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I think kinda but I'd read it in the totally opposite way; they're actually VERY tightly linked. Moves happen when triggered in the fiction, and tell you what happens next. So someone who's constantly threatening people is going to trigger Go Aggro all the time, for example. Once triggered, moves give you a defined narrative outcome, with some mechanical tracking. So, your belligerent character will trigger Go Aggro a lot, and by Going Aggro, they're going to have a lot of people who are hurt (fictionally) and have taken Harm (mechanically). You're a belligerent dude, though, so you probably don't care, converting them into dead people, which other people in the game will have opinions about. Some of them are probably going to retalliate or try and stop you. Conversely, if you don't play someone who gets into arguments a lot you'll trigger Go Aggro less frequently, and maybe when it does trigger you'll panic from having nearly killed someone you didn't mean to, and drag them to the doc, and end up in his debt for emergency medical care. You're only using basic moves, there; anyone could trigger those. But, two different gunluggers are going to play two different games, even with an identical statline, though they certainly might be very similar given the incentives of that statline. I'd wager most gunluggers are going to have boring games if nothing's ever kicking off (but who's got everything locked down that tight?) (As a minor note, AW moves follow the principle of "To do it, do it". You can't get in someone's face and demand they give you the money and not roll, and you can't roll without trying to get in someone's face; though, of course, plenty of people are going to go "I go aggro on him, by-" or whatever. But, there's never a mechanical outlay without a fictional setup for it, and once the move triggers they always tell you about a new state in the fiction)
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Sep 14, 2018 23:10
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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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Honestly OscarDiggs, I think you’re totally misreading AW due to coming in with some pre-conceived notions of how it works and trying to fit what you’re reading into that, instead of just taking in what AW is doing. I think you’re going to get a much better idea of what it actually is by reading some of the AW game threads here or by watching a recording of a game, like the one Roll20 did. I’ll toss some links in when I’m not phone posting.
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Sep 14, 2018 23:17
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I'll also note that there won't be two Gunluggers in a game. The Gunlugger in your game is the Gunlugger in your game. That's another factor.
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Sep 14, 2018 23:36
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At this point I'll take kinda over nothing! And honestly thinking about it in that sense, yeah I can see the appeal of a game that plays like that. Plus, it's easier now to make the connection between narrative actions triggering mechanical moves. Hell, I'd be eager to give it a go. I'm not sure if I should be allowed to given it's taken me this long to get my head around it, but understanding it in this way, even if it's only "kinda" right, does make it seem like something I would want to give a go. Comrade Gorbash posted:Honestly OscarDiggs, I think you’re totally misreading AW due to coming in with some pre-conceived notions of how it works and trying to fit what you’re reading into that, instead of just taking in what AW is doing. I think you’re going to get a much better idea of what it actually is by reading some of the AW game threads here or by watching a recording of a game, like the one Roll20 did. I’ll toss some links in when I’m not phone posting. Sure, I'd agree with that pretty much completely. I definetly came in with an idea of what I thought PbtA played like, which is why I was so confused in the first place. And thank you, but there's no need for you to put yourself out trying to find examples for me. As you said, there are tons going down in The Game Room right now I could look in on to get a fairer understanding. And I can always google a live session or two like Roll20's. Thank you very much for the offer though. Ultimately I think I've tortured this thread enough with my questions. Knowing what I know now is going to make going forward on my own much easier. Thank you everyone who took the time and effort to make a post in order to help me understand better. I shall let you all get back to more interesting things.
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Sep 14, 2018 23:42
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OscarDiggs posted:I'm used to storygames coming from the FATE angle so I was approaching PbtA in the same way. However, it looks like the narrative side and the mechanical side are utterly seperated in AW and the like, unlike in storygames I'm more familiar with. So the reason they're different is because they're different. I think a lot of this is comes from the part where I cut you off, because "the fiction" (what you're calling narrative) and the mechanics are intertwined. If they are in the same exact situation, react the same exact way, which causes the same exact move to trigger, and they make any possible choices the same way, then they are very similar yes. But that's a lot of variables! Why does Jangles have those moves? The MC will probably ask that, and that will change how it works. Because the fiction comes first. It doesn't have to change the specific mechanics written in the move for it to change the fiction. If the veteran has an ancient hi-tec HUD in his retinas to explain those Battlefield Instincts, the MC might say things happen as a result of it. Wolves Of The Maelstrom don't show up on them, Buzzo's drug cocktail makes his heart beat so fast the HUD can see it through walls sometimes. A lot of Apocalypse World is just letting things happen, you're playing to see what happens. Also if Jangles is a monkey I would probably have a lot more Act Under Fire rolls for people smiling at them (if that's a monkey thing I forget).
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Sep 15, 2018 02:53
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Also there is a separate uplifted animal playbook.
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Sep 15, 2018 08:34
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Playbooks match you to a character trope, but consider that just because James Bond and Jason Bourne probably use the same Playbooks doesn't mean they are the same character. Everything that is not a move, and basically all the framing around a move is up to you.
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Sep 15, 2018 10:53
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Golden Bee posted:Also there is a separate uplifted animal playbook. Is there? Space Marine Mammal is just Landfall Marine now and isn't inherently about being a dolphin.
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Sep 15, 2018 11:13
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hey, I was meaning to homebrew a setting for the system after getting some experience playing rpgs but one thing occurred to be, is it wrong to not let your players roll for a human? the setting i wanna use in question is basically grimdark bug's life and tiny humans aren't a thing.
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Sep 17, 2018 19:27
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Having different playable species with humans as the default boring option is a terrible tradition. So yes, break it.
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Sep 17, 2018 19:33
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Fruity20 posted:hey, I was meaning to homebrew a setting for the system after getting some experience playing rpgs but one thing occurred to be, is it wrong to not let your players roll for a human? the setting i wanna use in question is basically grimdark bug's life and tiny humans aren't a thing. hollow knight?
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Sep 18, 2018 00:04
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DoctorWhat posted:hollow knight? i have heard of the game i just never played it. i might after my next payroll. last time i pitched it somewhere else, someone claimed it felt more lighthearted. I guess i didn't set the tone right  .
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Sep 18, 2018 15:32
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How do you GM an empty box? A player says they open a box. You, as the GM, know there is nothing in the box. You tell them there is nothing in the box. It's boring and sad and nothing happens. Is this an acceptable outcome? Should it not be empty even when it only makes sense for it to be empty? Should the box never have been empty in the first place? What if there was something there and now it's gone? Should there be something there now?
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Sep 20, 2018 02:27
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generally it's ok to say the box is empty, it really doesn't sound like it's a big deal in this case. You want to make sure the narrative doesn't run out of momentum, and if you feel like the game would stop when the empty box is opened, put something in the box. It's more about avoiding 'Nothing's Happening' rather than 'Nothing Happened', because if you jam plot hooks into everything, it gets really confusing to play and run. Keep focus on the interesting parts of the game.
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Sep 20, 2018 03:25
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Isn’t the entire point to use the GM moves when the players look to you to see what happens as well as to follow the fiction? That means you have to somehow twist “this box is just empty, man” directly into Announce Future Badness or Trade Harm or something. Does that mean I get free reign to say “there’s nothing here cause it’s loving uninteresting, hey check out this goblin about to shank you”? And if so, isn’t that railroading?
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Sep 20, 2018 03:43
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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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In this particular instance the thing that was in the box got stolen out of the box by a beaver/pig and they checked the box for anything else, they seemed disappointed when I said not really, and I wondered if I handled it badly.
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Sep 20, 2018 04:13
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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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Could always have implied there SHOULD have been more in the box but for some reason wasn't...gives it a bit of meat.
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Sep 20, 2018 06:16
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Fill it with scorpions.
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Sep 20, 2018 11:15
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Ask the player what they found in the box that surprised and worried/encouraged/confused them.
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Sep 20, 2018 11:29
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That would be crossing the line imo. https://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2010/10/apocalypse-world-crossing-line.html
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Sep 20, 2018 15:05
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Pollyanna posted:Isn’t the entire point to use the GM moves when the players look to you to see what happens as well as to follow the fiction? That means you have to somehow twist “this box is just empty, man” directly into Announce Future Badness or Trade Harm or something. Does that mean I get free reign to say “there’s nothing here cause it’s loving uninteresting, hey check out this goblin about to shank you”? And if so, isn’t that railroading? "Something else got here first" would fall under the purview of Reveal An Unwelcome Truth. Then people can be all "poo poo, let's track it" or whatever. "You looted the decoy sarcophagus" also counts, because now they've got to go back to the tomb and find the real one without the element of surprise. Glazius fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 15:59
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Biomute posted:That would be crossing the line imo. Yeah, almost certainly.
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Sep 20, 2018 16:06
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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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That’s not what the linked article would say.
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Sep 20, 2018 16:22
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So after a few months hiatus I came back to writing my cop procedural PBTA hack. (Previous discussion here.) New stuff includes: - Rules for Stress and explanation of how harm works here - Every Playbook now gets a special move for making the big arrests - Equipment moves got parcelled out to Playbooks - I figured out how I want to do Hx (although it will probably require a bunch of work) - The Beadie is the first complete (although obviously not finalised) Playbook - A bunch of other stuff, mostly Playbook moves Feel free to look through it and tell me what is bad
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Sep 26, 2018 22:00
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Just at an instant glance I really feel like good cop and bad cop should be the stats and then the fists and interrogate comes off of that? I don't know what the other stats are off that but I feel that's got a stronger flavour to it
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Sep 27, 2018 13:25
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All the cool kids probably already know this but drat is Vincent Baker's Patreon an amazing deal. So much neat stuff for as little as a buck a month.
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Sep 30, 2018 21:30
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I'm a huge D. Vincent Baker fan, but he's pretty notorious for abandoning games, even years into production. I buy everything he puts out, and I'd pay more if he raised his prices, but I don't think I'd want to do any sort of monthly payment.
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Sep 30, 2018 22:36
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I figured $12/year was a pittance to pay to encourage Baker to keep writing down his craziness and sharing it with the world.
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Oct 1, 2018 00:38
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Yeah, even if it's all just fragments, it's so interesting to look at that I'll gladly pay him a buck a month for it.
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Oct 1, 2018 01:20
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I really enjoy his patreon because it's a real look into game design. He'll experiment with a form or mechanism every two months for a year, working out the exact feel he wants, and it's interesting to watch that level of care in rule iteration. Also, he puts out some really cool 'technically playable' stuff (his words). Speaking of PbtA hacks, I've been working on a space one and would love feedback. It's still rough around the edge, but mostly playable in its current state.
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Oct 7, 2018 02:57
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I am also working on a pbta about murder mystery free for alls. Its inspired by Danganronpa but I hope it can also capture the dynamic of mafia/werewolf games that people like. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cNpuLkBQwhs9fhWonbAy3XLj4qn8ITWig3IPd-IW8UI/edit?usp=sharing The last page is ideas I've had in the past few days. I'm bad at formatting and don't know where to stick them in yet. It's someone else's formatting who was nice enough to go over it.
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Oct 7, 2018 22:14
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QuantumNinja posted:I really enjoy his patreon because it's a real look into game design. He'll experiment with a form or mechanism every two months for a year, working out the exact feel he wants, and it's interesting to watch that level of care in rule iteration. Also, he puts out some really cool 'technically playable' stuff (his words). I had a quick read and left some comments. Feel free to message to discuss. In general, I feel like the playbooks have had some good conversion work, and are evocative and genre-appropriate (although some of the names confused me). I feel like the basic and peripheral moves can use some more work, though. Some of them are very reminiscent of AW still, where they should be dripping with space flavour, being the rules players interact with more often.
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Oct 8, 2018 02:20
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One of my players had to skip last session due to work being insane, so I was wondering what the best way to bring them up to speed and involve them was. That's what love letters are for, right? Is the intent to just summarize the session they missed and update their character/give them some stuff to roll for? I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do for them.
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Oct 8, 2018 03:22
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Pollyanna posted:One of my players had to skip last session due to work being insane, so I was wondering what the best way to bring them up to speed and involve them was. That's what love letters are for, right? Is the intent to just summarize the session they missed and update their character/give them some stuff to roll for? I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do for them. A loveletter is designed to sum up what a character was doing in the meantime. What were they doing in the meantime?
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Oct 8, 2018 05:23
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Mechanically they tend to involve a roll with their primary stat and then some number of choices. The list of choices is either good things they pick to have happen, bad things they pick to have not happen, or maybe both. A quick rough example for that sort of move (of which there are many variants on top of doing something else entirely) MC Love Letter Move posted:When you've been gone a while, roll +STAT
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Oct 8, 2018 14:41
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Glazius posted:A loveletter is designed to sum up what a character was doing in the meantime. Am I asking them that question, or answering it for them? Bear Enthusiast posted:Mechanically they tend to involve a roll with their primary stat and then some number of choices. The list of choices is either good things they pick to have happen, bad things they pick to have not happen, or maybe both. This makes it seem like the latter. Given that in this particular case the character was "around" but not active in the party (outside of a "help me bust down this gate" thing), I think I have an idea for what they could have been doing.
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Oct 8, 2018 22:58
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