My intuition is to go by the playbooks. They get a shit-ton more scrutiny than the gear+crap section. It's the playbooks that people actually look at and play by.

That said, hey, I'd be perfectly happy to hear Vx chime in with the errata.



 

"Suckering Someone: When you attack someone unsuspecting or helpless, ask the MC if you could miss. If you could, treat it as going aggro, bur your victim has no choice to cave and do what you want. If you couldn't, you simply inflict harm as established."  If you can miss, you roll, but on 10+ they have to take the harm - they can't cave. To quote, "Since the victim doesn't have the option to cave, a 10+ means they have to take the harm." If you can't possibly miss, there's no uncertainty to roll for, so they take the dmg. I think I described it fairly as being the replacement for Go Aggro in certain situations. Perhaps I should have used more nuance?

As to GA:
"If that's not the Move for threatening violence, what is it? How could it be more clear?"

Because "to do it, do it." Going aggro is triggered by going aggro. Going aggro is given a definition on pg 139:  "Going aggro on someone means threatening or attacking them when it’s not, or not yet, a fight. Use it whenever the character’s definitely the aggressor: when the target isn’t expecting the attack, isn’t prepared to fight back, doesn’t want to fight back, or can’t fight back effectively." Which, broken out, goes back to the numbered list I provided in my previous post. In other words, a shit-ton of things unrelated to threatening someone seems to trigger the "threaten" move. To quote, "Going aggro on someone means threatening or attacking when when it's not, or not yet, a fight." It's literally inclusive of "shooting someone in the face who thought we were still having an argument", which involves no threats, and no caves to in (that actually seems to turn it back into sucker someone). In fact, the 7-9 description suggests you *didn't* threaten: you actively attacked ("A 7-9 is a hit, but that doesn't mean the attack itself has to connect") as your means of altering behavior.

Meanwhile, "threats" are explicitly listed under Manipulate.

It used to be clear that Go Aggro was "earnest threat of violence, where failure to get what you want *would* end in violence" and manipulate was "empty threat of violence." Now Manipulate really doesn't give a shit about whether your leverage is sincere or not, and Go Aggro is expanded to "attacking someone who's not expecting to be attacked," with conflicting examples as to whether a threat is actually involved. It's actually not at all "the" threat move; it seems to be "the" "uncontested violence" move, with "threat" being "verbal violence", but... no. No, it's definitely not so clearcut "*the* move for threatening violence" that it couldn't be more clear.

Maybe I still have it in me to write the Faceless and Maestro D' foci?

It would be pretty great if you did. Especially now that the Operator is gone, which seemed like a really difficult playbook to grok for everyone.

I'd happily offer help turning it into a final, pretty product, but... that's actually not an expertise that I have. I could probably help turn it into *something*.

Forgive me if this has been answered before: google didn't help, and the search function brought up mostly "inspirations."

I've been asked to MC a DW game for the first time. Stupidly, I agreed, so I've been reviewing the rules. The ration rules are giving me pause, though, and I was hoping some might help clarify.

Salient points:
- Undertake a Perilous Journey suggests a journey costs 1 ration/day
- Human Hunter starting move states the character doesn't have to consume a ration when making camp (in context X), suggesting rations are 1/character/day
-Make Camp consumes a ration, and again, its phrasing suggests 1/character/day
-Quartermaster skill, on 10+, reduces number of rations required by 1. On a 7-9, normal ration consumption.

Things I'd like to clarify:
1) It's not explicitly stated, but it seems to me that the ration cost of Perilous Journey and the ration cost of Make Camp are the same cost; you make camp each night, and you measure your journey as 1ration/day. That is, this is a cost of 1/day, not 1/day of travel + 1/night of camping.

2) Again, I can't find the explicit statement, but it seems to me the cost is 1 ration / day / character. A five day journey with a party of 3 ought to consume 15 rations. Right?

3) If I understand the above two, it seems like the quartermaster skill check is a bit odd.

A 10+ on trailblazer, if it saves even a day, will save a number of rations equal to the number of members in the party. If it saves more than that, it grows in multiples. Likewise, a miss would be measured in large proportions of total ration cost. Scout 10+ can take a huge amount of sting out of an encounter; a miss can really hurt. QM, on the other hand, on a miss can theoretically be crippling, and on a 10+ seems to have essentially no value over a 7-9 (e.g., a party of four traveling for a week, on a 10+, saves 1 ration off of 28; by comparison, a trailblazer 10+ saving even one day of travel would save 4 rations).

That is, trailblazer and scout each have a "holy shit," "status quo," and "nice!" category, depending on the roll. QM seems to only have "holy shit" and "status quo".  It just doesn't quite seem to fit the magnitude of the other two roles, at least assuming I've understood the ration counts correctly, and the QM move correctly.

Any guidance?

Hello there,

I recently picked up the sprawl and I'm dissecting it alongside my favorite co-player, and some questions have come bubbling up. I hope the community here doesn't mind if I share them in this thread as they do so.

The first big one:

The moves in AW tend to use a playbook's main stat for their function, and often include a move that allows them to use that main stat in other, highly-used moves for that playbook. To give an example: the brainer is going to have weird +2. Of their 6 moves, 1 is a weird bonus, 3 roll +weird, and 2 substitute +weird for other stats (one for hot, and one for sharp). In other words, this character is (a) fucking weird, and (b) highly competent. All the playbooks have a similar effect, though not all are 6/6 like the brainer.

By comparison, looking at the Sprawl book, I see the hacker in particular is quite diversified. The hacker seems to require +synth, +mind, +edge, and +cool to run the Matrix moves, and has no playbook moves to transfer their competence at +mind (or whatever else) over into other moves.

I was wondering what the intention here is? I see that for some things you can replace normal rolls with +synth if you have the appropriate cyber-parts, so I can see a general sort of push to incentivize people to chrome up. The flip side is, as far as I can see, even if the decker wanted to chrome up, it wouldn't affect most of their moves, so that doesn't seem like the underlying design decision.

Can anyone clarify for me what they feel the effect on gameplay is of this change in stats emphasis, and de-powering of deckers is? The other playbooks don't seem so diversified, so it seems like an intentional decision.

I get the impression (on various boards) that people don't respond well when I liken AW tropes to movie tropes.  L:->  But for me, this is another example of how AW mimics movie reality, not "real" reality.  I don't find it necessary to consider the Skinner's power supernatural, because my group and I are creating something that flows rather like a movie.  When that moment comes, and that sexy leading character is hit by those perfect blue lights and the soundtrack is awesome and the perfect body is being revealed, the plot may be in the middle of a fire or a fight scene, but for ten to thirty seconds all the camera sees - and therefore all we are looking at - is the Skinner.

I think you've hit on a key point here.

We see things like this in movies all the time. The smokin' hot protagonist drops the shoulder of their blouse, and everyone's eyes are pinned to that little patch of bare skin. The camera is pinned to it. Our shot goes medium-close, and all we see is the curve of their neck, the shadow of the clavicle. Reverse shot to the antagonist, nostrils flared, pupils dilated, lip glistening with just the smallest dot of unrestrained saliva. Shot retreats to medium distance, and we're suddenly surprised that one of the protagonist's teammates has somehow been next to the antagonist the whole time, and slits their throat!

It's a pretty common move for the world to narrow down to "our attention", and then be shocked that other parts of the world continued to move when our attention is broken - much like someone riding into a wall that *they* should have seen, but our camera didn't. It would seem like a comic trope, but we see its equivalent in action all of the time. And it's awesome.