I: Vincent has been kind enough to share total sales figures for AW over the past few years. Last time I saw, I think you said 4000 copies sold since 2010? AW is a very high-profile game in the community, but financially it seems to be completely overshadowed by heavy-hitters like D&D5, or even a game like 7th Sea (300K on the Kickstarter in 24 hrs). Why do you think it’s so hard to reach audiences, relatively speaking?

Meg: We are not aiming to be D&D. We are not hoping to capture the 7th Seas audience. We write weird little off-beat games dealing with odd concepts, like young gunslinger preachers and superpowered people with amnesia and doomed pilgrims and whatever the Hocus is. We want to do our thing well, and if folks like it, that’s great! To use a music analogy, we’d rather have coffee shops full of folks that love what we do and follow every note than have a stadium full of folks who know that one song because they heard it a few times and don’t really know the words.

That said, I also think Apocalypse World continues to reach new audiences because of the wide appeal post-apocalyptic media in general has lately, and the way AW is structured makes it VERY accessible to people who have never played a roleplaying game before. We see this over and over at PAX, when people are excited and it’s the first time they’ve bought a tabletop roleplaying game.

Vincent: Part of it is just plain age! Apocalypse World is five years old. 7th Sea is what, 25? Let’s compare again in 20 years. I bet that Apocalypse World has the staying power.