the meat hook and find out what happened near it recently. The meat hook doesn't tell them much that they didn't know, but inspecting the door reveals that the guards have been having huddled conversations about some character named Gabool. It's not what he was looking for, but definitely something interesting to poke at later on. Barbecue and Specter meet up again to discuss his findings, and Specter relays the above. As he stands to leave, one of the guards knocks on the door and announces that Barbecue has someone who'd like to see him. There, framed in the door, is Blastershell's informant, Winkle.

Blastershell flees Albion with Doghead, and dumps him off at one of her many hideouts in Ouroboros territory. It only takes a little bit of finagling for them to get through the little line of motorbike gangs, including one massive gang leader named Pigeon. Then, they head to where they're going to meet with Dustwich.

Dustwich is a babbler, and is doing that thing where you're talking to yourself, all about how the Marconis--especially the Von Scales--are vipers, snakes, evil bastards, and so on. And when Blastershell steps out behind him, Dustwich all but falls apart, because he knows that if they take him to the Marconis and say what they heard, Dustwich is probably dead. And, so is his wife, Rum, he says. With that leverage, and with the promise that they'll get Dustwich's wife Rum out of the Marconi's control, Blastershell is able to strongarm him into being the driver in Blastershell's plan to heist both trucks from Albion and Central Park. One man won't be enough; they'll need to recruit at least three more people if this heist is to be successful, but it's a good start at the very least.

Rictor, exiled from grace in Albion, is permitted only a few minutes to grab the essentials before he's kicked back out to the Marconis. With only 2-barter to his name, he makes the slow trek back to Central Park. It's fairly safe, as apart from the four-or-so blocks of no-man's-land between the two gangs, it's all fairly well patrolled land.

If Albion is a fortress, a citadel, then Central Park is a German WWII prison camp. Ramshackle, corrugated-iron-and-chainlink fences surround a compound of slave barracks. Guards with cobbled-together SMGs and stop-sign armor patrol the perimeter, keeping an eye on the slaves in the field. Where Albion has patrols and guns facing out, Central Park has patrols and guns facing in.

Don Jesus lets Rictor stir good and long, and when the secretary Rice lets him in, it's immediately obvious that the Don is not happy to see him. The Don ignores Rictor's demands to be let in on the scheme, to know whose plan it was that got him kicked out, and instead the don demands to know why the hell Rictor is here. He has a job, and that job is to monitor Albion for signs of treachery and to ensure that the guns keep flowing to the Marconis. If they don't get guns, they can't set up to eventually conquer Albion. When he found out about the scheme, the don says, Rictor should have done whatever it took to stay in Albion--kill whoever it was that pulled this marketplace stunt, turn him in, stay in Barbecue's good books, whatever. Now they've lost access, and they've lost guns, and it's on Rictor's head to fix this.

By the way, the don asks, who was the one who pulled the stunt?
"Don't," warns Blastershell OOC.
"It was…."
"No…:
"Dustwich!"
"No!" wails Blastershell. "My carefully constructed plan!"

The don reluctantly agrees that in order to take care of this, Rictor should be given access to the full facility, and non-interference in his investigation. As Rictor turns to leave, the Don pagest through a thick rolodex, before he sighs and pages Rice. "Bring me Rum," he orders.

After a short snack/bathroom/give-the-MC-time-to-think break, we cut back to the tower, Barbecue, and Winkle.

Winkle is the epitome of high fashion in the post apocalypse--by that, I mean that not only does she have a full set of clothing that covers all of the essential bits, but she's wearing nearly a full-on Elizabethan bustle dress. She's got money, she's got style, and as a tailor she has the skill to make sure that she looks her best. Winkle is here, Winkle looks good, and Winkle has an angle. She'll feed Barbecue information, she says, in exchange for more food and better food.

"Pleeeease let her be lying," Blastershell moans, OOC. "She's one of the other people on my list of allies!"

One failed Read a Person later reveals that Winkle is ambitious. She's got money, she's got wealth, she's got a network of friends and gossipers that make her the social queen of the tower. What she doesn't have is expansion, is power, is goons. And here's the sting from the failed roll: she doesn't just want food. She wants to rule, she wants to be part of the structure, wants to seduce Barbecue and use that influence. More than that, she wants to be seduced in turn; no information for Barbecue until he takes her out and properly wines-and-dines her.

Barbecue reluctantly agrees, and the date is set: next Friday, 7 PM, dress up nice. And Winkle flounces out, what do you do? Blastershell, OOC: "I plan her death."

Barbecue sits back in his desk, lets out a long-suffering sigh, and summons Clarion to bring the normal report. The tower won't run itself, after all. Clarion reports: Guns have been going missing from the factory floor. It's only small amounts, small enough to be a rounding error, but still something to be concerned about. The guards who patrol the edges of Albion territory and make sure it's clearly marked have also reported that they're having to cover up a lot more clan grafitti, and there's this new mark mixed in: a bull's skull against a backdrop of a nuclear mushroom cloud. Oh, and also the guard Hugo hasn't reported in for a few days--was assigned to guard the larder, and hasn't been back to the barracks in a few days.

Barbecue also summons Bill and Brace, the corrupt guards who were all too eager to see that stolen cow shared out. Bill and Brace are coppers in the vein of Nobbs and Colon--slow, stolid, selfish, but decent sorts nonetheless. As punishment for their dereliction of duty, they're put in charge of the larder, and if any food goes missing on their watch, they'll be held directly responsible. Mentally, I'm taking notes that I definitely want to see what happens there, so let's write up somebody who wants to steal food.

Let's zoom back in on Specter. He's been tracking down Tao, one of the guards he learned about when he opened his brain to the larder door. Tao is in the cafeteria, carefully guarding a fruit--rare, precious, practically unheard of--that he's mixing into his oatmeal. (Dimly, I note down that I wonder where he got that--is he an unknown agent for the Marconis, or is there another source of food out in the New York wasteland? Gabool was pretty nebulous during this session, could he have supplied those?)

Anyway, Specter sits down next to him, and they start conversing. Specter brings up the name Gabool, and Specter checks to make sure nobody's watching before asking, "So what do you know?"

It turns out, the guards are just as much in the dark as Specter is. They know that they've seen grafitti around the edges of Albion's territory, and there's a lot of it. Tags like "Gabool the savior," "Gabool the purifier," "Praise the Prophet," and so on. That much graffiti means that not only is there a new gang in the area, but that it's large, aggressive, and looking to push into Albion's territory. They haven't brought it to the boss's attention because it's not much to go on, but secretly a lot of guards are terrified at the prospect of even more people gunning for Albion. Again, how'd you know about any of this, Specter? Specter makes some kind of noncommital non-answer, and excuses himself to figure things out.

I don't know what Blastershell wants to do when they return from Ouroborous territory, so I just up and ask them. They say, in essence, that it's time to go talk to Barbecue about the planned heist. So they hit up Winkle, who reveals that she has a network of tunnels for snooping purposes, and one of these leads all the way up to the 23rd floor. Blastershell will need to find their own way from there.

Some fire-escape climbing and window rapping later, they're finally face to face. Blastershell proposes a simple plan: Blastershell is going to steal guns and food from the Marconis as they're in transit. If Barbecue backs them, he can claim ignorance, and Blastershell can sell the guns back to Barbecue at a discount. The Marconis don't get guns, Albion gets food, and Blastershell gets paid.

It's a decent deal, but Barbecue wants none of it; he has too much to think about, too many lives on the line, to risk starting a war for a single shipment of guns and food. This, on top of the situation with Rictor? No way, man, no deal. He's not going to interfere, not going to support, but when this goes south for Blastershell, he's going to sell her out as quickly as needed in order to keep the peace. They're at an impasse, but at least it's not enmity.

Hopefully, it won't be another six weeks between now and the next update. I actually have it nearly typed up, since during session four the microphone I use to record sessions crapped out, and I had to take notes during the session like a barbarian. Thoughts?