Also: I set up a design blog for World on the Edge! I turned the first part of my OP here into a Welcome post for the blog. I'll probably conduct most of my design work there (and you're all welcome to join me!), and leave forum posts for when I've got a particularly thorny problem or need more crowdsourcing.

Yeah, fronts are something that instantly seemed like they'd map easily to OtE.

"Down play violence" is an insteresting point. The whole atmosphere of danger thing really worked in my game to create a sense in most of the players minds that things were so deadly dangerous that they could give no quarter. Many groups, even just regular gutterpunks, became "kill on sight" to them. It felt liks such D&D/videogame thinking. I always wished I could get them to treat this more like modern life in a big city, even a strange and fucked up and dangerous one. I wanted more focus on day to day life, and less focus on which enemies would be slaughtered in the streets today. I whined about it somewhat, but never found an effective way to reinforce that.

I think that's going to be a crucial issue to navigate as I proceed. I am supposed to evoke danger, but I think it's not so much action-movie danger as the everyday terror of modern life, magnified and distorted.

Perhaps that means that new campaigns and character's always start as foreigners arriving at the airport and they end by becoming what amounts to citizens. What you could deal with here is culture shock and assimilation as reality shock and normalization. The point where the secrets are uncovered and the surrealness everyday (and, as such, no longer dangerous or strange) is the point when they retire.

That's a fascinating take and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The original game stipulates that all starting characters are newcomers to the island, and when a player changes to a new character, then they have the opportunity to create a native.

I've been wavering on whether to preserve that for WotE, because the playbook structure pushes me more toward delineating some of the more iconic subtypes of Al Amarjan weirdo--mutant, psychic, gangbanger, conspirator, fringe scientist, etc, with newcomer ("Burger) in local slang) being but one variety. It would feel weird to make a bunch of playbooks that are all Burger. I'll get more in-depth into that as I proceed through the book. For now, I think I'll reserve judgment. Once I've got all my groundrules in place, I'll be able to better make that call.

Peace,
-Joel

So, Over the Edge was one of my formative roleplaying experiences--I didn't encounter it until college, but it busted so many of my gameplay and game design paradigms that I can honestly say I wouldn't be the gamer I am today without it. The only more significant event in my roleplaying history is discovering Vincent's blog and the Forge.

I GMed an OtE campaign from about 2000-2009. It was awkward at its best and miserable at its worst. Part of that was a complete mismatch of play agendas and expectations across the group, but it's also clear to me that I simply didn't have the techniques and vision to helm the ship at all, much less navigate it into the region of play that would have been fulfilling for me.

And then came Apocalypse World. When I read it, the thought hit my brain like a lightning bolt: principles like these could've made OtE work for me!

So here we are! Welcome to World on the Edge, the Over the Edge hack of Apocalypse World. I'm going to use this forum (as well as my Google+ account) to publically and collaboratively share my design process. If you've a love or curiosity for OtE and/or Apocalypse World, I hope you'll join me and pitch in to the conversation!

To start with, I'm reading through my OtE book and noting what it actually says about its rules and play practices. I suspect that simply reading the text mindfully, the way I read an indie text these days--that is, taking everything it says seriously as principles of play, not just fluff or advice--will get me halfway to what I'm looking for.

The other purpose of the read-through is to check for compatibility with the AW rules and principles--seeing where they line up, where they clash, where one could be adapted to fit the other, and where something on one side or the other just needs to be slashed.

So!

Beginning at the beginning, here's the back of the book blurb:

Welcome to Al Amarja, the mysterious mediterranean island that is home to all that is sinister and bizarre. If it troubles you in your dreams, if it scares you, if you hope it isn't true, you'll find it here. This is the setting of Over the Edge, the roleplaying game of surreal danger.

So, mysterious, sinister, bizarre, troubling, scary, surreal, danger. Pretty evocative, but also vague. I remember rattling off a bunch of adjectives like this to my players, but for some reason they didn't really pick up on the seedy, messily human element of the setting that I was hoping to bring out. Instead they played it more or less like D&D, except that the dungeons were neighborhoods and the goblins were street gangs. I'll need more to go on if I'm gonna rise above that. Let's see what the Introduction has to tell us:

The game pits the player characters against all manner of decadent, evil, twisted, mind-boggling, blood-curdling, soul-rending, ego-shattering experience. The Game Moderator (GM) is called upon to evoke an atmosphere of surreal danger. The players are called on to deal with the danger to body and soul, to thrive and accomplish their own goals in spite of it. Enjoy.

Again with the adjectives! But we seem to be getting somewhere. There's a GM job and a player job, right there. The GM'sa first duty is to evoke an atmosphere of surreal danger. That's still a little vague, but it's a start. When I GMed, if I'd had this mantra as a fall-back, I might not have been so lost all the time. "Man, I have no effing idea what to do right now. Oh, right--'evoke an atmosphere of surreal danger!' Got it!"

The player role is what really stands out to me, though. Deal with the danger to body and soul, to thrive and accomplish their own goals in spite of it. At first it seems pretty basic and obvious: the GM evokes danger, you deal with the danger. But the word that jumps out to me is "thrive." Thriving means more than surviving, more than escaping danger, more than beating bad guys. Thriving implies a very human yearning. Thriving means defiance and nerve. Thriving means joy. Thriving means making a life for yourself, carving a little piece of happiness out of all that mind-boggling, blood-curdling, soul-rending, ego-shattering misery.

To thrive in spite of surreal danger to body and soul. Now THERE'S a game premise. That's going to be my central principle as I proceed.

Thoughts? People who've played OtE, how does that match up with your experience? AW-savvy folks, do you see fruitful avenues to travel with this? Anything else about the text jump out at you?

Hmm, gotcha. Gives me a little shudder, but gotcha.