A toy game from the 2016 game design advent calendar.

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When I first saw the prompt, I thought someone had ripped a truck in half and built a little cement-lined space in the middle. That's clearly not the case, but the idea of shoving space in where it doesn't belong stuck with me.

You've lived in the Wastes all your life; it's strewn with strange ruins at odd distances from one another. And those distances...plants and oases and life exists, but where it doesn't there is nothing but the ground and the air and the nothing. The people of this accursed place, your people, share a common curse: you create physical and figurative space where there was none, at will and without cost. A knife descends for your throat, and suddenly is 1000 feet away. Your husband is jealous and abusive one moment, and ambivalent the next. This is the tool by which you live, and the final death of your land.

Requires:

• A copy of Apocalypse World or any Powered by the Apocalypse hack; the GM rules there are necessary to make any PbtA hack like this one work.
• A big d6 and a little d6 (or a red and a green, just differentiate them)
• Some index cards
• A couple big sheets of paper for maps

Rules:

Draw out two separate maps. One is a relationship map; write each PC's name on a big piece of paper and draw a line between each pair of PC's. This represents the connection, or space between the two of you. Give that a distance from 1 to 4. You're allies, if not friends.

The other map is a regular map of the Wastes. Each player should make a little drawing of the village or ruin or oasis they're from on an index card, and tell the group a bit about it. These are their Hometowns. Throw those cards on another big sheet of paper and mark where the PC's are on the paper. Draw lines from that spot to each drawing, and label each line with the distance the PCs are from that Hometown.

As space increases, relabel the lines on each map.

Each character gets two numbers: Physical and Social (these are terrible names, I know). Assign a 1 to one of them, a 2 to the other.

Anytime you roll, roll your big d6 - your little d6. If it's a Physical roll, you can adjust the roll closer to 0 by an amount up to your Physical number; likewise for Social. So if you have Physical = 2 and roll with Physical, getting a 3, you can turn that into a 2 or a 1. If you rolled a -1, you could turn it into a 0.

When you increase the space between two physical things, say how much space you are creating, in specific units, and roll with Physical.

• If your final roll is 0, you create precisely as much space as you desired.
• If your final roll is less than 0, you create one fifth less space for every point of difference. For instance, if you try to create 16 feet between yourself and that bandit, but roll -2, you create about 10 feet.
• If your final roll is greater than 0, you create a fifth again as much space for every point of difference. So if your final roll is a 3, you create 16 feet instead of 10 feet.

When you increase the space (figuratively) between two people, say how much space you are creating (in social units) and roll with Social.

• If your final roll is 0, you create precisely as much space as you desired.
• If your final roll is less than 0, you create one less unit of space for each point of difference, minimum one. For example, if you try to increase the figurative space between yourself and the lawman trying to kill you by 3, but roll -3, you increase the space by only 1.
• If your final roll is greater than 0, you create an additional unit of social space for each point of difference. So if your final roll is a 4, and you were trying to create 2 units of space, you instead create 6 units of space.

When you would further adjust your roll closer to 0:

• Increase the space between yourself and another PC, and adjust a Social roll by the same amount.
• Double the distance between your location and any Hometown any number of times, and adjust a Physical roll by the same number.

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Social connection is thought of as figurative space between two people, and measured in social units. Use the following as a guide for what social distances mean:

1. You're lovers, or sworn enemies.
3. Friends or rivals; you know secrets about one another, and share respect.
4. You share either respect or secrets, not both. You might fight that respect or use those secrets.
6. You're neutral and ambivalent to one another.
8. The other guy is barely human and unworthy of consideration; you'll tolerate each other only so long as is necessary.
10. The other guy is less than human, a disgusting thing that should not exist. You'll ensure this unnatural thing's body feeds the Wastes before the sun rises again.

GM:

• Play to find out what happens before the end.
• Fill the wastes with hostility and distance.
• Explore the mysteries left stranded in the desert.

Use Apocalypse World's GM moves here; it's a pretty similar setting. The GM's job is to facilitate situations where the players must rely upon their ability to create space. Force people and forces against them, hard, and get them to push them away.

When you introduce an NPC, decide their social distance from the PC's. A known enemy probably has a low distance (close through rivalry), while a monster or jaded bandit has a higher distance (far through disdain and dehumanization).

Notes:

This game ends only one way: the PC's are stranded in the Wastes, thousands of miles from any civilization and anyone who cares. What's more, they don't even have the heat of hatred to keep each other warm; they simply don't care about one another, or believe the others to be inhuman blights on the land (that picture is seriously depressing).

It does depend on the GM making the space-creation ability relevant. It's the only roll in the game, so everything else is done freeform. If the GM can drive the players to roll, the system will push things further and further apart.

This game has an obvious lineage from Apocalypse World, but also Wolfspell by Epidiah Ravachol, and any number of games designed to end in only one way (3:16 or Call of Cthulhu, for instance).

--Karaktakus the Bummed

Prompt/cover photo: Wikimedia Commons