Scene cards

[kaiserjez]

I've been playing a couple of narrative heavy games recently - namely Montsegur and Love in the Time of Seid.
One of the really cool tools they have is scene cards - a brief description of a scene or sometimes just a smell, written on a card. The player whose turn is it to frame a scene can use these cards as a springboard to come up with cool shizzle in their scene setting.

One of the problems I find a lot of people seem to have when playing Apocalypse World is moving from a reactive playing style - players seem to wait around for the MC to bring them plot rather than go out looking for it themselves. Has anybody used cards like this in AW? I think it might be a cool way to get players barfing forth apocalyptica a bit more!

[noofy]

Well Yeah.
I dragged out 51st State (the card game) and scattered the cards about as 'inspiration' for both me and the players. Once someone took hold of an image on a card it really did work its way into play. Either through moves, or setting up for moves.

They do give a certain 'feel' to the game, since they are all by the same artist (I think), but the gritty, sombre feel is what we were going for. I think all apocalyptic imagery has the potential to influence the game's aesthetic in this way, so I can't see why a scrapbook of images wouldn't do just as well.

Now that I think of it, a AW scrapbook, with all the maps, NPC sketches, and various ephemera generated through play collated into one giant scrapbook? Wicked. That's happening from now on :)