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Antivehicular posted:Okay, so it isn't just me, then? I've read the section several times and, while the advice given is good, it seems to mostly cover situations that are obvious, like "if a player fails a Run Away check to avoid harm, deal harm." I want failed rolls to have teeth, if only to keep the story feral, but a lot of the options seem disproportionate or nonsensical as a response to "you tried to have your character look alluring and it didn't work." (Then again, the character who's had the worst luck with Turn Someone On failures so far is the Ghost, and that's a pretty reasonable skin to force into Darkest Self if they can't get people's attention, at least?) Maybe the problem you're having is expecting the move and the responding hard move to be causally linked? A lot of your moves - Announce Off-Screen Badness, Announce Future Badness, Herald the Abyss, Expose a Dangerous Secret to the Wrong Person - can happen irrespective of what the character is doing but still cause their attempt to fail. Your attempt to glisten subtly in the sunlight is ruined by your target noticing a body underneath a nearby bench, or the class bully (but not your target) realises you're trying to look alluring at them and now knows that's something your trying to do. Oftentimes rolling a 6- doesn't mean that your action was performed badly - it can even succeed - but instead means that the overall story beat around the roll is negative for the character.
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Jan 30, 2015 11:35
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Antivehicular posted:The problem is that my players are very into using Turn Someone On at the drop of a hat (are all Monsterhearts players like this?), often without their characters deliberately doing anything I'm not sure I understood this part. Are you applying the to do it, do it principle? You don't get to make a move unless there's a specific, deliberate attitude in the fiction, which comes first. Even if that attitude is "I stand there looking gorgeous for George", that's still an attitude that you can build hard moves around. All "standing there", "looking gorgeous" and "for George" are things that can go horribly wrong. Flavivirus posted:Maybe the problem you're having is expecting the move and the responding hard move to be causally linked? A lot of your moves - Announce Off-Screen Badness, Announce Future Badness, Herald the Abyss, Expose a Dangerous Secret to the Wrong Person - can happen irrespective of what the character is doing but still cause their attempt to fail. Your attempt to glisten subtly in the sunlight is ruined by your target noticing a body underneath a nearby bench, or the class bully (but not your target) realises you're trying to look alluring at them and now knows that's something your trying to do. Oftentimes rolling a 6- doesn't mean that your action was performed badly - it can even succeed - but instead means that the overall story beat around the roll is negative for the character. Another thing you can do, though not very often, is you that failed roll as a hold-like. Nothing bad happens right now, but maybe later you come at them with an unexpected hard move. Cyphoderus fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 13:09
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Halloween Jack posted:More on the subject later, but I kind of wish there was one of those D100 tables for "stupid crap that happens to teenagers." Buy a few Archie comics digests, and turn to a random page.
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Jan 30, 2015 16:29
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neonchameleon posted:This may end up being a ramble. And it's only personal opinion - I also might set this sort of standard for my characters, but when MC I don't make things nearly this terrifying. quote:Not being able to readily read a sitch or read a person is the fruitful void at the heart of Monsterhearts. You're a confused kid, unable to mechanically work out what's going on and instead having to guess and use some broken moves. (My Hunger Games hack does the same with Read a Person so you can never mechanically know who you can trust and then dangles the move everyone needs just out of reach until it's intended to be largely irrelevant just to reinforce the point). quote:Subsequent characters of mine haven't normally had quite such flamboyant gazes, but the abyss has always been a part of it. To give some of my other examples, my Nice Guy mortal used 4Chan and Reddit for his gaze and were I playing him now he'd be active on #GamerGate, my other Queen started by bitchily gossiping down the phone tree of her clique and sifting the gossip, and near the end wasn't bothering with phones, simply rifling through the minds of relevant members of her clique. My Witch used to normally have a ritual involving scrying into a cup, but she was fooling herself. The active part of her Gaze wasn't the gazing then drinking. It was the moment of clarity when she cut herself and the blood reflected off her silver knife blade and between the pain and the focus everything became clear. (She'd swear she wasn't a cutter - it was a magic ritual.) quote:Ultimately the Gaze into the Abyss as I play it is all about where you go when you hit the bottom, and how that becomes a coping mechanism. It can be relatively benign (comfort reading) but more likely is something a little more self destructive. A good ordinary gaze into the abyss would be someone getting drunk to deal with their problems (and I wish McDaldno had used that as an example). It's not going to your Darkest Self, but it normally does involve going to somewhere you can see your darkest self from. Some of the supernatural gazes are simpler and easier than the mundane ones I've listed; an Infernal just needs to talk to their Dark Power (although that's normally as bad an idea as the rest of them). Antivehicular posted:Coincidentally, this is exactly why I dropped into the thread! I've been GMing Monsterhearts over IRC for a couple of months now and am working on getting more aggressive with making hard moves. The problem is that my players are very into using Turn Someone On at the drop of a hat (are all Monsterhearts players like this?), often without their characters deliberately doing anything, and it's hard to construct hard moves for this that don't feel arbitrary or dictate the other player's reaction. Also what Flavovirus said, but it sounds like you're already on track to getting that a Move can fail because of coincidence or circumstance and not because the PC hosed up. quote:My other newbie-MH-GM question is about working with uneven XP distribution and seasons. The group's Mortal has an insanely experience-gaining build and has reached his fifth advance, while some PCs have yet to get their first (one player plays intermittently because she prefers her character to be in lurking-future-badness mode right now, one player plays intermittently because of RL scheduling issues, and so it goes). We've already decided that we won't end the season until we reach a certain plot milestone, but is there a way to help even out experience gain besides encouraging players to play more actively and hit their highlighted stats a ton? It doesn't help that, since the game is so Turn-On-heavy, players with highlighted Hot seem to be gaining faster by default. Also, is it reasonable to allow every player to take a Season Advance even if they don't technically have an advance to spend at the end of the season? I don't know about giving a Season Advance to everyone at once. Season Advances are kind of a big deal and will change that PCs life. (On the other hand, if those PCs aren't around a lot, major changes to them will be less meaningful to the game as a whole. Your call if that's good or bad.) One hard move that I've stolen from Dungeon World is "show a downside to their class." That is, you throw a situation at them that their Skin isn't well-equipped to handle. So, from a fictional POV, you have two characters who are supposed to be principal characters but don't get a lot of screen time. You want them to be important and impactful (and gain XP). So, show upsides to their Skin whenever they are around. Let them stir a lot of poo poo up before they fade into the background. Bongo Bill posted:Buy a few Archie comics digests, and turn to a random page.
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Jan 30, 2015 16:51
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Turn Someone on is a passive skill; reread the section on it. Off the top of my head, things that could go wrong: The wrong person get an idea (give a string to a loner/weirdo) As above, but it's a significant other of the person you're trying to seduce As above, but they fall for the PC, hard, demanding they stay away from their true love Nothing happens that they can see; later, their locker's cover in graffiti. As above, there blamed for the actions as a desperate cry for attention. As above, but someone does it to get THEIR attention.
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Jan 30, 2015 19:55
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Antivehicular posted:Coincidentally, this is exactly why I dropped into the thread! I've been GMing Monsterhearts over IRC for a couple of months now and am working on getting more aggressive with making hard moves. The problem is that my players are very into using Turn Someone On at the drop of a hat (are all Monsterhearts players like this?), often without their characters deliberately doing anything, and it's hard to construct hard moves for this that don't feel arbitrary or dictate the other player's reaction. I've had to do it twice so far, and my hard-move choices have been "the Turn On target's estranged father calls and ruins the moment" (herald future badness) and "a gossipy, unpleasant homeroom NPC notices, takes cellphone pictures, and starts spreading rumors" (make them assume the worst). I'm reasonably pleased with that, but I'd appreciate any advice that people have about moving in response to failed Turn Ons, because I think we're gonna have a lot. Sometimes players will avoid rolling dark because they don't really understand Gaze Into the Abyss, or have a good way to work it into the fiction. Try steering players away from really specific/restrictive Gazing methods like "I gaze into the abyss only by looking into a corpse's eyes!" It should ideally be something that they can do relatively trivially throughout the day. Players also get really weird sometimes about Volatile rolls, where they're really iffy about physically attacking another PC, even when they know how trivial Monsterhearts' death penalty is. It's particularly problematic when someone with this kind of attitude tries to play The Werewolf, because The Werewolf doesn't actually have much of anything beyond hurting and intimidating people. Cold's pretty straight forward, but it's pretty much exclusively reactive to things other people are doing. This means that high hot skins generally feel easier for inexperienced players to play. That can be a little bit superficial in practice -- like, The Mortal in particular is one of the more complicated skins included in the base game, just because of the power dynamics you need to understand in order to work with it effectively. Either way, though, it's pretty common to see someone without a high hot score still trying to play as if they had one, because they don't really know how to work around having a low hot score by relying on other moves, or stuff like offering strings to people. Try pointing out to players when their actions might be construed as a move more often. "Are you Shutting him down? Are you Gazing Into the Abyss? It sounds like you're Running Away to me." Remind players that these options exist, and they'll be more likely to make stronger use of them. In terms of experience imbalances, try to stress to your players that they should be trying to roll both of their highlights in every scene whenever it's practical. Highlights aren't just for experience, they are the table telling them "I want to see you use X stat." So If you've got a Witch who isn't making use of her dark highlight, she's basically ignoring the request that you or the player who highlighted her made at the beginning of the session. When it comes to actually assigning them, the biggest thing to keep in mind is: If one character has a good stat highlighted, try to make sure everyone has a good stat highlighted. As the MC, you're the one who gets to "shore up" any imbalances in highlight distribution. Don't let a situation arise where one player only has to roll their good stats and another one has both -1s highlighted or something. While this mechanic is about letting the player know how you'd like to see their player act, you should also be conscious of the fact that you are essentially dictating how hard or easy someone's access to experience is going to be for the duration of the session. In general, I like to have it so everyone has a good stat and a bad stat highlighted -- that's always going to be achievable too, just because of how highlight assignment works.
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Jan 30, 2015 23:23
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I ran Monsterhearts earlier today and drat is it a blast, I barely have to do anything, the players just run the thing themselves.
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Jan 31, 2015 00:34
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not sure what you mean, since we're already talking about the abyss not being metaphysical. The Abyss is definitely a fruitful void. Even if not the one McDaldno points out. And what I meant by mysticism is that mysticism done well is normally a mix of trying to eff the ineffable and understand matters such as shadow sides that tie in closely with the Abyss whether you ascribe group or personal aspects to it, or whether you ascribe metaphysics to it or not. (I'm an atheist with mystical tendencies IRL). quote:Lots of turn someone on rolls are probably to the good, but I can see how it could get out of hand--say, if the players are being very metagamey with it because they think there's no downside to blowing the roll. Remember the Singleton rule, and also that one hard move that's pretty easy in terms of fictional justification is giving a String to an NPC. Strings to NPCs and assorted conditions are the default. And having a Turn On succeed in the worst possible way is always a nasty hard move.
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Jan 31, 2015 03:40
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neonchameleon posted:Strings to NPCs and assorted conditions are the default. And having a Turn On succeed in the worst possible way is always a nasty hard move. Yeah, I should probably clarify here that my issues with writing Turn Someone On hard moves come when the PCs are trying to turn on other PCs, not NPCs. NPCs can react however seems most awful / take strings / etc., but I don't feel comfortable dictating what sort of response a PC should have to a roll like that. I suppose I can start applying conditions?
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Jan 31, 2015 04:26
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Antivehicular posted:Yeah, I should probably clarify here that my issues with writing Turn Someone On hard moves come when the PCs are trying to turn on other PCs, not NPCs. NPCs can react however seems most awful / take strings / etc., but I don't feel comfortable dictating what sort of response a PC should have to a roll like that. I suppose I can start applying conditions? My normal solution for those is to hand the string to the PC the turn on was attempted against. Step back and let them sort it out. (The worst thing I've done in such a case was to send the vampire target of the turn-on into Darkest Self and watch the fur fly - that only works with a couple of skins).
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Jan 31, 2015 05:32
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Any recommendations for running an investigation plot in a PbtA game (Worlds in Peril, in this case)? The players want to investigate mysteries and uncover a conspiracy but I'm not sure how to handle that with this sort of narrative system without the investigation seeming either pointless or unfair.
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Feb 4, 2015 21:19
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Strontosaurus posted:Any recommendations for running an investigation plot in a PbtA game (Worlds in Peril, in this case)? The players want to investigate mysteries and uncover a conspiracy but I'm not sure how to handle that with this sort of narrative system without the investigation seeming either pointless or unfair. How about GUMSHOE-style? The investigation is a sequence of scenes culminating in a climax scene that answers all questions. In each scene, something exciting happens. In each scene, there's a "clue", which is the thing that leads players to the next scene. Finding the clue is a given. You have 100% certainty that the PCs will find something that will lead them onward in the investigation, until they discover whatever it is they want. Now, the exciting things that happen, i.e. the soft and hard moves that you'll throw at players, they don't come from the investigation. That is, they aren't about finding the next clue, because that's a given. They're about the things that happen around finding a clue. They're the ninjas sent by the real culprit to mess with them. They're the rival investigator getting in their way. They're the old building collapsing down, etc. As for what a clue looks like, GUMSHOE is an entire system dedicated to that, but PbtA doesn't have the luxury. I don't know how Worlds in Peril works, but it's gotta have super-powers, right? Maybe you can ask a player: "describe how you're using your powers to find a clue." When the player comes up with something interesting, you can give them a clue appropriate to what they did, and frame your next scene based on that (e.g. a clue obtained by talking to the dead is different from a clue obtained by x-ray vision). You can even ask them to make a move to find the clue: in a fail, you throw a hard move at them but they still find a clue that advances the investigation. If you're interested in the subject, Mutant City Blues is a GUMSHOE investigation game structured specifically around superheroes and superpowers.
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Feb 5, 2015 13:44
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Halloween Jack posted:I have a Monsterhearts related question. I'm not really familiar with Monsterhearts, but in AW you can read a sitch at any time (though you can't read the same sitch more than once). However, you can only read a charged sitch. Didn't think it was charged, but someone read it? It's charged, now, fuckers!
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Feb 5, 2015 21:56
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Captain Foo posted:I'm not really familiar with Monsterhearts, but in AW you can read a sitch at any time (though you can't read the same sitch more than once). However, you can only read a charged sitch. Didn't think it was charged, but someone read it? It's charged, now, fuckers! Gaze Into the Abyss is sort of like Open Your Brain, not Read A Sitch (there is a werewolf move that allows you to do that though). You get a "vision" that answers your questions, although the exact method depends on the character.
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Feb 5, 2015 22:24
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Cyphoderus posted:How about GUMSHOE-style? Great ideas! Thank you.
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Feb 6, 2015 01:31
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Heliotrope posted:Gaze Into the Abyss is sort of like Open Your Brain, not Read A Sitch (there is a werewolf move that allows you to do that though). You get a "vision" that answers your questions, although the exact method depends on the character.
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Feb 6, 2015 02:02
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Open Your Brain doesn't always give you answers. Sometimes (the best times) it gives you questions.
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Feb 6, 2015 02:13
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Baby Babbeh posted:Open Your Brain doesn't always give you answers. Sometimes (the best times) it gives you questions. drat skippy.
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Feb 6, 2015 02:22
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I apologize if this has been answered in the last 70 pages, but I had trouble slogging through the whole thing, so I'll just ask : Is there a good Apocalypse World hack for playing in a fantasy setting? I know the short answer is Dungeon World, but as has been mentioned earlier, adapting *World moves is a key part of representing the setting/style of your chosen genre (which Dungeon World does well) but D*W is geared toward "using A*W to model an old-school Dungeons & Dragons game," whereas I am looking for "uses A*W to model a fantasy (or Sword & Sorcery, or Discworld, etc.) world". I have played D*W and had fun, but I am looking to try a good Not-D&D game where I still get to be a bumbling wizard's apprentice or greedy sneak-thief.
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Feb 6, 2015 03:28
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Hitherfetcher posted:I apologize if this has been answered in the last 70 pages, but I had trouble slogging through the whole thing, so I'll just ask : You could probably do something real quick by turning the gunlugger into a barbarian, replacing all guns, and turning the Driver into a horseman.
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Feb 6, 2015 04:03
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A Dark Age by Vince baker is in preview state and looks really promising. it's not technically playable but some people have managed. World of Conan had a decent set of playbooks. Big list here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nPfff5dSHsk__rFHGQfLaAmb3ns680s_Fc0CSNlhfFA/edit
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Feb 6, 2015 04:12
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Strontosaurus posted:Any recommendations for running an investigation plot in a PbtA game (Worlds in Peril, in this case)? The players want to investigate mysteries and uncover a conspiracy but I'm not sure how to handle that with this sort of narrative system without the investigation seeming either pointless or unfair. Speaking of Worlds in Peril, has anyone had the chance to play it yet? I'd really like to know how it runs, especially since, going from previous discussion, Superhero PbtA seems to be a difficult genre to get right. I backed the Kickstarter but haven't had a chance to run it yet. I'm also not sure if the rules are publicly available yet, which is holding me back from PbP; the developer said they'd release the text for free but I don't know if that also counts for the pre-release rulebook.
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Feb 6, 2015 05:11
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Captain Foo posted:You could probably do something real quick by turning the gunlugger into a barbarian, replacing all guns, and turning the Driver into a horseman. THE BARBARIAN (Gunlugger) THE CAVALIER (Driver) THE HEALER (Angel) THE PRIEST (Hocus) THE WARLOCK (Brainer) THE BARON (Hardholder) THE BANDIT (Chopper) THE ARTIFICER (Savvyhead) THE ROGUE (Operator) THE MERCHANT (Skinner) THE MERCENARY (Battlebabe) What happened to that mini-hack that had stats for kung-fu and melee stuff so you could run Kenshiro? You could use that as a starting point. e; on the same note: I once saw a blog that had a couple of mini-hacks for AW, one of which was about running cyberpunk AW, and it had one or two special moves included. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and have a link? I can't find it. 
Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 10:33
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Lemon Curdistan posted:What happened to that mini-hack that had stats for kung-fu and melee stuff so you could run Kenshiro? You could use that as a starting point. Fists of Asphalt, right here: http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=6813.0 Lemon Curdistan posted:e; on the same note: I once saw a blog that had a couple of mini-hacks for AW, one of which was about running cyberpunk AW, and it had one or two special moves included. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and have a link? I can't find it. http://leftoblique.net/wp/2013/08/12/three-small-aw-hacks/ And there you go. BryanChavez fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 10:38
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Thanks! I could have sworn it was in the big list of hacks but when I looked at the spreadsheet version I couldn't find it. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 10:40
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Lemon Curdistan posted:THE BARBARIAN (Gunlugger) there you go! ...this might actually be worth working on and playing(!!)
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Feb 6, 2015 13:58
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Dungeon World is still really good for running a PbtA style dark fantasy game even if you don't like D&D. Just do away with the base playbooks and use some third party ones that fit your preferred setting.
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Feb 6, 2015 14:40
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Sort of. DW does not cope well with the kind of LotR-style adventure involving a lot of travelling - you're deprived of the easiest target for fronts and the game is built around oldschool "adventure to this dungeon located not far from a village" stuff - nor does it handle armies and kingdoms (the mass combat supplement isn't out yet and won't cover kingdom management). It's not wholly terrible but it's also not great.Captain Foo posted:...this might actually be worth working on and playing(!!) I'd run it (set in a big fantasy city) but I want to run cyberpunk AW first. 
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Feb 6, 2015 14:55
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Sort of. DW does not cope well with the kind of LotR-style adventure involving a lot of travelling - you're deprived of the easiest target for fronts and the game is built around oldschool "adventure to this dungeon located not far from a village" stuff - nor does it handle armies and kingdoms (the mass combat supplement isn't out yet and won't cover kingdom management). It's not wholly terrible but it's also not great. I think my next three conceits for settings are waterworld, space hulk, or generic fantasy with this hack
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Feb 6, 2015 18:42
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scissorman posted:Speaking of Worlds in Peril, has anyone had the chance to play it yet? I just ran my third session last night (using the text file they shared on G+). So far it's basically just as smooth as any other PbtA game, though I'm not sure we're using all of the rules correctly (the Bond stuff in particular). Character creation takes a little bit longer than I'd like it to, but that's just a result of there effectively being no standard template for characters, I think. Coming up with the power profiles for new heroes is usually a lot of fun. This is my favorite one from my group: Armament: real American hero/cyborg with a metal gorilla arm Powers summary: American Army knife, highly trained operative, Exceptional Americanism, True Patriot Simple: Beat up a Canadian Mountie and his horse, hit a moving target with a firearm, deploy a lasso made of Detroit Steel Difficult: Throw an illegal immigrant back over the Rio Grande, follow a target using a tracking bullet/Eagle Drone Borderline: Destroy a Chinese tank with my bare hands Impossible: Catch and throw a Russian nuke back across the ocean The rules don't come with any explicit modifiers for rolls made to do Simple/Difficult/Borderline tasks, so I've kind of just been rolling with the fiction and making the consequences for 6- and 7-9 rolls more dire the further you push your powers. For instance, last night a hero called Phorrener, a sound-manipulating alien whose persona is based on 80s glam metal received via Earth television broadcasts, wanted to make a sonic attack against an enemy in an upstairs room that he couldn't see. His powers profile has "Bang your head" as a simple task but "Blow your mind!" is difficult ("Bring the house down" is borderline impossible for him), so when he rolled an 8 on his Smash move, he managed to knock the assassin unconscious with a serious nosebleed, but he also received a condition of Moderate severity - in this case, he screamed his throat raw and would need to take some downtime to rest it up. All in all, we've been having a good time with our motley crew of inept supers. Just because I think it's funny, I'll share our current roster. It's a lot of dudes because not everybody can make it every week, so we've had a rotating cast. Andres "Slimeate" Sercuz: A retired supervillain with an incredible intellect and a gorilla body made out of slime Armament: Real American hero/cyborg operative. Incredibly racist. The Fish/Business Fish/Mr. The Fish: A retired superhero with superstrength and a fish for a head. Owns a chain of successful fusion bistros throughout the city. Tony Sindaco: Famous Italian-American singer brought back to life by a deal with dark forces. Super speed, demon powers, sonic control. Miss Midnight: Jinxy World Class catburglar Wild Card: Morphing duplicator whose powers follow a deck of cards Phorrener: Space alien disguised as an 80s glam rocker Bozar: Resurrected Viking hero. Density control, ghostly powers, giant battleaxe. Strontosaurus fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 18:50
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Hey I just want to thank Cyphoderus for introducing me to AW back in 2012. After seeing The Stone Jungle and playing in the game for just a short time, I knew I had found my new system. Just a couple of days ago I finished The Island, my third PbP AW game on the forums. AW has been the highlight and the bulk of my gaming experience over the past few years, and I just want to recognize the guy who got me involved.
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Feb 7, 2015 05:29
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Captain Foo posted:Hey I just want to thank Cyphoderus for introducing me to AW back in 2012. After seeing The Stone Jungle and playing in the game for just a short time, I knew I had found my new system. Just a couple of days ago I finished The Island, my third PbP AW game on the forums. AW has been the highlight and the bulk of my gaming experience over the past few years, and I just want to recognize the guy who got me involved. Thanks, man! I'm glad I could show you my favorite game. Nothing blew my little RPG-player mind harder (not even, I think, Unknown Armies' "6 ways to stop a fight") than AW's paragraph on "The Conversation". What program do you guys use for playbook layout?
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Feb 8, 2015 14:26
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Lemon Curdistan posted:I'd run it (set in a big fantasy city) but I want to run cyberpunk AW first. This is something I'm actually working on, hoping to have a playable draft of it by the end of the month.
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Feb 8, 2015 17:43
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Whatever else I might think about Monster of the Week (and its lack of investigative moves) as a game, I have to say the author (Michael Sands) is excellent at customer service. If you owned the game on DTRPG you got a coupon to download the new edition for free, and if you had your publisher contact settings on Off (and so didn't get the coupon email), you can email him to get it resent. Dude's email address is at the bottom of this page if you're in the same situation I was: https://sites.google.com/site/gamesteratlarge/ 
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Feb 11, 2015 09:32
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I’ve been toying with the idea of a superhero hack. I know, I know, everyone and their mom has a superhero AW hack, but this is only a pet project for personal use, and I think my approach is new, at least as far as the games I know of. In a superhero team book, team composition is much more important than establishing the powers of individual characters. It’s the same as when a player picks the Driver playbook in AW. The game may have not involved cars and long distances so far, but now it does. When a writer does a comic about superhero teams, if they include, say, Captain America or Superman, it’s not because of heat vision or shield-throwing. It’s because they want to ask, what does it mean to do good, to be super-person in a world of normal-persons? This is the line I’m following with my playbooks. I don’t care about powers (I’m not even sure how to treat them, mechanically). What matters is what you want your character to add to the collective fiction. What playbooks the players choose determine both the features of the fictional universe and the themes explored in the game. Here are the playbooks I thought of, including published heroes that inspired them. The Icon is the intrepid leader with an inspiring personality. The theme he brings to the table is the messy relationship between the general public and an elite group of superbeings trying to do good. Model heroes: Superman, DC golden age heroes, Captain America, Cyclops, Jenny Sparks The Bastard is all about efficiency. He gets results, through whatever means necessary; the price to pay is his own soul. The theme he brings to the table are the various shades of grey in the gulf between right and wrong. He can also introduce the mundane criminal underworld. Model heroes: Batman, Hitman, Wolverine, Punisher, Midnighter The Moderator is about communications. He monitors affairs and coordinates the group. If he’s in play, the group has a common base with monitoring facility. With him in play, the group is a cohesive entity that’s tasked to enforce (some kind of) order, and has to deal with the responsibilities. Model heroes: J’onn J’onzz, Oracle, Charles Xavier, Weatherman, Drummer The world of super-heroes is full of wonderful artifacts and technological marvels, but they’re usually restricted to the world of super-heroes. The Inventor, however, uses his privileged position in this fantastic world to bring its innovations to regular lives of real people. He invents to make the world a better place. The theme he brings to the table is the duty of the superhero to improve the world their share with mundane folk. With him in play, also expect insane gadgets. Model heroes: Iron Man, the Engineer, Axel Brass The Agent works for some agency, which can be almost anything, from a secret society to a spy agency to a nation. He has duties to his agency, and in turn can petition it for boons. A move lets the character be the leader/ruler of this agency. What the agent brings to the table is faction politics. Model heroes: Aquaman, Black Panther, SHIELD people, Elijah Snow If the Icon represents the big social picture of the conflict between “super” and “man”, the Everyman represents the personal side. To him, his civilian life is just as important, if not more, than his crime-fighting adventures. What he brings to the table is a mundane profession and relationships, and the little-man perspective that big-time heroes often lack. Model heroes: Green Arrow, Jack Knight, Spiderman, Daredevil While the agent has an active give-and-take relationship with his agency, the Exile has been cut off from his people. He often carries with him an artifact of his culture. The theme the exile brings to the table is adaptation and alienation. He also brings with him his culture, which is out there, somewhere, and the idea that the world is huge so there exists an “out there, somewhere”. Model heroes: Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Mikhaal (the blue Starman), Thor The Worldhopper has unique access to a different “universe”, which can be many things: the world of speed, the astral world, a different dimension, the collective subconscious, etc. He brings to the table the presence of his universe, and a special cast of characters that can also interact with it. Model heroes: Flash, Atom, Dr. Strange, Jack Hawksmoor Inevitably, players will want to use existing heroes as templates to creating their own, but most mainstream heroes can fit more than one playbook. This is intended. I want to take the focus of superhero RPG-ing away from “what can my character do” to “what does my character represent, to this specific team-up?” And this is can be answered in different ways for the same superhero. Like, for instance, I can see Green Lantern and Hulk meaning very different things to different stories. The choice depends on what features and themes you want your character to add to this game. Here are two more playbooks that I’m not sure are worth pursuing. The Unhinged is madness; around him, reality decays. For stuff like weird characters (Doom Patrol, Shade…), bizarre comic relief (Plastic Man of nowadays, Captain Carrot…) and maybe even John Constantine. But all of those could arguably be a Worldhopper with the proper universe, so I’m not sure a different playbook is warranted. The Explorer is about bringing exotic variety to the game. He constantly brings to the game new places and new people. He’d model pulp-y heroes, like Conan, Tarzan, or their modern counterparts like Randall Orson. I like the idea but I’m not sure the archetype is represented enough to gain a playbook. Most superhero stories explore their characters’ legacies, and I want to model that. So I’m thinking about a move that invokes the character’s past to acquire knowledge, favours or trinkets: you come up with one of your hero’s previous adventures and get a boon from it. It would be a straight +0 roll and have the possibility to resolve almost any problem. The cost is that the past comes back to haunt you. I’ve got a lot more written down, like attributes and many moves, but I wanted to know what you guys think of this approach to superhero RPG-ing.
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Feb 11, 2015 13:32
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Cyphoderus posted:In a superhero team book, team composition is much more important than establishing the powers of individual characters. It’s the same as when a player picks the Driver playbook in AW. The game may have not involved cars and long distances so far, but now it does. When a writer does a comic about superhero teams, if they include, say, Captain America or Superman, it’s not because of heat vision or shield-throwing. It’s because they want to ask, what does it mean to do good, to be super-person in a world of normal-persons? Yeah, this is absolutely the right approach to take, and part of why so many supers hacks get it wrong. Superman's narrative role isn't "can fly, has laser eyes, is invulnerable" it's "is the most powerful superhero, and also a paragon of virtue;" Batman's isn't "has batarangs and a cape," it's "paranoid rear end in a top hat who'll gladly cross the line to do his job;" etc. The actual specifics of the powers are totally irrelevant to the narrative arc, which to me means the powers ought to just be an equipment choice like you'd pick guns in AW, rather than anything that has moves tied to it - e.g. "choose two: laser eyes (2-harm near heat), super-strength (3-harm close messy), invulnerable (4-armor, messy), flight" or "choose one, all 2-harm: powerful magicks (AP slow messy), gadgets of your own design (valuable infinite) or..." etc. On that same note, I'd suggest parts of Superman would fit a second playbook in which you'd also fit heroes like Sentry or the Hulk - the superhero who is nigh-invulnerable and near-godlike, and has to struggle with what that means relative to their being a hero; the theme is the super's struggle with themselves and the temptations/frustrations they have to deal with because of how much more powerful they are than everyone else. quote:What the agent brings to the table is faction politics. Don't forget the other big theme of agency-based supers: the ethics of power. Who should decide what the superheroes do, themselves or a government legally elected by the People? Can the government be trusted to use them ethically? Can they be trusted to make the right decisions? Do they feel their innate sense of justice ought to supersede what society says is right? This also works for an Agency controlled by a private individual, the conflict just becomes between the supers and their boss rather than between the supers and society (presumably, one of the Agent starting moves should lead to them defining the Agency by picking between secretive/open, private/government, etc.). Also, "Worldhopper" feels way less catchy than the other playbook names. I'd suggest The Stranger, The Outsider, The Traveller or The Alien, maybe (I like the last two more). Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 13:42
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Just throwing this out there for feedback/ideas, but for those who have looked at the new version of The Sprawl what are things you really like about it? What things don't you like?
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Feb 11, 2015 17:02
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Cyphoderus posted:I’ve been toying with the idea of a superhero hack. I know, I know, everyone and their mom has a superhero AW hack, but this is only a pet project for personal use, and I think my approach is new, at least as far as the games I know of. I think you should definitely check out Worlds in Peril. It does a lot of what you're describing, the playbooks are roughly split into Origins (the accident, the alien, etc.) and Drives (your motive, work for an organization, etc.) Everyone gets an Origin and a drive, and drives are easily switched or added as the fiction/game continues. I also think it's a pretty good game too.
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Feb 11, 2015 18:07
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Yeah, this is absolutely the right approach to take, and part of why so many supers hacks get it wrong. Superman's narrative role isn't "can fly, has laser eyes, is invulnerable" it's "is the most powerful superhero, and also a paragon of virtue;" Batman's isn't "has batarangs and a cape," it's "paranoid rear end in a top hat who'll gladly cross the line to do his job;" etc. The actual specifics of the powers are totally irrelevant to the narrative arc, which to me means the powers ought to just be an equipment choice like you'd pick guns in AW, rather than anything that has moves tied to it - e.g. "choose two: laser eyes (2-harm near heat), super-strength (3-harm close messy), invulnerable (4-armor, messy), flight" or "choose one, all 2-harm: powerful magicks (AP slow messy), gadgets of your own design (valuable infinite) or..." etc. I think any finicky system of determining powers is the Lego syndrome applied to RPG, trying to make building more fun than playing. What I'm thinking right now for powers is a "power card" system. You start the game without choosing powers, and get a card filled with possible superpowers. At any moment during play, you can write a check next to a power and say "by the way, I have this power". There would be some sort of fiction-first reward system to penalize players for relying too much on only one thing or for picking way too many powers. quote:On that same note, I'd suggest parts of Superman would fit a second playbook in which you'd also fit heroes like Sentry or the Hulk - the superhero who is nigh-invulnerable and near-godlike, and has to struggle with what that means relative to their being a hero; the theme is the super's struggle with themselves and the temptations/frustrations they have to deal with because of how much more powerful they are than everyone else. quote:Don't forget the other big theme of agency-based supers: the ethics of power. Who should decide what the superheroes do, themselves or a government legally elected by the People? Can the government be trusted to use them ethically? Can they be trusted to make the right decisions? Do they feel their innate sense of justice ought to supersede what society says is right? This also works for an Agency controlled by a private individual, the conflict just becomes between the supers and their boss rather than between the supers and society (presumably, one of the Agent starting moves should lead to them defining the Agency by picking between secretive/open, private/government, etc.). quote:Also, "Worldhopper" feels way less catchy than the other playbook names. I'd suggest The Stranger, The Outsider, The Traveller or The Alien, maybe (I like the last two more). Error 404 posted:I think you should definitely check out Worlds in Peril. It does a lot of what you're describing, the playbooks are roughly split into Origins (the accident, the alien, etc.) and Drives (your motive, work for an organization, etc.) Thanks, I'll have to check that out. Something I was pleasantly surprised about : Worlds in Peril is available for free on their Google+ page. It's the final text, apparently, without layout and art. Cyphoderus fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 20:22
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Cyphoderus posted:Thanks, I'll have to check that out. Something I was pleasantly surprised about : Worlds in Peril is available for free on their Google+ page. It's the final text, apparently, without layout and art. Unrelated, but somebody start a WiP game, I really wanna play!
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Feb 11, 2015 20:27
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