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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.
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Apr 29, 2020 18:35
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Filboid Studge posted:I've just started a new campaign of Apoc World 2e on Roll20 with some IRL friends who started playing D&D online with me last summer - been a real lifeline for us as we're split by the Irish diaspora and of course haven't been able to travel. I make physical copies of the threat map and players' playbooks when I play AW, even online. I've tried making them in photoshop, roll20, and mspaint but I always end up just printing the sheets out. Using a pencil, and being able to just look at it (not have to alt-tab) is a massive boon for my GMing.
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Nov 18, 2020 06:56
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It's incredibly useful for the classes that are massively wired up, and it comes up a fair bit in hacking. Also, most of the cyberware does use it? Cybereyes/Cyberears, the Targeting Suite (basically how the Killer functions), and hacking all lean heavily on it. It's also sort of a symbolic thing on a lot of sheets: when you put a high stat in your synth, you're saying you are going to be grabbing 'ware when you can. It's part of making everything chrome. If you are interested, I previously reworked the Drive playbook to use Synth for driving while jacked in, plus grafted most of the AW2E car moves onto it: http://conjur.es/sprawl-driver.pdf. If you're going to cut it, I'd make sure nobody is playing the Killer and heavily rework the Hacker's hacking moves (though that should probably be done anyway). QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Feb 26, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 07:03
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Josef bugman posted:What are other reasons? Just a few of the issues:
QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Mar 4, 2021 |
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Mar 4, 2021 21:43
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malkav11 posted:I don't think it's mandatory or even necessarily desirable for most moves to have miss text in a PBTA game. The default for missing a move roll is that the MC makes a hard move. If you specify, that limits the scope of what they can do in a way that might not suit the fiction. Sometimes you want that limited scope, but I wouldn't expect it. I completely agree, and for moves like Act Under Pressure I think that's fine. But the moves Get The Job and Getting Paid both have no miss text, and are integral to establishing the fiction of the game. Anything there to go on would help both the player and MC quite a bit. Somfin posted:Some of this isn't exactly true- they absolutely go into detail about how to fix a burnt-out cyberdeck (costs 1 cred and a few hours to bring it to full stats-1, 1 more cred and another few hours to bring it to full stats, you do that with Hit The Streets), and the miss text is generalised that the MC makes a move, with harder moves coming out more aggressively as the clocks advance- something that Apocalypse World could have used a bit more guidance for from time to time. The lack of explanation for how one sells hacked paydata is really glaring though, as is the fact that +satellite uplink is actually a dire negative and probably something that you get as mandatory with +owned. (I'm just gonna house-rule that hacked paydata is worth 1 cred, 2 if the player had to gently caress up the mission to get it, and anything that could be worth more than 2 is too hot to actually sell and possessing it is real bad) Thanks for clarifying on the cyberdeck thing. It would be nice if they appeared on the Hacker playbook or MC sheets. The paydata thing came up several times in the game where I played a hacker, and we did the same: +1 cred when I grabbed it. It set my hacker up to retire early, but he ended up spending it moving apartments a lot. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Mar 5, 2021 |
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Mar 5, 2021 00:28
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Speaking of playtesting, my group has been running the Thirsty Sword Lesbians preprint system and it's amazing  It's definitely a "right group / right time" sort of system, but insanely fun and emotionally deep.
QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Mar 7, 2021 |
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Mar 7, 2021 05:16
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Agent Rush posted:I picked this up because I was interested in the design aspects/expansion of PBTA. Firebrands is absolutely the stand-out, but I also found Murderous Ghosts and Midsummer Wood to be worthwhile reads. Note that when Spin The Beetle says bugs, they mean actual insects. If two or more of the games sound interesting to you or you want to see how the developers of Apocalypse World play with their engine, I'd say grab the bundle. Otherwise just get Firebrands and you won't be missing too much. To add on, Firebrands is written in the same rules style as The King is Dead, which is also worth checking out.
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Mar 7, 2021 19:18
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Several People posted:FitD Thoughts I have strong opinions about FitD, so let me pile on! It comes down to four things: FitD dice rolls are way more "hedged" than you'd expect, FitD medium rolls get into "everything sucks" holes, FitD dice roll results engage more with mechanics than fiction (moves don't snowball), and FitD is fiddlier, and I don't think it pays off. (There is some other stuff, like how recovery clocks are just awful, that I'll elide for now). Dice Rolls are less interesting One big issue in FITD is that the only real "safe" success is a 6+. Based on fictional positioning, a 4-5 can be brutal. And that's fine, but as a result the dice system basically has to reflect this theme. And it does. Compare the following probabilities:   Why is it like this? Because rolling a 7-9 in PbtA is still okay, but in FitD it's easy to think of it as a "failure" in many cases: you do okay, but now you're screwed because you're in a desperate situation, or you were before so the 4-5 result keeps things "awful." See below: FitD medium rolls get into "everything sucks" holes The largest problem, on the back of those stats, is the following: if you're in a "desperate situation" (as determined by the group/GM) and you roll a middling success, it often feels like a failure: you can take a severe wound, face a serious complication, or do basically nothing toward the action clock. Conversely, a 6+ doesn't mean you do it with panache, it's just vanilla success. In AW terms, this would be a 7-9 result saying "take 3-harm, or -1 forward" when the 10+ result says "you do it, with no adverse effects." This produces weird gameplay sleds where middling results trend toward failure, not success. FitD dice roll results engage more with mechanics than fiction Just like PBTA, the game twists medium results into upsides and downsides ("you do it, but now things are more dangerous"). Unfortunately, as described above, the results aren't quite as fictional: when you roll a 7-9 on Act Under Fire, the discussion is about the dangerous position, and how it acts in the fiction. In FitD, the 4-5 roll is a discussion about how you take mechanical harm, you fill the clock in less, or maybe a nebulous "complication" occurs. But that's not the real problem. The real problem is that, in PbtA, moves start and end with fiction. Attack something? Let's talk about how. Run, talk, threaten? The rules demand you describe the fiction of how that happens. Conversely, I've seen multiple groups get lost rolling flat against the "break into the mansion" clock, the position ticking up or down, without engaging in the fiction. They're focused on the mechanical outcomes of their rolls, because their roll results are described as mechanical outcomes. The fiction doesn't move forward, because the objective is still the same: "break into the mansion." Failed skill checks don't drive the fiction in a concrete way, they just make you roll again with worse odds / outcome. FitD is fiddlier, and I don't think it pays off For this one, I'll just quote the Bakers:  Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Edit: I will say I believe that, for Blades proper, this system works great. Scrappy thieves having a bad time works super well! But then you see weird hacks where you're on a starship or fighting mechs, and I think the system really starts to fall flat in those broader applications. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 04:20
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Tulip posted:
IMO, the biggest thing with AW damage (for bad guys) is that counting numbers is almost never the point. Really it just decides if it is one or two rounds of moves. To make it interesting, you write a custom move that constrains or changes the narrative of combat. Both 1E and 2E use the same example of this: quote:If you harm a hollow daughter with a gun, it blows through: inflict 1-harm on her and the rest of its harm on whatever’s behind her. The damage-tracking isn't too interesting, but trying to harm them can be meaningful. I've written all sorts of moves for enemies in this vein over the years:
By reframing the fight narratively, it makes it more-interesting than "number gets bigger." Using this approach works in a ton of places, e.g., Dungeon World fights get really cool when you dig through some old monster manuals and spec out some monsters to have custom moves that reflect the supernatural abilities listed here.
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Jun 4, 2022 05:47
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about AW damage.