Barf Forth Apocalyptica
barf forth apocalyptica => Apocalypse World => Topic started by: Gerald C on July 24, 2011, 12:28:58 PM
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Last night the world’s psychic maelstrom barfed forth into my sleeping brain, and so I present to you:
The Rat-Pack
“Where do these fucking kids keep coming from?! I kick them out and when I turn around there’s another one behind me. Don’t they have any mothers? Any good-for-nothing fathers? Little fuckers keep stealing my food and my knives. Those were good knives!”
Creating Your Rat-Pack
To create your rat-pack, choose kids, names, looks, moves, gear, and Hx.
Name
Choose 1 for your rat-pack:
Leeches, Silverfish, Nest, Swarm, Brats, Cheeky Fuckers, Roaches
Then choose 1 for each kid (detail below):
Jake, Braces, 4-eyes, Foster, Li’l bro, Markie, Puck, Hates-Soap, Slugger
Freckles, Pigtial, Sis, Juvie, Nix, Annie, Waif, Caterwaul
Look
Choose 1 for your rat-pack:
Boys, girls, mixed, or too-young-and-dirty-to-tell.
Then choose 1 of these for each kid (detail below):
Casual wear, scrounged wear, rags, tinfoil-and-cardboard “armour”, brightly-coloured costume (with full-face mask and sound effects at your option), dirty-and-torn Sunday Best, mud covered, underwear, or birthday suit.
Bruised face, snot-nose face, bloody-nose face, cold-hearted face, feral face, baby face, old-soul face, tear-streaked face, sour face, pouting face, or innocent face.
Kids
Your rat-pack is made up of elders, middl’uns, and pups. By default, it has 5 members, is (1-harm gang small 0-armour), and has the following stats:
Cool-1, Hard-1, Hot-1, Sharp-1, Weird-1
You may increase the size of your pack up to 9 members, but you also gain +hungry.
Detail your members:
Elders are the oldest members of your rat-pack (12-15 years old-ish), or maybe they’re just bigger and tougher than the other kids. You have 1 of them, or up to 2 if you have 9 members. If you ever have more than 1, gain +divided leadership. For each elder your rat-pack has, choose 1. Each option can be chosen more than once, up to its maximum.
- +1 cool (max +2)
- +1 hot (max +2)
- +1 harm (max +2)
Available basic moves as an individual: all of them.
Middl’uns are the meat and potatoes of your rat-pack, and can be anywhere from 7-12 years old. You start with 3 of them, or 5-7 if you have 9 members. For each middl’un your rat-pack has, choose 1. Each option can be chosen more than once, up to its maximum.
- +1 hard (max +4)
- +1 sharp (max +4)
- +1 armour (max +1)
Available basic moves as an individual: Everything except seize by force and seduce (but you can still manipulate).
Pups are the little kids you’re looking out for (3-6 years old). They might be one of the other’s kid brother or sister, they might be orphans you met on the street or in a shelter you ran away from. However it is, they rely on you at least as much as they help out. To start, your rat-pack has 1 pup, or 2 if you have 9 members. For each pup, choose 1. Each option can only be chosen once.
- +1 weird and +emotionally fragile
- +1 weird and +homesick
- +1 weird and +sickly
Available basic moves as an individual: Manipulate (but not seduce), read a person, and open your brain. You also may or may not be very good at getting around on your own.
Basic Moves
The rat-pack gets all the basic moves, but each kid may not get all of them individually.
Rat-Pack Moves
You have this 1:
Born Unto the Apocalypse
Unlike those who lived in the before-time, unlike those who where born just-before, or after but soon-after, you are all truly the first children of the apocalypse, and you understand it like only those of a generation can ever truly understand that generation. Whenever some aspect of the world-as-established (or not-yet-established) is in question, you have final veto over all players except the MC.
Gerald Says: “Don’t be a dick!”
And choose 1 of these:
Crows and Pigeons
You’ve become especially good at begging or scrounging up stuff that common folks find useful. At the beginning of each session, roll+sharp. 10+, gain 2-barter. 7-9, gain 1-barter. 6-, you’ve spent 1-barter since last session. If you have no barter, you gain +hungry. If you normally have +hungry, none of you have eaten in days, gain +sickly. If you normally have +sickly, well, you're fucked anyway.
Ravens and Vultures
You’ve become especially good at scrounging up stuff that not-so-common folks find useful. At the beginning of each session, roll+sharp. 10+, hold 2. 7-9, hold 1. 6-, you owe one of the other characters a favor, payable by the end of this session, or take -1 to this roll next session if you don’t pay up. Spend your hold 1-1 at any time this session to have one of your members come running with:
- 1-supply worth of/for an angel kit
- 1-ammunition for any refill weapon
- a can full of bio-diesel
- any weapon worth 1-barter
- whoever they’re looking for
- enough clean food and/or water for 2 people or your entire pack and 1 other person
- a piece, part, or tool (high-tec at MC discretion)
But also choose 1 each time:
- it took a while
- they spent 1-barter to get it
- the pack now owes someone a favor (MC details, same rules as above)
- the local law or gang is after them now
- they got hurt in the getting, take 1-harm
And choose 1 more:
The Swarm
When you help or interfere with someone, roll+(number of members participating/3) (round down, min+1) instead of roll+Hx.
Like a Plague of Locusts
Whenever one or more of your members is in physical danger, the rest of you rat-pack shows up without needing an order to do so and within seconds, if they’re at all able.
Abandon Ship
If any member of the rat-pack is killed, the MC immediately tells you what your best escape route is and, if you act on it, roll+hard. 10+, take +1 forward to do so, and mark experience. 7-9, take +1 forward to do so.
Hive Mind
If you ever roll+weird when at least half of your members are present and focused on the same task, take +1 to that roll.
Gear
The rat-pack has oddments equal to 1-barter.
Each member has fashion suitable to their look, and, when acting as an individual :
Each elder has 1 kid-sized weapon, and possibly a piece worth 1-armour.
Each middl’un has 1 sort-of-weapon.
Each pup has 1 toy or something.
Kid-sized weapons:
- big knife (2-harm hand)
- .38 revolver (2-harm close reload loud)
- 9mm (2-harm close loud)
- .22 bolt-action rifle (2-harm far loud reload)
- baseball bat (what the fuck is baseball?) (1-harm + s-harm hand)
Sort-of weapons:
- pocket knife or sharpened stick (1-harm hand)
- big stick or club (s-harm hand)
- rocks (s-harm close infinite)
- fucking powerful dart gun (1-harm close reload)
- fucking powerful bb rifle (1-harm far reload)
Toys or something:
- Stuffed Animal (+adorable)
- A-B-C Book or 10-piece puzzle (+inspiring)
- Pacifier or diaper (+heartbreaking)
- Action Figure (+distracting)
Hx
Everyone introduces their characters by name, look and outlook. Take your turn. List the other characters’ names.
Go around again for Hx. On your turn, choose one player who is the mother/father/older brother/sister of one of your members. Tell them Hx+2. At your option, you’ve also stolen (repeatedly and often) from one of the others, tell them Hx-1.
On the other’s turns, if the player who is your relative still looks out for you, take what they tell you and write +1 to it. If they abandoned you like everyone else in the world, ignore what they tell you and write Hx-3.
Everyone else, whatever number they tell you, write it next to their character’s name.
At the end, find the character with the highest Hx on your sheet. Ask that player which of your stats is most interesting, and highlight it. The MC will have you highlight a second stat too.
Rat-Pack Special
If one of your elders loses their virginity to another character, they write Hx+2 with you, and you roll+cool. 10+, it was no big deal and mark experience. 7-9, it was cool and write Hx+1 with them. 6-, you fall head over heals in puppy love.
If one of your elders has sex with another character otherwise, you both write Hx+1 with each other.
Gerald Says: “While I do not condone either incest or pedophilia, I do unfortunately recognize that they happen. I highly recommend overtones of tragedy and innocence lost when using this rule. Apocalypse World is a fucked up place, yes, but please be considerate of your other players when/if you bring this into play!”
Rat-Pack Improvement
Whenever you roll a highlighted stat, and whenever you reset your Hx with someone, mark an experience circle. When you mark the 5th, improve and erase.
Each time you choose to improve, choose one of the following. Check it off, you can't choose it again.
__ get +1 elder (max 3, detail) and choose an accompanying bonus
__ get +1 middl’un (max 6, detail) and choose an accompanying bonus
__ get +1 pup (max 3, detail) and choose an accompanying bonus and want
__ get another rat-pack move, but not Crows... or Ravens...
__ get another rat-pack move, but not Crows... or Ravens...
__ get battlefield grace
__ get impossible reflexes
__ get just give me a motive
__ get pit bull, but it applies when a pack member dies instead
Barter
1-barter will cover a month’s living expenses for the entire pack, if your tastes aren’t too grand.
On Combat, Harm, and Healing
Obviously the rat-pack operates and fights as a gang, but they can also (most of them) fight as individuals too. You’ll notice though, that even the toughest possible elder can never be as badass as the pack as a whole. Fight as a unit whenever possible. You count as a gang whenever there are at least 2 of you.
When you take harm as a gang, take harm as a gang. In this case, whenever you would normally be allowed to take a debility instead of harm, one of your gang members dies instead (you choose who), and you lose all bonus’ and wants associated with them. If the pack is ever reduced to less than 3 members, it dies (disbands, whatever). This means that starting size packs can take less punishment than other characters, but as they increase in size they become harder and harder to do away with for good. Note also that while you can take improvement options to gain new members, they can only be chosen once, just like all improvement options.
When a pack member takes harm as an individual, elders have 3-harm (1st is free, 2nd takes them out, 3rd kills them), middl’uns have 2-harm (1st takes them out, 2nd kills them), and pups are killed by only 1-harm.
When you take harm, either as a gang or as individuals, you should be detailing and keeping track of which members are either dead or unconscious (or whatever), and what bonus’ and wants you’re missing because of death.
While healing as a gang, heal as a gang, and dictate which members are back in fighting shape if not all of them are. Note that only death removes bonus’ from the pack, not simply being out of the fight.
When you heal as an individual, heal as an individual.
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Suggestions and all feedback welcome as always! Also, I need more names!
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This is so insane that I think I fell in love with it!
I'm a little high after ending my thirteen session AW campaign this evening, so I'll try and comment more later.
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Weeeeeeeee! Thanks Chroma! The more I think about this the more excited I get about it.
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Not much else to say until I get some AP in on this, but I did notice a couple errors in the text.
Middl’uns are the meat and potatoes of your rat-pack, and can be anywhere from 7-12 years old. You start with 3 of them, or 5-7 if you have 9 members.
This should be:
Middl’uns are the meat and potatoes of your rat-pack, and can be anywhere from 7-12 years old. You start with 3 of them, or 5 or 6 if you have 9 members.
Related to this,
get +1 middl’un (max 6, detail) and choose an accompanying bonus
should read, "get +1 middl’un (max 7, detail) and choose an accompanying bonus
I'm also thinking of changing
Crows and Pigeons
You’ve become especially good at begging or scrounging up stuff that common folks find useful. At the beginning of each session, roll+sharp. 10+, gain 2-barter.
to:
You’ve become especially good at begging or scrounging up stuff that common folks find useful. At the beginning of each session, roll+sharp. 10+, gain 1-barter and remove either +hungry or +sickly from your sheet for the rest of this session.
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This is one of my favourite custom play-books so far!
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Thanks! I have a few others in playtesting right now, but I haven't been able to convince anyone to play this one. Once they've all been smoothed out I plan to release a custom playbook pdf, maybe with one or two others I have semi-planned. So, stay on the lookout for that! Also, if you (or anyone!) does play this, I would love to hear some feedback on it.
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Yeah, great work on this one, at first glance I deemed it a bit too hard to play and didn´t actully introduce it to my players (we are still adjustning to AW). But one of them found this on his own and then pretty much forced me to make him a (wery crude) trifold. Shuld get it in play in a session or two and will report back as soon as possible.. =)
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Oh! That's great Reax! And I agree, it does present some interesting roleplaying challenges, but I feel it ties in with Vx's ideas about gangs and playing multiple characters.
What I really want to know is if the ability to be in multiple places at once is game breaking. When you play two separate characters they can work in coordination, but they can also be at odds with one another. This playbook presents a ton a mechanical advantage to cooperation, but any antagonism between the kids is purely a fictional construct (as per +divided leadership). What I hope is that people will take this with AW's story first design in mind, and not use it as an attempt to overwhelm situations or other players.
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I really like the thought of several characters per player, making them able to join any and all 'sub-groups' instead of taking turns playing (my players tend to split up a lot).
I 'even' did a rewrite of one of the 'A boy and his dog' for another player, turning the dog into a 'sub-character', in pretty much the same way as you did with the kids, rather then a mechanical NPC (and turned the dog itself into a move to open up the option for other playbooks too).
But then again, (possibly) 12 characters are a somewhat.. disturbing thought, will be great too see if the player manages to get it to work..!
And as a side node, "Born Unto the Apocalypse" is.. brilliant, I love the thought of a stubborn kid refusing to letting go of an unbelievable claim that turns out to be absolutely right.. =)
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Big thanks to Reax for putting this together! To anyone who uses it, I would love to hear your playtest results!
The Rat-pack Playbook PDF (http://www.mediafire.com/?y6drl68rorcvdeo)
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The playbook didnt have any art so I did you guys some art up really quick and emailed to Reax to put it in the .pdf.
Cheers.
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Updated version of the PDF by Reax, now with art by Nathan Orlando Wilson. Thanks so much for your work on this you guys!
The Rat-pack Playbook PDF v.2 (http://www.mediafire.com/?dd4ipfpkexrvc1a)
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You're welcome!
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Yeah, thanks for the help. Artwork (and me realising and fixing some of my mistakes) made it turn out real nice!
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Looks fantastic but I don't understand the Abandon ship move.
1. MC has to remember it all the time :/
2. Fuck this shit does the same thing but better (although you don't get XP for it). You imagine each kids has to get out by themselves?
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As MC, there's nothing that I have to remember all the time, except the principles. If players forget to mark their experience from rolling highlighted stats, that's their problem. If the rat-pack player forgets to tell me about Abandon Ship, that's his problem. I'm not trying to penalize anyone, but I'm also not going to memorize everyone's character. That's the player's job.
I grant you the move is similar to Fuck this shit, but it does differ in a few fundamental ways, which were intentional. If you look at each die roll outcome, and the trigger for when each move can be used, they both have benefits and drawbacks over the other. Also remember that the rat-pack doesn't have access to Fuck this shit.
In response to your other question, this move can be used as an individual or for the entire gang. The rat-pack is unique in that whenever someone says 'it', 'they', or whatever, they are equally referring to both individuals and the pack as a whole.
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This actually reminds me of a thing I've been meaning to articulate. It's this: If any of your members are not explicitly somewhere else at the moment, they can be wherever you want them to be. Obvious modifications to this are Like a plague of locusts or when it makes absolutely no sense for it to be possible. But I can probably think of a plausible explanation for just about any scenario in order to have some other member show up.
What's the reason for this? Your character is the gang. This playbook doesn't function like any of the other playbooks. Your gang is not an extension of your character. In this case, your individual members are simply a logical extension of your gang.
Anyway I had some people asking about this, so there it is.
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Why not give them a free escape and 1 XP if they do if someone is killed? That let's non hard packs escape at a cost too.
Anyway, this playbook looks fantastic and I really hope someone in my campaign picks it up!
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After a lot of schedule collisions, and a general lack of time, I have finally manged to get the campaign running in somewhat regular sessions again, and have had the Rat-pack in play for quite a few of them now.
Overall the playbook have been working really well both in the fiction and in the game itself. The children quickly found a place in the hardhold as just about everyone’s under-paid errand-children (on top of general thievery and mischief), while being Mrs Langs (the hardholders) eyes and ears. Binding all the other PCs together by their relations to the individual children in a way I have had a hard time doing before.
They even manged to create a lot of cool and memorable situations already. Among them, stealing an Angel kit from Doc, delivering it to the Maestro who then unknowingly gifted it back to Doc. And later they badly humiliated the Chopper in a 'fight' by swarming and harassing him until he had to give in. (This far marking our only use of Like a plague of locust)
This actually reminds me of a thing I've been meaning to articulate. It's this: If any of your members are not explicitly somewhere else at the moment, they can be wherever you want them to be.
I didn't actually read that until just now, but I did run them like that without really thinking about it, really seems to be the only decent way to do it without forcing the player to micro-manage every member all the time.
The only 'problem' have been that the player player haven’t really been into any 'internal' interactions between the children (without me pushing him with questions) and at first had a hard time running them as a individuals and not just as a gang, but recently they have really started to get their own personalities.
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I'm *very* excited about this, Reax. I would love if you could keep me updated via this thread.
The only 'problem' have been that the player player haven’t really been into any 'internal' interactions between the children (without me pushing him with questions) and at first had a hard time running them as a individuals and not just as a gang, but recently they have really started to get their own personalities.
I'm not sure this is so much a problem. I feel like this playbook has the potential to become disruptive if the player starts meta-gaming with himself, so the fact that your player is not doing that is a good thing. As far as personalities taking a while to develop, I find that's generally true of all characters, and not unique to this playbook.
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Wonderful Playbook Gerald. Simply inspired. Well done all.
I may have a weekly skype one-on-one game starting soon and this looks like the preferred playbook for the game! Woo! I'll let you know how it goes if it gets off the ground.
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I feel like this playbook has the potential to become disruptive if the player starts meta-gaming with himself, so the fact that your player is not doing that is a good thing. As far as personalities taking a while to develop, I find that's generally true of all characters, and not unique to this playbook.
I pretty much came to the same conclusions after a few sessions, kinda tried to push him into it with questions at first but once everyone at the 'table' (..Skype) started to treat them as individual kids and not just a grey mass (like they still do with most of the choppers gang) it worked itself out.
I did run another short session last night, the kids really are starting to become one of my fallback 'play-generators' when the other characters get a bit too passive. And even without my questions driving them to mischief they keep forcing everyone into.. interesting situations, always funny to watch the the chopper trying to cope with the thieving children.. without angering the hardholder that is sort of protection them (Especially since one of them are the choppers 'secret' son).
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@ Noofy: That's great! Thanks for the kind words, and I hope to hear some feedback from your game.
@ Reax: The more you talk, the more I feel like I've created a beautiful monster. /single tear of paternal pride
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Hey, my group and I are really interested in the Rat-Pack, but I have a clarity question for you before we really go for it. The rules say that when taking harm together, they can take it as a gang -- does that mean that after 2 harm one of the kids really dies (some fatalities)? Or does "fatality" here count as "unconscious" as mentioned in the playbook section on getting harmed as a gang.
Just doing the math, it seems to me that if I have a 5-kid pack, and take 3 harm as a gang, maybe 2 kids would die, right? That would leave me with 3 left, stats reduced, just barely surviving. But if they were to take 4 harm, 3 kids would die, and then the number of kids in the gang would fall to less than 3 and it would fall apart. The extra rule about one of the kids dying instead of taking a disfigurement couldn't apply because the pack would fall apart just from regular gang damage before ever getting that far, wouldn't it?
Besides. I mean. Gosh. Kids, man.
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Hi, David. I just looked through the harm and healing section of the playbook again, and I'm not really sure where your confusion is coming from. If you could quote something specific that is throwing you I would appreciate it, so I can make it more clear. Having said that, to answer your question, no, kids only die in place of a debility, not from simply taking harm. So, with other playbooks, you would normally take a debility when you go past 12, and it prevents you from dying. In the case of this book, when you go past 12 one of your kids dies, and since your kids each provide the playbook as a whole with a mechanical benefit in the form of a stat bump, this provides the same function as a debility to other characters.
I hope this helps. Please feel free to ask if you have more questions.
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Yes that clarifies things a lot for me, thanks! The part that confuses me is on page 169 under the special rules for harming a gang, there's a little countdown clock, copied also on your trifold character sheet for the rat-pack, where it shows this:
1-harm: a few injuries, one or two serious, no fatalities.
2-harm: many injuries, several serious, a couple of fatalities.
3-harm: widespread injuries, many serious, several fatalities.
4-harm: widespread serious injuries, many fatalities.
5-harm and more: widespread fatalities, few survivors.
Then, in the example, Dremmeler's gang inflicts 2 harm on Uncle's gang (Uncle's the PC), and two of his gang members just die, just like that, "looking through crosshairs" style. Uncle also takes 2 harm, since he's leading the gang. Trying to escape, Uncle's gang takes more harm, and ends up with just a few of his gang left alive, and Uncle himself badly hurt.
In your playbook, you wrote, "When you take harm as a gang, take harm as a gang," hence my confusion. How would you suggest we interpret gang "fatalities" on the gang harm countdown with the rat pack?
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Your confusion, confuses me as well. It sounds more like an organization issue.
When you take harm, either as a gang or as individuals, you should be detailing and keeping track of which members are either dead or unconscious (or whatever), and what bonus’ and wants you’re missing because of death.
^from the rat-pack playbook
There is a rat-pack being played in one of my games. I have the PC keep track of all their gang members on a separate sheet. Each gang member has their own wheel for individual harm and the advancements or hinderances they bring to the gang.
For gang combat(on another sheet or index card), I have the PC make a circle for every member with the gang members name under the circle. As casualties happen they fill in the circle to represent death then reference it to the sheet that has the individual wheels. The PC picks who dies(fills in the circle on the index card) then cross references it to the individual sheet to keep track of advancements or hinderances that the gang currently has.
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I'm unclear on this issue as well. Let's say you are fighting as a gang (2 elder, 5 middluns and 2 pups) against a gunlugger (effectively small gang vs. small gang). The gunlugger inflicts 4 harm to your gang. How is that applied?
Looking at the gang countdown clock, this would normally incur widespread serious injuries and many fatalities. It seems though that this is ignored (at least in terms of death) for the Rat-Pack as it has been stated that kids only die when you past 12. Are a couple middluns and an elder injured and your gang is now at 10 o'clock and 2 harm away from having the first kid die? It doesn't seem you can say a pup is (really) injured, because 1 harm kills a pup. If the fight breaks off at this point, does it then become individual damage to be kept track of on each individual kid's harm wheel? Who decides how the harm is allocated?
It would be great if someone could detail what happens if a full Rat-Pack gang takes 4 harm twice, both in the combat and then what that looks like to the Rat-Pack after the combat is over, in terms of how injuries are applied.
Thanks!