59. Describe. Barf forth apocalyptica.

You already have a lot of good material to work with. Everything the players have come up with between them and introduced at the end of character creation, plus everything I’ve given you, plus the stuff you thought about yourself before the game.

Talk about the landscape, the sky, the people, their broken lives. Say what the weather’s like, say what time of day, say what the walls look like, what the rag-waste smells like, how the plastic canvasses snap and hiss, how many people are at the well and which of them have guns (98).

Apocalypse World is often celebrated because it doesn’t require a lot of prep. The other side of that coin is that the game actively limits what you can prepare; it demands that you hold your part of the conversation with precious little planned. Because of that demand, the game is careful to never ask you to speak without giving you the tools to know what to say. In this case, everything that comes in the first part of the first session gives you “a lot of good material to work with.” The last item on the list in the first paragraph here is the only prep you were asked to do: develop an aesthetic for the apocalypse of your game, aka “daydream some apocalyptica.” That’s what you came to the table with.

It is not surprising then that the first bullet point of this list asks you to make use of that material. You’ve daydreamed it for yourself; now describe it for the other players.

Description in the first session accomplishes two main things. The first is that it creates a sensory-rich fiction with which the players’ characters can interact. The medium through which Apocalypse World is played is the fiction, and no moves can be triggered by the characters or made by the MC that is not submerged in that fiction. This is the equivalent of filling the pool before you can swim. Get that fiction started and make it specific so the characters have details to engage with. The second paragraph above proposes a list of descriptive possibilities to jumpstart your game (because, again, the game always has your back when it’s your turn to speak).

Second, your description in this first session establishes the tone and feel of the game. The apocalyptic landscape and characters populating it can be as dire, threatening, relaxed, comical, rich, desolate, dirty, or verdant as your imagination dictates. As MC, you have the power to offer up a proposed tone through your description. It’s not your decision alone of course, because you are, as the second bullet point will tell us, building off what the players established during character creation, but as the narrative proper begins, you get the first chance to lay out the details of the world. The foundation you lay in the first session will impact the tone and direction of the rest of the game. So seize that opportunity. As the text says, "Say everything . . . “