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Messages - benhamill

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1
Apocalypse World / Re: Going to PbtA from Forum RP
« on: October 04, 2017, 09:53:34 PM »
I'll second the "make rules" thing. The deal in the MC section of the AW rulebook about making them just not that complicated works for PCs, too. You can get complicated over time, but you don't have to start there. One of the funnest characters I ever played (a different game, but still) I came to the table with the idea that he would never consider the downsides to any potential action at all and that he'd choose to do whatever he felt he'd look coolest doing, have the most fun doing or feel the most awesome having done when it worked (no "if" because don't consider the failure cases). He was wildly consistent because that rubric is pretty simple. This made him feel more real, not less, to the other players because they couldn't detect this fairly simple rule system explicitly and only experienced the consistency implicitly. Honestly, playing a caricature is a good idea as long as it's not just straight up 100% an existing trope with no changes.

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Apocalypse World / Re: New in Second Edition
« on: September 23, 2017, 11:39:22 PM »
Stats
You can highlight Hx.

I saw someone mention this in another thread and it seems like kind of a cool idea, but... the playbooks don't have the little "highlight" circle in the HX area, which makes me wonder if that was actually the intent. Do you have a page number I should look at on this?

If you want the details for the changes, I recommend the 2nd edition book.

Yeah. I probably should have mentioned: I have the book and have read through it. But a lot of it is the same and a lot else is similar. I just want to make sure I didn't miss anything others consider important.

I would really have loved a version (maybe only in PDF) that has little annotations to indicate "this part is new" or something. IDK.

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Apocalypse World / New in Second Edition
« on: September 21, 2017, 08:00:37 PM »
Does there exist a document highlighting the stuff that changed between AW1E and AW2E? Or maybe just the most important differences?

If not, could we crowd-source such a list in this thread?

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Apocalypse World / Re: Bennies or rewarding players?
« on: September 12, 2017, 09:57:55 PM »
I'm with Paul in that my instinct is to see how it goes without anything in-game :shrug:. But if you're set on it, I think something like:

Quote
When you use outside time to make something cool about or for the game, mark experience.

or maybe...

Quote
When you use outside time to make something cool about or for the game, hold 3. Spend this hold 1-for-1 to take +1 on any roll, even retroactively.

Something like that?

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Apocalypse World / Re: Session Length
« on: September 10, 2017, 03:53:45 PM »
Ahhh. This makes some sense, then. Thanks for answering, Vincent. <3

Anybody else please feel free to answer about how long you play in real time and how that maps to in-game time. I'm curious.

6
Apocalypse World / Session Length
« on: September 10, 2017, 02:22:16 AM »
So I wondered this a bit in first edition, but it's more stark in second edition...

Each of the playbooks has a Barter section where most of them say "At the beginning of the session, spend 1- or 2-barter for your lifestyle." In the Hardholder playbook, it makes clear that 1-barter will get you "a month's hospitality, including a place to live and meals in common with others."

If we had all the PCs pay one barter for rent at the start of every session at my table, they'd be paying a month's rent every, like, 1-2 in-game days.

So questions: Is this because our sessions are shorter than most peoples (or Vincent's)? We play for 2.5-3.5 hours at a time. Is it because we play way more moment-to-moment that most people? I'd say a session covers anywhere from a half a day to a couple of days. Almost never a whole week, let alone a month. There's just too much stuff going on. Because it might be relevant to play time, I'll also mention that we have 4 players including the MC.

What do other folks do? How long are your typical sessions in real time? In game time? How many players do you have?

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Apocalypse World / Re: 4-harm gangs
« on: June 03, 2013, 04:27:37 PM »
A .50 cal MG mounted on a vehicle of some kind? RPGs and other shoulder-mounted badness? Heavy cavalry, maybe? Trebuchets and catapults? Mortars? Other artillery?

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Monsterhearts / Re: New Skin: The Mentor
« on: June 02, 2013, 12:52:13 AM »
Harping sources, again: Also consider Buffy trying to lead a group of Slayers at the end of Season 7 and at the start of the comics. She was pretty hopeless at it, basically.

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Monsterhearts / Re: Help/Hinder mechanic?
« on: June 02, 2013, 12:24:27 AM »
Take a look at the growing up moves:

Make Others Feel Beautiful can let them carry forward, as can (to a more limited extent) Share Your PainCall People on Their Shit and Intervene Against an Act of Violence can give people penalties or simply make them fail.
Nice point! I really like the implication, here: That these characters are too immature to help/hinder as a basic skill. They have to grow up a little at a time, building that skill set as they go. And, also, doing that growing up moves them closer to retirement because once they do, they're pretty much too mature for the genre.

There's little drama if the characters aren't confused and unable to control their own impulses. Totally with-it protagonists are boring.

10
Apocalypse World / Re: Interesting Place Names
« on: May 23, 2013, 10:42:50 PM »
The Unstoppable Emperor is a 50+ car train headed by a huge black locomotive decorated by a two story tall bronze statue of a naked man holding a whip and a sword. The cars are three stories tall with the topmost floor just being huts and sheds built on top of the cars. It is a city in its own right with half a thousand permanent passengers and a feudal aristocracy that see to the running of the train.
Oh. Em. Eff. Gee. YES.

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I feel like there are a lot of indie games out there these days that really facilitate Story Now play (AW, Shock:, Swords without Masters, etc.). I wondered if anyone could recommend a game that really facilitates Right to Dream in a coherent and low points-of-contact way. Ideally something indie, but not required.

My group's been playing GURPS and we will probably explore Story Now some more, but I kind of wonder what else is being done in a similar space. I guess it would help to know that we seem to like exploring System the least and Setting, Situation or Color the most.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. I felt like the people who'd read this forum would be most likely to know the jargon I'm using and know of indie games that I haven't seen (I don't have wide exposure).

12
roleplaying theory, hardcore / Re: References for Beginners
« on: May 17, 2013, 11:51:16 PM »
Follow up question: Is there a decent site where one can look up jargon terms? People drop things like "Right to Dream" and I'm like lolwut and 30 minutes of google later I find what appears to be the definitional essay about it. I was kind of hoping I could cut out the 30 minutes of googling.

EDIT: And, of course, that linked essay has a bunch of words that feel like jargon, but I'm not sure how to look up. Should I be trusting the 8 year old, "provisional" glossary on the Forge?

13
Apocalypse World / Re: Gigs and how they work
« on: May 12, 2013, 02:02:25 PM »
I feel like there's a sort of art to reading the AW rules. If you read all the rules and all the (core, anyway) playbooks, a couple of times, you can get a good sense of when Vx is implying something (when a move asks a player to pick options and one is "you take little harm" it implies that if you don't choose that, you'll take normal harm) and when he's not (Juggling is a good example; it's mentioned twice in a row or whatever and those two mentions are all that it's for).

I think the latter can be confusing coming from, say, GURPS (where I'm from) because you expect there to be a whole big section on each stat or kind of stat and for everything to be equally available to everyone. The way AW works, stuff like Juggling and gigs are only available to someone if their playbook says they are. And since the operator is only playbook with gigs out of the gate, the rules for them are in that playbook. It might be tempting to think, "This is the gigs system," but it's more like, "This is the operator's gig system." IMO, anyway.

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Apocalypse World / Re: Interesting Place Names
« on: May 10, 2013, 09:15:20 PM »
I ran a short sort of experimental few sessions. The PCs lived in The Oasis, named after what used to be a restaurant named after an actual oasis. Nearby was a smaller hardhold named Rock Town and, further away, one named The Tank.

A ways out of town, there was a place called Ippin Dep, which is known for being a nice place to score some serious jingle, but is also rumored to be cursed. Before the apocalypse, it was a Shipping Depot.

15
Apocalypse World / Failed Open Your Brain
« on: May 06, 2013, 03:03:54 AM »
Recently, I MCed my 2nd session of AW. The PCs got into a firefight with a guy holed up in an 18-wheeler cab they were trying to, um, acquire from him. We've got a pretty Weird bunch, so at one point, someone decided they'd open their brain and it went kind of interestingly (they got some vague hints about an unrelated Threat for their trouble). That was the first time we'd done it, so we talked a lot about the nature of the Malestrom, etc.

Because it went interestingly, two other (of the 4) PCs decided they, too, wanted to open up... and both rolled misses. Since it's the second session, they haven't bumped directly into most of the Threats (though, at least one in each Front, so far), so I don't have a lot of stuff that would make sense in a, "Well, Jojo and her biker gang roll out of nowhere. They must have heard the gunshots and decided it sounded like their kinda mayhem," sort of way. And with the Maelstrom, there's no harm establish to deal out...

Basically, I'm looking at these moves and trying to figure out what makes sense from a misdirection standpoint. I feel like the ones that make the most sense are, like, "Put someone in a spot", "Take away their stuff", "Activate their stuff's downside" (maybe), "Tell them the possible consequences and ask" (maybe), "Offer an opportunity, with or without a cost", "Turn their move back on them", or some threat move. In the case above, I wanted to make at least a medium-hard move (I'm still calibrating what's hard, so I don't know how strong I can hit, yet, but that's just an experience thing).

What I ended up doing was taking one PC's stuff away (hands go completely numb, drop your gun, freak out for a while) and turned the move back on the other PC by asking a bunch of questions. The latter didn't feel nearly as hard as I'd've liked.

AND, after the session, one of the players brought this up specifically. Basically, saying he wanted opening your brain to really have consequences to disinsentivize people from being like, "I open my brain, I buy a drink, I open my brain, I take a stroll, I open my brain, I gaze at the clouds, I open my brain" and never have bad things happen. While I think that's a sort of ad absurdem example (eventually, we'd all get bored and I'd roll out a super hard move no matter my temperament). But his idea was that, like, if you fail your roll+Weird, it would be entirely reasonable for the MC to just nod and be like, "OK. Well, sucks for you." and not say anything more until later when the PC gets back to the hold and finds out their house burned down. In the fiction, no causal relationship to the Maelstrom, but something bad did happen.

Also, in the case of turning the move back, I have a flavor question: If you turn the move around and ask the player a bunch of questions and something comes out, like, "Oh shit. Yeah, I'm totally terrified of snakes. Worst thing I can imagine would be to be buried in them. Can't stand to even be near one, but a ton would be panic attack city." In order for that to be a hard move, that should totally come up again. Do I need to tell myself that, off screen, Harridan the (little h) hardholder got a text from the Maelstrom with that piece of data and so, at some later date, can use it, or is it enough for me to know it and, later, have Harridan just happen to use snakes as a threat against that particular PC?

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