Salty Dogs
An Apocalypse World conversion for nautical adventures. Play as a crew of scurvy scallywags, bloodthirsty looters, courageous naval officers, or intrepid explorers.

Salty Dogs has these game principles:
- Explore an interesting world
- Give the players adventure on the high seas

Salty Dogs makes these assumptions about your game world:
- The high seas are where men and women risk everything to make their fortune
- The high seas are where men and women battle to decide the fate of their country
- The high seas hide dark and ineffable beings that lie beneath
- The players have sailed forth together, their fates and the ship's intertwined

While intended for use with a world similar to Earth's Age of Sail, this system could be easily adopted to depict other times and places, such as a Greek trading ship criss-crossing the Aegean, a carrier in the 1940s Pacific, or aliens sailing ion-powered ships across the seas of the Galilean moons.

Stats:
Salt: Seamanship (cool)
Iron: Battle (hard)
Gold: Negotiation (hot)
Glass: Learning (sharp)
Jade: Magic (weird)

Basic Move List:

Salt:
Maneuver
Iron:
Fire!
Swashbuckle
Gold:
Parrrley
Take Stock
Glass:
Consult Knowledge
Take Your Bearings
Jade:
Listen to the Deeps

Crew Loyalty:
Dogpack
Muster

Context-dependant:
Make Sail
Size Them Up

Independant:
Carouse

Any move that refers to "you" can also refer to crew or a ship under your command.

Maneuver
When you try to evade strife or establish a positional advantage, roll +salt.
On a 10+, you have the advantage and take +1 forward.
On a 7-9, the GM will offer you a tough choice.


Fire!
When you aim and fire guns, roll +iron.
On a 10+, it's a direct hit, and you deal full damage. Good show, lads.
On a 7-9, choose one: you must maneuver into harm's way to get the shot, or you take what you can get (-1 damage)

Swashbuckle
When you fight at close range with cutlass and pistol, roll +iron.
10+, you deal damage, and your enemies can't counterattack.
7-9, you deal damage, but they counterattack.

When crews are fighting, add +1 damage for each size category the attacker is larger, and subtract 1 for each size it's smaller.


Parrrley
When you seduce or manipulate someone, roll +gold.
If it's an NPC, on a 10+, your promise is enough. On a 7-9, they want something concrete.
If it's a PC, on a 10+, if they do it, they gain xp, and if they don't, they must maneuver. On a 7-9, choose one of those.

Take Stock
When you examine your ship's hold to check your supplies,  roll +gold.
On a 10+, the GM will tell you precisely how much you have; on a 7-9, he tells you an estimate, but no more. On a 6-, tell the GM how much you think you have, and they will secretly decide whether you're right.

Consult Knowledge
When you consult your accumulated knowledge about the order of things, roll +glass.
On a 10+, the GM will tell you something useful and interesting about the subject.
On a 7-9, it's just interesting; it's up to you to make it useful.

Take your Bearings
When examine your situation, roll +glass.
On a 10+, hold 3; on a 7-9, hold 1.
The GM can spend your hold by showing you threats on the horizon, giving you time to react and +1 forward against the threat.
You can spend your hold by asking any of these:
- What is my position, speed, and direction?
- Which enemy is the biggest threat to me?
- What enemy is most vulnerable to me?
- What's the best way in/out/past?
- What happened here recently?
- What is about to happen?
- Who's really in charge here?
- What is not what it appears to be?
When you act on the GM's answers, you get +1 forward.

Listen to the Deeps
When you open your mind to the strange and alien songs of the underdeep, roll +jade.
On a 10+, the GM will tell you something useful and interesting, and may ask you something.
On a 7-9, the GM will tell you an impression, nothing more.


Dogpack
Whenyou order your crew to do something they'd rather not, roll +loyalty.

On a 10+, yarr, they do it.
On a 7-9, they do it, but mark 1.
On a miss, count your marks.
1-2: They do it, but mark 1.
3-6: The GM chooses one:
- They look to someone else to confirm the order
- They grumble and drag their feet
- You owe them
7-10: The GM chooses 2 of the above, or 1 of these:
- They do it, but take -1 to loyalty rolls until the next shore leave.
- They do it, but someone has their backing to challenge you.
- They openly defy your order.

When you give your men liberty, erase all your marks.

Muster
When you muster your crew after liberty, roll +loyalty.
On a 10+, no weaknesses apply.
On a 7-9, one weakness of the GM's choice applies.
On a 6-, all weaknesses apply.


Make Sail
When your ship travels the high seas, assign jobs. Everyone with a job rolls. On a 10+, they get an extra, as noted; on a 7-9, they do their jobs as expected.
The navigator master rolls +salt. 10+, reduce the travel time.
The lookout rolls +glass. 10+, spot any trouble ahead of time.
The quartermaster rolls +gold. Reduce ration/grog use.

Size Them Up
When you size someone up, choose a stat and roll. On a 10+, while you're interacting with them, you can ask that question and one other. On a 7-9, just that question.
Salt: What does your character intend to do?
Iron: How is your character vulnerable?
Gold: How could I get your character to _______?
Glass: Is your character telling the truth?
Jade: What's your character really feeling?



Carouse
When your crew celebrates a triumph, spend 1 grog and roll. Spend extra, 1 for 1, to add +grog spent to the roll. On 10+, choose 3; on 7-9, choose 1. On a miss, you still choose 1, but things get really out of hand.
- Erase 3 marks from your loyalty count
- The crew informs you of an interesting rumor
- The crew gives you useful information
- The crew is not dreadfully hung over



Basic moves look good. Playbooks are next.

Feedback and ideas welcome.

For my nautical RPG Salty Dogs I have:

Weatherbones
When you try to predict the weather by feeling the sea wind in your bones, tell the GM what you hope the weather will be and roll +salt.
On a 10+, you're right.
On a 7-9, it's not what you wanted, but might be close enough for your current purposes.
On a miss, the GM will decide the weather, and won't tell you what's coming until it's upon you.

So that's pretty similar to your move. Great minds think alike.

As for earthquakes, I think they and other natural disasters or catastrophes should have their own specific move. This separates the players who want to cause havoc and mass destruction from those who simply want to be in control of the scenery and/or give some peasants their much-needed rain. I think that's one of the keys to when to split moves: what are players trying to do with this? If there are two different purposes, maybe it can be split up. Try this:

When you call forth the destructive wrath of earth and sky, say what disaster you're calling forth and what you want it to effect, then roll +wis.
On a 10+, you destroy what you intended and nothing further.
On a 7-9, you destroy much more or much less than you intended.
On a miss, either the disaster affects your allies, or you reabsorb the spell's energies, taking 2 harm.

Auberney's suggestion is similar to the Race/Class system in D+D or DW, except that it's 50/50. Possible, but it would be easier (not necessarily better) for, like D&D, the race to provide some kind of stat boost, extra move, other modifier, or some combination of those three, and the player is still primarily their class/role. Perhaps all Gorillas have +1 Strength and access to the move "Smash Things", while Orangutans have +1 Intelligence and "Puzzle it Out".

Another option would be to do the regular class-only playbooks, but make sure each race is represented in more than one playbook. You could have let's say the Berserker and Guardian for gorillas, the Handychimp and Sneaker for chimps, and the Elder and Doctor for orangutans.

If a player wants to make a character who was a hybrid of more than one idea, that's what multiclassing (IE "take a move from another playbook") is for. For "ape moves", couldn't you just add them to the list of basic moves? Characters are already somewhat restricted in what basic moves they can make useful just based on their stats, so it might not be necessary to make players put skill points into them to restrict their use.

What was the problem you ran into with role-based playbooks?