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« on: June 09, 2015, 08:38:11 PM »
My group just ended an Apocalypse World campaign that started nuts and just kept running full-steam ahead. The setting was an isolated space station that had been cut off from Earth for decades and decades due to a wormhole collapsing. Cannibals, tribal warlords and 'proper folk' all fighting each other in a crumbling space station for dwindling resources. One of the moves players can use in AW is to 'open their brain' to the psychic maelstrom of the world. This is usually used to discern new information about things as the characters interact with the world in their own quasi-spiritual way. You can advance that move and if you do that and then roll a 12+ on 2D6+stat, something new happens. To quote the game text "You break through to whatever's on the other side". Freaky, right? One of our players did just that and simply declared:
"I see the Devourer for what it truly is."
This was the first mention of any such thing and cryptic enough to make everyone wonder aloud as to what it meant. The Devourer would eventually become a shadowy antagonist, the cause of all the anarchy and chaos on the station, for two characters to rail against, recruiting gangs and cults to their cause, infiltrating rival tribes and gangs, all kinds of crazy shit. Most of the other characters thought it was all tribal bullshit.
One day, a ship came into radio range. An ark ship carrying 180,000 people in cryostasis (and all the supplies needed for such a sizable group to start a colony) was returning after not finding any habitable planets and running low on reactor mass. The ship carried its own wormhole generator for a one-time-only use when a new colony was established and the craziest characters decided that they needed to get on the ship and get the generator to finally defeat the Devourer.
Queue every PC boarding a ramshackle torpedo and flying towards the ark ship as quickly as possible to beat the station gangs from tearing it apart first. Among the PCs was a psychotic cannibal by the name of Puff who really, really hated gluttonous and greedy sinners. Puff was sane enough to not tip his hand at every opportunity but at least one PC had seen him with a bloody mouth and a dead corpse at his feet. He was, in essence, an agent of the Devourer and had a psychic connection to it from spending years in cryo but no one else knew that. Another PC was an obese scientist named Dr. Raskolnikov, who kept a briefcase of wondrous inventions and oddments known only to him, and had a habit of talking down to everyone that was dumber than him (which was everyone).
The party was split up multiple times as they tried to simultaneously warn the ark ship sailors of the other station gangs, find the generator, and murder (and sometimes eat) people. Things came to a head when half the party was at the generator and the other half was in sickbay. One of them had been thoroughly ventilated by cannibals from the Flycatcher gang and was getting patched up. Dr. R was hiding behind the Marines that were keeping the place secure and Puff was there because Dr. R was there. There had been a one-sided firefight between a PC cult leaders group of fanatics and the Marines. The doctor in charge had been wounded, causing lots of panic and confusion so in the interest of never wasting an opportunity, Puff fell upon Dr. R, stabbing him in the back (literally) and then proceeding to bite his face off (literally).
There's blood and screaming and confusion and sheer fucking chaos and then the generator gets flipped on. Fade to white. Everyone rolls+weird.
10 years go by.
Dr. Raskolnikov had his face eaten and was already cooling when the generator went off. RIP.
The cult leader was never seen after that moment, lost in wherever exists inside a wormhole. Probably Hell. (Failed the roll completely)
The psychic-researcher that triggered the generator was on the moon, watching space and trying to start a cult around his messianic complex. (Partial success)
The badass merc was teaching a women's self-defense class and keeping a low profile. (Partial success)
The witch that had been shot to pieces survived somehow and became a hermit in the mountains. (Partial success)
And sometimes, in London, bodies would turn up missing body parts after a man listened to the tiny, hungry voice in his head. (Complete success on the roll)
It's really amazing to me that the climax of the entire campaign came from a single line spoken months beforehand and really speaks to improv GMing as none of it was planned in advance.
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