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lessavini
Jun 22, 2017
Anyone could take a look at this playbook and see if it's good? I've finally settled on the form and substance and want to do the future ones based on it.

It's for my Planescape hack. This one is the Xaositech, which will be a chance manipulator of sorts.

Front


Back

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Arivia
Mar 17, 2011
Activate Windows, get a spellchecker (I get it, you have all the cant in, but it'll still stop you from giving tieflings "fire resistence"), and check your line spacing and everything. Ow my eyes hurt from some of that, and you don't want to pass off poor formatting as just a ~chaos~ thing. That didn't work for White Wolf in the 90s, it's certainly not good enough now.

Also it's really hard to critique your playbook when it references a bunch of basic moves we don't know. Do those first, THEN the playbooks.

lessavini
Jun 22, 2017
Lol thanks for the honesty.

Here are the basic moves. They're really.. basic really. xD

Basic moves


Planes moves

Nea
Feb 28, 2014

Funny Little Guy Aficionado.
So, your basic moves don't really fit the genre you seem to be emulating? While they're all workable moves on their own, they're clearly drawn from other basic apocalypse world hacks and not something that comes through considering what sort of actions are Common that move the narrative forward in your genre.

Basically, these don't seem to fit the Sort Of Things Heroes Do in your story well, they mostly just seem like a mishmash of other games?

Like, i think the organization of the sheets looks mostly fine, but there's a lot that can be done with a PBTA hack and this isn't being very adventurous, and it sort of ends up becoming flat and stale.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Neopie posted:

So, your basic moves don't really fit the genre you seem to be emulating? While they're all workable moves on their own, they're clearly drawn from other basic apocalypse world hacks and not something that comes through considering what sort of actions are Common that move the narrative forward in your genre.

Yeah, I think it's hard to overstate how important getting a robust and tone-specific set of basic moves is for a PbtA hack. They're what players will look to as the fundamental guide to what their PCs can and should be doing and what kinds of actions are important to the story your game is designed to tell. These should be as specific as possible, both in action type and outcomes; while it's reasonable to start from other games, you really shouldn't just lift them straight.

Rick
Feb 23, 2004
When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Tekopo posted:

What was the issue that you had in terms of flow? The game flows a lot differently between IRL and written/discord/pbp games but from what I've heard of the IRL games, you have to keep the action going quickly and most of the spotlight switching is quite natural since the game itself tells you when to shift the spotlight. From the perspective of Creative, you don't really need to get involved in the matches themselves, and just let the players get on with it, unless you want to introduce an unexpected swerve at some point. Creative's job in the game is actually quite limited when the matches themselves are happening.

I think I was just really confused as to when rolls should happen, and also how my friends who weren't wrestling fans were going to be able to do the narration of the match and such, or even know what to do and I guess I was hoping for ways to more clearly guide them.

lessavini
Jun 22, 2017
Thanks for the feedback on my Planescape hack. I was super lazy (I actually wanted for it to be a reskin of AW, for practical purposes). But I will think about remaking it.

By the way, found out that Yoshitaka Amano art goes really well with planescape.

http://www.image-share.com/upload/4058/119.png
http://www.image-share.com/upload/4058/120.png
http://www.image-share.com/upload/4058/121.png
http://www.image-share.com/upload/4058/122.png

lessavini fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Apr 5, 2020

GladRagKraken
Mar 27, 2010
I'm gonna be running session zero of a monsterhearts series soon. I'm coming in with the vast majority of my PBtA experience in world wide wrestling. Should be a little bit of a different tone, unless I really botch it. What should I be keeping in mind?

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

GladRagKraken posted:

I'm gonna be running session zero of a monsterhearts series soon. I'm coming in with the vast majority of my PBtA experience in world wide wrestling. Should be a little bit of a different tone, unless I really botch it. What should I be keeping in mind?

Ask harder Qs, make bold NPCs.

Wrestlepig
Feb 25, 2011

my mum says im cool

Toilet Rascal

GladRagKraken posted:

I'm gonna be running session zero of a monsterhearts series soon. I'm coming in with the vast majority of my PBtA experience in world wide wrestling. Should be a little bit of a different tone, unless I really botch it. What should I be keeping in mind?

Give your players rope and they’ll gang themselves. Characters in MH have an inbuilt economy that drives them deeper, just point them at the start and let the agendas take the wheel.

Nea
Feb 28, 2014

Funny Little Guy Aficionado.

GladRagKraken posted:

I'm gonna be running session zero of a monsterhearts series soon. I'm coming in with the vast majority of my PBtA experience in world wide wrestling. Should be a little bit of a different tone, unless I really botch it. What should I be keeping in mind?

I don't know what safety tools monsterhearts 2nd edition has but use them and make sure your players are familiar with them, and if they're inadequate add more, it's a fun game but one that can easily go into traumatic territory, in a lot of different directions, so be prepared to sort of, mediate that?

BlackIronHeart
Aug 2, 2004

The Oath Breaker's about to hit warphead nine Kaptain!
Yeah, I'd even say that when running Monsterhearts you may wanna look for a hard 'yes' instead of a hard 'no' when it comes to player buy-in to certain topics. If you're gonna bring in any kind of hard 'R-rated', trigger warning level content, forecast it before hand and if people aren't enthusiastically consenting to it, dial it back.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

BlackIronHeart posted:

Yeah, I'd even say that when running Monsterhearts you may wanna look for a hard 'yes' instead of a hard 'no' when it comes to player buy-in to certain topics. If you're gonna bring in any kind of hard 'R-rated', trigger warning level content, forecast it before hand and if people aren't enthusiastically consenting to it, dial it back.

Agreed on this. The content of Monsterhearts makes it pretty easy to assume implied consent for a lot of things, which makes it potentially very dangerous for players who think they have to just go along with group consensus even if they're not comfortable. You should absolutely be checking and looking for enthusiastic player consent, as well as extensive out-of-character communication and abundant safety tools, and maintain an atmosphere where those safety tools can be used without judgment.

GladRagKraken
Mar 27, 2010

Neopie posted:

I don't know what safety tools monsterhearts 2nd edition has but use them and make sure your players are familiar with them, and if they're inadequate add more, it's a fun game but one that can easily go into traumatic territory, in a lot of different directions, so be prepared to sort of, mediate that?

Ran a session zero. Folks were familiar with the x card from other games I've run with them, but I made a point of pointing out that on video call it's hard for me to see a little card, and harder to get a read on how folks are feeling, so I enlisted them all into paying attention to each other and asking for a breather if someone else looks distressed. MH2 comes with lines and veils, tho it doesn't call it that, and I was thrilled that I had a lot of buy-in from my players, with everybody contributing something they didn't want the game to touch on. Put the result front and center in our shared notes doc. The book also recommends frequent breaks and breathers, and while I made sure that everyone knew they could ask for a break whenever for whatever, I suspect it'll be something I have to model. Finally, I made sure everyone had all sorts of ways to reach me through side channels if they wanted to talk. Really tho I think the two keys to making sure everyone stays safe will be going slow and deliberately and carefully, and reaching out to check on folks.

I'm feeling a lot less confident in getting the motor running so the players can pick it up and start having their characters make bad decisions. We made a nice thickly woven web of classmates I can pull from, and an evocative little decaying town to wreck. I just gotta figure out how to turn the players loose. The book recommends a homeroom scene with a party, a disappearance, or a fight, and running from there. Vaguely worried either I won't be able to make some sparks from that, or won't be able to figure out how to make use of them. I guess I oughta have trust, but I'm gonna be examining my seating chart closely for something I can make blow up just in case.

Pththya-lyi
Nov 8, 2009

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
What I like to do in Session 1 of Monsterhearts is to wait until someone Gazes into the Abyss - or failing that, until the classroom drama stalls out - and have a car smash into homeroom. The Abyss-gazer or someone looking out the window is forewarned; they can shout a warning or pull a classmate out of the way. The driver and/or people who don't get out of the way get injured or even killed. Ideally, the driver is connected to one of the PCs - maybe they give the character a cryptic warning just before they die of their injuries. If you can't think of a good NPC to be the driver, ask a player.

Nea
Feb 28, 2014

Funny Little Guy Aficionado.

GladRagKraken posted:

Ran a session zero. Folks were familiar with the x card from other games I've run with them, but I made a point of pointing out that on video call it's hard for me to see a little card, and harder to get a read on how folks are feeling, so I enlisted them all into paying attention to each other and asking for a breather if someone else looks distressed. MH2 comes with lines and veils, tho it doesn't call it that, and I was thrilled that I had a lot of buy-in from my players, with everybody contributing something they didn't want the game to touch on. Put the result front and center in our shared notes doc. The book also recommends frequent breaks and breathers, and while I made sure that everyone knew they could ask for a break whenever for whatever, I suspect it'll be something I have to model. Finally, I made sure everyone had all sorts of ways to reach me through side channels if they wanted to talk. Really tho I think the two keys to making sure everyone stays safe will be going slow and deliberately and carefully, and reaching out to check on folks.

I'm feeling a lot less confident in getting the motor running so the players can pick it up and start having their characters make bad decisions. We made a nice thickly woven web of classmates I can pull from, and an evocative little decaying town to wreck. I just gotta figure out how to turn the players loose. The book recommends a homeroom scene with a party, a disappearance, or a fight, and running from there. Vaguely worried either I won't be able to make some sparks from that, or won't be able to figure out how to make use of them. I guess I oughta have trust, but I'm gonna be examining my seating chart closely for something I can make blow up just in case.

Nice! The breaks are a really good choice, and encouraging them for minor stuff really helps when people need to use them for the major stuff. And it's good that you got other players involved, it is Just Bad when the GM is the only person watching for safety stuff.

If you're having trouble using the X card, it's also great to do it over text- then everyone can see it regardless of video. And, if the x-card doesn't work great for your group, here's a whole bundle of tools and alternatives that might be a lil easier.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T-4diHGaxlOy-N76rYmqYvLXkSV-dp_L3lSMZvb8Qqg/edit

In general, really glad you're pushing this stuff and it sounds like you're going to have a good time!

Infinity Gaia
Feb 27, 2011

a storm is coming...

So I figure this is the place to ask for this sort of help. I've somehow managed to get myself in the position of running a Masks campaign due to the combination of the previous GM being tired and wanting to pass on the seat to someone else and a spur of the moment decision for superheroes. I did not want to run something like Mutants and Masterminds since that is just... Insane in terms of crunch, so the previous GM mentioned Masks, which I was vaguely aware of as a PbtA hack, so I agreed.

I have never run a PbtA hack before, and only played very briefly in Dungeon World campaigns. After reading through the core rulebook for Masks, I must say I am mildly terrified, which is weird, since I'm pretty fine with much crunchier games. It just seems like a game that requires a LOT of... Well, as they put it, conversation. Can't hide behind a filler combat with goblins here. What this whole rambling post is meant to ask is, any tips for someone running a PbtA game for the first time, specifically Masks? Any important pitfalls to avoid, and so on? My group has only recently started to move away from playing only the ultra-crunchiest of games, so they're also probably not fantastic at... PbtA. Tips for how to ease them into the conversational style?

Zorak of Michigan
Jun 10, 2006


Are they specifically into the teenage superheroes aspect of Masks? If they're used to games that don't have the genre conventions embedded so deeply in them, and someone shows up wanting to play Batman or Wolverine, the game is going to go bad, fast.

Yami Fenrir
Jan 25, 2015

Is it I that is insane... or the rest of the world?

Zorak of Michigan posted:

Are they specifically into the teenage superheroes aspect of Masks? If they're used to games that don't have the genre conventions embedded so deeply in them, and someone shows up wanting to play Batman or Wolverine, the game is going to go bad, fast.

Seconding this. Masks is very specifically Teenage Heroes trying to be taken seriously.

Ilor
Feb 2, 2008

That's a crit.
The biggest challenge for anyone running a PbtA game is to make every roll (success but especially failure) consequential. By that I mean that the underlying narrative that describes the situation (what you'll hear people refer to as "the fiction") needs to change with every roll - something needs to happen.
If you're coming from a crunchy background, this will seem weird, because it's not generally how crunch games work. You failed to pick the lock? It takes you some time, but there's usually nothing stopping you from trying again. In a PbtA game, the issue that is being resolved is not whether you can pick the lock - you're awesome and could absolutely do it given enough time - but rather whether you can pick the lock before the guard comes. So if you fail the roll, it's not because your character isn't competent, it's that the guard forgot he left his flagon of ale and doubled back to his post to pick it up, inadvertently catching you in the act of skullduggery.

Your job as the GM is to explain what success or failure means in the context of any given roll (what happens and how the situation changes), and why "I do it again" is not generally an option. And you need to do it in the moment. It requires some improvisational skill, but that's what the list of GM moves is for - it's to give you broad ideas or prompts for natural answers to "what happens next." Fail your big attack during a fight with the supervillain? Maybe he pimp-slaps you into a wall which subsequently collapses and buries you under a pile of rubble (GM move capture someone). Now you're stuck, and someone else is going to need to help you.

Nea
Feb 28, 2014

Funny Little Guy Aficionado.

Infinity Gaia posted:

So I figure this is the place to ask for this sort of help. I've somehow managed to get myself in the position of running a Masks campaign due to the combination of the previous GM being tired and wanting to pass on the seat to someone else and a spur of the moment decision for superheroes. I did not want to run something like Mutants and Masterminds since that is just... Insane in terms of crunch, so the previous GM mentioned Masks, which I was vaguely aware of as a PbtA hack, so I agreed.

I have never run a PbtA hack before, and only played very briefly in Dungeon World campaigns. After reading through the core rulebook for Masks, I must say I am mildly terrified, which is weird, since I'm pretty fine with much crunchier games. It just seems like a game that requires a LOT of... Well, as they put it, conversation. Can't hide behind a filler combat with goblins here. What this whole rambling post is meant to ask is, any tips for someone running a PbtA game for the first time, specifically Masks? Any important pitfalls to avoid, and so on? My group has only recently started to move away from playing only the ultra-crunchiest of games, so they're also probably not fantastic at... PbtA. Tips for how to ease them into the conversational style?

My big one is read the gm section of Apocalypse World Specifically, many pbta games just sort of, assume you'veinternalized the basic rules of running them and don't, uh, copy that into their gming sections, but apocalypse world spells a lot of it out just in it's pages.

BlackIronHeart
Aug 2, 2004

The Oath Breaker's about to hit warphead nine Kaptain!

Infinity Gaia posted:

My group has only recently started to move away from playing only the ultra-crunchiest of games, so they're also probably not fantastic at... PbtA. Tips for how to ease them into the conversational style?

The advice I would give your players, not you specifically, is to not look at their character sheets too much. I've noticed a lot of people that go from, say, D&D to PBTA will immediately look at their sheets when asked 'What do you do?' and what they probably should be doing is just describing what they want to do and then the GM can determine if that's a move that requires a roll. That's how you get the conversation going.

Infinity Gaia
Feb 27, 2011

a storm is coming...

Thank you all for the advice! Yeah, while everyone is very into crunchy systems they are all smart enough people to understand the general narrative expected by Masks after reading the core book, so that part is not an issue. The hint to try to get them to not look at their character sheets is great, and probably the most significant advice I've gotten. I'll try to get my hands on the apocalypse world GM section too, while I think the Masks GM section was pretty thorough more advice never hurts.

Heliotrope
Aug 17, 2007

You're fucking subhuman

Infinity Gaia posted:

Thank you all for the advice! Yeah, while everyone is very into crunchy systems they are all smart enough people to understand the general narrative expected by Masks after reading the core book, so that part is not an issue. The hint to try to get them to not look at their character sheets is great, and probably the most significant advice I've gotten. I'll try to get my hands on the apocalypse world GM section too, while I think the Masks GM section was pretty thorough more advice never hurts.

The first edition PDFs are free on the Apocalypse World site:

http://apocalypse-world.com/

The second edition changed a bunch of stuff, but the MC section is pretty much the same and what people are saying to read.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Infinity Gaia posted:

Thank you all for the advice! Yeah, while everyone is very into crunchy systems they are all smart enough people to understand the general narrative expected by Masks after reading the core book, so that part is not an issue. The hint to try to get them to not look at their character sheets is great, and probably the most significant advice I've gotten. I'll try to get my hands on the apocalypse world GM section too, while I think the Masks GM section was pretty thorough more advice never hurts.

You've already gotten a lot of good advice, but one thing I'll add that can be counterintuitive for new PbtA groups is to make sure the players have plenty of narrative control. As a PbtA GM, a big chunk of your job is asking the players interesting questions, and a big chunk of the players' job is giving interesting answers with narrative heft -- encourage players to go out on limbs with their ideas and to make choices with impact on the world. The conversation format means everyone's developing the story together, and players should ideally be more proactive about this than the GM is.

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.
I might have asked this before, but is Interstitial crap? Because I heard it has next to no GM advice in the book and too many playbooks.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?
Interstitial is indeed not very good.

QuantumNinja
Mar 8, 2013

Trust me.
I pretend to be a ninja.

Neopie posted:

My big one is read the gm section of Apocalypse World Specifically, many pbta games just sort of, assume you'veinternalized the basic rules of running them and don't, uh, copy that into their gming sections, but apocalypse world spells a lot of it out just in it's pages.

This is the largest sin most PbtA hacks commit. A rulebook should fundamentally explain how to play a game.

(I think the second-largest is that most skip the "players and their crap" section, which is incredibly useful in trying to determine how to interpret and think about specific moves.)

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



e: Yeah, I was being weird in that post and now it's gone. Sorry about that, tired brain fart.

So instead I'll ask:

If I were writing a hack that had only 4 stats, would a move along the lines of AW's Act Under Fire or DW's Defy Danger make sense in an "roll the relevant stat" as opposed to "roll +thing"?

Stats are fast, cool, hard, loud, game's about armed high speed couriers and live social media. e: and is firmly tongue-in-cheek, if it wasn't obvious.

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Apr 26, 2020

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry

Elector_Nerdlingen posted:

e: Yeah, I was being weird in that post and now it's gone. Sorry about that, tired brain fart.

So instead I'll ask:

If I were writing a hack that had only 4 stats, would a move along the lines of AW's Act Under Fire or DW's Defy Danger make sense in an "roll the relevant stat" as opposed to "roll +thing"?

Stats are fast, cool, hard, loud, game's about armed high speed couriers and live social media. e: and is firmly tongue-in-cheek, if it wasn't obvious.

I think pointing all your stats at dealing with catastrophe is more fine in a game where you're constantly mainlining catastrophe, and you seem to be pointed that way, so cool.

One of my metrics for "what stat is this Defy Danger" is a list of upsides and downsides for each stat, framing what you're trying to accomplish and what could go wrong in terms of the stat before the roll happens. So, like, to roll +loud you say who you're showing off for and what you don't want them to see. It'd be nice to see that spelled out, in addition to examples of a worse outcome/hard bargain/ugly choice in your setting, assuming you preserve that language.

QuantumNinja
Mar 8, 2013

Trust me.
I pretend to be a ninja.

Elector_Nerdlingen posted:

If I were writing a hack that had only 4 stats, would a move along the lines of AW's Act Under Fire or DW's Defy Danger make sense in an "roll the relevant stat" as opposed to "roll +thing"?

One issue I have seen come up with Defy Danger is that a player will often try to figure out how to tune their action to get their best stat to apply. It can force characters to forgo "what fits" in order to do "what's optimal," shaping their behavior around the mechanics instead of the character. I think that's generally a negative. One alternative might be to think about splitting it up based on the actual danger instead of their reaction: if it's dodging bullets, it's Hard; if time is of the essence, it's Fast; and so on. That way, it still selects the stat as as the situation demands, but it keeps the player from doing something out of place to game the roll.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



QuantumNinja posted:

One issue I have seen come up with Defy Danger is that a player will often try to figure out how to tune their action to get their best stat to apply. It can force characters to forgo "what fits" in order to do "what's optimal," shaping their behavior around the mechanics instead of the character. I think that's generally a negative. One alternative might be to think about splitting it up based on the actual danger instead of their reaction: if it's dodging bullets, it's Hard; if time is of the essence, it's Fast; and so on. That way, it still selects the stat as as the situation demands, but it keeps the player from doing something out of place to game the roll.

So instead of "When you act under pressure using your reflexes or speed" more "when you act quickly to avoid...". Less "When you overcome a threat via your toughness and grit" and more "When you stand there and take everything they throw at you"

I see what you mean, and I think that's what I was going for but I realise that not only did I not write that in the post, I haven't written it in the rules either. I'm pretty sure that were I running the game I'd do what I had in mind, but communicating how to use the rule within the rule (like AW is so good at) is new to me.

I think I'll just write different moves with different suggested consequences - failing to tough it out isn't the same as failing to move fast enough or failing to self-assuredly ignore an insult.

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Apr 28, 2020

megane
Jun 20, 2008



Elector_Nerdlingen posted:

So instead of "When you act under pressure using your reflexes or speed" more "when you act quickly to avoid...". Less "When you overcome a threat via your toughness and grit" and more "When you stand there and take everything they throw at you"

I see what you mean, and I think that's what I was going for but I realise that not only did I not write that in the post, I haven't written it in the rules either. I'm pretty sure that were I running the game I'd do what I had in mind, but communicating how to use the rule within the rule (like AW is so good at) is new to me.

I think I'll just write different moves with different suggested consequences - failing to tough it out isn't the same as failing to move fast enough or failing to self-assuredly ignore an insult.

Well, the problem is: okay, some arrows are coming at me. Should I act quickly to dodge or should I stand there and take it? The answer is "whichever I have the higher number in." If the stat depends on my approach or whatever, I'm obviously going to say I'm doing the thing that lets me roll my best stat.

So I think the suggestion was more like "When stuff is flying at you, it's Dex." The stat depends on the situation, not on what the player chooses. No whining about how actually I'm using my intellect to plot the paths of the arrows, or my wisdom to sense them coming.

Of course, this is all tied into Defy Danger's other big flaw, which is that it is one move trying to cover every single threat or obstacle you might run into except combat (and also combat sometimes!). It's so broad that it applies to nearly every situation, and then you get to try and hammer some round pegs into square holes to get a +3 as above. I'm "in danger" of not impressing the Duke with my dancing! Time to Defy Danger with Charis- er, wait, uh, I'm gonna dance for a really long time and shrug off my exhaustion, so that's +Con, riiiiight?

AW's Act Under Fire is much more well-written, since it uses one stat and is for one thing (you want to do X, but doing X might hurt you because of falling rocks/angry onlookers/actual fire/whatever, so roll to see if it does).

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



This is quite a bit deeper than I thought.

I've got 4 stats and 4 playbooks, and each playbook broadly correspond to a stat which wasn't really intentional but in retrospect it was obvious that I was subconsciously doing it on purpose. What I think I'm gonna do is to write each playbook a unique resist move which uses their high stat against a certain type of threat, and then also have the AW style "act under fire" move.

Also, doesn't Defy Danger work in the genre in part because it means that most characters are mostly going to defy danger in class-stereotypical ways? I mean, "they'll fish for the good stat" is a valid criticism, but if you're telling Dungeons And Dragons stories, then "the fighter was strong a lot" and "the thief was agile a lot" are in-genre, right?

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Apr 29, 2020

GimpInBlack
Sep 27, 2012

That's right, kids, take lots of drugs, leave the universe behind, and pilot Enlightenment Voltron out into the cosmos to meet Alien Jesus.

Elector_Nerdlingen posted:

Also, doesn't Defy Danger work in the genre in part because it means that most characters are mostly going to defy danger in class-stereotypical ways? I mean, "they'll fish for the good stat" is a valid criticism, but if you're telling Dungeons And Dragons stories, then "the fighter was strong a lot" and "the thief was agile a lot" are in-genre, right?

Definitely, but the problem with defy danger is more that its triggers are so vague that it's often difficult or impossible to ever challenge anything but their highest stat. We like to see the fighter be strong a lot and the thief be agile a lot, but we also like to see the fighter occasionally have to be sneaky or blend in in a high-society party, or the thief occasionally have to figure out how to move that three-ton marble statue covering the vault, or whatever.

If you haven't yet, I'd definitely recommend looking at Fellowship 2e or Ironsworn for how to do multi-stat moves rather than Dungeon World. They both do a better job of making the distinctions clearer and striking a balance between letting each character shine in their best stats without only ever rolling that.

(I also really like your "each playbook gets its own unique way to avoid trouble" idea, that sounds really cool!)

QuantumNinja
Mar 8, 2013

Trust me.
I pretend to be a ninja.

Elector_Nerdlingen posted:

I've got 4 stats and 4 playbooks, and each playbook broadly correspond to a stat which wasn't really intentional but in retrospect it was obvious that I was subconsciously doing it on purpose. What I think I'm gonna do is to write each playbook a unique resist move which uses their high stat against a certain type of threat, and then also have the AW style "act under fire" move.

This is an excellent idea! I would be tempted to make the default "Act Under Fire" be a flat roll, which means either they're doing the thing they're good at or they're just okay at it, across the board. It will help reinforce characters as "in their element" versus "not", which I think is likely suitable for the genre you're describing. It's also cool because it means that an advancement for "take a move from another playbook" can be used to just make yourself better at danger in a different situation.

Harkano
Jun 5, 2005

I don't know how many folks are using Discord to keep up with their games, we migrated our D&D games on there and I was impressed by some of the dice bot support for the system.

Since I wanted to start a Masks game and ease my players into the system I wanted to find a bot for this, but since I didn't find anything I had to learn how to make my own.

The Masks Automated Discord Dice Interpreter & Explainer! M.A.D.D.I.E!
https://github.com/harkano/maddie/blob/master/README.md

It supports all the basic and core playbook moves, along with moments of truth etc.
e.g. to unleash your powers with a +2 on Freak you'd type !unleash+2.

It's currently live on 36 discord servers, and tonight there were 4 separate games seemingly using it at once.

Had some great community support on the Masks discord in terms of graphics help and code contributors, so let me know what you think of it.

I also left the data format open in a big json file, so my thought is that it would be relatively easy to adapt to any PBTA system (Fellowship? BiTD?)

sasha_d3ath
Jun 3, 2016

Ban-thing the man-things.
They're having the Sex Moves Argument over in philosophy and I don't wanna say it in there, so I'm saying it in here:

AAAAAAAAAAAA.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Foglet
Jun 17, 2014

Reality is an illusion.
The universe is a hologram.
Buy gold.
Why did the hyphzchat explo...
Ohhhh, someone mentioned the intimacy moves in AW.

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Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
People can’t stand that you can have sex in a game. They couldn’t when AW came out and it’s either the same people arguing or new people joining the endless cycle of “don’t use it if you don’t like it”.

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