Hello

I am thinking about Retro SF hack, based on the golden era SF, and leaning more in the retro hard-sf direction (my main inspirations are Polish SF writers - some early works of Stanislaw Lem, but also others - general it will have delicate soviet era flavor): atomic rockets, low techlevel computers and automata, exploration, etc.

Currently I am assuming three archetypes: coordinator & pilot (kind'a captain - can be potentially broken between two classes later on), engineer and scientist.

- every character will be picking options of the rocket, so coordinator will choose general tonnage and drive plus maybe some other options (recon rocket, recon satellites - using film rolls of course), engineer will be able to select additional equipment (ground vehicles, automata, etc), scientist will be picking science equipment ('computer', more extensive lab, thermonuclear devices for seismic tests)
- bits of equipments will be giving additional moves
- tradeoff between the size of rocket and other parameters (only smaller rocket will be able to do atmospheric manuevring) - here I have a bit of difficulty of what should be a tradeoff for larger rocket
- I want this to more or less work as PvE without "hard" conflicts between characters

Characters will be getting mission briefing, which would be kind of main threat for them. No burning, but some kind of graph for creating general mission for MC. High level option:
- exploration (new planet)
- investigation (mysterious signal, some strange activity)
- rescue mission

There will be some mission criteria: "gather information on what happened to previous mission" for instance.
When the characters uncover all important information bits, they can consider their mission done (should they know how much they need to ncover?)

But characters will also have their personal success criteria:
- coordinator: gets points for completing mission as fully as possible
- engineer: points for conserving rocket/team resources and keeping everything working and undestroyed
- scientist: gathering science data (maybe I should call it Impact Factor points?) - this can coincide with the main mission, but doesn't have to
- pilot (optional): planet/system exploration (mapping, etc.)

Moves ideas:
Coordinator
Remind of the Mission - social moves, allowing him to appeal to the characters sense of duty, so they focus on the mission.

Engineer
Repair - fix stuff, which will eat up resources and in case of 7-9 can also need some additional stuff (cannibalise something in the rocket, gather some local resources, use up more spare parts)

Scientist
Research - gather research data, in case of 7-9 could get entire team in jeopardy, break something, disturb something locally.

Pilot
Explore - this I have trouble with.

Issues:
- how much picks characters should have
- how much dedicated moves
- what general moves to pick for them, and what moves to leave for fiction
- should all character be able to use moves from special stuff picked by others
-- no (why?)
-- yes (won't that make them feel redundant?)
-- yes but with lower attributes ratings (maybe the better you are at 'your' stuff, the worse you are at other)
- balancing rocket size - higher 'mission cap' for larger?

How to do development:
- don't: one mission - one player wins
- additional options for rocket (with rocket size dependent on how much options players taken)
- additional character development
- larger crew with smaller specialty areas (engineer + robotics expert instead of engineer, multiple specialty scientists)

Things I missed here? Obvious issues I am not seeing?

My first hack idea, and any insights, reading suggestions, inputs - anything, will be very welcome.

I am wondering whether someone can help me with custom move for mutant NPC. Generally she is car-gang boss, called Mustang (go figure), and she has third eye - literally.
So I decided to give her some kind of mind-control powers. And now I wonder how exactly custom move for that should work:

When Mustang uses her Third Eye on you, you roll +Weird.
On 10+ you are unmoved. On 7-9 MC keeps 1, if you lose he keeps 3.

When Mustang wants something from you, MC can spend 1 to make you do it. If you don't do it - you act under pressure.

This is how I went about it. But now I get feeling, that this move is a bit weak. The character basically has two opportunities to oppose it. First when rolling Weird, then rolling Cool. Should I add additional incentive in form of check, or go about this in different way?

Hello

I need to design three custom moves, that will help me determine what exactly happened between sessions.
A bit of background - the previous governor of the city is being overthrown. On the last sessions, three players (Chopper, who will be changing the playbook to Hardholder, Operator and Gunlugger) managed to destroy the gang that was supposed to help the current governor in defending his position, and Operator orchestrated alliance with Chopper and one of important town families. My idea is, they will overthrow Governor, with help with another neutral gang (called Mustangs). However - majority wants that to happen off screen (and I agree), so I wanted to design custom moves for the 3 that were on last session (2 were not present, so I will assume they return after dust settles).

What I have so far:

For Chopper and to-be Hardholder:
Roll +Hard, on 10+ keep 3, on 7-9 keep 1:
- small number of casualties in your gang
- Governor was captured (didn't run away)
- no important gang members from your gang were harmed/died
- small destructions to the town
- you enriched yourself additionally (+3 barter)

For Operator
Roll +Cool, on 10+ keep 3, on 7-9 keep 1:
- you don't get new obligation gig toward Mustangs
- no one from your team was hurt/died
- you enriched yourself (+3 barter)
- you enriched yourself (+2 barter)
-

For Gunlugger
Roll +Cool, on 10+ keep 3, on 7-9 keep 1:
- you didn't get hurt
- you enriched yourself (+3 barter)
- Your favorite Pub is untouched (the place that he both sleeps, and likes to drink very much - closest to home, that character has)
-
-

I am a bit at loss for more options, and I am unsure how much of them I should really include - if 5 isn't a bit too much. When they fail, or succeed partially, most of the nagative options will come to life.
Thoughts, suggestions?

I will probably settle, on giving him some new obligation when occasion arises, but not giving another +1 juggling yet.
This is offset by fact that he neglected the obligation gig for three first sessions, and didn't get any consequences (I didn't get how this works clearly enough). And death of guy he owed obligation to, happened out of session, and to be honest - he had nothing to do with that.

One question that came to my mind regarding helping Choppers gang - if the gang is getting wounded as a whole, is it also healed as a whole by angel?

So! I've been thinking.

We're currently in "season 2" of our game, and last session was "first session" all over again — second season pilot, if you will. I'm currently building up fronts and I'm thinking about Uncle.

The maelstrom wasn't that important last season, so here it is: the maelstrom is definitively a front this time. Also, the chopper introduced a new warlord and managed to piss her off right of the bat, so a war is in sight with Uncle's compound. Which is home to a very, very dangerous cult leader in ties with the maelstrom — the aforementioned brainer-turned-hocus.

What if the warlord comes to Uncle at the start of the next session and offer him an alliance to properly destroy the maelstrom? What if most of Uncle's people are definitively not down with that, what with Verm the White (the brainer/hocus) being the protector and prophet of the maelstrom and all that? How would Uncle, Verm and all the other PCs, who are slowly but surely becoming more and more weird but still attached to Uncle's people and compound, react to whatever would happen?

I'm curious to find out. What do you people think?

Will you share how it went?

Seems totally legit to me. I mean, we're not talking about the Driver's car or something, here. Your starting equipment is not sacrosanct, it's not all automatically 'what makes the PC interesting'. Now maybe this coat WAS one of those things, it's hard to say from the example. But it sounds like a classic case of 'activate their stuff's downside' to me -- the downside of luxury clothing is that it doesn't tend to deal well with jungle bushwhacking. And in this case the player had a choice, as befits a 7-9 result.

Depends on how much emphasis that skinner is putting on elegance and luxury, but I see your point. I'm just very wary of taking away things that form a basis of the character. I would thing twice before taking away gunlugger guns, part of chopper gang, and in case of skinner, that goes to the luxury items.
But maybe I'm too lenient? Not sure really.