4-harm is rare, definitely, but even in the rare circumstances when it would occur, I'm not going to be able to tell a dude that he's a paraplegic now, or that he's in a coma and might never wake up. It's one of those circumstances where I feel I'd be exercising too much control over the player character, if that makes any sense - it'd take a hell of lot of trust to assume what the MC was saying wasn't antagonistic in its agenda. Unless we had a Savvyhead in the game with the life support workshop add-on, then I could see some wacky shit happening which would fit in the fiction.

The rules certainly make the harm/healing factor in the game far more gritty, and that's something which, in the right group, I could see going down really well! Maybe I'm not at that stage yet (I do not even have an AW group in real life right now), but I could see how these rules and suggestions could make for an interesting game.

See, I think I can agree with this idea that people are Gunluggers because they're ugly just as much as I can agree that people are Skinners because they're beautiful. I just have one of those weird sensibilities where, at least with a group of people I know understand the way the game works, I'm not going to limit them to that kind of playbook determinism - if they say their Gunlugger has a handsome face, I'm going to be like, "shit, okay, now what's a handsome guy like you doing making a living by carrying a big gun and fucking people up?" That just makes me want to know more about that character!

As always, though, your mileage may vary, I have some pretty weird opinions about this game.

Sidenote: I'm not sure the Battlebabe inherently wants or wishes for anything, isn't that the point of the playbook?

I'm just going by what is in the current version of the hack pdf that I found on Sage's website - every character's gear section seems to mention those tags as their usable gear, but like I said, those terms don't exist beyond the character sheets. I assumed it was a mistake, but I wanted to double-check!

I think I'd be more scared of meeting a gun-toting hardarse named Steve than an identical one named Vonk the Sculptor.

The only thing worse would be a gunlugger named Sue.

I'm going to throw my two cents in here as well:

Every game I've played or run, I've never had the players choose from the list. The first few times we played, we didn't even realise you were "supposed" to choose names off the list, and even when we saw the various opinions being bandied about on story-games and wherever, we still decided to stick with a choose your own name system. Partially this is about ownership - a lot of the game is about asking other people and players their takes on things, their interpretations, where they live, and then for some reason not allowing them to choose their names? That doesn't really fly, with me. The names struck me as being flavour fuel, like the ones on the NPC lists, something to draw on and add to as appropriate.

This really comes down to my own personal taste, which is a real dislike of the names offered themselves. I can't justify a lot of the names with what is said in the book! People name their children whatever they want because they don't have cultural references, but for some reason every Driver is either a Golden Age movie star or a car model. Every Hoarder is named for a shoplifter/rich guy from modernity/fictional dragon*.

Someone once commented in an old story games thread that a Japanese name is inappropriate for an ethnically Japanese character, and I couldn't disagree more. A Japanese name is as valid for an ethnically Japanese character as it is for an ethnically Lebanese character, or an ethnically Argentinian character - if we're assuming a world has zero cultural references, a word is a word is a word, and there's nothing more to it. If a word exists, it can be made into a name for anyone, regardless of background. Isn't like there's a birth certificate with your REAL name on it anywhere.

This is all opinion, of course! Your mileage may vary.



*Come on, Smaug, really? Anyone who has read the Hobbit is going to be the first to die in the apocalypse.

The only Brainer I've ever played was one who took a brain relay and the two brain relay-compatible moves, specifically because I knew every other Brainer I had seen went with a violation glove. It became a pretty important artefact in the game, but this isn't really the space for any "my character" stories.

When I MC'd a game with a Brainer who had the glove, I did the same as Neurook, playing up the "violation" aspect of the word with as much intensity as possible. By itself, without flavour, the glove is arguably the most potent piece of brainer-specific gear in the book. Once you start adding stuff to it, like seizures, the ramifications of mind-rape, it changes in its use and style throughout the game.

Imagine the rank stacking as: a guy or two < ten or twenty (small) < thirty or forty (medium) < fifty or sixty (large). Each one hits the next one down for +1 harm, and so forth, and -1 harm for each above.

In the example you're thinking of, with seizing against two guys, you deal harm against them normally, and they do the same - so it'd be 3-harm once, minus armour. If you want to think about it narratively, then keep in mind that being shot (or whatever Momo is doing to the poor saps) isn't exactly something you shrug off and retaliate from with pinpoint accuracy. Balls fires a shot that goes wide as he's hit, and only Tum-Tum actually makes an impact, maybe, there's a lot of ways to think about it.

Everything comes down to the narrative, really, and if you're trying to make it seem as real as possible (while still fun), stuff like this is going to come up, and you roll with it! Kill those NPCs with relish, burn it all down.

You have to buy Apocalypse World after the 1st of April, apparently.

That's what you get for being an early adopter!