I initially read the first edition of Apocalypse World because I wanted to better understand the game that inspired such a huge family of other games (e.g., Powered by the Apocalypse games). The writing style is unique and evocative of a gritty, post-apocalyptic world:

  • “The characters are together against a horrific world. They’re carving out their little space of hope and freedom in the filth and violence, and they’re trying to hold onto it.”
  • “Hot, meaning fucking hot, attractive, subtle…”
  • “Gear and other crap.”
  • “The world wasn’t always like this, blasted and brutal. There wasn’t always a psychic maelstrom howling just out of your perception, waiting for you to open your brain so that it can rush in. Who fucked the world up, and how? Is there a way back? A way forward? If anybody’s going to ever find out, it’s you and your characters.”

While I read and enjoyed it, like most TTRPGs I’ve read, I never got it to the table.

But my players, after each enjoying The Last of Us HBO show, were eager for a post-apocalyptic campaign. And two were interested, from a meta perspective, of understanding the foundational PbtA game. So I was able to convince them to play the second edition. I’d already used its Threat Maps to great success for managing my Stonetop campaign.

As is now tradition with us, we ran a Microscope session for collaborative world building, producing the following timeline:

Timeline for Pergtopia with several dozen historical events organized into five time periods

The campaign started off well enough, but “there are no status quos in Apocalypse World.” After our session zero, we had an abundance of scarcity: I had prepped a hardhold (set in my old junior high school complex) and its rival (a group of landfill miners who had just occupied the town’s old dump). But within three sessions the PCs had fucked over their hardholder and his rival, and they were on the run.

Along with “Make AW seem real” and “Make the PCs’ lives not boring,” one of the three key agenda items for AW2 is “Play to find out what happens.” Suddenly my game about scarcity in the ruined wastes was a Fallout-style adventure to discover vaults and their treasures, to help the upper world recover from the apocalypse. I brought in modules for the first two vaults, Bunker #1 and Bunker #2, then created the third and fourth vaults whole cloth. 

The players started to struggle against their expectations of the system.

  • I tried to incorporate barter and jingle, but they foraged, or each session just covered a few hours, so it made no sense to need this economy.
  • No player was interested in the sex moves unique to each playbook, meant to deepen interrelationships between PCs.
  • Players weren’t interested in changing their highlighted stats.
  • They treated Hx (shared history) like Bonds from Dungeon World.
  • Players chafed at the advancements available. 
  • They missed having a move like “Try Something Challenging” (see below), writing our own for making moves against the environment: breaking down a door, the Quarantine trying to hack a system he would know from the before-times, etc. (Probably our play style, as they had the same complaint about Impulse Drive.)

Transitioning to Burned Over

At the end of July 2024, Vincent Baker announced a beta of AW: Burned Over 2024 for his Patreon subscribers. We began using the reworded basic moves where we could, including the new move “Try Something Challenging”:

If you’re trying to do something challenging, a physical action that might be beyond you, requiring strength, skill, great care, quick reflexes, patience, or hard work, roll+Aggro. On a 10+, you’re able to take it on. Ask the MC what you can accomplish, and no one could expect to do more. On a 7–9, ask the MC what it will cost you, and decide for yourself whether to go through with it. On a miss, be prepared for the worst.

(Unlike AW and AW2, Aggro is now a stat in Burned Over.)

It took quite a few months before I managed to get three of my players to convert their playbooks, though Vincent was generous enough to create form-fillable PDFs for beta-testers to use (an essential for my players, they said).

Meguey Baker describes AW:BO as “a fork in the river or a branching path” while Vincent Baker describes it as “a new take on Apocalypse World.” But Vincent pointed out on the Lumpley Games Patreon not to “blow the differences out of proportion. For most people playing Apocalypse World, the thin pink crescent isn’t the important part of the game. For a few people, sure! But most groups won’t have to make any adjustments at all.”

3 circles almost completely overlapping: AW1, AW2, Burned Over

Copyright 2024 by Vincent Baker.

Despite the small differences, Burned Over was a better fit for our group: you can think of it as the PG-13 version compared to the rated R version of AW2. It’s less brutal and unkind. The way we played it there was a scarcity of scarcity.

Final Thoughts

The psychic maelstrom is a foundation of Apocalypse World, with a basic move that relates to it:

When you open your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, roll+weird. On a hit, the MC tells you something new and interesting about the current situation, and might ask you a question or two; answer them. On a 10+, the MC gives you good detail. On a 7–9, the MC gives you an impression. If you already know all there is to know, the MC will tell you that. On a miss, be prepared for the worst.

I loved the impact of this throughout our sessions. It became core to our campaign, which ended in a confrontation with the ultimate source of the maelstrom. It helped that there’s at least one playbook devoted to interacting with the maelstrom (the Brainer—the Brain-Picker in Burned Over) and that it was in play. The Brainer often peered into the maelstrom for insight into NPCs and the wider situation.

While I loved the psychic maelstrom’s contribution to world building, what I missed were the aids I’ve come to rely on in Dungeon World (starters and custom monsters produced by the community), Stonetop (its almanac), Blades in the Dark (faction details), and so forth. Apocalypse World is so improv-focused that there aren’t many supplements. I like all the help with prep that I can get.

In all, we played 22 sessions of a nearly biweekly campaign over the course of a year. I would have loved to have run with the new playtest from the start, and I hope to run a future campaign using the published edition of Burned Over. You can get access to the Burned Over beta by supporting Vincent and Meguey Baker’s Patreon.

This is an excerpt from my ebook, Reflections on PbtA Design.

Photo by Ana Itonishvili on Unsplash.