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Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Galaga Galaxian posted:

This. So much this. I want a good ruleslight Cyberpunk game.

Have you checked out Technoir? Because it's a pretty good rules light cyberpunk game.

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The Lore Bear
Jan 21, 2014

I don't know what to put here. Guys? GUYS?!

Bucnasti posted:

Shadowrun being a kitchen sink setting and having 25 years of splatbooks might make it an insurmountable task to work into a *world game without cutting it down to the point that it's no longer recognizable as Shadowrun.

I think the better idea may be to make a cyberpunk game with elves, dwarves and magic. Sure, it won't feel exactly like Shadowrun to a die-hard, but I don't think anything will feel close to Shadowrun to that person.

Zorak of Michigan
Jun 10, 2006

Do the brand names need to be important to the system, or to the fiction? I think a lot of the classic genre feel could be made up on the spot as color simply by putting the right queues in the playbooks. Just off the top of my head, you could have something like...

Street Samurai

Pick one piece of futuristic weaponry, then
- Give it a brand name
- Assign one tag to show its chromed goodness
- Assign one tag to show its cheapness


Decker

You have a deck.
- GIve it a brand name
- Assign two tags to show how awesome it is

Corporate Sellout

Pick one piece of obvious cyber-augmentation, then
- GIve it a brand name
- Assign one tag to show its excellent
- Assign one tag to show its enormous expense
- Assign one tag to show that it's dated now

Then you come up with the tag list and go from there. By the time the whole party gets done, you should have a brand taxonomy, and a few fruitful conflicts, like how Arisaka makes a fantastic deck but only the most ignorant guttersnipe would get Arisaka eyes.

Siivola
Dec 23, 2012

Zorak of Michigan posted:

Do the brand names need to be important to the system, or to the fiction?
Since it's *W, yes. :v:

In the books, the brands clearly have in-universe meaning, since they're worth bringing up in the first place. But the thing is, Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun are both from the darkest eighties, when setting came in books. You couldn't just make brands up, what if you contradicted the source material? If you needed a gun with a personality, that's what the Chromebooks were for. And honestly, those setting details they'd write in the books are why I love gear porn so much. I give exactly zero shits about the numbers (I never read 'em), but thinking about what sorts of bits and bobbins a character might carry around is so much fun.

Zorak of Michigan posted:

Then you come up with the tag list and go from there. By the time the whole party gets done, you should have a brand taxonomy, and a few fruitful conflicts, like how Arisaka makes a fantastic deck but only the most ignorant guttersnipe would get Arisaka eyes.
So, I think you hit the solution right on the head here. It's not enough to have a brand, you have to let everyone at the table know what it means, too.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

I really like the idea of a PbtA cyberpunk game where the corporations and relationships between them are created by and during character generation.

Impermanent
Apr 1, 2010
Everybody makes a runner. Faces, Deckers, Street Samurai and Rigger players all make also make a corp per player. Magician, Shaman, and Adepts make up magical setting details.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Impermanent posted:

Everybody makes a runner. Faces, Deckers, Street Samurai and Rigger players all make also make a corp per player. Magician, Shaman, and Adepts make up magical setting details.

Sold. When's the Kickstarter?

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Evil Mastermind posted:

I really like the idea of a PbtA cyberpunk game where the corporations and relationships between them are created by and during character generation.

Doesn't the Sprawl do exactly this? At least in an earlier draft I recall that making a corporation and giving some details on it was something that every player did during character creation.

Zorak of Michigan
Jun 10, 2006

I think maybe the commitment to gear-dork-ness should also be reflected in the Moves. I'm not sure how tightly to tie them but (for example) the Street Sam's special killy move should require them to mention the brand name or a tag from a weapon or cyber-enhancement to trigger the move. You want to just punch somebody? Basic move. You want to disembowel some dude with your razor-sharp finger blades by Hanzo Global Industries? Now you're triggering Sonny Went To Chiba.

QuantumNinja
Mar 8, 2013

Trust me.
I pretend to be a ninja.

Kai Tave posted:

Doesn't the Sprawl do exactly this? At least in an earlier draft I recall that making a corporation and giving some details on it was something that every player did during character creation.

Yes, Sprawl does this exactly. Honestly, I think that Sprawl is a good cyberpunk system: it hits upon gear, focuses on Megacorps, and generally gets into a lot of the grit you would expect. If you want classic Gibson-style stories, it will deliver.

Unfortunately, that doesn't really scratch the Shadowrun itch. As derisively as it has been brought up in this thread, the appeal -really- is playing the gear selection minigame, and figuring out how to push that during sessions to get the upper hand. But as has been repeatedly observed, that seems pretty opposed to the fundamental way gear is handled in PbtA. Attempts to squeeze one into the other is fundamentally flawed, and I wish people would stop trying and failing.

Error 404
Jul 17, 2009


MAGE CURES PLOT

Zorak of Michigan posted:

I think maybe the commitment to gear-dork-ness should also be reflected in the Moves. I'm not sure how tightly to tie them but (for example) the Street Sam's special killy move should require them to mention the brand name or a tag from a weapon or cyber-enhancement to trigger the move. You want to just punch somebody? Basic move. You want to disembowel some dude with your razor-sharp finger blades by Hanzo Global Industries? Now you're triggering Sonny Went To Chiba.

The Hacker/Decker should totally get a special harm move whenever they take M-harm (Matrix harm) or dumpshock or whatever. Call it The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




QuantumNinja posted:

Yes, Sprawl does this exactly. Honestly, I think that Sprawl is a good cyberpunk system: it hits upon gear, focuses on Megacorps, and generally gets into a lot of the grit you would expect. If you want classic Gibson-style stories, it will deliver.

Unfortunately, that doesn't really scratch the Shadowrun itch. As derisively as it has been brought up in this thread, the appeal -really- is playing the gear selection minigame, and figuring out how to push that during sessions to get the upper hand. But as has been repeatedly observed, that seems pretty opposed to the fundamental way gear is handled in PbtA. Attempts to squeeze one into the other is fundamentally flawed, and I wish people would stop trying and failing.

Good news ! The Sprawl hit a stretch goal and will get a not-Shadowrun magical cyberpunk expansion. I was broke and couldn't back it, but if it's up to par with the pre-KS public draft, it should be good.

Bucnasti
Aug 14, 2012

I'll Fetch My Sarcasm Robes
One of the things I've always disliked about cyberpunk games is the inclusion of the matrix in the rules. If I was making a cyberpunk game I'd either make running the matrix super abstract (When you hack the gibson roll +smarts...) or I would come up with a completely separate set of rules for the matrix and make it into it's own game.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Yeah, even though I like the concept of Deckers and Cyberdecks, I never liked how Shadowrun (early editions anyways) pretty much crawled to a halt while the Decker pulled out his Deck to jack in and hack. The Matrix needs to be kept simple and flowing, just another move, not an elaborate virtua-dungeon within a run.

I'd also make sure hacking is something anyone could do, not just the "Decker" playbook. Of course, while anyone can hack, the Decker is the one who knows the slickest tricks and has the best Cyberdeck.

Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Aug 13, 2015

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Zorak of Michigan posted:

I think maybe the commitment to gear-dork-ness should also be reflected in the Moves. I'm not sure how tightly to tie them but (for example) the Street Sam's special killy move should require them to mention the brand name or a tag from a weapon or cyber-enhancement to trigger the move. You want to just punch somebody? Basic move. You want to disembowel some dude with your razor-sharp finger blades by Hanzo Global Industries? Now you're triggering Sonny Went To Chiba.

I think the problem here is that "dropping a brand name on a piece of gear to explain why it's badass" really only works one time for any given piece of gear, after which everyone at the table is probably going to be like "yeah yeah, we get it, your Arisaka gun is badass for the 50th loving time." So unless the street samurai is constantly acquiring new implants or new gear, which is a possibility but again "constant gear treadmill" is more a product of cyberpunk RPGs and not a lot of cyberpunk fiction, this seems like a move with limited usefulness.

QuantumNinja posted:

Yes, Sprawl does this exactly. Honestly, I think that Sprawl is a good cyberpunk system: it hits upon gear, focuses on Megacorps, and generally gets into a lot of the grit you would expect. If you want classic Gibson-style stories, it will deliver.

Unfortunately, that doesn't really scratch the Shadowrun itch. As derisively as it has been brought up in this thread, the appeal -really- is playing the gear selection minigame, and figuring out how to push that during sessions to get the upper hand. But as has been repeatedly observed, that seems pretty opposed to the fundamental way gear is handled in PbtA. Attempts to squeeze one into the other is fundamentally flawed, and I wish people would stop trying and failing.

Non-derisively, it really does sound like you need to check out GURPS. If you want to get lost in minutiae GURPS has you covered in spades. What it doesn't have is everything pre-made for you like a catalog, you'll need to supply cyberfuture brand-names yourself and cyberware is probably not going to be gear so much as a function of purchased character abilities, but it absolutely has lists of guns and gear and it has advanced combat rules for things like martial arts that make Shadowrun look like Risus by comparison. I'd recommend Spycraft but it doesn't really have much in the way of cyber or magic, but it also has extensive gun lists, feats, combat styles, and like a dozen separate conflict resolution subsystems for car chases, manhunts, hacking, on-site infiltration, seduction, interrogations, and so on.

e;

Bucnasti posted:

One of the things I've always disliked about cyberpunk games is the inclusion of the matrix in the rules. If I was making a cyberpunk game I'd either make running the matrix super abstract (When you hack the gibson roll +smarts...) or I would come up with a completely separate set of rules for the matrix and make it into it's own game.

This is another problem a lot of would-be Shadowrun *World hacks run into. The last draft of Sixth World I looked at had Matrix rules that were like ten pages long. The Sprawl's were only like two pages and I even thought that might have been a bit excessive, but we'll see.

Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Aug 13, 2015

Bucnasti
Aug 14, 2012

I'll Fetch My Sarcasm Robes

Kai Tave posted:

Non-derisively, it really does sound like you need to check out GURPS. If you want to get lost in minutiae GURPS has you covered in spades. What it doesn't have is everything pre-made for you like a catalog, you'll need to supply cyberfuture brand-names yourself and cyberware is probably not going to be gear so much as a function of purchased character abilities, but it absolutely has lists of guns and gear and it has advanced combat rules for things like martial arts that make Shadowrun look like Risus by comparison. I'd recommend Spycraft but it doesn't really have much in the way of cyber or magic, but it also has extensive gun lists, feats, combat styles, and like a dozen separate conflict resolution subsystems for car chases, manhunts, hacking, on-site infiltration, seduction, interrogations, and so on.

I loved GURPS back in the day, I'd probably play a GURPS Shadowrun game, but I don't have time to do all that work.

Galaga Galaxian posted:

Yeah, even though I like the concept of Deckers and Cyberdecks, I never liked how Shadowrun (early editions anyways) pretty much crawled to a halt while the Decker pulled out his Deck to jack in and hack. The Matrix needs to be kept simple and flowing, just another move, not an elaborate virtua-dungeon within a run.

Yeah I love decking/hacking, and almost always played a decker, but it really sucked the life out of games. The best Shadowrun game I ever played was actually an all decker game, which is why I think a *world hack just about decking might be cool.

"When you try to do something in the real world roll +meat..."

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.
Totally unreleated, but a few days ago I completely, arbitrarily made up a categorical system for AW hacks in a middle of a conversation and I'm wondering if it makes any sense.

Basically, it goes:
  • First Generation: In the style of hacks that came out as AW was still completely new. Essentially, steering way too close to AW itself and not trying to make the mechanics your own. So, like the original Monsters Of The Week that used the same basic moves as AW.
  • Second Generation: This is when the hack is trying to make the game their own, but it held down by assumptions and tradition. You're trying to make it different, but veer too close to what is established. So, like a Tremulus and the Sixth World.
  • Third Generation: This is when the hack successfully makes the system their own. They get how it works and plays it all to their strengths. So, like Monsterhearts.
Totally poo poo that I made up off the top of my head and probably a waste of mental effort, but, since I keep finding myself using the terms since that conversation, I'm wondering if they make any sense.

Tulpa
Aug 8, 2014
doesn't make sense, they all came out at the same time

If anything, I consider Monsterhearts and Sagas of the Icelanders and Dungeon World to all be first generation hacks and we're only now seeing the release of second generation AW games like Urban Shadows and Undying.

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Tulpa posted:

doesn't make sense, they all came out at the same time

If anything, I consider Monsterhearts and Sagas of the Icelanders and Dungeon World to all be first generation hacks and we're only now seeing the release of second generation AW games like Urban Shadows and Undying.

It's more style than chronology. Like, it comes down to it's defining features and less its chronological placement.

Impermanent
Apr 1, 2010
Those are good distinct categories but I don't think that "generation" works because it implies that that these are ordered by chronology, which isn't the case. Monsterhearts, for example, was actually published before Dungeon World, which solidly belongs in the second tier.

I like the distictions because they essentially describe whether or not a work is dominated, pressured, or inspired by AW, but those terms are likely to get muddled.

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

Impermanent posted:

Those are good distinct categories but I don't think that "generation" works because it implies that that these are ordered by chronology, which isn't the case. Monsterhearts, for example, was actually published before Dungeon World, which solidly belongs in the second tier.

I like the distictions because they essentially describe whether or not a work is dominated, pressured, or inspired by AW, but those terms are likely to get muddled.

Yeah, since Tulpa's post, I got the feeling that "generation" is a bad term, but I don't know good replacement word(s).

Edit: Thelazyblank on IRC suggested "tier, circle, steps, etc." I liked Circle since it's neutral, non-judgmental, and doesn't imply chronology. What do you guys think?
  • First Circle: In the style of hacks that came out as AW was still completely new. Essentially, steering way too close to AW itself and not trying to make the mechanics your own. So, like the original Monsters Of The Week that used the same basic moves as AW.
  • Second Circle: This is when the hack is trying to make the game their own, but it held down by assumptions and tradition. You're trying to make it different, but veer too close to what is established. So, like a Tremulus and the Sixth World.
  • Third Circle: This is when the hack successfully makes the system their own. They get how it works and plays it all to their strengths. So, like Monsterhearts.

Covok fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Aug 13, 2015

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Bucnasti posted:

I loved GURPS back in the day, I'd probably play a GURPS Shadowrun game, but I don't have time to do all that work.

This is honestly where I'm at with a lot of crunchy systems with tons of fiddly bits these days. Back when I was in high school I played the poo poo out of Magic: the Gathering, bought and obsessively studied several different M:tG magazines for deckbuilding purposes (this was before the advent of widespread netdecking and people on blogs breaking everything down in exacting detail), and I would spend hours on a lovely Macintosh computer making Shadowrun 2E characters for games I would never play. I used to think gear porn books were the best fuckin' thing ever and I owned tons of supplements for games full of robots, guns, cyberware, magic spells, and all kinds of poo poo, most of which went unused.

These days I simply find I can't be arsed to bother with a lot of that stuff anymore, especially since it's become increasingly clear that a lot of game designers who are themselves fond of minutiae and gear porn aren't talented enough to make it a worthwhile endeavor. Too often games with lists of poo poo like Shadowrun are an exercise in figuring out what 10% of everything is good with 90% being filler or trap options.

The last time I played Shadowrun was here in the Game Room. It was a fun as hell game run by a cool GM who has since vanished off the face of the earth (RIP children overboard) but making my character took me like three hours of flipping between pdfs and crunching numbers and starting over because nope, that doesn't work like how I thought it would, and I know that quality is here somewhere but what book is it in...and then when the actual game got started it was fun, but I noticed that I used about 10% of all that crunch baked into my character and the rest might as well have been set dressing. Then the new edition came along and with all the changes it made to various gear costs, skill costs, how stuff worked, etc. it turned out I couldn't actually recreate that character in the new edition as a starting level PC and it was like welp, okay then.

To bring this around to *World chat, I appreciate that gear in *World games like Apocalypse World are generally defined by what's going to be most important. Does it pierce armor? Is it expensive and flashy? Does it cause horrific wounds beyond the usual? Tags are an interesting, if somewhat binary, shorthand keyword system and I do love me some keywords. Technoir also uses a keyword system for pretty much everything since a lot of the system is built around playing with keywords/aspects, exploiting them and applying them offensively, so you get things like a cyberarm whose tags are high strength, gesture input, and natural looking for instance. What a tag system lacks is gradiation, the difference between a +3 bonus and a +4 bonus and a +5 bonus, but in highly gradiated systems like by-the-book Shadowrun what usually winds up mattering the most is extreme values in either direction anyway.

Tulpa
Aug 8, 2014
Fair enough, and I think I'm probably more critical of MH than most people here as I would class it as 2nd-circle instead of 3rd-circle (come to think of it, there hasn't actually been a 3rd-circle game)

Part of that is that I have played more than 50 sessions of Monsterhearts whereas I have played maybe 15 total sessions of Dungeon World, so DW's flaws don't really stand out to me whereas everything wrong with MH is glaringly obvious.

I think AW is kind of an overdone mechanics-genre (though tbf I haven't played or read World Wide Wrestling and that one seems like it does some actually interesting things.) The Warren didn't change enough from the much earlier playtest release and has a lot of the same problems as MH and Sagas

RSIxidor
Jun 19, 2012

Folks who can't handle a self-reference paradox are real suckers.
Anyone ever heard of a hack that's about starfighter jockeys?

Or even just fighter jockeys?

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Closest thing I know of is Night Witches. But that isn't really about air combat so much as war drama and it'd be very difficult to adapt to a normal fighter group instead if a night bomber group (the whole game is structured around a day/night cycle).

RSIxidor
Jun 19, 2012

Folks who can't handle a self-reference paradox are real suckers.
Ah, yeah, I have heard of Night Witches. Pretty cool concept.

I think what I want is something to capture BSG / Top Gun / Macross type fighter jockey groups. Can probably think of a few other sources.

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops
You could probably still have a ground/air split but it'd look different from Night Witches for sure. NW is very much about being a Soviet airwoman rather than planes particularly.

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Flavivirus posted:

Maybe a potential solution is to take a leaf from Borderlands and have a range of premade manufacturers, each of which applies their own tag to their manufactured equipment? So cheap brands like the Val-U-Ware Ventilator always come with the Unreliable tag, and expensive ones like the Schloss-Mikenburg Eliminator T5 always come with things like Armour-Piercing or Nanotech?

That or gate the number of positive tags a piece of gear can have behind how high-end the brand is, so cheap knockoffs have 1 or 2 and top-of-the-line stuff has 5-6.

(or simplest solution: branded is an extra tag you can have on gear that means it does something fancy, unique and desirable)

This is pretty much it, maybe have a few selections of more common weapons, but this allows you to generate any number of weapons with the various tags built in already, give it a brand name, and apply it to every single piece of gear in the game.

Also you could rebrand (pun intended) a lot of the moves. Your Gunlugger (or equivalent) isn't Insano like Drano, but he's got XyTek Threat Amplifier electrodes attached to his skull.

Zorak of Michigan
Jun 10, 2006

Kai Tave posted:

I think the problem here is that "dropping a brand name on a piece of gear to explain why it's badass" really only works one time for any given piece of gear, after which everyone at the table is probably going to be like "yeah yeah, we get it, your Arisaka gun is badass for the 50th loving time." So unless the street samurai is constantly acquiring new implants or new gear, which is a possibility but again "constant gear treadmill" is more a product of cyberpunk RPGs and not a lot of cyberpunk fiction, this seems like a move with limited usefulness.

I don't know if I agree. I haven't played SR in years but I seem to recall that it was just about impossible to get through a full action without a higher level of description than we usually get in AW. I don't want to make people orate about the virtues of the neoKrinkov compared to filthy capitalist civilianized war profiteering M-7 carbines, I just want to steer them away from the vaguer AW terminology ("I shoot her in the face with my magnum") and toward SR obsessiveness about gear ("I shoot her in the face with my Ruger Chromehawk"). I think it would be an important color aspect.

QuantumNinja's not wrong that SR was all about a certain level of min-maxing, but I think there's room in the world for a game that duplicates the trappings without having to be the same game. I enjoyed obsessing about gear and 'ware lists and figuring out how to build the best possible character while still preserving a vaguely healable 3.0 Essence, but I also remember things that were cool in story terms. I think a game that helped us tell those stories without taking an entire session to get through a firefight would have some value.

Cyphoderus
Apr 21, 2010

I'll have you know, foxes have the finest call in nature
There's an AW principle that reads, "give everyone a name, make everyone human."

Just add another one that says "give every object a name, make every object a product."

You don't need endless lists of equipment to evoke the gear-obsessed feeling, the same way you don't need endless lists of NPCs to evoke a community feeling. Just give your stuff a name, place it in the context of market. Maybe provide players and GM with a Big List o' Generic Brand/Model names.

Lurks With Wolves
Jan 14, 2013

At least I don't dance with them, right?

Zorak of Michigan posted:

I don't know if I agree. I haven't played SR in years but I seem to recall that it was just about impossible to get through a full action without a higher level of description than we usually get in AW. I don't want to make people orate about the virtues of the neoKrinkov compared to filthy capitalist civilianized war profiteering M-7 carbines, I just want to steer them away from the vaguer AW terminology ("I shoot her in the face with my magnum") and toward SR obsessiveness about gear ("I shoot her in the face with my Ruger Chromehawk"). I think it would be an important color aspect.

QuantumNinja's not wrong that SR was all about a certain level of min-maxing, but I think there's room in the world for a game that duplicates the trappings without having to be the same game. I enjoyed obsessing about gear and 'ware lists and figuring out how to build the best possible character while still preserving a vaguely healable 3.0 Essence, but I also remember things that were cool in story terms. I think a game that helped us tell those stories without taking an entire session to get through a firefight would have some value.

I get what you're going for, but there's only so many times you can say "I stab him with my Mitsuhama Airsplitter" instead of "I stab him with my vibroblade" before calling something a Mitsuhama Airsplitter loses whatever impact it has. I mean, people don't actually go around calling things by their brand name every time they use them. Giving people a better combat move that only unlocks when they use their gear's full product name just means people are going to talk like they're in a bad commercial. (Admittedly, that could be a really cool move for a corporate goon playbook, but not for everyone.)

I guess my point is that talking about your sweet tech is something that needs to be rewarded, but you need to be rewarding the kind of tech talk that will actually sound natural when you have people doing it constantly over the course of a run.

RSIxidor
Jun 19, 2012

Folks who can't handle a self-reference paradox are real suckers.
You can evoke quite a bit just from the model name of a weapon and I think brand should do the same thing.

BFG (assuming you know waht the acronym means) implies something quite powerful, perhaps unwieldy, but definitely big. Add a brand to it and it could add some more flavor.

If a player decided the brand was, "Great Goblin's Gastronomical Guns," then that BFG might have a slightly different flavor.

Thanlis
Mar 17, 2011

Tulpa posted:

Fair enough, and I think I'm probably more critical of MH than most people here as I would class it as 2nd-circle instead of 3rd-circle (come to think of it, there hasn't actually been a 3rd-circle game)

I'd be interested in your take on Cartel. It doesn't fall into the trap of using the same basic moves, damage is handled very differently, etc. Perhaps too early to judge given that it's not out in final form yet.

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Cyphoderus posted:

There's an AW principle that reads, "give everyone a name, make everyone human."

Just add another one that says "give every object a name, make every object a product."

You don't need endless lists of equipment to evoke the gear-obsessed feeling, the same way you don't need endless lists of NPCs to evoke a community feeling. Just give your stuff a name, place it in the context of market. Maybe provide players and GM with a Big List o' Generic Brand/Model names.

I like this

I'm also the guy that ended up with a list of 100+ NPCs in my last game, though

e:158

edit2: this remains my favorite entry

Name: D-Day
Sex: F
Notes: LOVES EXPLOSIONS
Killed By: D-Day
Killed How: explosive yield too high

Captain Foo fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Aug 13, 2015

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Captain Foo posted:

I like this

I'm also the guy that ended up with a list of 100+ NPCs in my last game, though

e:158

Yeah, AW's thing about naming everyone seems wildly impractical to me for exactly that reason. Especially combined with "Also kill them off frequently".

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

spectralent posted:

Yeah, AW's thing about naming everyone seems wildly impractical to me for exactly that reason. Especially combined with "Also kill them off frequently".

you don't have to do it, but i just keep a quick google doc with everyone that gets named, and add notes as they come up: it looks like this

spectralent
Oct 1, 2014

Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Captain Foo posted:

you don't have to do it, but i just keep a quick google doc with everyone that gets named, and add notes as they come up: it looks like this

This looks like "Remember who people are for versimilitude's sake" to me, rather than "Make everyone a person". Unless that's all it meant and it's yet another example of AW restating things I already do in a way that's just different enough to frustrate me trying to work out what kind of insane madman does that. That happens a lot with AW.

Cyphoderus
Apr 21, 2010

I'll have you know, foxes have the finest call in nature

Captain Foo posted:

I like this

I'm also the guy that ended up with a list of 100+ NPCs in my last game, though

e:158

edit2: this remains my favorite entry

Name: D-Day
Sex: F
Notes: LOVES EXPLOSIONS
Killed By: D-Day
Killed How: explosive yield too high


Ah, I meant endless lists of NPCs in sourcebooks.

Endless lists of NPCs that you and your players came up with are the best

Shoombo
Jan 1, 2013
Just don't make a new npc every time you need one. Reuse npcs frequently, it makes stronger triangles and makes their eventual death hit harder.

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Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Loki_XLII posted:

Just don't make a new npc every time you need one. Reuse npcs frequently, it makes stronger triangles and makes their eventual death hit harder.

This was the point of doing it this way. People get mentioned offhandedly, and you keep track of that information. The full list of mine included their loyalties and their stomping grounds, so as the game went on if I needed an NPC for this or that, I could use one that already existed. Makes the game feel more alive, to me.

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