If Han solo was a dog, he would probably [...][/list]

This confused me for a moment. Are we talking about Spaceballs here?

(And then I understood, a fraction of a second later.)

Thanks! (And that's how I do it, too. It just seems like the most sensible way to me.)

That's exactly what I'm saying: if you spend the advance RIGHT NOW, you're not leaving it up to play to find out, you're plotting ahead. Holding on to it for an appropriate moment later in play seems more organic to me.

How do you do this, Vincent? Do you always have the player choose the improvement right then and there?

Because I see a few weird cases:

1. We're in the middle of something, and we want to keep going, figure out the best improvement option later. Let's not stall the game!

2. We like to have improvements come organically out of what's going on (like in The Shadow of Yesterday, where this experience seems to me to be derived from), creating interesting situations and revelations in play.

(I like doing that kind of thing, like when I pulled off a cool trick in this game: http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=1931.msg12482#msg12482)

3. There's an improvement we're thinking about, but the fiction isn't ready for it yet (e.g. gaining a gang), so it doesn't feel like we're quite ready to go there. For instance, a character is about to go meet a bunch of savage biker nomads to negotiate with them, and hopes to sway them to follow her. She gets an improvement and we all go, "Cool! Maybe they'll become your gang!" And the player agrees, but she says, "Well, let me meet them first, and let's play to see what happens."

What do you recommend?



(I find it interesting that Monsterhearts makes this explicit: you cannot gain any more experience until you've chosen an improvement.)

Would it work if the "person in crisis" was the one who activated the mechanic?

(Like: spend 1-barter to have the Abacus's gang come to your rescue. That's not great, but just for illustration. It makes the transaction a little more abstract. Better would be if you could collect "debt" with the Abacus, like Monsterhearts Strings, and pay for such interventions by accruing debt.)

Great stuff, nicely laying out your thought process. I'll keep checking in as you keep editing!

Hi, thanks for the interest.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever played this yet.

I don't think there are too many things to look out for, except to scale down the situation a little (the characters will have fun dealing with relatively mundane threats and situations, compared to "default" badass AW characters).

One thing I think you should be aware of is that the MC can't ask questions as believably as she can in standard AW. So a tiny bit more prep before the first session: brainstorm some different things you'd like to see in the apocalypse, some places, some people, some objects or events.

Then you'll tie those things in, colouring them with the players' Hopes and Fears, and applying them wherever they would fit in the players' depiction of the local geography.

Full on "Fronts" prep can probably wait longer in this version of the game: treat it as a "sandbox" exploration game at first, then switch to regular AW Fronts as the game develops and the characters become important members of the world.

I could even see doing a time-lapse thing, where you "skip" a few months (or maybe even longer) of gametime, and then look at the characters again, "much later", having adopted playbooks and established themselves in the world. This then becomes like the new "first session" of the game, according to regular rules and procedures.

Please let me know how it goes! I'd love to hear where this takes you.

A couple of things:

1. Give a thought to PC-PC conflict, and how you will handle it. That's a stumbling block for some people not used to Apocalypse World. Basically, it works like anything else: someone makes a move, you roll for it and describe the outcome. Then the other person gets a chance to try something.

But people sometimes feel like they need to make an initiative roll or something in there, or worry that it doesn't seem fair.

2. If you want to keep some "traditional" comfort, come up with a very basic scenario. Pick two or three really grabby elements from your sense of what's cool apocalyptica. Maybe a downed satellite is cool, and an ancient nuclear reactor that's about to melt down, or just a weird mutant chick who owns a bunch of slaves.

Pick a couple of playbooks you'd like to see in the action, and write down about three strongly leading questions for each one. For instance, let's say you have this downed satellite. You have a Brainer ready for this scenario. You ask the Brainer, "This thing that fell from the sky, it's really really bad news, you can feel it when you open your brain. Why is that? Why do you fear it, and why are you convinced everyone else should, too?"

You'll probably get an answer which will give you enough material for a whole session right there, but just in case you don't, write about three questions like that for each character.

So:

Put some grabby material in front of the players. This means a small selection of playbooks (not all of them!), and a few really cool apocalyptic things you're excited about, and maybe a few NPCs. Ask them to choose a subset of that stuff, and then ask them what the implications are.

Players: "We're excited about the nuclear plant, and the weird warlord dude! And I want to be a Chopper."

You: "Great. The nuclear plant is in serious trouble. Only one of you knows this. Who is it? How do you know? Did you see something in your dreams?"

"Which one of you is the most threatened by the potential meltdown?"

"How does the weird warlord dude see a huge opportunity connected to this reactor?"

And so on. You'll only need a few questions to be ready to rock.

Wow, these are beautiful!

-One character told you about some really, horribly awful nightmares. They didn't know those were your actual, real-life memories. Ignore what they give you, write down +3 instead.
[...]
-One of them was keeping something from you, and you had to learn about it from your damn nightmares? Give them -1.

Some of the others, I'm less sold by. But the concept is great, I like it very much.

It makes me think that "opening your brain" is a bit like slipping into the dream-world, or having a waking dream.

I've also never had an issue with using certain mechanical "sex moves" descriptively.

If your sex moves says that "the other characters takes +1forward", and the other character's an NPC, I'll use that as a prompt to have them do something cool or succeed where they might normally have failed, or maybe just grow a spine.

I agree completely.

Under normal rules, that would go like this:

"How can you make that move?"

You need to position yourself to make the move first.

Sure.

It's not quite as complex as it looks on paper: usually, you'll just grab the die for your stat, and the MC will pass you a d6. The only question is the third die (which will usually be a d4).

But it is an extra step. The question becomes whether the extra step adds something worthwhile to the game or not. I'd have to try it to be sure, I think.

I think it's a very fluid process in action.

Sometimes you come to the table thinking "I want a desert apocalypse setting", and you don't get anything from the players that would change that, they're totally into that concept, they run with it.

Other times (like my last game), you sit down and one of the first things you ask is:

"Ok, you're the hardholder. Where's your holding built, what kind of landscape is around?"

And the player says, "Ooh, yeah! The holding is carved out of a reef, tunnels bored out of the coral."

That's cool! (But, obviously, now your desert idea goes out the window. Save it for later, if the PCs ever go traveling, but more likely you'll use it a different game.)

I think it's totally OK to keep asking questions as long as you play, but the more material gets solidified in play, the less you'll do it as time goes on.

I ask questions whenever I don't have a ready idea on the tip of my tongue, or whenever I think the answer could tell me something interesting about that character.

[d8]

I don't know just yet. Maybe something like this:

Each time you roll the dice, ask three questions. For each answer, take that die.

You get one die from the MC, one from your character, and one from the group.

1. MC, how tough is my opposition? (MC answers.)

* Beyond you. d4
* Challenging. d6 (default: pick this one almost always)
* Pathetic or faltering. d8

2. Am I [hard/cool/etc] enough for this challenge? (You answer.)

* Stat is negative. No dice.
* Stat=0. d4
* Stat+1. d6
* Stat+2. d8
* Stat+3. d10

3. Is your character in a position to meet this challenge? (Answer as a group.)

* No. You're totally unprepared, unequipped, or at some painful disadvantage. No dice.
* Yes. You have the basics necessary to meet the challenge. d4
* Yes, and. Yes, and you also have some advantage beyond the usual (you have JUST the perfect tool for the job, or you've taken the time to prepare or position yourself unusually well). d6
* Yes, completely. Yes, and you have made sure everything is perfectly in place specifically for this action. d8

Roll all the dice together and count the total of the highest two.


Example 1:

Keeler goes aggro on Dremmer, after bashing in Dremmer's buddy's head with a hammer.

Keeler's player gets a d6 from the MC. (Maybe if she had previously seized by force and chosen to "dismay or frighten" Dremmer, she'd get a d8.)

Keeler's hard+1, so she gets a d6 for that.

Keeler's got what she needs in this situation (a weapon to threaten Dremmer), and a little more: she's holding a hammer covered in Dremmer's buddy's blood and grey matter, and poor Dremmer's just put two and two together. She gets a d6 here too.

So, Keeler rolls d6+d6+d6. (Odds somewhere between rolling at +1 and +2.)


Example 2:

Later, she tries to seduce some weird mindfuck called Blindblue.

We've established that Blindblue isn't interested in physical love, taking pleasure directly from the psychic maelstrom somehow. Keeler gets a d4 from the MC.

Keeler's not terribly hot (hot=0), so she gets a second d4.

Keeler's got what she needs to seduce someone (she's wearing some decent clothes, and has a chance to spend some time with Blindblue one-on-one), but nothing special beyond that. She gets a third d4.

Her odds this time are pretty lousy: d4+d4+d4. (Odds are almost exactly like rolling at -1, except with no chance of a 10+ at all.) That's about as bad as it can get with these dice rules. But she could improve her odds by finding the right circumstances or preparing for this encounter in some way (how? maybe some weird psychic business - I don't know).

Maybe if she could get all the circumstances set up just perfect to seduce this weirdo, she'd roll d4+d4+d8 instead, which is similar to rolling at +1 or so in regular AW.


Example 3:

Keeler has been captured and tied to a chair, but she's managed to stand up and to slip one of her arms out of the ropes tying her down. She goes aggro on the dude guarding her.

She gets a d6 from the MC. (The dude is just a regular dude, of course.)

She gets a d6 for her hard+1.

She gets no dice for circumstances, because her circumstances are pretty bad: she's not really in a position to even make this move, hardly even that.

So she rolls d6+d6 (like rolling 2d6+0 in AW).


Finally, any move that gives a +1forward should be handled in one of two ways. If it establishes you as having some kind of advantage (which most of them do), that'll affect the group's choice of the third die. If it's a purely mechanical/meta thing, the +1forward allows you to roll an extra d4 instead.

This is fun because it makes misses unlikely, but still reserves a good chance of a partial hit instead of making skilled characters almost always roll 10+.


Overall?

I don't know if this is an improvement over the standard rules: is the extra complication worth it?

But the odds are nice for the possible dice combinations. Bad combinations are still a little more favorable than rolling at -2; and yet even with a +3 stat (called a d10 stat in this version) your odds aren't quite as good as in standard AW, keeping more interesting results. Lots of partial hits at any level rolled.

These rules will encourage your players to prepare much more for moves, position themselves, gather the right tools, etc.

That could be an advantage of disadvantage.

(If you consider it a disadvantage, of course, you could change the third criteria to be something else.)

I also like that it makes it easy to create other traits, and use them when necessary. (Like Dogs traits.)


ETA: For certain genres, it could be interesting to add an "completely impossible" category to the first question, for facing that which you shouldn't be able to face. In that case, you do not get a die from the MC at all.

In some heroic D&D-type genre, you might have a situation where you have higher stats (up to d12, maybe) but you often face such "impossible" dangers.