thread: 2011-09-20 : Deep Dark Vincent-burning Game Design
On 2011-09-26, Adams wrote:
I've found, in AW, that the only real evil, the only evil punished by the system, is betrayal of the other PCs. PCs are just so much more powerful than anything else in the game, that they're the only real danger to each other. There was one time there was a chopper named Hooch who playbook-changed to brainer, right, after finding this haunted, insane car (inspired by Deathproof). He'd always been an evil bastard, enslaving people (including a PC, the first session), shooting his own men, razing small settlements, but after he found that car, he really went down the crazy serial killer rapist route, got too evil for his gang, and playbook-changed to brainer. Shortly after that, he took both the moves "Merciless" and "In-brain puppet strings", which the player realized could combo to a potential 6-harm on one roll. By this point, he was working for the local hardholder-like NPC, Kempf, who had had his food source cut off by a revolutionary Quarantine named Sam (btw, Esoteric, my experience is that the apocalypse world is exactly as harsh as how scarce resources are in it). There was a PC-maestro d' run circus coming to Kempf's town, and Kempf wanted one third of the people in that circus killed and butchered to relieve the food shortage. So, when Boiardi, the maestro d', showed up early to arrange a performance contract, Kempf had Hooch in-brain puppet strings him. When the circus arrived, Hooch and Boiardi went down to the arena that the circus was performing in, to arrange things, but Boiardi managed to lure Hooch into the back of a truck, concealed from Kempf's men, where half the PCs happened to be hanging out, and then everyone just fucking shot Hooch to death. So, I guess what I'm saying is that AW can have evil, damnation, and salvation, but it's all relative to the standards of the other PCs. Salvation is through Hx.
