Situation, setting and "status quo"

Numidius said:

Actually AW is intended to start "clicking" after half a dozen sessions, at best.
The setting is heavily implied in the text. There are no locations, tho, since it is a post apoc setting.
No status quo means no self sustained authority bigger than "the party" that cannot be subverted if They so choose.
Lots of connections, tho, between all the factions/npcs involved.
Lots of procedures to create a coherent environment with scarce resources needed by anyone, but not enough for everybody, hence no status quo.

Hope it helps

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No locations?

It seems that: "no self sustained authority" would be the status quo? Also the scarcity. Except "the party" is there?

This seems confusing.

dragoner said:

No locations?

It seems that: "no self sustained authority" would be the status quo? Also the scarcity. Except "the party" is there?

This seems confusing.

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No "prewritten" locations. Although a lot of stuff is suggested in the examples of the text.
In the First session of play characters are made, and also worldbuilding, but not a whole fantasy world, just the locations in which the players, or the party, live and start playing, a smallish postapoc setting, supposedly rich of npcs and connections.

I humbly suggest to the op to read the fluff intro, of course, and jump straight to reading all the pc playbooks. Most of the setting is there.
Also before starting to play, the players, of course, should read'em. They're very inspiring to find, come up, with situations around the pcs classes. Every single choice the players make compiling the char sheets, the Gm should ask lots of questions to them about anything, and help define the starting situation.
It is pretty organic in its development.

A good example is The Hocus. The post apoc paranormal Priest head of a religious sect, community. Simply reading the options on the playbook (character sheet) about his/her followers, in form of multiple choises to ...choose from, the situation, the setting comes to life.
The gm then asks for details about really every choice made and anything else worth of interest, and mixing it with the other pcs provides a starting, complex situation/setting.

Numidius said:

No "prewritten" locations. Although a lot of stuff is suggested in the examples of the text.
In the First session of play characters are made, and also worldbuilding, but not a whole fantasy world, just the locations in which the players, or the party, live and start playing, a smallish postapoc setting, supposedly rich of npcs and connections.

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I get it now, though I think the language could be a little clearer. In one of my games, for example, I grabbed a line from a book ad about "violent gangs vy for power on the frontier" (frontier could be changed to post apocalyptic wasteland) which sort of described most of what the players needed to know. Other parts, I let them fill in the blanks.

Numidius said:

I humbly suggest to the op to read the fluff intro, of course, and jump straight to reading all the pc playbooks. Most of the setting is there.

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Yes, I've done that. I get the setting in the sense of genre/colour/tone.

Numidius said:

Hi there! I wouldn't say the setting is the situation. Perhaps the situation is the (first) session, instead. By reading the manual and the playbooks the setting is mostly implied. Does it make sense?

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Interesting. Maybe my use of "setting" is misleading, or just flat-out wrong?

I'll try to explain what I was getting at, and why - for me - it's distinctive compared to what I'm more familiar with.

Painting in broad brush strokes, and doing some classification on the run, I would say that I'm familiar with 3 main sorts of situation - and I'm thinking here especially of situations at the start of a campaign/"arc":


For this sort of situation, setting is a backdrop but often not fundamental. And (1) and (3) can certainly co-exist with a pretty robust status quo, and (2) can as well although maybe is more likely to produce outcomes that upset a status quo.

What's struck me about AW, by way of contrast, is that the situation is (or, I should say, seems to be) established by the arrangement and orientation of the setting elements - rival warlords/hardholders and the like; poison in the water or food supply; fifth columnists and crazies; etc. In this way it seems closer than what I'm used to to what Ron Edwards wrote about here.

Comparing to DW - which I have read, and even played a little bit of - the concept of "fronts" also seems much more at home in AW. I can see how that sort of technique relates to the idea of the non-status-quo.

I've been thinking of trying to do some DW with my group some time in the not-too-distant future, but now I'm thinking AW looks more interesting. (If also more challenging, because I think it would push me as a GM in ways that I'm not used to being pushed.)

Right. I believe with AW, Baker goes beyond those structures of reasoning, towards a freeflowing play and Gming.
From his previous games, the pattern, the direction of his designing is visible and AW is the apex of that

Numidius' caveats

Once a gm, at the end of a difficult first session, introduced an enemy out of the blue, just to let us roll some dice. Not cooperating players and a condescendent gm... bad results

Once I been proposing Aw to my vampire group. They pushed for having a zombie apocalypse as main theme. I tried to change their mind, arguing that "that" is also a status quo. I eventually refused to gm

Btw when Aw did "click", I had some of the most immersive and intense gameplay

About the "status quo" thing. I see the written passage from Baker more as a warning, than an advice: the system works effectively against a status quo scenario (unless maybe it is treated as a continuous, neverending Front).

Once this Gm forced us to confront a gang of sort of humanoid monsters, I had a Gunlugger and warned him I could wipe out his gang with a single roll then I rolled and we moved on...