New Playbook? Lost Girl

Oh I nearly forgot: Dude amnesiacs or dudes with them uncontrollable powers include the guys from Memento and Angel Heart, Jason Bourne, and maybe Tetsuo the Iron Man if you want something really weird or Tetsuo from Akira, he kinda loses it, too.

What I get from what you've written is that the Lost is innocent of the chaos that they cause, right?

Both that AND the fact that they're kind at the mercy of this "Other force". Be ist past life, psycho training, or just wierd supernatural stuff (in this case the psychic maelstrom). So in mechanics that means there's a sort of randomness to this there... Learning to control and eventually harness this hidden side is a big part.

Yeah, the Last Child is pretty groovy and not particularly childish, except for the Special and some of the Hx.

I think it might need a reskin to the Oracle.

My question is, how is this not a variant of the Battlebabe (using the highest Weird stat line, and advancing the weird stat) or the Brainer (using perhaps the highest Hot stat line)?

This was my thought as well, but then again this is my thought for 85% of the Playbooks I see. But I mean, River Tam is already a Battlebabe (well, arguably she's not even a PC, but if she was a PC she'd be a Battlebabe). She just has a weird personality and backstory; but the function of all of that in terms of what she gets to do is to make her basically untouchable on a social and physical level, which to me is the core Battlebabe skill-set.

The Battlebabe I have just started playing in our latest campaign is basically like this, as well. Being able to escape unscathed from crazy, violent shit is already a core Battlebabe ability (+3 cool, reflexes-armour), though you can really cement it by grabbing the 'roll +cool and name your exit' move from the (I think) Operator book. Visions of Death is a pretty solid 'kill people inexplicably without realizing what you're doing' sort of move, as well, though some of the Brainer moves could fit that even better if you simply narrate that your character isn't aware of what they're doing.

[quote author=Democritus link=topic=2150.msg12831#msg12831 Both that AND the fact that they're kind at the mercy of this "Other force". Be ist past life, psycho training, or just wierd supernatural stuff (in this case the psychic maelstrom). So in mechanics that means there's a sort of randomness to this there... Learning to control and eventually harness this hidden side is a big part.[/quote]

Maybe it's a playbook that centers around surviving and coming to terms with intense personal/psychic trauma? The idea of a horrible past event that has marked the victim in some way, that they have to overcome or learn to harness... I mean it's kind of like an externalized version of PTSD therapy, just in the end you get immense psychic power instead of just a return of basic human agency. And obviously the amnesia angle fits pretty well there, if that was of interest.

Presumably such a playbook would take a lot of cues from the Quarantine, in that you'd want to be having flashbacks and developping details of The Traumatic Event as you went along; salvaging the past, etc.

It sounds like you want to make The Amnesiac.

I sound like I want to read that one. (c:

That being said, I think the playbook would be better if it was less gender specific. I'm sure it'd be just fine as "The Lost" and a lot less patriarchal: "Strange, fucked up, unstable girl" is a sexist trope, playing on ancient Greek mores and myths about how women were dangerously close to the spirit world and needed to be veiled. That and the figures of young drugged women as oracles, either Delphic or Sibylline. 

We can do it one better and just say that they're 'strange, mysterious, and oracular youth.'

Wow!  Good point.  But the classical world also has myths of beautiful youths -- male youths -- who sorcerers look upon as sources of power and purity.  And gender transgression by male and female shamans ...

Lots of good weird to explore.

Wow!  Good point.  But the classical world also has myths of beautiful youths -- male youths -- who sorcerers look upon as sources of power and purity.  And gender transgression by male and female shamans ...

Lots of good weird to explore.

Care to elaborate some?

Internet Explorer keeps crashing.  Must be brief.

David Ogden's Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds
- tale of beautiful, pure boy kidnapped by witches

Luc Brission, Sexual Ambiguity
- sex, and ambiguity in Greco-Roman world
- myth of Tiresias, esp

Academic books, both.

Daniel Ogden.

So I've kinda started work on this. Here's the current introductory blurb and the look section:

Introducing THE LOST
In Apocalypse World, everyone is broken. Luckily most know why. But not you. Nope. You've lost that. And that sometimes scares you. But you're not sure why. Yeah right, you sometimes do or know weird things. But that's not what has you afraid when you're all alone at night. No, it's the thought of never finding out what's wrong with you - or maybe, just maybe, you're afraid that you will find out and won't like what you find at the end of that road. Knowing Apocalypse World it's probably going to be the latter. Good luck.

Look
Man, woman, concealed, or transgressing

Casual wear, outdated wear, scrounge wear, vintage wear, cute wear

Soft face, sweet face, girlish face, boyish face, hard face

Innocent eyes, curious eyes, scared eyes, watching eyes, sad eyes, old eyes

Small body, soft body, sensual body, lanky body, or young body