Powered By The Apocalypse: It's All In The Conversation

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Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

So has anyone given The Sprawl or Uncharted Worlds a look? I'm kinda interested in both, but haven't heard much talk about overall quality.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2016 15:46

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 22:48

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Michael Sands is working on an new PbtA game called Heavy Metal �ons. He's got preview playbooks and stuff here, and it looks to be as :rock:

as possible.

Playbooks include Berserker, Psychic Veteran, Star Trooper, Mystic Cat, and Sapient Weapon.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2016 16:01

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Auralsaurus Flex posted:

Apparently you can get it at PAX East this weekend. So if anyone's there and interested, they might be able to get some more info.

https://twitter.com/lumpleygames/status/723174553430581249
It appears to take place in the Solar Calendar setting shared with the other Mobile Frame games. I'm told it was developed as part of Baker's Patreon; there should be a preview available there for patrons.

I'm at PAX (ran two loud games of WWWRPG, and my throat is very sore) and had a quick look. The game is about setting up scenes between two players in the group, then one those one-on-one scenes are over, switch partners around. I'll see if I can get some more info tomorrow.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2016 03:43

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Oh, right, Firebrands.

It's not actually a PbtA game; it's a diceless game where everyone makes characters by asking/answering a few questions, then everyone splits into pairs to roleplay one of ~10 scenes, which do have PbtA-style leading questions. Then at the end of each scene everyone splits into new pairs and plays a different scene. Once most/all of the scenes have been used, you do a wrap-up scene.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2016 04:54

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I finally managed to see the playbooks for The Sprawl.

Six stats and 24 "basic" moves.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2016 20:59

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

It's odd it took this long, but there's finally a PbtA-dedicated podcast out there. It's called "+1 Forward" and it's by the folks behind the Gauntlet podcast. There's only one episode so far (interviewing Meguey about AW2e) but it has potential.

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/+1-forward/id1110623840
RSS: http://1forward.libsyn.com/rss

# ¿ May 10, 2016 15:02

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Avery Alder (n�e Mcdaldno) is back, and is looking for feedback via post and survey for a new edition of Mosterhearts. :siren:

# ¿ Jun 21, 2016 03:13

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Vincent and Meguey are doing an AMA right now.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2016 18:02

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

An interesting thing (based on my skim) about City of Mist is that it seems to be statless; your character has a bunch of tags based on your powers or backgrounds (three each in four categories, going by the pregens), and when you want to do something you bring in as many tags as are relevant, then you roll and add the number of tags you're using, minus a point for every weakness you have that would matter (one weakness per category). But as near as I can tell, there's no upper limit on how many tags you can bring into play; I saw a way for one of the pregens to get a base +4 on Convince rolls.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 17:43

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Yeah, this is definitely a "I need to see this in motion" situation.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 19:05

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Just a head's up: DriveThru is having a big ol' sale on PbtA games and supplements.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 19:34

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

So...

...let's say I'm thinking about writing a new version of the Dungeon World Guide, designed to cover PbtA in general as opposed to just DW.

Assuming I get off my rear end and finish this no promises at all I am a lazy gently caress, what kinds of things do people feel should be included/expanded on this time around? What was missing that would have helped ages ago? What's some non-DW-specific stuff that should be discussed?

# ¿ Oct 7, 2016 20:36

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Glazius posted:

Hmm. Sex moves and the X card, player being antagonistic to player, ways to keep non-fight-scene conflicts like chases or charged social situations dynamic?

Beyond that you'd have to go game by game, hack by hack. Maybe an introduction to the genre for non-genre fans?

I was kinda hoping to keep it generic, so the advice in the book could be applied to multiple games, but specific advice would probably be needed for certain games.

madadric posted:

A brief history of the space apocalypse world was created in?

You mean like an interview with Vincent? Or something about the Forge?

Also, since this idea just popped into my head a little while ago: has anyone done a PbtA game based around magical girls/sentai/tokusatsu stuff? I don't know why the idea came to me out of nowhere, but I think you could do something interesting in the PbtA design space with the idea. Like having separate playbooks for your mundane identity and your transformed identity.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2016 17:58

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Golden Bee posted:

Someone made their own "improved" ruleset, but it sucks because they got rid of "getting rid of others strings on you". It resulted in skins like the Giant which has moves like "You have a giant dog" or "You can eat people whole" and lets you roll 2d8 instead of 2d6.

Wow, missing the point on the mechanics and the tone of the game. That's pretty impressive.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2016 17:42

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Vincent Baker did a talk at Metatopia about making PbtA hacks, and put the slides online. It's not really complete because it seems the panel wasn't recorded, but there's stuff in there that you can suss out.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2016 02:59

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

There's now an official Powered by the Apocalypse Redbubble store so you can get t-shirts and mugs and stuff.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2016 17:53

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Yeah, while I still enjoy Masks and didn't want to punish the author for the stupidity of the publisher, I'm not going to be giving Magpie any more of my money. I don't even think Truman's ever actually addressed the numerous concerns people had with his blog posts.

Speaking of Masks, I made a playbook a while back and I've been tweaking it here and there as I remember it exists. If people could take a look and see what needs work I'd appreciate it.

The Bearer is your Kyle Rayner/Blue Beetle/Nova type; someone who's come in possession of an item of power that has ties to a larger peacekeeping (or "peacekeeping") organization.

Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jan 3, 2017

# ¿ Jan 3, 2017 19:32

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

You mean defining your Contact in addition to the Organization in general? That's not a bad idea; it gives the playbook a bit more depth. Originally I had a "you are the LAST ONE PERIOD" option for the Organization, but then I realized doing that would really limit the real meat of the concept: not just the new responsibility that's being foisted on you, being forced to deal directly with an authority figure you either want to impress or is working against your interests.

e: Oh, you mean tying the Organization's scope to a label. I'll have to think on how that could be used. Maybe with the stat-swap move?

Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Jan 5, 2017

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 06:31

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Heliotrope posted:

Things that stand out to me:

1) The "What are they up to" option includes them fighting another Organization, but one of the GM moves you've given is "Have a rival Organization show up." Is the intention that not picking that option mean your Organization doesn't care about any rivals that may exist? Otherwise, that option is already part of the playbook. A slight editing note - you've written down that it's created by the MC instead of GM.

2) One of the abilities is just "ancient magics." This seems a lot more open ended then the other powers which are more specific, and might step a bit on the toes of a Nova with Sorcery.

3)A 10+ on Respect the Badge gives you Influence over someone only for the rest of the scene. That seems kind of odd since Influence is supposed to be permanent until someone does something to make it go away. You could make it +1 ongoing instead.

4) Feet on the Ground, Head in the Stars is really powerful for a Label substitution move. Normally they only let you use a high Label for one basic move - this lets you use anything that requires the other label, not just basic moves.

I wrote the bulk of the playbook waaaaaay back when all we had were the draft rules, and I've been tweaking it piecemeal since then, so I'm sure there's going to be a lot of stuff that doesn't line up. For instance, I added the "fighting another Organization" option like two days ago, but the GM moves were added ages ago. I was aiming for a "SHIELD vs Hydra" type thing, where the focus is on fighting that other group over there as opposed to dealing with what comes. I should probably reword that to make it clearer.

"Ancient Magics" was for a Dr. Fate style character, but I suppose you could fake that with the other powers?

Respect the Badge does need some work, yeah. I know I want it to do something with Influence; maybe you get Influence automatically, but then you roll to see how well you "sell" it and if you make the Organization look bad or not.

I'm really not happy with the stat-swap move, to be honest. I may tweak that to make it related to what Ominous Jazz said about giving the Organization a Label of its own. "When you're directly pursuing the Organization's goals, you may substitute its label for whatever", or something.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 07:05

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

So hey I remembered another playbook I first came up with back in the original AWorld thread: The Revenant.

quote:

Apocalypse World is a dangerous place; we all know that. Violence is a way of life. Towns get attacked by gangs, warlords make examples, people take payment out of your hide and the hides of your loved ones. Monsters walk the ravaged earth, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

You were supposed to be one of those bodies.

Maybe you weren't home when the attack happened. Maybe you weren't as dead as they thought. Maybe they just didn't give a poo poo about you and left you there standing in the smoldering ruins of your life.

It doesn't matter anymore. Your old life was burned to the ground, the ashes scattered to the wind.

Only one thing matters now. Revenge. You're going to find the fucker responsible, and you're gonna put him down once and for all.

There is no one more dangerous than someone with nothing left to lose.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 19:47

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Okay, I made a few more changes to The Bearer, with track changes on.

The two big changes are that I took Ominous Jazz's idea of the Organization's scope having a related tag, and used that in the stat-swap move; and I reworked Respect the Badge a bit.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2017 19:30

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

simonwolf posted:

I got my copy of The Veil in the mail the other day and boy howdy, it is exactly what I wanted out of a cyberpunk PbtA game. I'm going over it and The Sprawl in relatively close succession, so it's interesting to look at how they're taking similar concepts and going for completely different end results in terms of gameplay facilitated.

Would you be willing to do a rundown on The Veil? I've been interested but haven't seen much detail about it anywhere.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 15:07

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Sorry to double-post, but there's now an "official" list of PbtA games on the official Apocalypse World site.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 15:58

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Alaois posted:

there are so many fuckin moves in The Sprawl man, too many fuckin moves

Sprawl was one of the more popular games at this year's Games on Demand at PAX East, so I guess it's doing something right? I didn't get a chance to sit in or look at the book, though.

I did actually get Blades and can confirm that it's fun as hell and goes a great job of eliminating the Shadowrun-esque planning stage.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2017 20:04

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Flavivirus posted:

Monsterhearts 2 PDF is out to backers!

And to non-backers too!

# ¿ May 23, 2017 21:41

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

"Hmm, this game is different than what I'm used to. Instead of meeting it on its own terms I better bend the loving thing into the shape of D&D because change scares me."

# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 01:58

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

How is Uncharted Worlds? I remember seeing the early drafts and not really being impressed, but I don't know what it's like now.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2017 16:28

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

LongDarkNight posted:

All of the above is true but I'll stand up for DW as being a great, if flawed, gateway to bring folks entrenched in Dungeons & Dragons into the world of narrative games.

This is true. I've run tons of DW demos for people who've never played anything but 3.Path, and the similarities to what they're familiar with helped people get it in like five minutes.

As for alternates, there's this DW hack/rewrite called Worlds of Aventure that was made to align DW with current PbtA understandings. No spell lists, simplified damage, stuff like that. I haven't played it, but it looks good.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2017 17:38

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I don't remember if I linked this in this thread or not, and I'm too lazy to check, but this is a DW rewrite called "Worlds of Adventure" that seeks to bring DW more in line with current PbtA understanding.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CTggilyWU7NUG5neI_OzOSykOG29RldS/view

quote:

The Main Changes
● Alignments are now Drives.
In Worlds of Adventure, we wanted to give players the freedom to explore the holistic motivations of their characters, rather than
just their moral code, and Drives enable and reward that. This also opens up a wider range of moral choices during play, from
areas of moral grayness to more traditional absolutes of Good and Evil.
● Races are now Backgrounds
In Worlds of Adventure, players are encouraged to make their character whoever they want, including their race. Instead of tying
such an important character trait to an explicit mechanical benefit, the choice of race is now a Look option, and the existing
mechanics are now an expression of a character�s personal background (cultural, historical, or otherwise).
● Ability Scores (3-18) have been removed, and only their modifiers remain.
Although traditional ability scores have their strengths, they are often a sticking point for new RPG players and have little effect on
Dungeon World�s gameplay. As such, Worlds of Adventure removes them, keeping only the more important modifiers.
● Health Points are now hard-coded for each playbook, rather than being calculated from Ability Scores.
A natural extension of using simple modifiers rather than ability scores, static HP and cuts down on the unnecessary paperwork
needed to create a new character. Load is still calculated as a part of character creation, however, and still uses Strength.
● All Moves and Mechanics now use a single type of die: the d6.
In Worlds of Adventure, everything - from damage, to monsters, to foraging - now uses six-sided dice. This removes the complexity
of using multiple types of dice while still allowing for the variance that dice bring to the table. This is most noticeable during
combat, as using a d6 lessens the divide between classes and makes �+n� damage bonuses feel more impactful (be it from weapons,
from class choice, or from other factors).
● Bonds have been altered to better tie PCs to each other and to NPCs.
Bonds now exist as representations of shared experience, rather than as goals for the future. The applications for these bonds have
also been expanded upon, making them a greater part of the system and giving better support for PC-NPC bonds. Finally, Bonds are
now explicitly defined as a resource that the GM can manipulate by Using up Their Resources and Testing Their Bonds.
● Offer the players Principles, and the GM the Spotlight, to engender good play.
The GM is no longer alone in having principles to help guide play; players can now benefit from a similar list. The GM also gains a
new tool that assists with balance and clarity during turns: The Spotlight.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 02:32

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Flavivirus posted:

Rhapsody of Blood

Is this a stand-alone game, or does it need Legacy 2e?

# ¿ Jan 20, 2019 19:13

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Tasoth posted:

Stand alone. If you have Legacy 2e, you can probably massage some of L2e's playbooks into it.

Ah, nice.

Follow-up question: is this a print-and-pdf combo, or just the book?

# ¿ Jan 20, 2019 19:23

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

So looks like I'm running Rhapsody at PAX East this year. Hopefully I can do it justice; the extra notes here have been helpful in getting how the game works.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2019 20:45

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Tekopo posted:

World Wide Wrestling 2e is coming on kickstarter on the 15th of March and I'm very excited. I already have 1e and II but I'll probably pledge as soon as it comes up, since the game itself has been so fun for me in the last 6 months.

What's changing for 2e?

# ¿ Mar 7, 2020 15:20

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 22:48

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I've seen people saying that Legacy campaigns generally last 8-10 generations, but I haven't been in one myself.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2020 19:05

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