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Apocalypse World: The Master of Ceremonies Playbook 2nd Edition
Something's wrong with the world and I don't know what it is.
It used to be better, of course it did. In the golden age of legend, when there was enough to eat and enough hope, when there was one nation under god and people could lift their eyes and see beyond the horizon, beyond the day. Children were born happy and grew up rich.
Now, that's not what we've go. Now we've got this. Hardholders stand against the screaming elements and all comers, keeping safe as many as they can. Angels and savvyheads run constant battle against there's not enough and bullets fly and everything breaks. Hocuses gather people around them, and are they protectors, saviors, visionaries, or just wishful thinkers? Choppers, gunluggers, and battlebabes carve out what they can and defend it with blood and bullets. Drivers search and scavenge, looking for that opportunity, that one perfect change. Skinners and the maestro d' remember beauty, or invent beauty anew, cup it in their hands and whisper come and see, and don't worry now what it will cost you. And brainers, oh, brainers see what none of the rest of us will: the world's psychic maelstrom, the terrible desperation and hate pressing in at the edge of all perception, it is the world now.
And you, who are you? This is what we've got, yes. What are you going to make of it?
It used to be better, of course it did. In the golden age of legend, when there was enough to eat and enough hope, when there was one nation under god and people could lift their eyes and see beyond the horizon, beyond the day. Children were born happy and grew up rich.
Now, that's not what we've go. Now we've got this. Hardholders stand against the screaming elements and all comers, keeping safe as many as they can. Angels and savvyheads run constant battle against there's not enough and bullets fly and everything breaks. Hocuses gather people around them, and are they protectors, saviors, visionaries, or just wishful thinkers? Choppers, gunluggers, and battlebabes carve out what they can and defend it with blood and bullets. Drivers search and scavenge, looking for that opportunity, that one perfect change. Skinners and the maestro d' remember beauty, or invent beauty anew, cup it in their hands and whisper come and see, and don't worry now what it will cost you. And brainers, oh, brainers see what none of the rest of us will: the world's psychic maelstrom, the terrible desperation and hate pressing in at the edge of all perception, it is the world now.
And you, who are you? This is what we've got, yes. What are you going to make of it?
306 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 1, 2019
It can be very difficult to figure out how to make a given genre work, long-term, for RPGs. The traditional swords-and-sorcery fantasy and superhero genres are rare in that they lend themselves to this sort of thing. Apocalypse World managed to make post-apocalyptic genre campaigns work this way by making worldbuilding the first part of play, an interactive process. It is not unique, or first, in the use of this innovation. It is, however, among the best.
It also makes the game more explicitly and frictionlessly about collaborative storytelling than any other RPG I've encountered, and I have more game books for more different games than most game stores these days. I was skeptical, at first, of any system that basically restricts dice rolls in the game mechanics to the players, apparently relegating NPCs necessarily to the roles of third-class citizens of the game (while one of the most rewarding parts of a good campaign can be an excellent second-class citizen NPC or two), but I find that the particular quirks of this game system actually help highlight the significance of NPCs that step into the limelight, especially when one starts applying the rules for PC-to-PC interaction to (only the most important) NPCs with a light touch from time to time.
The thing that most blew me away about the design of this game, though, was the way the system handles character actions, and provides guidance (not strict instructions) for how to deal with the in-game effects of success and failure. It makes the resolution of conflict and uncertainty feel dynamic, lends good tension to a scene, and keeps things moving at a brisk pace. Everything basically takes only as long as everyone wants to spend describing the consensus reality of the game world. The rules are light, flexible, and easy to remember and apply. The book includes explicit reminders that destroying what makes a PC cool is bad, and it provides plenty of guidance for how to make failures significant while keeping the action fun.
One of the key innovations of Apocalypse World is the way it defines character capabilities. It's not so much about the specific strengths and skills the person has as innate abilities. Instead, it's about the kinds of outcomes a person is good at achieving, and the flavor for how the character achieves those outcomes is left up to character concept and collaborative description. Your rolls determine the general scope and magnitude of what one achieves, or of how badly awry things might go, but leaves the determination of what actually happens to reach those results up to the conversation between participants in gameplay.
It's brilliant, and I have found it difficult to let myself get drawn into any game other than Apocalypse World, games based on its system (Powered By The Apocalypse in the parlance of that community, but in my case particularly those that stick to the above-described use of the system, or can be easily ported to the basic Apocalypse World rules themselves), and one other game I first encountered this year called Dread.
I have, in fact, started porting ongoing Pathfinder RPG games to adjusted Apocalypse World rules, rather than continue with the much more burdensome systems under which those long-running campaigns were first launched.
The Bakers have changed my gaming life (via the agency of the missus, who got in on the ground floor with the 2nd Edition crowdfunding campaign).
It also makes the game more explicitly and frictionlessly about collaborative storytelling than any other RPG I've encountered, and I have more game books for more different games than most game stores these days. I was skeptical, at first, of any system that basically restricts dice rolls in the game mechanics to the players, apparently relegating NPCs necessarily to the roles of third-class citizens of the game (while one of the most rewarding parts of a good campaign can be an excellent second-class citizen NPC or two), but I find that the particular quirks of this game system actually help highlight the significance of NPCs that step into the limelight, especially when one starts applying the rules for PC-to-PC interaction to (only the most important) NPCs with a light touch from time to time.
The thing that most blew me away about the design of this game, though, was the way the system handles character actions, and provides guidance (not strict instructions) for how to deal with the in-game effects of success and failure. It makes the resolution of conflict and uncertainty feel dynamic, lends good tension to a scene, and keeps things moving at a brisk pace. Everything basically takes only as long as everyone wants to spend describing the consensus reality of the game world. The rules are light, flexible, and easy to remember and apply. The book includes explicit reminders that destroying what makes a PC cool is bad, and it provides plenty of guidance for how to make failures significant while keeping the action fun.
One of the key innovations of Apocalypse World is the way it defines character capabilities. It's not so much about the specific strengths and skills the person has as innate abilities. Instead, it's about the kinds of outcomes a person is good at achieving, and the flavor for how the character achieves those outcomes is left up to character concept and collaborative description. Your rolls determine the general scope and magnitude of what one achieves, or of how badly awry things might go, but leaves the determination of what actually happens to reach those results up to the conversation between participants in gameplay.
It's brilliant, and I have found it difficult to let myself get drawn into any game other than Apocalypse World, games based on its system (Powered By The Apocalypse in the parlance of that community, but in my case particularly those that stick to the above-described use of the system, or can be easily ported to the basic Apocalypse World rules themselves), and one other game I first encountered this year called Dread.
I have, in fact, started porting ongoing Pathfinder RPG games to adjusted Apocalypse World rules, rather than continue with the much more burdensome systems under which those long-running campaigns were first launched.
The Bakers have changed my gaming life (via the agency of the missus, who got in on the ground floor with the 2nd Edition crowdfunding campaign).
February 28, 2021
My favorite system by far. Finally got around to reading e2. Feels a little bit 2010s edgelord in 2021 but nothing a little homebrew can't fix.
August 4, 2026
I really didn’t want to buy Apocalypse World. For a bunch of reasons.
First, since it was the origin of PBTA systems there’s a good chance that it was too primitive, whereas subsequent games got a chance to refine the system.
Second, there are now three versions of Apocalypse World and from what I understand the systems are all pretty significantly different. Meaning the ‘design’ was not finalized before being published and may not yet be finalized!
Thirds, there are very few dystopian futures that I’d want to play in. Planet of the Apes and Gamma World/Thundarr the Barbarian are the only ones that come to mind.
But a couple of things convinced me to get it. It has a lot of Moves. The more I read PBTA games, the more convinced I am that this makes more sense and is a better way to play. I’ve read too many that act like FATE in the sense that there are only four Moves and I think this will get pretty old pretty quick. More moves sounds like a lot less work for the GM.
Second, it covers some things that other PBTA games don’t usually cover. Like a base of operations and vehicles.
In the end I figured the 2nd edition was the one to buy (and also the only one I could find in hardcopy).
Well, the first thing that pisses me off is that playing the game will also require downloading character playbooks, players’ reference sheets and MC’s playsheets. Why the hell did I pay $40 to get a crippled game?
”The Basics”
Right after the overview of what Moves are and how they are triggered, they make special mention of sex moves and who they will work on. So you know this is a ‘mature audiences only’ type game. This is the only PBTA game I’ve seen do this. Even Pasion de las Pasiones does have direct sex moves.
"The Stats" are pretty typical. They add Weird in the same way that Monster of the Week does. They also add a unique stat - Hx. This is ‘History’ in how well you know or relate to someone else. Is this kept track of separately for each person? Or just each PC?
"Gear and Other Crap" notes that equipment is described in meaningful ways by being given descriptive tags. I like this because in most PBTA games the differences in gear or even NPCs is just hand-waved away.
Say This First And Often is something I’ve never read before in a PBTA game. It says you should play your character as if they were a real person. It says the GM should play the NPCs as if they are real people and play the world as if it was a real place.
This is the essence of roleplaying (Let’s pretend with rules). Because it seems like with the amount of metagaming PBTA forces you do it seems like you really can’t roleplay in the traditional sense of pretending it’s all real because so much is abstracted and there is so much authorial control that is forced on you by the rules. Note that you can take authorial control in regular RPG games, but it’s all voluntary. In PBTA games, the moves will often force you to take the wheel.
I admit I have no idea what Highlighting Stats means, does or is for.
As aggressively crude as APOCALYPSE WORLD is, I do think it’s a relatively pure expression of what the design meant by the game.
Of course, what they meant seems pretty obviously, ‘Don’t do what crappy D&D dungeon masters do!’ Which I think is a pretty bad way to design an RPG. And I think the PBTA games pretty much prove that.
But that’s not to say the ideas behind it don’t have merit. They do. And I would love to see an actual RPG designed around them.
An interesting note under A Few More Things To Do is an encouragement to ‘Make maps like anything’. This is something you never see in PBTA games which seem to take the (ridiculous) approach that the less you prepare the better your game will be.
Once again it seems like if you go to the source - the original designer of PBTA - you get a truth that is conveniently forgotten in every other version. About GMing.
Your job is harder, you have a lot more to set up than they do. They each have one character to create, you have the whole bedamned world.
"Threats" is a chapter that I have not seen in any other PBTA book (and one of the reasons I wanted to read this book).
Threats are defined as one of seven types: Warlord, Grotesque, Affliction, Brutes, Landscape, Terrain and Vehicle.
There is also a Threat Map which is similar to ‘Clocks’ only this seems a bit more useful. It’s a graphic map that details which Threats are closest to the players. It’s interesting but I can’t imagine it working because it treats threats relationship to the characters as: North, East, South, West, Up, Down, Inside and Outside. Okay that’s lame enough but also, what if a threat has a different relationship to one player than another? Two Threat maps for the same threat? Just write notes people.
There are three Threat Map examples, for the first, second and third sessions, with hand-written notes. This in no way makes this seem any easier or smarter than simply taking notes in outline form.
"Moves Snowball" is a chapter I’ve never seen in another PBTA book. I’ve also never seen the concept occur in any other PBTA book. The idea is that moves trigger other moves and often interact in ways that trigger other moves. Additionally, the example given shows that a move may trigger something - even if nothing was there 5 seconds ago. The idea being that no move is inconsequential. If you have to roll then something has to happen even if the GM has to make it up on the spot.
I find this fascinating. In the example, the player asks for the move to happen. But what happens when players know that making a roll is always, always, always dangerous? On the one hand it could lead to much more roleplaying - meaning the player has to rely on their wits to get things done more than their rolls. On the other hand, it could lead to players who want to do nothing but fish. I’d love to see this in play.
To the author’s credit he also points out where the player has essentially ‘seized the initiative’ from the GM by taking control of what happens next with her character. Something I wish more GM’s would encourage. There’s nothing in any rules that say you can’t.
There is a weakness in the example in that it only deals with one player character. That’s a LOT of moves and decisions about what happens with ONE player character! How does that work when you have 4?
On a 7-9, when it comes to the worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice, you’ll need to look at the circumstances and find something fun.
Ug. I hate statements like this. Fun for the player about to screwed? Fun for the GM who gets to screw them? Or fun for the other players to watch? Or fun for the ‘fiction’? I guarantee that those won’t all be the same things…
It’s nice that there is even an example of the GM screwing up while trying to improvise a negative result.
"An example of a mistake & correction" is great to have (and completely unique to this PBTA game) but the casualness of the description can sometimes lack clarity. This is given with every move and should be required in every PBTA game. It really helps show how the system is supposed to work.
Highlighted Stats are still a complete mystery to me. Page 163.
APOCALYPSE WORLD has a huge number of moves, which makes more sense than most other PBTA games which seem to have an average of 4 moves. This makes the game a lot more playable than most of the others.
It can make it a bit of a slog to read, but it kind of shows me that if your PBTA game doesn’t have this much to go with it, it’s probably going to be lacking.
"Harm and Healing" starts on page 202.
The Suffer Harm move is interesting because it provides a reaction of sorts to taking damage. You can be put unconscious, trapped, incoherent, panicked or lose your footing, drop what you’re holding, lose track of someone or something your attending to or fail to notice something important.
"When Life Becomes Untenable" is when your ‘harm clock’ reaches midnight. You’re dead, but you can either comeback with -1hard, +1weird (Max+3), change to a new playbook, or die.
Well another game has bumped this off my list.
Here’s the thing. I wish that had been the first PBTA game I bought and read (that was instead Thirsty Sword Lesbians. I throw myself on the mercy of the court).
If it had been, it very likely would have been the last PBTA game I bought (well, maybe second to last).
But this game shows me (and it’s something I’ve suspected for a while) that PBTA won’t really work with just a few rules and playbooks. In order to thrive there needs to be a lot of custom moves covering a lot of what’s likely to come up in a game.
This one - by the original designer and the game all others are based on - is the gold standard and honestly no other PBTA game has this much quality or depth. Some come close ( Pasión de las Pasiones is the only other PBTA game that screams - ‘I can be played!’), but most have way too few moves which seems to be (and has been reported to me by friends who have played) to be very limiting in the game.
That said, this game seems like it can be played and seems like a good template for any other PBTA games. So far, though, almost none have followed the ‘playbook’.
4****
October 10, 2018
Disclaimer: I Kickstarted this edition, but haven't actually had (or rather, made) the opportunity to play it yet. YMMV in actual usage.
That said, this has got to be close to the gold standard for RPG rulebooks. It's smoothly readable and well-formatted, with just enough personality to be interesting but not so much that affectation obscures the actual content. It has enough redundancy that you don't have need to hunt for important information, but (albeit just barely) not so much that reading becomes a slog as repetition piles up. The organization supports quick pick-up and play for those who want to have fun with pen-and-paper RPGs without needing to read and internalize a textbook's worth of rules before they begin. The size is reasonable, the art style is evocative, and the production values are high enough that the paperback volume stands up to some rough handling. And that's without even going into the extras: the discussion and supplemental materials at the end of the book, once the rules are out of the way. The designer clearly put a lot of thought into this one, and it shows in every aspect of both the physical product and the content.
If you're into RPGs at all, especially gritty post-apocalypic SF, this one is strongly recommended.
That said, this has got to be close to the gold standard for RPG rulebooks. It's smoothly readable and well-formatted, with just enough personality to be interesting but not so much that affectation obscures the actual content. It has enough redundancy that you don't have need to hunt for important information, but (albeit just barely) not so much that reading becomes a slog as repetition piles up. The organization supports quick pick-up and play for those who want to have fun with pen-and-paper RPGs without needing to read and internalize a textbook's worth of rules before they begin. The size is reasonable, the art style is evocative, and the production values are high enough that the paperback volume stands up to some rough handling. And that's without even going into the extras: the discussion and supplemental materials at the end of the book, once the rules are out of the way. The designer clearly put a lot of thought into this one, and it shows in every aspect of both the physical product and the content.
If you're into RPGs at all, especially gritty post-apocalypic SF, this one is strongly recommended.
September 27, 2019
After being a fan of PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse, games modified from Apocalypse World base rules) for some time, I finally decided to go to the source. Admittedly, I could have gone even further back and read 1st edition, but I felt satisfied with this book.
The best part of the book is the chapter on running the first game session. I feel it prepares the game master well for getting things started.
There was a lot in this book I didn't care for, but I feel confident that was primarily a matter of personal taste. The book's bigger shortcomings are merely being outdated by work done on the PbtA community since its publishing (for which it cannot be held responsible). For example, its explanation of the structure of PbtA moves is vastly improved upon by the work of Brandon Leon Gambetta.
Though I don't think this game is good me, I am considering using elements from it art my own game table.
The best part of the book is the chapter on running the first game session. I feel it prepares the game master well for getting things started.
There was a lot in this book I didn't care for, but I feel confident that was primarily a matter of personal taste. The book's bigger shortcomings are merely being outdated by work done on the PbtA community since its publishing (for which it cannot be held responsible). For example, its explanation of the structure of PbtA moves is vastly improved upon by the work of Brandon Leon Gambetta.
Though I don't think this game is good me, I am considering using elements from it art my own game table.
January 5, 2019
I have read quite a few Roleplaying games and did not think there was one that could teach me anything. I was wrong. Apocalypse world showed me ways to run a game that are useful in other systems. It also gave a whole new view of Character relationships. Probably the most useful game I have read in the past 10 years. Definite masterpiece for me.
February 26, 2019
Honestly, I don't know if I'll ever run Apocalypse World. I'd love to play in a one-shot or maybe even a series of games, but I don't think it's the kind of game I really want to run, just in terms of what interests me in terms of genre and storytelling. It asks interesting questions and puts characters in interesting spots, and I think it's awesome for that--but it's something I'd rather play in than run. Not sure if I can articulate it any better than that. But that said, I think Apocalypse World is one of the most important games I've read, and sections of it should probably be required reading for all GMs, regardless of whether they are ever going to run it, regardless of which side of the (manufactured) story-game vs. OSR divide, or what-freaking-ever. I think there's good food for thought in here about what running a game looks like, what the role of the GM/MC should be, and--for game designers--how to write about running a game in a way that's true to the genre and gives GM the information they actually need, as opposed to assuming what they do or do not know.
Apocalypse World is also an enjoyable read, though at times can feel a bit grueling because the voice is so consistent (it took me a while to get through for that reason). But even that is something different than we usually see in the traditional RPGs--the game being written in a "voice," in a way that drives home the exact feel you're trying to achieve. I'm not talking here about the sidebars written by famous wizards or what-the-fuck, but rather the whole book is written in a way that points the reader toward the tone and genre. It's really kind of remarkable in a lot of ways.
Apocalypse World is also an enjoyable read, though at times can feel a bit grueling because the voice is so consistent (it took me a while to get through for that reason). But even that is something different than we usually see in the traditional RPGs--the game being written in a "voice," in a way that drives home the exact feel you're trying to achieve. I'm not talking here about the sidebars written by famous wizards or what-the-fuck, but rather the whole book is written in a way that points the reader toward the tone and genre. It's really kind of remarkable in a lot of ways.
July 15, 2024
Haven’t played, but read the whole book with the Burned Over supplement in case I ever do. I also got some good ideas to pull into other PbtA games I currently play. Burned Over stuff definitely sounds better for me than just the book. I do have a complaint about weapons though: seems to me that homemade weapons and especially bows and arrows have been overlooked. In my game I’d have to include those. Firearms don’t last forever and are much harder to make without industrial infrastructure.
I also kind of wish there was more freedom or mechanics to include what caused the apocalypse. The psychic maelstrom is cool, but I feel like it would be more interesting if there was more to the apocalypse itself. Zombies? Virus? Toxic waste? Nuclear explosion? Massive volcanic eruptions or other natural disasters? I don’t know that I’m all that interested in gangs running around fighting each other. Mad Max is fun, but I’m not sure I would care to play a campaign of it. Having characters learning to survive in the apocalypse and avoiding (or fighting) whatever caused it, or maybe trying to fix it, something like that - that kind of story sounds more interesting to me, and this game isn’t really set up for that.
Still love Dungeon World the best!
I also kind of wish there was more freedom or mechanics to include what caused the apocalypse. The psychic maelstrom is cool, but I feel like it would be more interesting if there was more to the apocalypse itself. Zombies? Virus? Toxic waste? Nuclear explosion? Massive volcanic eruptions or other natural disasters? I don’t know that I’m all that interested in gangs running around fighting each other. Mad Max is fun, but I’m not sure I would care to play a campaign of it. Having characters learning to survive in the apocalypse and avoiding (or fighting) whatever caused it, or maybe trying to fix it, something like that - that kind of story sounds more interesting to me, and this game isn’t really set up for that.
Still love Dungeon World the best!
February 12, 2024
An overall excellent book, one I can totally understand how it influenced so many others into an entire subgenre. I've played a couple PbtA games before, but not this one yet, and never as a GM/MC, so I'm curious to see how this differs between reading and actually playing it. Certain parts like the threat maps I plan on taking and using in other games I'm hosting as well, which says something about the effectiveness of the book so far. I'll have to skim through it again and bookmark certain parts for when our campaign actually starts, but for now I'm optimistic it will work out well under this system.
October 31, 2019
Honestly, it's pretty clunky by modern game design standards, but it's easy to see the diamond in all that apocalyptic rust.
The tabletop world today would look very different without this book. I don't know that I ever want to play AP itself (not that I'd turn you down if you offered) but pbta is my very favorite game system, so I'm much obliged to this book.
The tabletop world today would look very different without this book. I don't know that I ever want to play AP itself (not that I'd turn you down if you offered) but pbta is my very favorite game system, so I'm much obliged to this book.
Read
March 8, 2021This sounds so fantastic! I desperately want to play someday - hopefully, I can catch some streams on Twitch, learn more, and then find a very nice MC to pat me on the back and guide my journey onwards. It just seems so fantastic. Definitely going to watch Mad Max for the umpteenth time after reading this.
August 29, 2020
Simultaneously informal, technical, and drenched in apocalyptica—with *superb* examples of play and the mindset of the MC. Not only is it rules; it’s prep.
Plus, the Battlebabe hook is a work of art in and of itself.
Plus, the Battlebabe hook is a work of art in and of itself.
August 30, 2020
One of the most elegant RPG systems out there.
February 14, 2019
Difficult to read but beautiful to play. Worth the struggle!
March 27, 2025
This book never gets old.
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