Diagrammatic Report of a short Apocalypse World Session

Apocalypse World Actual Play Diagram by Ché Wilbraham

Overview

The large diagram above charts out a short session of Apocalypse World, using the structure described in Game Narrative Structure Diagrams. The actual narrative or story of the session is briefly summarised along the bottom of the diagram, while most of the space and complexity is given over to the interlocking structure of moves (the system's term for actions attempted by the fictional characters, using dice rolls). These moves sometimes occur parallel to or flow into and out of each other - four player characters were acting, sometimes with consequences for each other.
It's worth noting that this session was short and relatively straightforward, and as such has generated a minimal-complexity diagram. The number of moves was low for a session of Apocalypse World, in my experience, perhaps because the players were fairly unfamiliar with the system, and roleplaying games in general.

The Gamemaster and the Players

Apocalypse World has a very distinctive and rigid structure that defines when the gamemaster may (and must) make moves. This is reflected in the diagram via the pink-tinted elements. The gamemaster may only make hard moves when the players fail a roll - these are the larger pink boxes. Otherwise, the gamemaster generally may establish details of scenes and prompt the players into taking action. They also are occasionally called to intervene in player moves with some decision-making.
This balance of power and responsibilities is quite particular to Apocalypse World (and systems that are based on it), so I suspect that other systems would not present such a clear-cut distinction between player and gamemaster actions, or the gamemaster actions would be less regimented.

Storylines

The diagram represents the interwoven stories of four distinct player characters, each with their own agency. While still relatively low in complexity, the threads intermingle in a way that makes the whole difficult to read as "a story". However, any one character's route can be followed through from beginning to end in a linear fashion, representing their linear storyline.