BRUTES

Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are stupider than that.Brutes cannot plan ahead. When you're MC'ing for Brutes keep that fact clearly in your mind. When Vincent talks about NPCs having simple impulses that's the key to the Brutes - they want a thing and they get that thing now. They think a boy is pretty, they make a pass at him now. They get angry and they shoot the offender now. Doesn't matter if any of those things land them in trouble two seconds from when they're finished - if they had the vision to think that far ahead they'd be Warlords.If you keep this fundamental limitation of Brutes in mind they'll basically play themselves. Have them blurt out the first thing that comes into their heads like they've never heard of OpSec. If a player does something scary have them run for it. If a player manipulates one have them fall over themselves to help. Have them react instantly, and have those reactions be big and occasionally inappropriate. Players love it, it's like flattery to see how totally they can dominate the lives of these poor saps.When I write Brutes down, I do a grid with five slots: Their name, their crew, their haunt, their deal, and their damage. The crew and haunt are the Brute's support structure and where they go whenever they're in trouble. A Brute's deal should be simple and pejorative - drunken farmer, sexy aunt, loose cannon. Their damage is any harm done to them, diseases they carry, grudges they've picked up or shortages they resent (I use coloured sticky notes for these to help me track the spread of these things through populations).Because of their simplicity I think Brutes aren't really capable of malice. They're crude, rude, angry, self destructive, afraid, brutal, but they're very rarely outright bad people. They're also defined by their sense of community - there should never be just one disconnected Brute, that guy's a Grotesque or a Warlord. Brutes are a unit and have very strong social bonds with each other. Every Brute should have at least one person who cares if they live or die, and they should be quick to extend that same courtesy to the players.WHY USE BRUTES?In a lot of ways, the Brutes are the prize of Apocalypse World. Almost everything anyone does is a struggle for control of the Brutes. A Warlord without any Brutes is just a pretentious dude. A Brute without any Brutes is a Grotesque. When the Brutes put their muscle to it they can build up or tear down basically anything.If Grotesques are the mouth and Warlords are the brain, Brutes are the beating heart of Apocalypse World. They're love, fear, hate, compassion, community. The Brutes give you access to moral judgement - at the end of the day, when the rescued girl falls weeping into the Gunlugger's arms or the mob turns on its hateful prophet, the Brutes allow the world itself to recognise, reward or destroy what is right and what is wrong. The Brutes are the future, God help us. The power players of Apocalypse World will fight over what that future is and who will be alive to see it, but it is the Brutes who will inherit it in the end.The reason to use Brutes is to communicate the simple, primordial needs of the people to the players. Don't have a Brute get into a big debate about it, just have him say what's on his mind - "That didn't feel right, Keeler", "I'm scared about them storms", "Hey Uncle, do you ever get hungry?" When it comes time for a Brute to speak right from the heart, not parroting a Warlord's words, have it be something simple and insightful that cuts right to the core of who these people are.A BRUTE'S CRAPEach Brute should have one Thing. That thing could be a gun, a good blanket, an antler they pray to, a box of seeds, whatever. That thing is the one thing they've salvaged from the ruins of civilisation and they've built their identity around it. In the rare situation where a player asks a Brute how they're doing have them start talking about their one thing and not shut up until they're made to. Their total life assets, including house, gun and blanket might add up to about 1 barter, 2 barter if they're really cashed up.The other thing a Brute should have is an Affliction. A lot of the time in conversation it'll make a lot of sense to have a Brute make an Affliction move, so every Brute should have a pet Affliction that's the thing that bugs them about life in Apocalypse World.BRUTE TYPESHunting Packs are fearful creatures. They're constantly afraid for their lives, for their status in the pack, if they're going to go hungry. They find security of a sort in surrounding themselves with other people like them and pretending to big strong badasses. They're doing it for protection, for the safety of numbers, for the ability to cower in the shadow of an Alpha. And as long as they have the edge they'll channel that fear into making everyone else afraid, constantly proving to each other that they're big, strong and safe.The one thing a Hunting Pack will never do of it's own free will is attack a superior foe. They don't want to lay their lives down for this - what is it? Bunch of drinking buddies? They'll only go if they think they can win, and the moment that's in question they out. This trait means that Hunting Packs are magnetically attracted to big, confident badasses because they reckon their odds are better if their leader is a stone cold killer. If their big bastard goes down then they're going to surrender or run, and within the week you'll see them hanging around in the shadow of the next big f*cker.Key Moves:â¢ Make a coordinated attack with a coherent objective.â¢ Demand consideration or indulgence.â¢ Make a show of solidarity and power.Sybarites are the simplest of the simple. They want a thing? They go and get it, right now, no questions, no explanations. They can clearly express their desires only by immediately acting on them. They don't tell anyone they're hungry, they break into the grain silo. They don't lodge a complaint with the Hardholder about the Cannibal, they just go and kill him, and they sleep well that night. They're not an organised group, they're small collections of friends and drinking buddies. If you ever find yourself wondering what a Sybarite does in any given second, remind yourself their immediate thought is likely to be "Ah, f*ck it, YOLO"As frustrating as Sybarites are to deal with they're possibly the least violent type of Brutes in Apocalypse World. They could endanger everyone by drinking all the water or whatever but they're doing that out of stupid impulses, not out of hate or anger. If confronted with the negative consequences of their actions they'll often be quite abashed. They might get in fights all the time but they're not going to go out and deliberately murder anyone who doesn't clearly have it coming.Key Moves:â¢ Tell stories (truth, lies, allegories, homilies).â¢ Ask for help or for someoneâs participation.â¢ Cling to or defy reason.If your players are anything like mine, this is what they'll want most of their Brutes to be like. Loyal, obedient, disciplined, punching down at the riff-raff. I personally hate these guys, they're cold and dead and frog-like, full of petty hate and an internalisation of rules. If Brutes are the heart of Apocalypse World, these f*ckers are the cold, shrivelled and joyless heart of a tiny little dictator.I manifest this by having all the judgement these guys have to offer fall on the players. I have them disapprove of everything the players do. They disapprove of creative thought or unconventional tactics, they disapprove of new technology, they disapprove of making peace, they disapprove of treating people politely. They disapprove of the Gunlugger's pink Mohawk, they disapprove of the Angel's healing touch and they disapprove of the Hocus' new vision. They'd never upset the status quo by organising a revolt, oh no, they'll just sneer at you and undermine you in petty ways. They'll take their vindictiveness out on minorities, outsiders or standouts. They'll never do anything that puts them personally at risk.Key Moves:â¢ Make a coordinated attack with a coherent objectiveâ¢ Rigidly follow or defy authority.â¢ Ask for help or for someoneâs participation.A Cult is what happens when some idiot teaches the Brutes how to articulately express one of their primal desires. By giving them unifying words and phrases, pictures, traditions, music, paints, stories and rituals the Cult can not only ask for something they want but ask for it in an extremely sophisticated and effective way. While an ordinary Brute desire might be to hit a guy sometimes, a Cult can take that emotion and refine it into an elaborate warrior cult that exults in glorious death and battlefield unity. A Cult, uniquely among Brutes, can explain exactly what it wants and how it plans to get it.The problem with Cults is, of course, none of the language used to articulate those desires belongs to the Brutes themselves. They were told these things by some Warlord who was either insane, enlightened or manipulative. And the brilliant sophistication that allows them to explain exactly how they intend to die on the battlefield or how to maintain every minor component on an elaborate system of solar panels works against them when they try to get across some unrelated concept - like maybe they think that it's not right to burn people in sacrifice to the King in Yellow.If a Cult is dissatisfied it begins to generate tension but it cannot act on it because it doesn't have the words to express something outside its paradigm. When someone who understands the Cult's language well enough to phrase their hidden objections arises then the Cult can explode with startling speed and ferocity - the new heresy falls upon the old orthodoxy and fights it to the death.Key Moves;â¢ Tell stories (truth, lies, allegories, homilies).â¢ Rigidly follow or defy authority.â¢ Make a show of solidarity and power.A Mob is what happens when some idiot tells the Brutes that it's okay to shout. They raise their voices - and to their shock they get what they want. They're amazed. It's like they've discovered a superpower. If they yell they get what they want.And, like most newly minted superheroes, the Mob doesn't know the limits of it's power. How could it? These poor f*ckers have never had any control over their lives before now and now suddenly they can force the Hardholder - jesus, the f*cking Hardholder himself - to do what they want. So they're going to yell for something else. They're going to go through their wants like a shopping list until they literally cannot think of anything else they want. God help you if you tell them that their demands will be met later.And really, if it's just the Mob without a Warlord whipping them into a frenzy then they'll run out of things pretty quickly. They can probably be paid off, threatened by armies, impressed with speeches, or have their collective energy sapped by any kind of crisis or distraction. Heck, even rain can probably disperse a Mob pretty quick. But even if the Mob breaks up it's not dissolving, it's splintering - breaking down into little groups of angry people who are fundamentally upset that yelling didn't solve their problem. And these angry little splinters are the real danger - they're the dudes who'll set buildings on fire in the middle of the night with no warning. The instability feeds back into the mob and it'll soon re-form, louder and angrier than ever. Mobs are only really dangerous when they have a prolonged period of time to really whip themselves up into a frenzy. Like a wild fire, a leaderless, angry Mob cannot be stopped - it can only run its course.Key Moves:â¢ Demand consideration or indulgence.â¢ Burst out in uncoordinated, undirected violence.â¢ Make a show of solidarity and power.If you have a NPC who just seems like a regular dude with nothing weird going on his life at all then he's a Family. Family is the basic social unit and an excellent resting point for Brutes who aren't caught up with anything weird or nasty. Families are solid, dependable, reliable, salt of the earth people who have each others' backs. Blood spreads slowly so they're not in danger of spiralling out of control or forcing their will on the world around them. Simple.And, if you've seen any sort of horror movie at all, you know that when a Family goes bad it goes really bad. Inbreeding, blood rituals, dark secrets and all-powerful matriarchs who rule more totally and invasively than the cruellest dictator.The best way to mobilise a Family threat is to give them something to protect. One option is to make one family member a Grotesque. Now your Mutant or Cannibal has a place to hide and a score of violent people who will rigidly defy demands to give him up. Another option is to put them in charge of some key piece of infrastructure. The Family will attach itself to that thing like a starfish and become extremely secretive about how it maintains it. Either way, the slow rate of family expansion means that they're unlikely to expand in a timeframe that threatens the players, make the players come to them.Key Moves:â¢ Rigidly follow or defy authority.â¢ Cling to or defy reason.â¢ Make a show of solidarity and power.