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I've been reading the new AW preview, and it reminded me of a big question I had about AW. So, can somebody explain the idea behind Hx? I get that it's supposed to represent how close you are to someone, or maybe how well you understand them. But... the easiest way to become close to someone is to have them shoot you? And if you come to understand them too well, it wraps around and suddenly you're distant again? I don't get it.
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Feb 12, 2016 07:04
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 13:54 |
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Firstly, Mixed Messages and similar things are just one move triggering another, so Mixed Messages causes you to roll Turn On. They're separate moves, so you resolve them separately. Secondly, as written, the only relevant limit on spamming moves is the Singleton Rule, which says that you can only gain one string per move per scene. So you can use Turn On as much as you like until you luck into a String. However, once you've gotten a string on anyone, further uses read "...on a 10+, nothing; on a 7-9, your target chooses: give themselves, promise something, or nothing." It's kind of silly, and punishes Turn On disproportionately to every other move -- you can deal as much harm in a scene as you like, so rolling Lash Out over and over is perfectly effective. So the answers to your three situations are all "yes," but in no case will anyone get a second string -- if Peter picks to give Bob a string, and Bob already got one this scene, nothing happens. Personally, I would try to fix this by replacing the Singleton Rule with a house rule: "You can only use a given move once per scene." The rationale, beyond fixing the above weird situation, is that rolling to turn someone on represents all your efforts towards that end throughout the scene; you can't kiss them twice and expect to roll twice. Or, indeed, beat someone up, and then immediately beat them up again. It's all one big fight. As a GM I might occasionally allow exceptions when using the same move on two different people (in which case you can end up getting two strings in a scene), but that'd be pretty rare and require extenuating circumstances. If I beat up Joe, and then want to beat up Sally too, I should pick who I'm really trying to hurt, or we should make a new scene out of the second fight. That's just my feelings on it, though. megane fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 4, 2016 20:17
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Yeah, that's a good way to handle it too. I mean, our solutions are pretty similar, you're just doing it via fictional means rather than a hard-and-fast rule.Golden Bee posted:3. Agreed with Megane (no more strings) but I'd argue that he'd have to pick another 7-9. I'd probably make a soft move as GM to get the story more feral and less slap-n-tickley. It's fine if your players don't mind getting restricted like that, but I dislike it when it happens to my characters, so I try to avoid it as a GM. Heliotrope posted:Not quite. It's kind of hidden, but in the Long Example of play there's a part where a PC tries to see if they can use Turn On again and the MC says no: megane fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 4, 2016 21:33
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potatocubed posted:That's the one. Latest version. i-it's like you made an rpg out of my life  I might run a PbP of this myself, if that's okay with you.
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Apr 13, 2016 20:42
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potatocubed posted:Pigsmoke (time-consuming) When you take it easy for a week, roll +Bureaucracy. On a 10+, pick two; on a 7-9, pick one:
In particular, none of the choices contribute to the Slacker actually, like, accomplishing anything. She can coast by and dump her problems on everyone else (until she flubs the roll and gets eaten by the Dean). megane fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Apr 14, 2016 |
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Apr 14, 2016 01:57
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potatocubed posted:And this is a great replacement for it. Mind if I basically steal this in its entirety?
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Apr 15, 2016 05:11
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spectralent posted:Can someone explain to me the problems with Ghost?
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Jun 24, 2016 23:51
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I would really like a D&D-Fantasy-esque hack for AW that's closer to standard PbtA design than DW is, if that makes sense.
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Jul 12, 2016 02:26
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Apocron posted:Anyone know of any moves that are desert themed? Planning to run the low Fallen Empire game in the desert. Not a move per se, but make sure to have the desert itself be a Threat -- probably a Maze, since its drives are to trap and to frustrate passage. Then it's got moves like "bar the way" or "take something away: lost, used up, destroyed" to ruin everyone's day. You could even have it be a front unto itself, and include various Landscape or Terrain threats inside it, depending on how important you want the fact that they live in a desert to be to the story.
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Jul 20, 2016 10:33
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Maybe change the trigger, so something like "When you study the plans or inner workings of a piece of enemy technology, hold 1. Spend this hold to smugly reveal a weakness or flaw in that tech and choose one: etc." Then it requires some setup and provides a built-in plot hook (how do we get the blueprints to that robot?).
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Sep 20, 2016 02:34
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spectralent posted:I'm aware we have a lot of AW hackers here, so: What's your process? How do you start from "I have this concept for a game" and get to Fellowship or Masks? A good thing to keep in mind when writing moves, especially basic ones, is "what does this incentivize?" Any player is going to have goals, and accomplishing those means gaining power -- experience, leverage over NPCs, positioning, etc. The moves you right are the tools she has to do those things. So, what is she encouraged to do to exploit those tools? What are other people (PCs mostly, but also NPCs) pushed to do in response? And what are the possible results? Then you make sure that those behaviors and results are things you want to happen, fictionally. For instance, consider MH's turn on move: quote:When you turn someone on, roll with hot. On a 10 up, take a String against them. Strings are super important; if you have strings on someone it helps you control them, beat them up, pretty much anything. So naturally you want as many strings as possible, on as many people as possible. But the primary method of gaining them is this move here. So, in order to accomplish that natural goal, you're encouraged to hit on everyone else, all the time, even -- perhaps especially -- if you don't actually like them. In fact, if you're planning to betray them, murder them, etc., you should probably prepare for it by... hitting on them. Instant recipe for messy teenage relationships, especially if the MC makes sure that your illicit flirtations get seen and misinterpreted by others... which she absolutely will, at the slightest opportunity, since one of the MC hard moves is expose a dangerous secret to the wrong person. From the other side, if someone is using this move on you, how can you respond? Well, you can turn them on right back, and get a string to counter theirs. Or you could shut them down, hopefully erasing the string they just took -- give them the cold shoulder, insult them, be horrible and petty. Or, if they roll 7-9, you can give yourself or make a promise (and notice the wording on the promise: you don't offer something they want, you offer something that you think they want). So we've got steamy make-outs, betrayal and backstabbing, sex, and misguided attempts to guess what other people want. All things we, the designer, want to see.
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Sep 24, 2016 21:50
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A good thing to talk about would be the way ficiton and rules interact in PbtA, since it's different from most other games. E.g. in other games a move might cost MP or be usable only once per session but in PbtA the "cost" is usually more like "get ahold of some shoes he'd like as a gift" or something.
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Oct 10, 2016 21:06
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Monsterhearts has Strings (basically social leverage) and they all have EXP-by-any-other-name.
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Oct 16, 2016 20:51
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I think having rules specific to Ace characters, regardless of what they are, misses something fundamental about Turn On, which is that it never tells you that you're turned on. On a 10+, they get a string -- which could represent something sexual, but is intentionally abstract, and could just as easily represent embarrassment or social otherness or something. On a 7-9, you get a choice of ways to react, only one of which has anything to do with sex, and one of which is "give a string" -- again, completely devoid of specific connotations. If your character is asexual, just don't pick to give yourself*. Maybe getting hit on makes you irritated or nervous, or maybe others nearby think you're a dweeb, but the rules never require you to be attracted to anyone. *Another option, of course, is to interpret "give yourself to them" in some non-sexual way. Sex is not the only way to give yourself to somebody, especially in a game with vampires in it. e: I do have one problem with Turn On, though, and that's that a 7-9 is supposed to be a mixed success or a success with a cost or whatever, and Turn On's 7-9 is pure upside no matter what. e: v Yes, the person rolling it is doing something sexy, but the person being rolled against doesn't have to. megane fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Oct 28, 2016 |
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Oct 28, 2016 02:58
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Golden Bee posted:Edit 2: On a close read, without skin moves, you can't gain strings on Aces. Technically you can gain a string on them if they punch you and roll a 7-9  (I'm going to send in feedback pointing this out)
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Oct 31, 2016 22:37
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I find it also helps to focus at first on the characters and their little corners of the world. Ask about their families, where they hang out, what they want or worry about. It's still worldbuilding, since if they say "my dad is a blacksmith" you can ask stuff about what weird thing blacksmiths smelt down, and what's been causing trouble for dad's business recently, and who commissioned a sword he swore he'd never make, and so on. However, it feels more like character creation, and that can be more comfortable for newbies -- they're used to dreaming up people, not geopolitics, but if you look carefully at people's lives you can see the reflection of the world around them. You can move to more abstract questions later, maybe after the first session. e: Oh, and a really simple trick someone taught me: when you ask questions to get people being creative, don't phrase them in a way that can be answered with 'yes' or 'no.' So instead of, "Does Vincent have any dangerous enemies?" you instead say "So, what dangerous enemies has Vincent picked up?" In the former case, the snap response is to say "No, not really," because they haven't thought of any. In the second case, they might say "What? He doesn't have any enemies," but now it's more of a decision than a reflex: "he's the kind of guy nobody hates," rather than "I dunno, hadn't thought about it." megane fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 15:21
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It struck me recently that PbtA would be a good system for something like CSI or Law and Order or any number of other Homicide Investigation Team type shows. You have a handful of weird quote-unquote professionals with bizarre specialties working together to accomplish a twisty task despite their personal problems, and while they inevitably succeed it's usually due to somebody happening to mention a seemingly-unrelated detail that turns out to be the crux of the whole case or something. Sounds like PbtA to me. Playbooks include Creepy Forensic Autopsy Girl, Guy Who Really Really Hates Crime, and Ice-T. Actually, you could whole-heartedly embrace the sort of retroactive causality admanb is talking about : When you notice an unusual detail, roll +something. On a 10+, it's of vital importance to the case. On a 7-9, it's connected, but you're missing a piece of the puzzle -- you need to dig deeper. megane fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Jun 22, 2017 |
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Jun 22, 2017 00:02
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Jimmeeee posted:While we're talking Monsterhearts character concepts, which skin would you use for a nerdy, quiet outcast that's secretly a giant praying mantis? The player wants to go for "not fitting in with people" along with "secretly really dangerous", which says Ghoul or maybe Ghost to me. You could also look at the Sasquatch. A Sasquatch with some Werewolf moves or vice versa.
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Jun 27, 2017 17:32
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She can send texts but they just come out as a string of  emojis.
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Jul 25, 2017 05:59
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You can always ask questions about the dungeon itself. If they find a trap, ask: hey, rogue, what devious trap did you just discover? Or: what sort of monsters has Bad Guy got in here? What escape routes do you see? You can also do that stuff ahead of time, for instance by giving them a chance to stock up and prepare for the expedition and asking some questions about what they expect, and then have their answers turn out to be true (or turn out to be false in funny or ironic ways). That's always fun.
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Nov 20, 2017 16:18
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You could also have like, contacts instead of a gang that follows your orders. Like, you're not in charge of them, but if you need some poo poo repaired or stolen or set on fire, you totally know this guy Rolfball who owes you a favor and man, that guy's up for anything.
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Dec 9, 2017 05:33
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Just my opinion, but I think the big weakness of DW is that it uses PbtA mechanics without really grasping what makes them good. The primary symptom of this is that it clings to a bunch of D&D baggage that really weakens it and ruins the cleanliness and minimalism that PbtA is known for. Just as an example, every other PbtA game I can name uses the AW harm track with minimal changes; DW instead has big HP pools and rolled damage. Hell, DW even has Vancian casting. The whole concept of the 5-minute adventuring day barely even makes sense in PbtA-land, but here's a game where three of your party members are built vaguely like AW playbooks and then there's the loving Wizard who still needs 8 hours of rest to prepare his spells every day. But as I said, those are just symptoms of the core problem, which is that AW is a game that recasts the way the game is played: there's no tactical turn-taking, NPCs are explicitly not running on the same rules as PCs, the "party" isn't really a party exactly, and rolls are generally more abstract and narratively impactful than, like, "do I lift this big rock" or whatever. It's a storygame, basically. That's an important part of what makes PbtA PbtA, but, at the risk of sounding reductionist, DW just sort of ignored it in favor of copying D&D's playstyle and replacing all the d20s with 2d6s. e: f;b. That's a good list. I would kill for a better "D&D but in PbtA" game. megane fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Dec 24, 2017 |
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Dec 24, 2017 03:57
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I think the first step in making DW 2.0 is to redo the stats completely. There should be exactly four of them and they need to be carefully chosen instead of just copied from D&D (which had a terrible, boring-rear end stat array before it was blindly dumped into a system where stats work in a totally different way). And yeah, if you're going to have a basic move in the Act Under Fire / Defy Danger / Hold Steady / Adventure / Overcome family, it should sit on one particular stat, preferably the one that's least useful otherwise. Personally I would start with something like Might, Wisdom, Skill, and Charisma, but obviously that's just a first shot. As for the other basic moves, they... probably all need to be at least edited. Spout Lore and Discern Realities can probably be merged, Defend can be replaced with something more like the AW battle moves, and like the person a few posts above said, it's probably best to dump H&S and Volley in favor of a more carefully-worded Seize-By-Force-alike. megane fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Dec 26, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2017 06:01
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Worlds of Adventure is a step in the right direction, but there's definitely room for improvement. They didn't address the stats and basic moves, in particular. But drat, you've got it right that the Barbarian is amazing. Hi, I love gold so much it lets me throw boulders half a mile with one hand, fight me. We should have a PbtA Discord, I wanna run some pickup games.
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Dec 27, 2017 08:45
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Flavivirus posted:Somewhat relevant to the current conversation, I've been putting together a game inspired by Castlevania, Bloodborne and JoJo - Legacy: Rhapsody of Blood. In it, players are explorers diving into the depths of a nightmare castle invading our reality, trying to track down and stop its mad regent before they blight the mortal world. I'm up to playtest this as well, dang.
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Dec 30, 2017 07:59
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That looks excellent. Is there a place to get it is it just that playbook sheet for now? And yeah, definitely should have El Coyote and El Padre as playbooks.
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Feb 20, 2018 05:24
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When you grill somebody, roll +hardboiled. A good way to come up with basic moves is to watch some movies / read some books / etc. in the genre, and when you have an iconic scene, think: what (theoretical) move is Detective Johnson using here? He's questioning witnesses on the street, or he turned in the severed hand to forensics and is hearing about what was under the guy's fingernails, or he's getting shouted at by his boss for being a loose cannon, or whatever. If this is a thing that every detective (or whatever) does all the time, make a basic move out of it: when you canvas witnesses, roll this. You can call the forensics team to do this. When you have 4 or more gritty-line-crossing points, this happens. If it's a thing only he does (like, I dunno, Dexter's "hey this reminds me of a murder I committed" thing) then maybe that's a playbook move or something. megane fucked around with this message at 20:50 on May 6, 2018 |
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May 6, 2018 20:38
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I read it and it had some interesting ideas, but it's diceless and vampires aren't my thing, so I didn't really latch on. I like the debt mechanics in particular.
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May 14, 2018 02:23
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I was watching Into the Badlands earlier and I thought Sunny might be a pretty solid example of a Battlebabe. Maybe the Widow as well. It's a pretty Battlebabe heavy show. Incidentally, the setting is really distinctive as post-apocalyptica goes and something similar would be a pretty cool setup for AW. Trinity from the Matrix is another good one. Valuable and hi-tech are "worth more than 1-barter." Personally I'd also let them be used to impress people etc., like wearing a sweet hat to get yourself into a flashy party or something. As for ranges, 
megane fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 04:26
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You must journey into the mountains, child, through the snow and the howling winds, past the Great Eye. There, on the highest peak, hidden from mortal eyes, you will find the ancient monastery where the monks still practice the lost art of fixing an iPhone screen.
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Jun 6, 2018 17:01
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Pollyanna posted:A falling brick, a charging boar, a poison dart? Also, while these are valid examples, keep in mind that it's called acting under fire. AW's not really a game of people triggering traps and rolling to dodge the needle; you (as the GM) can say "hey bricks are falling on you, AUF or take 1-harm" like it's a D&D saving throw, but that's not really what it's for, if you ask me. I'd say it's more like this: "Okay, the temple is falling apart. What's your plan?" "I'm gonna go knife that guy!" "With the place collapsing around you?" "Hell yes!" "Okay, AUF with the fire being poo poo falling on you." The player rolls it when they want to do a thing, but the thing is dangerous or risky for whatever reason. That's why the stat it uses is called cool; if a Battlebabe decides she wants to stab your rear end, and that means dashing across a frayed zipline over a pit of alligators in the face of automatic gunfire, she's gonna fuckin' do it.
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Aug 17, 2018 05:05
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It probably wouldn't be exceptionally hard to replace the Overlord with some sort of nebulous "powers of darkness" that are causing bad stuff to happen. The Overlord has armies and generals that attack friendly towns, grab powerful places and objects, and generally cause havoc; just make those things the result of various independent bad guys being bad for no reason (instead of one Big Bad Guy with a Big Bad Plan) and you've got every D&D game ever. You'd probably want to rewrite the Overlord sheet, and it'd certainly lose something in the process since one of the coolest things about Fellowship is the players' relationships and interactions with the Overlord himself, but you could do it.
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Aug 20, 2018 05:44
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Especially since the AW standard is that most NPCs are seriously messed up at 1 harm and probably dead at 2-3.
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Aug 21, 2018 19:34
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The playbooks and basic rules (including the basic moves and such) are available for free if you click the "Apocalypse World" link in the OP. The full book costs money, but the reference sheet practically gives you enough info to play it, let alone decide if you want to buy it.
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Sep 14, 2018 01:06
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It's also good to keep in mind that, while you're somewhat constrained in your choices at character creation, you can then diverge a lot as you get advances. You can grab moves from any other playbook you like, and if you want you can get followers (which you then get to customize) and sometimes a lab or hold or something. So while the monkey and the veteran could start out identical, they might not stay that way. The monkey can grab zany moves like the Battlebabe's "+2 armor when you're naked" while he veteran takes the Quarantine's "you can deal less damage then the maximum if you like."
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Sep 14, 2018 23:14
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I mean, you don't have to use a move literally any time anyone asks you anything. If they have stuff going on and they check the box on the way out the door it's fine to just shrug and let them move on. But if they open the box and you say "it's empty, too bad" and they just stare at you 'cause it seemed like it was going to be cool, then yes, make a move; have something explode or have a note in the bottom of the box saying 'lol i stole it - the masked rear end in a top hat' or have them discover that the bottom of the box is fake and there's a secret door in there or something. It's not railroading to have things happen in your game, dude, come on. But on the other hand, like, if you tell them there's a big cool-looking box and they're stoked to open it and you're shaking your head like: "well, hey, I told myself this box was gonna be a huge letdown for no reason, gotta stick to the imaginary thing I made up and told nobody about, nothing I can control here as the GM" then, I mean maybe don't do that?
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Sep 20, 2018 04:09
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That's fine, they're not gonna be stoked about every single thing that happens. Your job isn't to shower them with gifts, it's to make their lives not boring; the thing you want to avoid is leaving them in a position where they don't think they have anything useful or interesting to do. So if you tell them the box is empty but they don't know why or what to do next, then that's not great. So when they look disappointed, that's them saying "this sucks, I wanted a cool item but don't know what to do about it now" which is your cue to pivot and go "You can tell right away from the mud spatters in the box that whatever poo poo used to be in here was swiped by the beaver/pig. What a loser. Maybe it's still got it?" The move would be off-screen badness but really you're just pointing out something for them to do if they want. If they're still disappointed, well, now they know what to do to remedy the situation. On the other hand, if they ignore it and go do something else and forget all about the box instantly, who cares, that's basically what you wanted anyway. e: By the way, the thing I described above is basically my go-to move when the players express a desire for something but I don't feel like immediately giving it to them or coming up with what it was in the first place or whatever. I say "yeah, Rolfball has it" or "it's probably in the Slime Crypt, that sucks" or something similar. Then if they really want it, they'll go hunt after it, which helpfully gives me time to make up what it is or does. If they were just being greedy and didn't really care, it gets forgotten. megane fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 04:33
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e: sorry, I thought we were talking about a different Line
megane fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 16:19
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Halloween Jack posted:This isn't relevant to DW, but I've considered an alternate armor system where the rating of armor decreases by 1 every time it prevents Harm, and is assumed to be repaired when the fiction says you'd have the time and means to do so. Thoughts? If your genre doesn't have dudes in heavy armor, just don't have armor as a mechanic. It's in AW because post-apoc guys walk around wearing a bunch car parts, but that doesn't mean it needs to be in other games.
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Feb 21, 2019 19:32
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Help/Hinder is not my favorite move, no. It sorta feels like they wanted Hx to be a thing so interpersonal relationships would matter, so they just threw a mechanic in to justify it. See also how getting to know someone really well causes you to loop around and not know them as well anymore, mechanically speaking. Personally I'd replace it with something more like Strings from MH, where you collect tokens on people and can spend them to help/hinder.
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Feb 24, 2019 18:00
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