68. Work on your threat map and essential threats.

This is where the chapter begins transitioning us to the next chapter, the one on threats.

The first three paragraphs walk the reader through the threat map, what its various parts denote, and where to put NPCs and other parts of the world that come up during play. We’ll just skip over that and get to the part and tells us how threats fit into the first session:

Be sure to get a start on your essential threats. They are:
• For where the PCs are, create it as a landscape.
• For any PCs’ gangs, create them as brutes.
• For any PCs’ other NPCs, create them as brutes, plus a grotesque and/or a wannabe warlord.
• For any PCs’ vehicles, create them as vehicles.
• In any local populations, create an affliction.
• What kind of threat is the world’s psychic maelstrom? (102)

Threats are not central to the first session (hence not being mentioned until two pages from the end of the chapter). Just because they aren’t central, however, doesn’t mean that we can ignore them altogether. We are told to “work on” the threat map and to “start on” our essential threats. Threats will become very important in the following sessions, but here in the first session, we simply want to be mindful of the threats, to have them rolling around in the back of our mind.

So let’s take a look at that word “essential.” In a book that chooses its language very carefully, “essential” is a word that doesn’t mess around. Why are they essential? Well we know that there are no status quos in Apocalypse World. We know that the playbooks, Hx, and the process of character creation as a group sets up a “fractured, tilting landscape of inequalities, incompatible interests,” and “untenable arrangements” (97—and no, I will never get tired of quoting that line). But setting up those elements is not enough to ensure that there is never a status quo. The players will work tirelessly to bring things to a balance, which will bring the evolving narrative to a dull standstill if they ever succeed. The only way to ensure that the landscape is forever tilting is to put everything on that landscape in motion and beyond the PCs’ control. When you make the landscape itself a threat, and the PCs’ gangs threats, and every NPC a threat, and every vehicle a threat, and give every population an affliction—when you do all those things, you ensure that there are more forces cascading across that tilted landscape than the PCs could ever possibly hope to stop. Because to make those elements threats is to give them energy and a direction which sends each off on its own trajectory, giving the PCs endless material to bounce off of and rub against.

So these threats listed here are the bare minimum, and the more you are aware of their status as essential threats from the first session, you can keep your eye out for who might be your grotesque and which of the NPCs is looking like a wannabe warlord. What kind of hostility do you find the terrain itself putting forth? What does the central population seem to be suffering from? You ask all these questions and keep your eye out for answers as you play your first session. There will be time enough later to solidify them; for now, just “start on” them.

The only thing left to look at in this passage is the psychic maelstrom. The chapter thus far has been pretty quiet on the subject of the psychic maelstrom. This might seem odd since opening your brain is a basic move. In fact, open your brain isn’t even mentioned in the bullet point commanding us to nudge the players to have their characters make moves.

It makes sense that the psychic maelstrom is somewhat danced around in this chapter because the move makes the MC tell the PCs something new and interesting about the current situation. On the one hand, everything (ideally) is new and interesting in the first session. On the other hand, and more importantly, threats and your prep work are the tools that the game gives MCs to be able to come up with something new and interesting to say in the first place. As such, the psychic maelstrom can easily make an appearance in the first session, but it won’t be a fully functioning part of the game until the second session and beyond. All the same, you want to keep the psychic maelstrom in mind so that if and when a player triggers the move, you can pay attention to what kind of threatening behavior it displays.