Barf Forth Apocalyptica

hacks => blood & guts => Topic started by: Jeff Russell on June 09, 2010, 07:22:21 AM

Title: Designed to be Hackable?
Post by: Jeff Russell on June 09, 2010, 07:22:21 AM
Howdy Vincent,

I wasn't sure whether this should go under "Apocalypse World" or hacks, but I had a quick question.

Given both the existence of this forum and the already proliferating hacks available, did you do anything in your design process to make the rules especially "hackable"? Or did you just look at one day and go "I guess you could play other games with the same basic rules"?

This might be addressed in the development blog, if so, I apologize, I'll be checking that out as soon as I have some more time.

Best,
Jeff Russell
Title: Re: Designed to be Hackable?
Post by: lumpley on June 09, 2010, 09:31:56 AM
(I moved it down here to blood & guts.)

The answer is, yes, totally built-in hackable, from the start.

I started the design by making, basically by gut, the brainer character playbook. That gave me a first-draft set of stats and basic moves. From there, the process of making a new character playbook IS hacking the game. I made the angel second, and it's really correct, historically and design-wise, to see the angel as a brainer hack.

Once I had the basic moves and a couple of playbooks for a core, I created the rest of the game solely by hacking them. I always figured that anybody else would be able to look at the game and see how I'd done it, see how they could do it themselves if they wanted.

After we'd played the first session of the first playtest, Shreyas and Elizabeth (who were in that playtest group) started hacking it. They brought me a beautiful new non-apocalyptic character playbook, it was tarot-based, and it had some ideas in it that I dearly hope see print someday. There were certain circumstances under which you had to change your character type, it wasn't strictly voluntary like it is in Apocalypse World's expanded improvement.  Anyway, that was the first confirmation of the game's hackability, and it came pretty much alongside the first confirmation of the game's playability.

-Vincent
Title: Re: Designed to be Hackable?
Post by: Jeff Russell on June 09, 2010, 09:39:57 AM
That's totally sweet. I've been getting the impression that it's an imminently hackable game, and even with the bits and pieces I've cobbled together (the play books, reading some of the available hacks, your blog, et cetera) I'm already bursting with ideas for games that seem like they'd fit the rules and approach. But like I said, I want to play "the real deal" first, a) because it sounds awesome, and b) so that I know what I'm tinkering with.