# Day 01: Apocalypse World: Burned Over tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/ > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice All right, it's the beginning of the year, and we are about to set sail for good or ill. Going through my pile from the most recently added to the least recently added, in order, throughout the entire month. Oh boy. This doesn't necessarily reflect when I bought them or when I backed them, because, as we know, things get updated. Things get released long after you've purchased them, more often than you might prefer—and by that, I mean all the time. We're going to open up with something that is a completed Kickstarter but hasn't been physically delivered yet. In fact, the full text hasn't been publicly released, but it's the last thing that got updated in my pile, so that's what we're going to start with. What's that? *[[Apocalypse World - Burned Over|Apocalypse World: Burned Over]].* ![[Apocalypse World - Burned Over (cover).jpg|300]] I have to be honest, *Apocalypse World* is not one of my favorite RPGs of all time, but it is pivotal. It was an elemental introduction that changed a good portion of the hobby forever, so it behooves me to keep up with these things. Today, we're going to see what creating a new character in the new system is like. Buckle up. ## Acts of Creation Ironically, the character generation process isn't in the core book or even mentioned therein. You have to go over to the playbook text, and it is on each of the playbooks. This allows for specific customization given the type of character that you're playing, but the process should at least be picked through in the core book. Still, this is early days, one theorizes, and not a follow-up literally over a decade in the making, so I guess we can overlook the little things. Right, so let's pick a playbook. ## Play On: Brain-Picker I have a general inclination, as anyone who's been reading *Grim Tokens* for any amount of time knows, and that is I'm a terrible, horrible, brain-rending nightmare, no matter where we go. Luckily, we can do that here. There's an entire playbook for that: *The Brain-Picker*. > *When they burned the world down, they didn’t know what would grow in its ashes. They didn’t know that we would be born, we with our eager, hungry brains, our unblinkered eyes, our whispering, dangerous voices.* > > When you play the Brain-picker, you have psychic powers and weird interests, and they go together… Off to page four and five we go in order to grab our template. ## Initialization This is one of those fun times that there aren't standalone PDFs for the character sheets. Instead, the playbooks are just folded into the whole mass, and because they're all custom—well, you get the idea. Fair enough, we'll just make do with what we've got. Time to go through the playbook setup, which is actually at the end of the second page. Yeah, don't think about it too much. I suppose they put the more frequently referenced stuff at the beginning of the four-page playbook. We get a lovely list of things to start off with: - Choose name and pronouns - First impression - Stats - Effects - Heart zone - Moves - Gear - History (spelled Hx) ### Name We have an amusing spread of possibilities on the names, but I think I'll go with something that leans into my particular brand of weird. **Name:** Burroughs (male) ### 1st Impression There's a list of first impressions that you can have, and of course you can add your own. Most of them are a little off or a little too good, which fits the character mold. I'm going to go with my inclinations. **1st Impression:** impatient ### Stats Figuring out your stats is a case of simply choosing a set as usual in an AW framework. They run from 0 to +2 across aggro, cool, hard, sharp, and Weird. For the brain-picker, none of the options have Weird at less than +2, so we'll go along the path in a sensible way. **Stats:** Aggro+1, Cool+0, Hard+0, Sharp+0, Weird+2 Stat selection is a little bit challenging for a brain picker if you want to be anything other than a bit of a knob. I decided that my best bet was to try and be a little bit decent at everything, especially given that it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland where he's survived so far. Going along with the impatience, he really does have Aggro+1, mainly so he can order people around fairly effectively and act under fire most of the time with his Cool+0. He gets stuff done. I like that. ### Effects **Effects:** > When you choose your gear, list your armor > and your weapon, including tags and harm. > > By default you have 0-Ψ, but your gear and moves might give you 1-Ψ or 2-Ψ. > > You have barter per your scavenge. That's straight off the playbook. What does it mean? I have no idea. They've explained absolutely nothing. Skimming through the main book doesn't really tell you anything either because there's absolutely no section on character creation. You'll notice that the brain picker gear is located on the previous page as a list with checkmarks or fill-ins, and as part of this process on this page as a list of things that you could do. Fine, we'll deal with that as we get to it. So really, no effects in here. ### Hard Zones Okay, so this is an actually interesting part of the new AW architecture. Hard zones are essentially post-apocalyptic portions of the setting which are sort of thematically related to one another. In a sense, it tells you what kind of post-apocalypse that you're dealing with. The current list of examples: - The Bottomless Vaults. - The Drowned City. - The Fallen City. - The Frozen World. - The Overgrown Wilds. - The Poisoned Land. - The Scorched Wastes. - A Hard Zone of your own creation. Each of those defined zones has eight locations inside of them, which are basically one-sentence descriptors. Frankly, it's a nice way to tighten things up and approach something a lot of people have trouble with in post-apocalyptic games, which is coming up with something that is a little bit focused but holds to the same kind of feel. Also, note that there are hard zones all around the one that the players start in, so it's going to make a difference when and how they travel because they're going to see new things and experience new things, and those things are going to be coherent. This actually might be my favorite part of the new edition. **Hard Zone:** Near Earth Oh yes, I probably should have mentioned there are a couple of special hard zones. And there was no way that I could resist being an apocalyptic survivor, living in zero-G in the messy accumulation of junk in orbit—a psychic who lives in constant freefall? My friends, you have just excited me. ### Moves According to the playbook, we get all the basic moves, and our gear might give us additional standard moves as well. Plus, we get two brain picker moves. Sure, those aren't located on this page, of course, because that would be sensible or useful. So I will flip back, grab those, and figure it out. Right. There are five in the book to choose from, of which I get to choose two. First up, I absolutely have to take *Embrace the Maelstrom*. It punches up our Weird to +3, and we get +1 Psi, which technically just brings us to +1 Psi. While I'm at it, I think I'm just going to go ahead and get *Deep Brain Scan*, which gives us the ability to really root around in there when we have time to study someone and ask them questions directly that they can't evade. Brain rapist? Yes, please! ### Gear Let's go with: - Two brain picker gear - One small fancy weapon - Some clothing - A prosthesis or aid - Living space - Incidentals I detail Straight out of the book. No problem. | Gear (tags) | Description | | --------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **In-eye brain-lenses** (hi-tech, worn) | For the wearer, casually watching someone for a moment counts as taking the time to study them. (Applies to **deep brain scan** and potentially to other moves and effects.) | | **Brain frequency resonator** (hi-tech, worn) | Gives the wearer +1Ψ (max 3-Ψ) | | Hidden knives (2-harm, hand, hidden) | | | Clothing | The rundown remains of a close-fit orbital skin suit originally designed for laborers in orbit close to atmosphere supplies. It is resilient against most impacts (one armor) and has ports to hook up cooling circulation fluids and air supplies, though both of those are in short supply. | | Living Space | A small Hab shack at the Stepoff.<br><br>It is a surprisingly modest habitation for someone who has made their whole life figuring out how other people think and function from the inside out. But the way the walls are scribbled on top to bottom in multiple orientations probably gives a hint as to why it's not a little more developed. | ### Hx Since there aren't any other players, I don't really have any history to establish with any of them. But normally, you would go around the table and ask 1 or 2 questions of other people in order to determine whether or not you have a pre-existing relationship. The questions are based on what playbook you have, and for the brain picker we have: *"Are any of you actually honestly uncomfortable hanging out with me?"* and *"Do any of you seem dangerous and unpredictable to me?"* For the first, the people who are uncomfortable with you have Hx+3, and those who seem dangerous and unpredictable have Hx+2. Yes, this means that the people that are most uncomfortable with the psychic are the ones he has the most chance of doing something relationship-oriented with. I kind of love it. # Exunt And that's kind of it. The end of the playbook suggests that we should think about what the goals for our character should be or achieve in order to pursue one phase of the XP layout at the end of a session, which is good design no matter what. Now we just need to do the sheet. > [!note] Editor's Note > > You know, working on putting actual text into the boxes here on the sheet. I hate how the actual stat is not centered in the box, which makes a centered number look absolutely wrong, and things are just out of true. Yes, that's me being ridiculously anal, but here we are. It's also worth noting that your scavenge is something that you choose and can change from session to session, but there's no mention of it on the sheet except the entry on the page. The primary mention of it is on the main rules text, which otherwise doesn't talk about character generation at all. Perhaps predictably, I put down that when resources run thin, I'm more than willing to use psychic abilities to exploit and extort people, which increases my barter rating. You're welcome. ![[00 - Apocalypse World Burned Over - Burroughs, Brain-Picker (sheet, p1).webp]] ![[00 - Apocalypse World Burned Over - Burroughs, Brain-Picker (sheet, p2).webp]] Shockingly, that's it for today. It went a lot faster than I expected and had a few bumps in the road, but for a game that's really not ready for publication quite yet, I can't really object. Obvious problems are obvious, but characters come out feeling reasonable and interesting. Tomorrow, things might get a little weirder. Actually, come to think of it, it won't be weird at all. In fact, we'll be visiting one of the old-school originators of the indie tabletop RPG movement, which wasn't available in PDF for quite a long time. Okay, apparently the first two days of the year here are going to have a theme. Good luck to me.