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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 8698603" data-attributes="member: 99817">So I think it's worth focusing just on this as a thing in its own right.Because if I buy Curse of Strahd, that establishes situation, right? But that's not how we play AW. There are many ways to 'establish situation'. One of them is for the GM to write down lots of things which have happened and lots of things which will happen. This is not how AW is played... so how is it played?My method has always been to collectivise the worldbuilding, as a group with everyone a creative equal. So we start with a generic statement:"There's been an Apocalypse of some kind, not sure what, but the world is a harsh, fragmented, ruined place where our ideas of civilisation have broken down... what does that look like?"That's the springboard for everyone to enthuse about ideas, whether it looks like baking, bleached desert, or crumbling ruins overgrown with toxic plants.And all that then feeds into our immediate ideas of situation because it starts telling us what's scarce in the game. AW is about scarcity, and the 'no status quos' is about putting pressure on both what is scarce and what appears abundant.So in the desert, where do you get water from? What is there to eat and how to you obtain it? So where do those materials for trapping and hunting come from? Or how do you find your way through the thick vegetation? Is there old coloured cabling marking trails? Who lays that down? Is there an antivenom for the plant toxin? Where does it come from? Who has the knowledge to make it?These are the vibrant and interesting questions at the heart of the character's survival. Making them front and centre in the initial conversation about place and setting, is what builds situation which the players have an implicit understanding of and an investment in. Once everyone at the table has had an equal say and can visualise the place, with all its attendant perils and weaknesses... then you're through the opening step of 'establishing situation'.</blockquote>

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