Adventure: The Door in Reality

Using Apocalypse World: Burned Over, this adventure began as the system requires - some player characters simply exist within a world of threats. As they attempt to deal with difficult situations and pursue their interests, they must deal with the consequences of their actions and the outcomes of their rolls. To read through the specifics of what happened, start here: The Door in Reality, Session 1. The world was seeded with content from the Apocalypse World book, some collaboratively chosen by the gamemaster and players together and some chosen by the gamemaster alone. Some elements and characters were also created (or further detailed) by the gamemaster for the sake of establishing compelling situations and building an engaging world. As the sessions went on, some of these elements were overlooked while some received greater focus, as the players made choices about what threads and opportunities their characters would follow. The later parts of the adventure revolved heavily around The Door, with Sub-Plot: The Door essentially becoming the main, focal plot of the story by the end.

Brief Story Summary

Those Who Will Open The Door are a loosely-affiliated group of survivors in the post-apocalyptic Overgrown Wilds. They each pursue their own interests for some time:

Reginald Fulton, Sequoia, Astiniltlish "Pell" Pelligri and STYG-0 become embroiled in Sub-Plot: Harbortown Versus The Cut.
Matthew Lutey encounters The Door and learns of its potential.
Storm Gardenia and Errol Mustang deal with the influence of The Orchids in House Gardenia.

Sequoia dies from injuries sustained in a fight relating to the conflict between Harbortown and The Cut, leading to Styg and Reginald trying to find a home for her daughters, Petunia and Prune. They head for House Gardenia, knowing that Storm will take them in. Pell focuses on trying to protect people from the Wolves of the Maelstrom, who seem to be becoming more aggressive. During a night-time ambush, he is rendered unconscious and rescued by some survivors. His group end up looking for refuge at House Gardenia. Once all of the player characters assemble at House Gardenia (both by choice and coincidence), they make plans to investigate The Door. They head off to claim it, destroying The Cult of The Door in the process and triggering branches in reality and multiple contradictory endings.

Plot points/Scenes

Sessions

Sub-Plots

Themes

Harsh survival, tough choices, compromise.

Structure

Exposition

The Starting Situation

In The Overgrown Wilds, Those Who Will Open The Door are based around The Buried City. It’s a pretty inhospitable and dangerous place, but provides shelter, opportunities and a form of protection. It separates the shaky coalition of The Cut / Harbortown from Shelter, which would probably have been overrun if not for this. House Gardenia is fairly intertwined with Shelter, though separate and somewhat distant. Pierre leads Shelter with a naive positivity, and he’s very keen to expand the relatively free and comfortable society for the benefit of others. The residents are relatively happy, though not especially secure or well-protected - the defenders are few and poorly equipped. Jeanette leads The Cut harshly - life there is uncomfortable, but no resident goes without their very basic needs, at least. She will not allow her people to die unnecessarily, but their lives can certainly be very hard. The defenders and scavenging/raiding parties are very well equipped. Millions leads Harbortown ruthlessly, always out for gains in wealth and power (mostly at a personal level, though they’re clever with how they spread their wealth). Residents have a vast gap between the poorest and the most comfortable. The defenders are few but well equipped, with heavy weapon emplacements around the walls. Harbortown and The Cut have a shaky alliance - they work together as far as it is mutually beneficial and are aware that an open war would be very costly to both sides. Their ideologies and ways of life are incompatible, though, which causes much friction. Both forces are certainly ruthless, but many of the fighters from Harbortown can be cruel, while the forces of The Cut seem more stoic. Beyond Shelter, the residents of The Pillars have all but closed themselves off from other settlements in recent times. The caravans slowed and then stopped, with rumours that the people there are forgetting how to speak. From further down the coast, The Grove trade with Harbortown, but they have little interest in coming to land themselves. Further South than The Grove, there are rumours of a place called Angel's Town. The people there may have some mastery over life and death, or perhaps other mystical powers, but it’s known to be hard to find and access. Far to the North, The Skyway is reportedly home to The Cult of The Door, and The Door itself. They are rumoured to be deluded and their settlement is well protected, but they supposedly keep great secrets about the world.

Components

Goals

Survive, pursue interests and deal with the consequences, investigate potentially advantageous situations

Hooks

The Cult of The Door worship a strange obelisk and claim that the rebirth of humanity is at stake.
Harbortown and The Cut are under a shaky truce, but both still try to gain the upper hand.
Rumours from Angel's Town speak of mastery over life and death.
People at The Pillars who deal with The Orchids are losing their higher functions.

Relations

Backdrops

Locations

The Overgrown Wilds: The Buried City, Harbortown, The Cut, Shelter, The Pillars, The Grove, Angel's Town, The Skyway

Threats

Using the terminology of Apocalypse World:

Past Events

Roughly eighty years ago, the apocalypse happened. According to Reginald Fulton and Sequoia, there was a great war happening at the time that continued beyond the apocalypse. Psychic strangeness may have been involved, but The World's Psychic Maelstrom was certainly first encountered around this time. In The Overgrown Wilds, nature overtook the remains of human civilisation, growing over and into most of the ruins there. A great city was swallowed by greenery and became inhabited by strange creatures. Pockets of human civilisation survived where they could, forming settlements and so on.

Notes

Because this story / adventure was told using Apocalypse World, which is very anti-plot and focused on emergent storytelling, it's strange to post-rationalise the activities as a traditional adventure or plot. A story was told, with a journey, a beginning and an end, but it wasn't guided or authored in the way a traditional narrative - or even a different RPG system - would be. None of us playing had any idea what the ultimate focus of the story would be, or which of the regularly-emerging threads of plots would be followed up on. For example, when establishing details of the world, I thought that the Subplot: Harbortown Versus The Cut situation would end up being the focus for more characters. It ended up driving some action, but the players ultimately abandoned the conflict. As a side-effect of not pursuing some of the sub-plots, we never discovered what the mystery / nature of some of them were. For example, we didn't find out what was in charge of, or had caused, The Orchids, or whether there was any basis for the rumours about Angel's Town (or what was even there, in a basic sense).