How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?

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How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« on: July 08, 2010, 12:12:25 AM »
So I recognize that this is one of those things that will vary from group to group, but I'm still curious: what's the weather like in your version of Apocalypse World?

It seems the stereotypical post-apocalyptic world is a blasted wasteland, turned into a rocky desert with an oppressive sun beating down throughout the day (or at least, somehow, that's what I've picked up... but I don't have a huge amount of exposure to the genre).  I'd like to go the other way when I play, with fields of mud and frequent violent thunderstorms.

Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2010, 01:18:57 AM »
Clouds, dark, everywhere. When the sun's even shining, it's dim anyway.

Rain. Always rain. When you manage to grow some crops, when the ground's not too wet, it'll flood the next week. If you're having really shitty luck, it's acid rain.

Wind. Biting wind, cutting you to the wind and blowing down anything you build too high.

Cold. Freezing, deadly cold in many places. In others, just enough chill to be annoying.

Mud. Landslides, quicksand, unsteady ground, sinkholes.

Depressing shit. Least, that's how I see it. One way to see it.

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Ariel

  • 330
Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2010, 02:41:41 AM »
The first time was pretty much Ballard's The Drowned World. The Hocus was a dust dancer named Dust Trout after a mythical fish that lived in dust, a rare and luxurious substance.

After that it's been the classic bombed-out waste land. I like AW best out of the box.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2010, 02:51:26 AM by Nathan Orlando Wilson »

Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2010, 02:47:40 AM »
Clouds of choking ash. A dim sun.

Rocky ground and scrub with a fierce, hot wind over everything. It almost never rains.

Out at sea, on the Rig, the air is clean and fine and you can see some blue, most days.

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DWeird

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Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2010, 03:01:46 AM »
A world ripped apart by towering earth-scraping machines. Heat, noise, magma.

A mirage over a single city. Those that dare touch those distant happy green hills simply die.

Perfectly regular weather. The Apocalypse is due to... something non-weather related.

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Carl

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Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2010, 04:44:25 AM »
Out in the burn flats, in the ashlands, in the winter it's dry and cold, and in the summer, dry and hot by day, cold at night.  In spring the winds come down from the western mountains (variously known as The Teeth of God or the "Fuck you I'm going to the Mountains") and you get big ash blizzards that it's best to stay out of, with a lot of lightning.  Sometimes in spring there's rain and the ash turns to mud that's hopeless to travel in, but in early summer there's a period where the ash mud dries to a hard surface that's good to travel on, so that's when there's a lot of raids.  By autumn the ground's soaked up enough heat that it's hot day and night, and on the hottest days the ash comes alive and eats people, or so some people claim.  It's best to avoid travel on really hot days, just in case.

Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #6 on: July 08, 2010, 06:20:15 AM »
Rather than dim, the sun is bright and ever present, baking everything in its merciless stare. The wind blows hot and searing like a hair-dryer on full blast, or being downwind of a fire. At night, everything is spilling out the heat that it soaked up in the day, so it's still hot, but at least the wind is just scouring instead of hot. Sometimes the heat isn't as bad because the dust storms get so thick that you can't see five feet in front of your face and stays that way for days. But that beats the hell out of the real storms that ride a front of lightning and can strip flesh from bone and scour rust off of steel.

The ground varies between hardpacked like concrete with a layer of dust that spends most of its time in the air and your lungs, or sucking clay mud with the infrequent rains. The few plants are scraggly and yellow. Salt seeps to the surface and gathers in an almost gel-like film before hardening into crystals.

Any water that flows or stands without evaporating is muddy, filthy, and full of weird fish and choked with scum.

Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #7 on: July 08, 2010, 09:35:08 AM »
I like AW best out of the box.
What do you mean?

Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #8 on: July 08, 2010, 01:33:31 PM »
Weather? The fuck is that?
Oh, that stuff our parent's parent's had? Wind and rain and sun and shit?

Wouldn't know 'bout any of that. We've been down in all these bunkers and tunnels and undergound cities so long, and we're all too scared to go up.

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Ariel

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Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #9 on: July 08, 2010, 03:03:07 PM »
I mean cinematic post-apocalypse. Like, how it's a blasted waste land but everyone's running around in bondage gear on choppers, spraying away with their AK's and using their creepy mind powerz.

I mean that it's very American in the way that's it's all guns and gasoline and cheap sex. That's not very realistic - none of those things would survive an actual collapse but they're very colourful and fun. Moreover, that's pretty much how Vx wrote the game.

Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #10 on: July 08, 2010, 05:07:44 PM »
Gotcha.  It does certainly read as though that's what Vincent had in mind: I never doubted it.  (Well, except for some of the examples that include things like guys that wade around in mud catching weird fish for people to eat.) Of course, the text doesn't actually SAY any of that.  I'm going to throw out my idea of mud, rain, and lightning, but I'll mostly leave it up to the players.  If they want the scorched earth desert wasteland, I've got no real problem with it.  There will be guns and gasoline and bondage gear either way, I'm sure.  :)

Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #11 on: July 08, 2010, 07:48:12 PM »
Trees.  Dead trees everywhere. 

Snow that's half-ash and half-freezing rain.  Shitty terrain - mud and rocks and all the good soil washed away so you're growing that GMO corn in a pile who-the-fuck-knows-what. 

Sunshine?  What's that?  I mean, maybe somewhere out on the Plains where the mountains don't loom all black overhead and shove those dark clouds down on you. 

Near the ocean, it's cold.  Salt air and drought. 

Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #12 on: July 09, 2010, 09:21:00 AM »
When I think about weather in ApW, I keep flashing to 'I Am Legend', which is a mediocre movie, but a great alternate depiction of an apocalypse - all overgrown, with trees poking out through roofs, and windows covered with ivy, and hedges that were once polite little borders now grown to weird tangled walls of thorns. I like the idea of playing 'normal' off 'apocalyptica' - maybe the weather's just dandy most days, but every couple weeks there's a day when the sky goes orange from pollution, or the wind brings such enticing scents that people do stupid shit, or the fog is so thick with maelstrom that going out in it is rolling weird+2 right there.

Our current game is set in Las Vegas, so yeah, hot, dry, desert-ish, nasty.

The game I'm planning, there's lots of trees and green, but sometimes acid rain so strong it bleaches what it hits, so everything's dotted with pale spots. Wind, frequent, and not sweet when it blows from the Cut. Sometimes you get days of glorious sun, sometimes you get snow so deep it kills, and sometimes the acid in the snow burns your hands.


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NilsH

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Re: How's the weather in Apocalypse World this time of year?
« Reply #13 on: July 18, 2010, 02:30:27 PM »
A gigantic abandoned city with dangerous huge plants, enormous insects who hungers for blood, storms, a coastline with tsunami waves. Broken buildings everywhere... Kinda classic I guess :)