8. Gear and other crap

Today we are gathered to reflect upon the “Gear and Other Crap” section of “The Basics” chapter in the 2nd Edition of Apocalypse World. Here’s our text:

All of the different character types come with their own assortment of gear and other crap, including holdings, gangs, gigs, followers, crews, workspaces, weapons, and specialized equipment.

Most individual items of gear or crap get a little list of descriptive tags, like magnum (3-harm close reload loud) or followers (fortune+2 surplus: 1-barter augury want: judgment savagery). Those tags work in 3 different ways. Some of them are straightforwardly mechanical, like 3-harm, fortune+2, Surplus and want. Some note the circumstances under which the thing can be useful, like close and reload. Some tell you, the MC, things to say when the character uses the thing, like loud, 1-barter, augury, judgment and savagery.

See the gear and crap chapter for full descriptions, page 224. (page 12)

“Gear and Crap”: What a fantastic title for a chapter covering all the odds and ends that are important to completing a character’s details. Not only is it humorous; it is dismissive. Of course holdings, gangs, gigs, followers, workspaces, etc. are all critical to the game, but I think cramming them all under the banner “gear and crap” is a way of saying, don’t be distracted by these gewgaws. These things are important only insofar as they contribute to and further the story being created; they are always secondary to the heart of our story: the characters. These are the characters’ gear and the characters’ crap, possessed by and subservient to. We know before we even turn to the chapter, that this book will not dedicate dozens of pages to detailing all the possible guns and weaponry available to the characters. We know that we won’t find a dozen more pages of vehicles in great detail with pictures and flavor text.

The “3 different ways” that the tags work are also interesting here. The first, mechanical, is straightforward. The second category is “circumstances under which the thing can be useful.” “Useful” is the important word here. These are not descriptions to bring the weapons to life; they are restricted descriptions that tell us how the weapons can be used in or to shape the Fiction. The third category is the fascinating one: “things to say.” The gun is “loud”—work that into the details of the Fiction. The gang is “savage”—don’t forget that detail. “Things to say” anchors those tags directly into the Fiction. The second category makes specific demands on the Fiction, and the third category calls out what needs to be added to the Fiction when this gear and crap play a role.

It’s worthwhile to directly compare tags to a traditional alternative. For example, in the 7th Edition of Call of Cthulhu, a .44 magnum (which for AW is “3-harm, close reload loud”) is described as follows:

Skill needed: firearm (handgun); Damage: 1D10+1D4+2; base range: 15 yards; Uses per round 1 (without penalty)/3 (with penalty); Bullets in Gun: 6; Malfunction 100 (meaning, on a roll of 100 the gun malfunctions)

Since, as we pointed out in the discussion of “Moves and Dice,” dice are only rolled for moves, AW assigns a non-negotiable harm value for each weapon, compared to the die roll for damage of many other games. The range of 15 yards is converted to “close,” which pulls us away from grids, hexes, and tape measures and leaves things to a much more cinematic Fiction. There is no fiddling with numbers or uses—all that is worked into 3-harm, weather you did that with one bullet or a number of bullets fired in rapid succession. Those details are left to the shared Fiction. The same goes for malfunctioning. That’s an option available to the MC when the player rolls a miss during battle (specifically the MC move “take away their stuff”). And the 6 bullet capacity is covered by the simple "reload."