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Yeah, I was thinking of moves that would specifically let you leverage your gang to do poo poo, like, "I have people for that."
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Dec 7, 2017 21:05
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In our game, the PeaceKeepers enforced law in the wasteland. Specifically, they guaranteed the safety of travelers and punished those who transgressed. Well, at least they did until the head PeaceKeeper decided to pick a fight with Mesa-town over who had the biggest dick, then went all Master-Blaster "embargo ON!" It kind of undercut their moral authority.
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Dec 13, 2017 22:52
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Flavivirus, are you still taking feedback prior to releasing V2?
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Dec 14, 2017 02:50
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Hypnotic is a great move, so it's hard to go wrong with stealing it.
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Dec 14, 2017 15:39
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Quidthulhu posted:What’s the best system, then? Or are you asking, "which is the best PbtA game?" Because the answer to that one is clear: Apocalypse World. I've played a lot of different hacks of Apocalypse World by this point, and the difference between the good ones and the mediocre ones usually boils down to two simple (and related) factors: how well do the basic moves of the game support the theme/genre, and how "complete" are they (in other words, how many situations crop up where you feel like something should be up to chance, but none of the moves really fit). The most recent one we played was Cartel, which we pretty much all agreed was spot-on thematically (and all the playbook moves were great), but in which there was just some stuff missing. Turn to Violence and Propose a Deal were the worst offenders for lack of clarity, but the fact that there wasn't really a move for physical threats or intimidation (i.e. no analog for go aggro) seemed like a gaping hole in a game about Mexican drug dealers. And Pressure someone didn't really fit that bill, which left us kind of scratching our heads. On the topic of Defy Danger, I find that the cardinal rule of "to do it, do it" salvages some of the move's worst offenses. Let the fiction set which stat you're using. If you're trying to dodge a falling boulder, that's not WIS or CON, it is clearly and obviously DEX. So as the DM, when the player says, "gently caress, I jump out of the way!" it's your job to say, "Great, roll+DEX!" And if their DEX sucks, well, mebbe they'll get some XP out of the deal. It's also totally cool to respond to, "gently caress it, I'll just stand my ground and take the boulder! Defy Danger with CON?" with, "No, rear end in a top hat, a boulder has just dropped on you. Take damage" because that fits the fiction, and YOU (the GM) ultimately decide when a move triggers and when it doesn't. But that doesn't change the fact that the move is poorly designed and not at all helpful to DMs new to Dungeon World.
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Dec 26, 2017 00:52
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gnome7 posted:You are correct that having the GM stick to their guns on it mostly fixes Defy Danger, but then it falls into the other problem with Defy Danger: over half the time +Dex is the only correct stat to Defy with, because people use it to try and dodge things. You will almost never roll +STR, +CON, or +WIS to Defy Danger in normal play. Every physical roll seems to somehow end up DEX, and sometimes you use INT for a puzzle, and sometimes you use CHA to fast talk, and that's all the Defy Dangers you get! Like I said, I think Defy Danger is poorly designed (or perhaps poorly explained), but it's not completely useless.
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Dec 26, 2017 16:05
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Ultimately it just goes back to the core issue with DW: it kept the wrong D&D sacred cows. 
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Dec 26, 2017 23:38
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open_sketchbook posted:Just looking for, like, a test of the waters here... If I were to pitch a game as a "Crunchy PbtA", would you be intrigued, or immediately turned off? Furthermore, it must be remembered that as a story-based game, the rules in (good) PbtA games serve to direct the narrative, not model any kind of reality. I generally equate "crunch" with "simulation," but "simulation" is almost diametrically opposed to how (good) PbtA games work. The result of any given move in Apocalypse World doesn't tell you anything about the world's physics or verisimilitude, it tells you what happens next.
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Dec 28, 2017 15:19
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Battle Mad Ronin posted:I want to make a Swashbuckling fantasy adventure game from an PbtA base. Think equal parts Dumas, Steven Brust and Michael Moorcock. Battle Mad Ronin posted:I don't feel confident in my ability to make such a game. Can anyone give me recommendations on 1) the theory behind PbtA, and how to shape it into what I want without making beginner mistakes, and 2) any examples of games in that genre already using PbtA or which are just good examples of how to handle romantic Three Musketeers antics in a fantasy world? As general principles, I'd keep the following in mind: 1) As mentioned in my previous post, the PbtA engine really shines when the moves directly interface with the story, and do not simulate any kind of "reality" (verisimilitudinous or no). How wide is the chasm? Well, if you rolled a 10+, it was narrow enough to jump it without breaking a sweat. Rolled a 7-9, things have not gone precisely as planned. If you rolled a 6-, I guess it was wider than it looked. You should never be counting hexes or squares and cross-referencing Move or Strength scores or whatever, because that's not what the engine is about. 2) Good PbtA games have attributes that are abstract rather than direct, measurable quantities. Really good ones have attributes that are both evocative and complex. It's the difference between "Comeliness" (how physically attractive you are) and "Hot" (which is simultaneously a mixture of your personability, general attractiveness, grace in social situations, and how manipulative you are. You can be dog-ugly and still be "Hot." This is one of the consistent ways in which goons bitch about Dungeon World - by keeping the D&D trope attributes, DW pulls people back into that character "quantification" mindset. Conversely, AW's "Weird" is a loving fantastic stat, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. 3) Speaking of attributes, don't have too many or too few. When it comes to making playbooks, each playbook will generally have one "primary" attribute, so if you have too few attributes the playbooks will tend to be kind of samey, and you'll need to work a lot harder on the playbook moves to distinguish them. If you have too many, it's more likely that players will have attributes they never need or use. 4) Good PbtA games have a solid set of basic moves that do two important things: they reinforce the theme/genre, and they cover the vast majority of the stuff that the players are going to want their characters to do during the session. The playbook moves should be icing on the cake, not critical to the character being able to function at all. AW2 has 8 basic moves, 2 battle moves, 3 support moves, and 2 barter moves. 90+% of the time, what you're going to want to do will be covered by just the 8 basic and 2 battle moves. There's some other stuff thrown in there for flavor (the 5 subterfuge moves and the 5 road-war moves), but frankly you could dragoon other basic moves into their places without losing much (e.g. you could easily use the basic move act under fire in place of the board a moving vehicle road-war move, which uses the same attribute and general structure). 5) Pay very special attention to the triggers for your moves. Make them specific - it should be pretty easy to tell when a move is being triggered - but more broadly applied for the basic moves, more tightly-scoped for the playbook moves. So think hard about what it is that your PCs will be doing, and tailor your game to that. So for instance, your crazy renaissance-hermetic-steampunk-swashbuckling-god-save-the-queen game sounds like one in which rank and title might be important. So to help support that, you might have an attribute called "Station." Further, that's the attribute you'd use when you make the basic move pull rank. It might also be the attribute used for the Socialite's playbook move host a soiree. These ideas hew pretty closely to the core mechanics of Apocalypse World. If you want to get away from that basic structure (2D6+attribute generating 6-, 7-9, or 10+; character roles and abilities defined by moves, results of moves serving to drive story directly) then the world is your oyster but you're looking at a lot more work. Ilor fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Dec 28, 2017 |
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Dec 28, 2017 16:21
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Cartel is thematically awesome, but in their current state the rules have some pretty glaring holes in them. There's a bunch of stuff that as a narcotrafficante you'll want to do but that aren't really governed under the rules. For instance, sticking a gun in some pendejo's face and telling him to give you what you want (i.e. "go aggro"). The combat rules don't really make it clear what "inflict terrible harm" or "suffer little harm" actually mean considering that there's no harm track. The negotiation/manipulation rules lack the mechanical teeth that Apocalypse World has, so you're kind of left going, "Uh, ok. For now, I guess?" about pretty much everything. The stress tracks and stress moves and drug rules are all (excuse the pun) loving dope, but IMO this game is not ready for prime-time, especially if you don't have a lot of other PbtA experience on which to fall back. We submitted a bunch of feedback to the author, but I don't know if any of it has been incorporated.
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Feb 24, 2018 01:43
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Golden Bee posted:If you want to intimidate someone, you can always pressure someone, propose a deal, or turn to violence. Also, what's up with modifying the "price" of something by +-10% or 15% or whatever when the game has no way to handle resources or money? Like, what does +15% even mean? What does "terrible harm" mean for a game that has no harm track? See what I mean? There's a bunch of stuff about this game that still feels beta or unfinished.
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Feb 25, 2018 23:00
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How about "Nerve?" Treat it as a resource (like Stress in BitD), something that comes and goes depending on how long it's been since your last downtime/recharge/whatever.
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Mar 13, 2018 13:16
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Saguaro PI posted:So there's this thing I've seen in a few Powered by the Apocalypse systems, including Apocalypse World and Masks, picking an advancement where your character changes playbooks. Have any folks here ended up doing this or seen it happen in their games? It's something I'm a bit skeptical of and wanted to know how that ends up working out mechanically (in what circumstances do you justify a character having a 100% different skillset and abilities in this way?) and within play, so I wanted to have an idea of what that might look like. What was even funnier was when random people started actually listening to the crazy poo poo that Torch (the Faceless) was saying and formed a cult around him. Easy playbook change to Hocus. I've also seen a Chopper change to a Touchstone (lost his gang, found god - or maybe vice versa), and a Quarantine set himself up to go the same direction (let's start the revolution, baby!) but the campaign ended just before he took the advance to do so.
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May 7, 2018 16:11
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There's one in development now called "Too Good To be True." Helpful link: http://blog.trilemma.com/2017/04/2btbt-010-mecha-rpg.html
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May 12, 2018 20:09
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Lichtenstein posted:I like how goons are listing a ton of supposed battlebabes, none of which is an actual babe.
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Jun 6, 2018 17:59
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Pollyanna posted:You gotta put some work into it, just like you do for any system. It's not that you can't have a great game using DW. It's just that other games might make it easier or give the GM better advice/direction. FWIW, I've actually gotten a better experience out of simply using straight-up Apocalypse World with the playbooks re-skinned for a fantasy setting than I have from DW itself.
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Aug 16, 2018 15:16
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I think part of the issue is generally that people who hack the system have already read AW and absorbed/internalized a lot of its nuance in the process. Then, when making their own hacks, they tend to either assume that their readers are also familiar with AW, or the author has internalized the lessons of AW so well that these things seem obvious to them, both of which lead to them totally forgetting to, you know, explain their poo poo from the ground up. There are some hacks that (as written) are virtually loving unplayable unless you have a firm grounding in AW.
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Aug 16, 2018 15:41
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Pollyanna posted:I still like Dungeon World, even though I’ve only played a handful of times. But hearing other people’s concerns gives me some pause.
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Aug 16, 2018 15:46
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To be fair, even AW's act under fire has some element of "catch-all" to it. It is the go-to move for doing things where success is not guaranteed and the consequences are interesting. In the move's section in AW2, Vincent says, "Call for this move whenever someone does something requiring unusual discipline, resolve, endurance or care." And also: "Whenever a character does something that obviously demands a roll, but you don’t quite see how to deal with it, double check first whether it counts as doing something under fire. Come here first." So it casts a pretty wide net. But because it is tied to a particular stat (unless you take a stat-substitution move like spooky-intense), I feel like it is more clearly delineated than Defy Danger.
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Aug 16, 2018 18:26
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Discern Realities is DW's attempt to mimic the D&D-style "perception check" or "notice roll" and put it into a PbtA context. But in AW, there's no such thing as a notice roll, as most of that functionality is covered in the MC's agenda and principles (the biggest ones being "always say what honesty demands," "be a fan of the characters," and "make the characters' lives not boring"). So when a player asks, "are there any secret doors?" the answer is simply "yes" (if you've decided there are) or "no" (if you've decided there aren't). Why is it done this way in AW? Because perception/notice rolls act as gate-keepers to plot/story. If you can't find the secret door, you're pretty much guaranteed to miss out on whatever is behind it. Where's the fun in that? Your job as an Apocalypse World MC is to be very free with information. So you say, "Yeah, absolutely, pulling on the torch sconce opens a hidden panel in the wall, which leads to a spiral staircase down. The fetid air within smells faintly of sulfur." And of course: "Do you take it?" That's not to say that finding a secret door can't be the natural result of read a sitch; it totally can. If the PC is sneaking around the fortress and trying not to get caught while casing the joint (remember, the situation must be charged), it's totally cool to answer "what's my best way in?" with something like, "Ebb tide tonight is pretty low, and while quietly crawling across the rocks near the shore, you see what initially looks like a small sea-cave. But after cursory investigation, it appears to be the outlet of an escape tunnel, and its obvious that it leads somewhere inside the castle." As for the requirement for a charged situation, it's because charged situations naturally lend themselves to consequences. Asking if your friend is telling the truth when he says he'll be right back is hard to pin consequences on. Asking if a guy with a gun trained on you is telling the truth when he says he'll blow your brains out if you don't get the gently caress off his front porch right-the-gently caress-now is much easier/clearer when interpreting the results of the roll. In other words, you only make the roll when the consequences are interesting. Absent the potential of those consequences, moves like read a person don't even trigger. This is an important distinction, and one that people coming from trad games like D&D often miss. Newbie MCs treating read a sitch as a vanilla perception roll is one of the more common horror stories you hear about peoples' bad experiences with AW and its descendants. And unfortunately, DW essentially enables this misunderstanding by couching Discern Realities in that context.
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Aug 16, 2018 22:08
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Pollyanna posted:...there’s just something I like about Dungeon World and its relatively gritty, more dungeon-y sandbox-y nature. Scratches a different itch.
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Aug 17, 2018 18:57
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Golden Bee posted:Just change damage dice to harm. Makes the fighter a much better class.
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Aug 21, 2018 19:22
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hyphz posted:I always thought Act Under Fire was to just be capable of doing something in a dangerous situation, with nothing about that something succeeding or having good results.
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Sep 4, 2018 23:18
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@Pollyanna: The GM moves are just a reminder of poo poo you should be doing anyway. Go with the flow, control your scenes well, keep the action punchy, and you'll do fine. @OscarDiggs: The first thing that separates two Battlebabes (for instance) is the moves they choose. Of the six moves unique to the Battlebabe playbook, you only get to pick two of them during character creation. A Battlebabe who is dangerous & sexy and has perfect instincts is going to play a hell of a lot differently than one who is merciless and ice cold. The first one is apt to be a much more social critter, the second is more along the lines of a steely-eyed killer. Next, their "signature weapons" may be completely different, which again is going to inform how they operate; an ornate, antique handgun says something very different about you than a big, semi-auto shotgun - both narratively and mechanically. Tack on varying looks and outlook and the two characters won't play even remotely the same. That's not to say there won't be similarities; I don't think I've ever seen someone play a Gunlugger and not take NOT TO BE hosed WITH as either a first pick or their first advance, but being the baddest motherfucker in the valley is pretty much the Gunlugger's schtick. But any playbook that gives you options to tailor your crap (Chopper, Hardholder, Hocus, Maestro D', Savvyhead) can diverge pretty radically in a hurry. I've seen Maestros D' run everything from a revolutionary coffee shop to a film noir cabaret to literal Fight Club. So yeah, there's actually a ton of variation built into the base playbooks.
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Sep 14, 2018 03:41
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Pollyanna posted:Anyone ever try running old (and new) D&D modules in a PbtA game? Given what they do, it sounds like you could only ever do that in Dungeon World, and I don’t know if the MC rules would conflict with the modules somehow.
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Feb 11, 2019 19:01
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On the topic of inventory, tracking individual bits of gear is a total rear end-pain, especially when you're dealing with a world with a higher standard of technology or where having a particular bit of gear might enable a player to do [thing]. To get around this nitnoid, fiddly equipment tracking issue, here's a custom move I created for one of my AW campaigns (set on a dilapidated space station long cut-off from Earth):quote:When you rummage through your oddments to find something useful to your present situation, roll+Sharp. On a 10+ you have just the thing, or near enough that it'll work more or less like you need it to. On a 7-9 you can make it work if you have to, but using it this way will be acting under fire. On a miss, you try to make it work and something goes horribly, horribly wrong in the process. This approach worked great, and covered everything from "can I get the lighting in this corridor/deck working?" to "do I have a telescope or binoculars or something that will let me keep a watch out for approaching enemy shuttle-craft?" to "gently caress, I need to repair my torn vac-suit in a hurry!"
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Feb 21, 2019 17:16
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Pollyanna posted:IMO that’s better than the way Blades in the Dark did it, which is to just hold X and spend when you want to use an existing item. Though, this prevents you from doing something like “I hold onto this magic stone for safekeeping”. Maybe we should discern between macguffins/weapons and gear? A move for “random crap to accomplish a goal”, and handle noteworthy/key items with...something else. Also, I don't know if it came across clearly in the custom move I posted above, but the term "oddments" is important there, because many of the playbooks in AW include things like "oddments worth three barter." The implication is that if you have no barter, you might have no oddments through which to rummage. This requirement to have barter-worthy junk on-hand to trigger the move makes the decisions around gigs and paying lifestyle up-keep super important - like, "Yeah, you had a couple of crusty old 9-volt batteries and a spool of dodgy wire that probably would have done the trick, but you traded it to 8-Ball last week to ensure your doss had breathable atmo this month. Bummer." Losing or having to spend your last barter was always a dodgy proposition as a result, which occasionally made for interesting dilemmas.
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Feb 21, 2019 22:06
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Sailor Viy posted:What exactly is the problem with Defy Danger? Also, I cannot recommend highly enough that you give Apocalypse World a look. Running PbtA games is paradigmatically different than most traditional RPGs, and will really help you to "get it."
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Mar 12, 2019 02:12
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CitizenKeen posted:So I like Powered by the Apocalypse mechanics, but don't like inter-party disharmony, and don't want to play Dungeon World, I should play... EDIT: But for the record, "inter-party disharmony" is loving awesome. Every Apocalypse World campaign (or even one-shot) I've run has had some element of PCs working at cross-purposes, and a few of them have had PCs eventually fall into the role of straight-up villain. In every case it has made for fantastic role-playing. In our current game, the Gunlugger has gone almost-but-not-quite-entirely-off-the-rails, effectively declaring martial law and setting himself up as the new sheriff in town (he took the "get a hold" advance). Given that he's essentially a religious zealot who holds views not necessarily shared by the rest of the party, this has made for some fascinating (and hilarious) inter-party dynamics. Ilor fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 17:27
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Sea Lily posted:Would Dungeon World play better if... [SNIP] Because of the way the moves and stats are paired, you're basically never in a situation where you'll "rarely roll+Hot" or "never roll+Sharp" or whatever. If you want to know what the gently caress is going on, trust me, you'll find a way to roll+Sharp. You can maybe get away with rarely rolling+Weird if your character concept is such that you don't engage with the game's pseudo-supernatural elements, but any good MC worth his or her salt is going to put you in situations where it comes into play. As such, unlike many traditional RPGs, Apocalypse World doesn't really have "dump stats" (like Charisma in D&D) that you can ignore because virtually none of the game's mechanics really touch on it. In AW, if your Hot is low you're generally unpersonable and a terrible liar, and that's going to be hilarious more often than you think.
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Mar 12, 2019 22:48
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Austria felix nube posted:Are there any good Apocalypse World actual plays on youtube you would reccomend?
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Mar 31, 2019 16:10
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That was kind of where I was at. As a fan of the characters, I think it's loving awesome.
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Apr 9, 2019 01:33
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Arivia posted:Okay, so I'm running Monster of the Week. Anything I should know, any advice? We'll be doing the usual pick playbooks and play the first session in two weeks. Let us know how it goes!
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Apr 21, 2019 17:11
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Golden Bee posted:I’m thinking of running a noir set in 50s LA. Any system recommendations? Don’t know if monster of the week will do what I want it to. It's not PbtA, but "A Dirty World" is pretty good for the noir feel. Word to the wise, though: the "One Roll Engine" needs work. I'd at least double or possibly triple the number of dice being rolled just to get a more interesting spread of numbers to actually make it work as intended. But that's a pretty easy change. EDIT: drat YOU, ZORAK!!!! 
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Apr 29, 2019 06:05
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Yeah, it's exactly as Zorak says. I've played through two "Dirty World" scenarios (one set in 1948 Berlin and the other set in Prohibition-era west Michigan (where all the Chicago mobsters had summer homes). Both were a lot of fun and both really delivered the noir feel, but in most cases you're rolling so few dice that you almost never have any kind of match. As such, it often boils down to "who can roll higher on a single D10?" which is pretty unsatisfying. But if you increase the number of dice being thrown, your chance of getting matches increases, which means the space in which you have to interpret interesting results/consequences widens.
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Apr 29, 2019 22:57
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This is where Monster of the Week suffers from not having a direct equivalent to AW's go aggro, as that is the move you generally make for one-sided harm (when you're not just suckering someone and inflicting harm, that is).
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Jun 1, 2019 16:15
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Character advancement is something that you have to be cognizant of in any PbtA game anyway. The advancement arc in vanilla Apocalypse World moves at a pretty breakneck pace, and if you're looking for a longer-playing campaign you'll actually need to take steps to slow it down. Otherwise, by about 10 sessions in everyone has changed playbooks or has multiple characters going and the tightly-focused narrative you started with has sprawled into something very different. Not bad, mind, just different.
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Jun 12, 2019 18:49
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Saguaro PI posted:Was finally able to run a full, start-to-finish campaign of Apocalypse World in which "no more courtroom drama" had to be made an explicit rule.
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Jul 3, 2019 04:36
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Also, it's pretty easy to re-skin Apocalypse World itself into a fantasy genre. Often it involves little more than changing the weapon options. I run a re-skinned version of AW done in a sort of Viking-themed setting all the time. The Gunlugger becomes the Huscarl, the Skinner becomes the Skald, the Battlebabe becomes the Shieldmaiden, and so on. This is a "serial numbers barely filed off" kind of hack, and works like a charm.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:44
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megane posted:Personally I'm glad they removed the sex stuff; I'm fine with it personally but it makes the game sort of awkward to introduce to new people. "Hey, let's play this game, it's like Mad Max, you can be a cool post-apoc warlord and- Uh, yes, that is a move about what happens when you gently caress someone, printed right in the middle of your character sheet, yes."
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Sep 8, 2019 22:35
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