A thought provoking and well written piece.


In terms of the dynamic of my game; entirely by accident two out of the four major factions in Steel City are currently led by women, one was lead by a brother/sister pair and the remaining one rotates leaders on a minute-to-minute basis.
Women are leaders in my game, and they are followers. They're the meanest, nastiest pieces of work around like Mimi; but they're also no-nonsense doctors who will fix you up without a complaint as long as you're fair with payment, like Kettle.
Men are big and scary brutes like Stomp, The Faceless; but kind, caring and protective (like Stomp, The Faceless).


The Apocalypse means the complete breakdown of social order. The post-apocalypse means that people start to seep back into the hole left behind, fitting themselves where they fit regardless of gender, colour or sexuality.


Generally I think I've handled it pretty well, and I couldn't be prouder of my players for how they act around NPCs; female or otherwise. In terms of what I would do differently, I always always always think I should be adding more depth to female characters (I know, make them just not that complicated) partially due to my instincts as an amateur writer who is aware of his masculinity, but we're getting some juicy plothooks along those lines bubbling to the surface at the moment.
Newton respects Stomp for his strength, but she hates it when he gets protective and he's also slightly scared of her, so there's some interesting push-and-pull going on there. Our Brainer did a Deep Brain Scan on Kettle, and found out that the reason she's constantly high on chillstabs is that an accident left her with nerve damage when she was a young woman. Lovely stuff.
The flipside of this is that I have a tendency to make male characters less interesting as I overcompensate in the other direction, but the world is full of enough male-focused stories, and I have an inherent advantage when it comes to creating male characters (being male myself) so I don't consider this in urgent need of fixing.


I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on the subject.

Feels a bit weird to me posting about a "rival" system on these forums, but since becoming an active member of the community I thought I'd share something cool that I found out about recently.


Open Legend is an open source roleplaying system that is based around opening up as many options as possible for both the players and the GM. The author seems to have come to a lot of the same conclusions as Vincent did, things like simplified wealth so you don't have to track currency, GM moves to keep players missing rolls interesting, and a focus on story-justification for your actions rather than just "I attack". It's also in the process of ongoing development, and there's a Discord server and a forum where the author regularly takes input and provides his reasoning for creative decisions, which the amateur game-designer in me loves.


Seems pretty awesome so far. I don't think it will shift me away from Apocalypse World when it comes to post-apocalyptic coolness, fantasy coolness from Dungeon World, or other kinds of coolness from the other PbtA games, but for different settings it might be my first port of call. It's especially easy to port into existing fiction, as I found out by making a complete Hack for The Witcher and Star Wars in 2 and 3 hours respectively. You can check out the full rules - for free - here and the Kickstarter for the new Steam Punk X Dark Fantasy setting (being written by Ed Greenwood, who made the Forgotten Realms and Matt Mercer of Critical Role; I'm fanboy-ing out so hard) here. If nothing else, it's an interesting case-study since the design decisions are reasonably well documented.

We kicked off this week's session with Vega's love letter, which was pretty much how I came up with it last week. Vega missed the sharp roll, so she got to find out that Stomp had sold her prisoner into slavery and slept with her closest rival, Newton, but everyone in her hold was annoyed that she'd taken the time off.

Stomp picked up a small hold as an advance when he earned xp while doing Hx at the end of last session, so he had spent a couple of days setting up The New Stomping Ground in an old shopping precinct between Forge and the Wild Dogs. His citizens were a bunch of violent fuckers, earning money through protection rackets and competing in blood sports for fun. Due to a 7-9 hit on the Wealth roll things were going okay, except they were all tearing into each other like a bunch of rabid animals. Nif had been starving for a few days, and was hanging around the fighting pit causing trouble. He took a bit of a beating from Rice, one of the Wild Dogs who had migrated Stomp's hold, but developed a taste for blood in the process, picking up Feral and happily gorging himself on torn off ears and severed extremities.


Rhythm was a bit battered and bloodied from the events of the past few sessions, so went to find Kettle to get stitched up. He performed a little song for her, using Artful and Gracious to get his treatment for free, and while he was blissed out on chillstabs he opened his brain, trying to learn the strange lullaby Nif had been singing while he butchered the Wild Dogs in the market. Rhythm didn't manage to learn the tune, but he saw the porcelain mask of Nif's mother and knew he would have to talk to her if he wanted more.


Meanwhile, Vega and Phoenix were getting ready to go give Stomp a gift basket (read: sack of "meat") to help him settle in to the neighbourhood and covertly see what was going on. As they were pulling out of the hold, they noticed the lights start flickering again. At The New Stomping Ground, the brawl was in full swing. Stomp was trying and failing to establish order, much to Vega's amusement. With the gift basket handed over, Phoenix and Vega were planning on heading back to the power plant to try and get the hungry generator running again and an exasperated Stomp decided he didn't want to deal with his citizens, so he executed Balls - the worst offender - and tagged along.


They passed through Wild Dogs territory without issue, though Stomp did have a bit of a lovers' quarrel with Newton (she didn't like him trying to be protective of her) but Lancer's Lot were another matter. Between them, Stomp and Phoenix had slaughtered dozens of the knights outside the gates of Forge, so they were very careful picking there way through that section of the city. Vega spotted some bikes following down parallel streets, but they didn't attack. When the travelling party reached the river however, they found that the bridge had collapsed. Phoenix carefully lead them down the bank and forded the river, but progress up the slope of the far bank was much slower. When they reached the top, they found a contingent of Lancer's Lot waiting. After some tense discussion, the knights agreed to let them pass. Unfortunately, at this point Rhythm used Bonefeel to appear from the back of Phoenix's truck and challenged them to a joust on the Driver's behalf. One of the knights threw down his gauntlet, and Phoenix reluctantly accepted. They set up at opposite ends of the street and charged, Rhythm used his battlesong to make the knights admire his patron with Artful and Gracious, and to Crack Open the World and use Augury to contact Mother. The Joust went in Phoenix's favour, and he was made an honorary knight, while Rhythm was sat on the roof, learning the lullaby of the maelstrom to satisfy his morbid curiosity.


Nif was also listening to Mother, causing as much chaos as he could by riling up the citizens of The New Stomping Ground into a blood-frenzy. He terrified some of them into helping him find Mimi, who was still hunting him, and he knew she was close.


The travelling group arrived at the power station, and cautiously approached the generator. Rhythm heard metal claws pattering in the vents, and enlisted Stomp's help to find out what it was. He saw glassy eyes in the darkness, and waited until it got closer to grab it and pull it into the open. A shiny, metal, cat-sized wolf went into a frenzy, clawing and biting at the musician. Phoenix opened his brain to try and work out what it was, but only succeeded in drawing the attention of the Wolves of the Maelstrom. Stomp killed the wolf, smashing it into the ground, while Phoenix took off running for safety. Rhythm followed, bleeding out badly and carrying the metallic remains. Vega saw the local techies watching her, and threatened to smash the generator to draw them out. When the remaining one of Tum Tum stepped out, Stomp and Vega grabbed her and fed her into the machine, securing them electricity for another couple of weeks.


Another interesting session, especially all the passive-aggressive behaviour between Vega and Stomp that came out in play. With Forge yet again left unprotected, and a pissed off Mimi and Newton the slaver in the area, there will definitely be consequences. I'm planning on adding an option to Crack Open the World as a custom move to represent the lullaby; currently thinking of inflicting ?-harm to the listeners, but I'll have a ponder before righting up. I'd appreciate any ideas. Also, Stomp advanced again, picking a second character; I look forward to meeting them next session.

Yes! Much better!


I like all of the new moves, but since you asked, a few points:

• Maybe Maelstrom Voodoo would work better as a modified Go Aggro with rolling +Weird and inflicting ?-harm, to give the MC a better idea of what they should say in response
• Don't worry about balancing the "lose something" option by putting a barter limit on it; if the item is super valuable then the character should be keeping track of it anyway and cutting that bit makes it less wordy. "They lose one thing that isn't big and they don't keep careful track of (decide what with your MC)"
• I see what you're going for with the curse being worse on a hit (I had a custom move in one of my games which worked the same) but that might confuse some players, and makes taking +1Weird actually quite bad. Also, keeping constant track of the +2 or -1 could be a bit annoying. I would flip the results so a 10+ is good - they're keeping control of the curse, which is easier if they're weirder - and cut the +2/-1 in favour of just picking 1 option, or 2 on a miss.
• On the special move, you don't need to say they take -1 ongoing. "They take -1 the next time they try to avoid their fate" would be enough to give the move some teeth without adding confusion as to when they're no longer in the same "avoiding their fate" situation

Overall, much improved. Can't wait to see where you go from here.

I like the idea, and the fiction is super cool, but I worry it will lead to very antisocial characters. The closest existing playbook to my mind is the Brainer, but they have a lot of "helpful" tools that the other players can come to them to take advantage of and things like Unnatural Lust Transfixion that help attach them to other players and NPCs. I get that it's the whole point of the playbook that they bring bad luck, but that's not a recipe for a character that the other characters want to be around. While it's awesome for a character to end up as a villain over the course of a campaign, I don't see any situations where The Jinx would be an ally rather than an enemy. You could do with adding something to give them a reason to interact with other players and NPCs, and vice versa.


Fiction aside, on a mechanical level:

• Dark Embrace: From some of your options for who the curse inflicts, it is literally impossible for this move to ever trigger. Also, making it clearer what counts as intentional. My suggestion - "You can intentionally inflict your curse, if you do so mark experience"
• Lots of moves relying on +Weird rolls, not a problem per se, but make sure you're aware that there's no reason for the player to not pick the +1Weird move from the Brainer for their first upgrade
• Dark Omens: Make it a -1 to a roll rather than an automatic miss maybe, less feel-bad moments that way. Possibly increase the number of hold to make it a bit more powerful.
• Voodoo: Why is the result for a miss better than the result for a 10+? and what happens if you roll a miss versus a player?
• Love the gear lists, so much apocalyptica. Shouldn't Sharpened teeth and nails be implanted?
• The curse has lots of good fictional teeth, but could do with a mechanical effect. Maybe change threat types for NPCs similar to the Show? Also, less death more living in agony will lead to cooler story moments. It's going to be a pretty miserable game if everyone your character talks to just straight-up dies with no way to avoid it; especially for other players who can never touch/meet your gaze/speak your name or they just have their character die.
• Change the special to "the next time they..." rather than whenever they confront your prediction. The way it's currently worded, you can tell the Skinner he'll die in a hail of bullets and now he takes -1 every time he tries to talk his way out of a situation without violence, and that majorly sucks for that player; and not in the fun way.

Very cool idea overall, just needs some more iterations. I look forward to seeing the changes you make.

Some ideas, feel free to steal ruthlessly:

• Threaten her with things that can't be solved with overwhelming firepower.
• Lean on your PC-NPC-PC triangles so that if she kills someone, one of the other players will be pissed.
• If she's acting like a murder-machine, have the NPCs treat her like a murder-machine.
• Find the NPCs she likes and have them act slightly against her (like "borrowing" some of her stuff or something) so that if she solves the problem with violence, she's ruining her own friendships.
• When she kills the gang-leader, have his young daughter appear and start crying so the Battlebabe feels like a monster, and maybe now she has a kid to look after if she feels responsible.

Real example from my AP: Steel City game, the Faceless has pretty much the same problem as your Battlebabe in that he's ridiculously overkill.
The Faceless was threatening the Hardholder's mechanic to get her to fix his car, he hit the roll on a 7-9 so she ran off to find the hardholder (if he hadn't failed, someone else would have reported what he did). The Hardholder needless to say wasn't pleased, so she's leaning on him to not do anything like that again. He even went to apologise to the mechanic in the last session because of this peer pressure.


A key thing to remember is that not all threats are of the violent kind, a threat is just something that has the potential to interfere with the player's goals. There's a fantastic thread here where there's an honest discussion of how a puppy can be a threat to a player simply by being adorable. I encourage you to give it a read.


If you're hankering for the violent kind of threat, just have the enemies she's facing be smart. Maybe they have a sniper, never getting in range of her shotgun and forcing her on a tense chase through the ruins, trying to keep her head down while keeping track of the danger (yeah, she'll almost definitely win, but the players always win because they're just that badass). If she's slaughtered a local gang, have some of the remnants spring nasty surprises, like dropping a grenade right on top of her in the middle of the hold (it's easy to inflict damage if you don't care about surviving). Remember all this time that Not To Be Fucked With only works for a full on pitched battle, scuffles in alleyways don't count.


Hope this helped; it's a common problem that's hard to solve while still being a fan of the players' characters, but it is manageable given a few of these useful tools.

Quote from: Dabrainbox on October 13, 2016, 06:44:57 AM

Not knowing any first aid, he asked his mask for advice, but Norman (Grotesque - Pain Addict) simply suggested to him that Vega had too many fingers.

Holy fuck dude.

I need one of my players to go Faceless.

I know right? Wait until you see what he got up to last session. Report coming later today!

I'm running a game that has a player as The Show, and they seem to be enjoying it so far. It's definitely a high mind-share character as you say. They have the tools for causing trouble but not getting out of it like the Battlebabe, and the lack of external motivation like the Skinner so it's not one for  the faint of heart. The player needs to be willing to cause chaos and surf the resulting tidal wave to get full enjoyment from the playbook.


The leash holding has worked out fun so far; the Driver holding the leash is never happy when they're asked to spend 3-barter on lifestyle for another character, but the occasional influx of 10-barter is making it worth it, for now. Crack Open the World hasn't seen much use, save for boosting allies in battle. I think that's partially because a lot of the options reference stuff the MC does that the players might not understand, and it being seen as a bit of a nuclear option.


Overall, so far so awesome. Check out AP: Steel City for the sitch with regards to my game, and what The Show has been up to, got another session coming up that should be written up by Thursday.