71. Opening Section for Threats – Part II.

People are motivated by scarcity. Scarcity creates and distorts their societies. The landscape itself is hostile, ungiving, full of hate and hunger (106).

This is a sort of thesis statement for the chapter. In the real world, there are a lot of reasons for people to be horrible to each other. In Apocalypse World, what motivates everyone to one extent or another is scarcity. Either you have something they want, or they have something you want. This paragraph orients you to everything that follows, connecting the MC tools for wreaking havoc with the wants and needs generated by a world that has too little to give to too many.

The characters’ enemies are their most obvious and immediate threats, but their allies too, their crews, gangs, their people, they’re threats too. They’re theirs now, but they can turn on them, and will, just as soon as their hunger and desperation outweighs their loyalty. And meanwhile, they’re still threats to everyone else.

Scarcity makes threats not only of your enemies, but also of your friends and followers. Everything Apocalypse World does with NPCs prepares you for this moment. When playing NPCs, you are told to pick a body part and have them follow it wherever it leads them. That single desire tells us that the NPC is always acting in their own best interest, driven by a deep need or habit. If the PCs benefit, great; if not, tough shit. Making PC-NPC-PC triangles shows us that the NPCs want something from everyone. Looking through crosshairs tells us that anything the MC controls is disposable, and all the NPCs are under the MC’s jurisdiction, friendly and hostile alike. The game makes no distinctions between NPCs aligned with the PC and those aligned against them. So unless the Battlebabe chooses “get an ally” as one of her improvements or any character rolls a 12+ after advancing their seduce or manipulate move—unless one of those things happen, the NPCs will remain potential threats to the PCs.

NPCs are the number one tool given to the MC of Apocalypse World for creating play and finding those darting fish that make them wonder. Because NPCs require no stats or numbers of any kind, they can be created on the spot. Grab a name from the MC worksheet and boom, the NPC exists in the fiction. This design allows the MC to fill the world with named, human NPCs at whim. Doing so provides not only color and a kind of realism, it gives the MC a way to poke and prod at the PCs at any given time. Players just as easily create NPCs. The playbooks bring NPCs into play as gangs and crews and staff and labor and gig-folk. Every one of those helpful souls becomes a threat in the prep time between sessions. Every NPC the players narrate into the fiction are like fire: they light up the space, can serve the PCs well, and will always threaten to burn them if the proper conditions come along.

I love the ominous sound (and meaning!) of “They’re theirs now, but the can turn on them, and will, just as soon as their hunger and desperation outweighs their loyalty.” That sentence does a beautiful job of capturing the precarious position the PCs are in vis-à-vis the NPCS. All friendship and support in the apocalyptic wasteland is conditional.