I like that description of the tech actually... that's definitely a cool aspect of the playbook that I can highlight. I think a few more Tech changes/elaborations will appear when I review my Max Headroom notes.

Would it be more intuitive if I changed the "winged" tag to "fixed-wing"? (as opposed to rotor craft)

I am familiar with Technoir. It's a cool system and those transmissions set things up nicely.

Have you played with the Tech, Guns_n_Droids?

I don't think it's been chosen in my games, so (a) I'm not sure if the moves feel right in play and (b) I need to work out how to sell it better!

Yeah, the Tech is the least developed of the playbooks in the alpha.

You might have also noticed that the gear section itself is pretty sparse and poorly formatted. Filling out that section properly and standardising the weapon stats was one of the things at the top of my list when I finished off the playtest alpha, but it skipped my mind since.

My general principle is that weapons with the same name should have the same stats.

I'm going to block out some time this weekend to fix these issues, write the Reporter and think further about advancement and mission generation. There are a couple of playtest opportunities coming up for me, so thanks for bringing this to the top of my mind!

That's great! I look forward to hearing what you have to say after playing.

As I say at the end of the document, I'm interested to hear feedback, especially if you play.

A fresh perspective is a wonderful thing! Some of the best parts of The Sprawl have been inspired by this sort of conversation.

Let me try to answer your question of what do I want Essence to do in my game.
"Essence will power the magical abilities of awakened characters and indicate the metaphysical wholeness of characters, both awakened and mundane."
So I guess three things:
• power magical moves
• gauge how much chrome a body can handle
• indicate how susceptible to magic a body is

Oh yeah, Essence as a target number; I'd forgotten about that. One way you could model that is having magic resistance as an Interfere move but rolling+Essence. I'm sure there's a more elegant way though.

That sounds like a good emulation of Shadowrun to me. If you keep that in mind as you think about how you want to to work, and keep thinking back to how every rule and move you design reflects that goal, then you'll be in good shape.

So there will be conjuring, sorcery, etc moves, all based on the intrinsic power (Essence) of the character. And then Initiation will be a move that can be taken after the character takes a certain number of other advances.

Yeah. There could also be something cool with conjuring not being a move you roll, but a set of bargains you make to get hold. Like bartering in AW.

I like this a lot, I was just having trouble with the balance. But then it changes what Synth means. In The Sprawl, it represents your ability to control and be at one with the chrome, right? In Shadowhack, would Synth go up when you gain cyberware? If a non-cybered character gets a piece of cyberware, his Essence goes down but does his Synth go up? And then, if he gets another, and it goes up again, does that represent not only that he has more cyberware, but that the more he has, the more he knows how to use all of it? I think I'm cool with that. It's just another sort of "wholeness" I suppose.

In an earlier version of the rules, a lot of the cyberware did give Synth bonuses, so I think that was in the back of my mind.

You have Synth right. The question is, does more chrome = better at dealing with chrome? If you want that answer to be yes, make it a straight "sum to 1" equation. If you want burned out mages who are useless with tech as well, make it a "cap at 1" equation.

By the way, I love the hunted/owned/unreliable cyberware stuff you did. It makes the whole thing so much more scary and intense.

Thanks! That's exactly what I was going for. Cyberware is cool, but lets not forget what it is and what it costs.

That post (and thoughts of axing Synth) pre-dated the Alpha. I'm not currently working on anything along those lines.

I've split off the rest as a separate thread here: http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=6056.0

I'm actually gearing up to use The Sprawl as a basis for a Shadowrun hack, and I'm trying to figure out how Essence and Magic would be affected by cyberware and the Synth stat.

The Sprawl did actually begin life as an AW hack of Shadowrun, until I realised that the bits I most wanted to emulate about Shadowrun were the non-magical cyberpunk elements. I did have a few thoughts though.

One important issue to consider is that Essence in SR (and Humanity in Cyberpunk) are essentially (hur-hur) game balance mechanics. As such, they're not needed in an AW hack, which is why The Sprawl doesn't replicate them in that way. What replaces them in The Sprawl is fiction-driving questions about cyberware in character generation and MC moves/principles/agenda.

It's implicit in the above statement that I'm not trying to make a point about humanity as essentially biological. The idea that we become less human as we accumulate prostheses is not what I'm going for in The Sprawl. The Sprawl is about the interaction of humanity and technology, and how that intersection changes both, rather than that kind of biological essentialism.

If you want to make such a point, or if you want to balance magic vs technology as a zero sum game then you'd want some kind of counter attribute to Synth.

I wouldn't bother with both Magic and Essence. I would probably just call it essence and then model the various fictional elements that raised or lowered Magic in SR as basic magic or playbook moves (depending on how you want to model magic in general). So there might be an Initiate advanced playbook or move tree or the like to model different fictional situations.

Essence and Synth might either always sum to 1, or perhaps the combined totals could never exceed 1. So if one is +2 the other is -1, if one is +1, the other is zero.

At the moment, there's no mechanical link between your Synth rating and the amount of cyberware you have. I would suggest something like this: Essence starts at +2 and is decreased by the addition of cyberware. One implant, Essence goes to +1 (as currently written, everyone has one piece of cyberware, so everyone would start with +1 at most); two implants, Essence is 0 (this would apply to anyone who takes the Chromed move); three implants, Essence -1 (At the moment, Killers with both cyberware moves). Beyond that, it would depend on how much cyberware you wanted to see in the game. Does it just bottom out, or is there a mechanical trigger for Cyberpsychosis? (I forget what the zero Essence state was called in SR).

I would then have Essence be the stat that powers the various magic moves, and maybe add in a basic move that drives at the heart of that zero sum game. Something like that advanced Monsterhearts move that lets you actually make a real human connection (I don't have my copy of MH to hand, sorry).

The main question you need to ask yourself is "what do I want Essence to do in the game". In an SR emulation, the answer could be as simple as "allow Magic as a counterpoint to technology by requiring a deliberate choice between the two", but the answer to that question will guide the way you consider this problem.

Ah, that's good! Thanks, woodsman!

That's nice! Can you actually imagine her choosing the Halfling afterlife?

(The following note might not be relevant to this particular case, but is worth bearing in mind generally...)

The best Bargains with Death make the player seriously think about their character and the choice.

The original link should work again now. Still the same version.

I was trying to think along the cyber angle, but something that gets at the punk aesthetic might work well actually, since the punk is the most human part of the genre... Thanks!

(It's also good to know that a proper explaination of Keys won't be preaching to the choir!)

I have a couple of upcoming deadlines, so the next version is in a holding pattern at the moment. I have a large pile of cyberpunk media to work through once I get back on the wagon though, so I'm excited to do so.

I also need a good flavourful replacement name for "keys"; suggestions welcome!

Yes, sorry about that! My website is undergoing some alterations at the moment; it will hopefully be resolved in the next week or two. In the meantime, here's a temporary link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wm7ylpa7p3e9lxe/The_Sprawl_Alpha.pdf

I playtested using TSOY Keys straight yesterday, and it worked well, so I'm definitely going to head the that direction for the next iteration.