WritesNaughtyStories

I think the nature of playbooks as character classes is more unfamiliar than complicated. It mostly boils down to pick a set of stats and the number of playbook moves the playbook indicates. Name, look, all that is completely flexible, though the playbooks do offer suggestions. The system is simple: Mostly, what you say goes. If there is a move - either a "basic" move like act under fire, seize by force or read a sitch, for example or a playbook move - involved, roll 2d6 and add (or subtract) the appropriate stat. 6 or less is a miss and I say what happens and you should be prepared for that to be bad. 7-9 is a hit and you get what you were trying to do but not much more. 10+ things clearly go your way. Hx is how well you know the other player characters. It's not how much people like each other, though. It's about understanding. You can roll+Hx to help or hinder other characters. Gear works off "tags" like loud or reach. Tags turn up other places, but they enable fiction by defining what is true in the story. Battlebabe have high cool and a possibly high hot, they're very good at things like acting under fire. One of their playbook moves let's them roll +cool for battle moves, which allows them to fight pretty well under some circumstances.

Sex in Apocalypse World is incidental, certainly more incidents here than lots of other places, sure but sex scenes are probably going be highlights rather than the focus - though that's really going to be up to all you. As for Talia - rather than try to force her in to the shape of a Battlbabe - why not work through the Battlebabe playbook and let a native of the apocalypse take shape?

@Warning Why couldn't a Battlebabe be yuri?

https://lumpley.games/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ApocalypseWorld2ndEd-PlaybooksEtc.pdf There's all the moves and playbooks provided by the Bakers. @IsabellaRose, the Battlebabe gets to have sex without having to worry about the other characters' sex moves - she just ignores them and moves on, leaving them panting and wishing they had a memento...

As we start working on characters, I'm struck by the interest in anthro and kemonomimi characters. In order to accommodate that is it possible that only animals survived the fall? Something like the animated film Rock & Rule, maybe? Not the magic or demon summoning, but the kind of look of the characters? Another thought might be that with the fall have the mutants from the rad-wastes between the mega cities made their way into the arcologies?

It looks like we're ready to get to work on characters. We need to start with our Hx, I have no real preference who answers first or in what order - we can let this flow as a natural conversation. Ask one Hx question at a time, when it is answered, the person who did NOT answer the question asks the next question (remember to describe yourself by name, look and what we might know about you). Does that make any sense to everyone? of so: Jasmine, the Skinner - would you start us off be describing yourself and asking an Hx question, please? Once we have Hx figured out, we'll work on where in this urban grave we actually are and who is here with us, okay?

8 would probably be the maximum. The game is very narrative - unless there's a specific move involved or an important NPC decision at stake, what the players say is truth.

For anyone interested, we're putting together an Apocalypse World game over here. There's still plenty of seats available. Looks like our apocalypse is sitting in something that used to look like Megacity One. We've got a Brainer, a Gunlugger and a Skinner, so there's plenty of opportunity to be part of the action.

I have not gotten many PMs regarding what people want from this game. What I have heard is "no magic" "not D&D" and "gritty". All of that is basically what Apocalypse World does by default. The psychic maelstrom is kind of magic, but it's really just an augury - it shows you things, reveals hints and clues. It doesn't create much in the way of direct effect that isn't specifically called out in a move. How the Brainer's mental influence works is probably tied to the maelstrom, but that's about it for magic. As for D&D, you all aren't going to be hacking down hordes of orcs or tracking down huge piles of treasure. A few cans of potatoes, a stash of edible mushrooms and some fresh meat are going to be about the extent of your "loot" that's no bullets and fuel. The world is dirty, crumbling and broken. You probably can't fix more of it than you can touch at any moment. The cast, so far, seems to be Skinner, Brainer and Gunlugger - that's fine, but if anyone else is interested, speak up!

There's no need to wait - there's no "ideal party" to build. PbtA doesn't really work that way, it's very fiction forward and player driven, a lot of this is going to be the players telling me what happens, so there's no "best fit for the party" in the same way that many games work. If you just want to wait to get some idea of who your character will be interacting with and what might look cool on screen, it's fine - but the story works without a meat shield, healer, DPS type or anything.

Okay, @DreamsnThings, what's this Skinner's name and what is the beauty they bring to this crumbled urban blight?

As an aside, if you use the same name at Coyote Code - say you character's name - your roll history appears to be stored for some period of time.

I'm not going to count bullets, but know that a miss may very well result in, "the firing pin clicks hollowly into an empty chamber." Food will be enough to sustain you - I don't want to count days until you starve, but unless you make an effort, you will be hungry and scraping by on worm meal and rain water filtered through what's left of a T-shirt. Meds are always scarce, the Angel (if we have one) will need supplies. Misses will be the kind of trigger I use to tick down supply clocks.

Gather here, and pick at the corpse of a world you never knew. So, first big question, what does this ruined civilization look like? Are we content with the remains of a giant urban complex? One thing we have determined is that we DON'T want a resource management game. That's kind of hard in a post apocalyptic setting. There's gas and guns, but we can eliminate counting shit like food and bullets. However, going to get that stuff is fun. One thing I thought we knew was no zombie apocalypse, but it seems that might be back on the table, so here's what we're gonna do: Everyone, PM me the one thing that will make it a game you do not want to play and a thing or two you'd really like to see in the setting. Once I have the answers, I'll post the responses here anonymously, and we'll see what we can work out.

The Battlebabe is my favorite playbook, but they're not as badass as they often think. Their high stats are cool and hot, they're really good at starting shit and keeping their head when it all explodes, but the ass-kickers are generally the Chopper, Gunlugger or Faceless. The Battlbabe is actually super social, the Driver is the real loner. The Driver is a fun playbook, but she needs reasons to be in their car. Having one in the game points to some truths about the setting and some of what is likely to happen. Namely, there are places to go and reasons to go there. They're specifically kind of antisocial, but without everyone else the Driver has nothing to do (which is part of why they're so fun). The Skinner is beauty incarnate. Dancer, chef or whore, perhaps even all three - anything that isn't rusty or broken probably comes from his impossibly clean, soft fingers. Stripper is definitely well within the Skinner's resume. On anthros: it's the apocalypse and lots of post apocalyptic settings have mutants as characters. This could be one of them. Up to the group to decide if that's what we want and how that manifests. My job is not to make that decision. My job is to make the Apocalypse interesting, the stakes feel real and make you live, and maybe die, in cool stories. I'm going to open a new thread for this discussion.

If you all want a fantasy game, go for it. I'll see myself out and wish you all a heartfelt and sincere, "Have fun." If there's interest in something else, whether PbtA or some other system, I'm happy to talk about what that looks like. If @Chiyako, @SataiRolePlayingGuyand @DreamsnThingswant to play Apocalypse World, I'm thrilled to MC. If anyone cares to join us, please do.

The issue becomes that I have almost no interest in a fantasy game. I have never had any interest in Dungeon World. I don't own it and don't want to. I'm open to other suggestions - court intrigue might be something I could be sold on.

We're having a conversation about what the world looks like now. Part of the conceit of the game is that the oldest people currently alive might have been small children when what was before collapsed. The characters in Apocalypse World are kind of like The Feral Kid from Road Warrior - born into the aftermath. Maybe even a second generation of survivors. They have no direct knowledge of the world before and most of what they do know comes from what they've heard. @Chiyako has asked for not zombies. So that particular apocalypse is off the table. We're currently looking at something like Megacity One but what ruined the world we don't know. It is rusted, crumbled and decayed. Who knows what might lurk in the ferrocrete caverns below the broken streets and tumbled hab-blocks. But that's not certain. Did global climate change flood the world and let the jungles reclaim what man had foolishly named his own? Did the pollution change the environment to a toxic swamp of plastic and petrol? @Warning, do you have thoughts about what the world might look like?

The game doesn't actually ban having two copies of a playbook but it stops just short of it. I have allowed it once but it mostly sucked so I do ban players using the same playbook. And destroyed all the corporations and removed all the technology. Nothing left to hack, no cyberwear, no wealthy, ownership class - just a half remembered age of wealth and ease the oldsters told you about when you were little. What's left is the desicated corpse that barely feeds the maggots - carrion punk, maybe.

@SataiRolePlayingGuy, the reference sheet is enough. Battle moves, basic moves, road moves, and the moves in the playbooks are really all that you need. The vast majority of that is self explanatory. Have skimmed the playbooks, is there one that draws your eye? @Chiyako, I think I can work with @DreamsnThings' idea. It's pretty common in post-apocalyptic fiction to be rumors of havens of the old world left, if you can reach them and get them to let you in. What does the world on the ground look like? The remnants of once gleaming arcologies? Verdant wilds reclaimed by strange, mutant flora and fauna? A crumbling hellscape of continent spanning city? Something else? Do we have enough agreement to move this to a different thread?

Okay, zombies struck from the list. With @SataiRolePlayingGuy's input, will put a pencil mark next to the rusting hulk of Arcology R-619

I remember that game, I think. It was Neuropa, right? That's not really related to the setting, that's about how events unfolded. I think we can avoid that. If we use Apocalypse World there's no real way to be sedentary and isolated from the other characters. What kind of post apocalyptic world do we want? Mad Max's deserts and roaring engines? The decaying corpse of a high tech domed city, the moldering swamps and flashy swords of something like Into the Badlands or the shambling dead of Atlanta?

What would you want in a post-apocalyptic setting? What would you like to avoid? Actually, let's refine that a bit. What are the hard "No!" things and the "Must Haves"?

We'll get a game Powered by the Apocalypse or something related going, we just need to figure out what. I like Apocalypse World - it's very flexible on what the setting is. It just the ruins of a world before - it presumes cars and guns, but those could be recast as almost anything else. What went wrong with your AW games, @DreamsnThings? Just remember, folks, lean into your sex moves... but here you don't have to hide them behind veils. Another thought: Scum and Villainy? Again, it's Forged in the Dark rather than PbtA and I'll have to do some studying, but it's a possibility too.

Do we have any other voted besides Apocalypse World? I know @DreamsnThings was hoping for Monsterhearts, Masks or Monster of the Week but I have no inspiration for Monster of the Week - I have literally never seen a single episode of Supernatural, Super heroes fucking confound me - I can give you great fight scenes but why the hell anyone is there I cannot ever come up with. "Random bad guy shows up and starts breaking shit" is my eternal answer to superheroes. Monsterhearts is teen drama - that doesn't work well here any more and the last game fizzled spectacularly - largely on my watch.