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Topics - john anderson

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1
Apocalypse World / Experience Stat
« on: September 09, 2010, 08:50:06 AM »
In the A|State hack we're looking at slightly changing one aspect of experience. In vanilla AW, one other player and the MC choose a stat each and when rolled you gain experience. In A|S we're going to try the following...

One player (and this includes the MC) can highlight 1 stat. The other highlighted stat is the defining stat for that character (Mapmaker is smarts etc). The player does not choose a stat to highlight. Other than that highlighting stats works exactly the same way.

Issue that may arise...
A single stat that max's out quite quickly.
The player loses the ability to highlight one of their own stats.

Any other thoughts?

John

2
Apocalypse|State / [A|S] Mapmaker
« on: September 09, 2010, 08:40:47 AM »
The Mapmake

Commerce and criminality with The City are often one and the same. Companies, gangs, and guilds work in an atmosphere of mutual mistrust and borderline paranoia. To bridge the gaps and facilitate deals, the mapmakers exist. With staunchly maintained independence and a carefully constructed reputation, they broker, arrange, and communicate. They take a small percentage or a flat fee for their troubles, walking away once the deal has been struck. A|State page 161

Creating a Mapmaker
To create your mapmaker, choose name, look, stats, moves, gear and Hx.

Name
Choose a first name, a family name and/or street name from the list of names in The City.

Look
Male, female, obscured
Smart business attire, street clothes, 
Open face, rugged face, inscrutable face, calm and measured look
Calm green eyes, intense blue eyes, nervous brown eyes, scary grey eyes
Body

Stats
Stats (Cool, Hard, Rep, Smarts and Hope) range from -1 to +2, distribute stats so that the total equals +3.
Experience Stat: Cool (you gain experience when you roll cool)

Basic Moves:
You get all the basic moves

Mapmaker Moves
You get:
Skilled negotiator: When negotiating between two or more individuals, parties or groups, roll+smarts. The art of skillful negotiation is difficult at the best of times, within The City it can be brutal. Each party will provide a stake which is the primary single result they wish to see emerge from the negotiations. These two or more stakes are inherent to the process of negotiation. You are attempting to smooth the process and try to make everyone happy.
Between NPCs,
  • On a 10+, you are able to smooth egos and move the discussions beyond “I kill you!”, both parties get what they want with only a minor compromise.
  • On 7-9, positions are entrenched and making headway is like swimming in The Green canal. After much debate, neither party gets what they want due to the massive compromise required.
  • On  6-, negotiations totally collapse and all parties leave vowing bloody vengeance.
Between PCs,
  • If the both PCs agree to your compromise and carry out what agreed, they both gain experience. If one or both do not stick to the agreement, neither gains experience.
Note: The MC needs to make sure the stakes of each party are clear and achievable prior to the roll.

Choose 1: 
Criminal culture: When you need to contact an NPC from within the criminal world roll, roll+rep.
  • On a 10+, you are able to track down your contact and he is willing and able to help. Name the NPC.
  • On 7-9, you can locate the NPC (name him/her), but there’s no way they can help right now as they have a little problem. Perhaps its something you can assist with?
  • On  6-, the MC should make as hard a move as possible or offer a difficult choice.

Mapmakers walk a quaking tightrope between violently aggressive organisations, maintaining a careful balancing act, to ever avoid dropping into the abyss.  A|State page 161
People person: When you read a situation, roll+cool.

Mapmakers know many things, much of which must remain forever hidden. To betray secrets is the mark of death for a mapmaker. A|State page177
Keeper of secrets: When you wish to declare a secret about an important individual (NPC) or group, roll+rep,
  • On a 10+, write down the secret about a person (NPC) or organisation. Let the other players and MC know as It is now a fact within the setting.
  • On 7-9, you discover a secret about a person (NPC) or organisation you are interested in, but they know that you know...
  • On  6- you’ve been set up and word on the street is that people are after you. Your address where you can be found? Very large men with guns are watching it...
The MC can also offer a hard choice or go straight for dealing harm.

Note: the player should declare the fact prior to the roll, and the table as a whole has the right to call foul or to offer suggestions as to how the fact could be changed to be more appropriate.

Once trust is lost, then life finishes; either dying by slow inches as work dries up, or ending up as a cooling corpse slumped in an alley. A|State page177
Of course you can trust me!: when trying to seduce or manipulate an NPC roll+cool, if a PC, roll+Hx.

Gear
You get:
  • Oddments worth 1-barter
  • Clothes suitable to your look, including a piece worth 1-armour
  • An address you can be found and contacted at - player describes
  • A big list of names. Persons that can be contacted without difficulty (+valuable)

HX
Everyone introduces their characters by name, look and outlook. Take your turn. List the other characters’ names. Go around again for Hx. On your turn, choose 1, 2, or all 3:
  • One of them screwed up one of your gigs and nearly got you killed. Tell that player Hx-1.
  • One of them came to your aid in the past and got you out of a tricky situation. Tell that player Hx+2.
  • One of them has proved a valuable ally in the past. Tell that player Hx+1.
  • Tell everyone else Hx+2. You're well known in the burgh.

Improvement
Each time you improve, choose one of the following. Check it off; you can’t choose it again.
  • get +1cool (max cool+2)
  • get +1smarts (max sharp+2)
  • get +1hard (max hard+2)
  • get +1hope (max hard+2)
  • get a new mapmaker move
  • get a new mapmaker move
  • add another name to your address book (name and detail the NPC)
  • get a move from another playbook
  • get a move from another playbook

Barter
  • When you charge for your negotiating and arbitration services, you services cost...
  • 1-barter if dealing with the ordinary people of your burgh
  • 2-barter if dealing with criminal organisations
  • 1-credit if dealing with macrocorps

3
Apocalypse World / Acting under fire?
« on: September 08, 2010, 08:36:27 AM »
So, as per pages 172-173, using an Angel kit to heal Uncle (hurt to 10:00), you roll+stock spent. On a 7-9, Uncle is stabilised and heals to 06:00. Now, let's assume the MC also decides you're acting under fire, describing how Uncle is delirious and thrashing out.

The problem I can't get my head around is the roll for acting under fire. The PC has already stabilised Uncle, but does acting under fire mean that the PC has to roll again? If so, how do the results of the acting under fire roll relate to the event that's already occurred? Uncle's already been stabilised. Do we retroactively deny that successful heal roll?

John

4
Apocalypse World / Playing cards for AW? Genius.
« on: September 07, 2010, 11:07:50 AM »
Rob Donahue on AW and the utility of using cards as an element of play.

Quote from: Rob Donahue
I want to zero in on a particular element of the rules that really struck me as interesting, that is to say, how strongly the rules seem in keeping with those of a Collectible (or non-Collectible) card game.

I hadn't even thought of that approach, but I've got to say, it's very good. Now, who knows of any open source ccg card-making utility?

Secondly, Vincent, when you designed AW, was this ever a design consideration?

John

5
Apocalypse|State / [Apocalypse|State] - The MC
« on: September 06, 2010, 01:54:49 PM »
The MC chapter will remain essentially unchanged apart from where, thematically, it makes sense to rename principles and moves.

Quote
Respond with despair and intermittent rewards: When a player character sets out to achieve something, they are acting out of hope. Hope that what they want to happen in the fiction will happen. This is where you barf forth The City all over their hope. Give them what they want but twist it so that it becomes something darker and definitely not the result they really wanted. This is a great time to introduce the shifted, dark places, the shift and other generally unpleasant stuff that The City has to offer.

Example.
Wilbur Shivers, lostfinder of follygate project puts the word out on the streets that he wants to speak to a certain Flintwich Humbolt, a notorious local pedarast, over the disappearance of a number of children in the burgh.


The MC decides now is a great time to mess with the player's head. No roll is required, instead the MC says...

Three days later, three hagar enter Wilbur’s garret, a silent simil in tow. The hagar turn towards the simil, and it lifts it’s head and Flintwich’s terrified face, newly transplanted atop a simil’s wheezing and clanking mechanical body meets Wilbur’s. “Help me” he whispers imploringly. “Payment”, the hagar rasp in unison.

However, don’t overuse this. Occasionally give the character exactly what the player wanted, maybe even a bit more. Play with the players’ minds such that they will want to keep trying out of the belief that this time they will get what they actually want. How often do you make the ratio between despair and hope? You know your group best, just don’t make it predictable.

This replaces respond with "Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards", and is an attempt to better hone in on giving the MC the thematic tools to bring in the decidedly weird stuff the setting has to offer.

John

6
Apocalypse|State / [Apocalypse|State] - Character Generation
« on: September 05, 2010, 05:35:40 AM »
I want to keep the A|State character generation style because it creates a character that is intrinsicly tied to the setting, rather than just appearing out of the ether. In A|State, characters have an origin, an upbringing and finally a profession.

Origin is based on the economic and social class to which you were born.

Upbringing tells of the type of adolescent and early adult life your character led.

Your profession is where your character is right now.

I've focused the origin far more so than in A|State, reducing the seperate delineated classes into three, prole, petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie. These will provide language skills and basic in-built modifications to the basic moves. Here's what I've got so far.

Origin

Prole

Dispossessed, redundant or drudge, you’re from the streets and have had a grim, hard life. Your parents, were homeless, unemployed or slaved in one of the factories for barely enough to feed and cloth themselves and their children. You had to grow up fast and learnt quickly that you could only rely on one person, yourself.

You get
Broken: You speak and understand the language of the streets, broken, a dialect of common. You can fully understand and converse with another person speaking broken. Those unable to understand the patter have no idea what you’re talking about.

Choose 1
Take what you can to survive: When you seize by force, roll+smarts
I know the streets: When you read a situation, roll+hard
One small cog in the machine: When you peer into the dark places, roll+hard

Petty bourgeoisie

Your parents escaped the worst deprivations of the streets, and managed to build a life in a, relatively, more comfortable part of The City. Educated and ambitious, they were the middle class small business owners, professionals, traders, craftspersons, owners of microcorps, or low ranking officials within one of the macrocorps. Life wasn’t as hard as for most, and life in the burbs was comfortable but by no means extravagant. 

Choose 1
Language of commerce: All complex negotiations and bargaining  between businessmen, entrepreneurs and macrocorps officials is undertaken in commerce, one of the three language groups in The City. You can fully understand and converse with another person who also understands the language of commerce. Anyone else has no idea what you’re talking about.
Cultured: You are able to speak and understand the language of Culture, one of the three main language groups in The City. Culture is the language of art and high-society. Those unable to understand culture have no idea what you’re talking about.

Choose 1
Work ethic: When you do something under fire, roll+smarts
Ambitious: When you seize by force, roll+smarts
Insecure: When you read a person, roll+hard

Bourgeoisie

Born with a level of security, wealth, luxury and privilege unimaginable for those born to the streets. These people make up a fraction of The City’s sprawling populace, yet are the political, social and economic elites. They live lives of comfort and decadence, shielded from the harsh realities of life for the teeming multitudes.

Choose 1
Language of commerce: All complex negotiations and bargaining  between businessmen, entrepreneurs and macrocorps officials is undertaken in commerce, one of the three language groups in The City. You can fully understand and converse with another person who also understands the language of commerce. Anyone else has no idea what you’re talking about.
Cultured: You are able to speak and understand the language of Culture, one of the three main language groups in The City. Culture is the language of art and high-society. Those unable to understand culture have no idea what you’re talking about.

Choose 1
Superiority complex: When you go aggro, roll+rep
Silver spoon: When you seduce or manipulate, roll+cool
Mover and shaker: When you read a situation, roll+rep

John

7
Apocalypse|State / Apocalypse|State - Economy
« on: September 03, 2010, 11:11:58 AM »
Quote from: A|State page
Currency in The City consists of Pounds, Shillings and Pence.
While all of the macrocorps, several banks, some local governments and a few churches produce their own scrip, all are denominated in the same manner and are generally given equal value, as money circulates around The City at a fairly rapid rate.

The City economy.
Yeah, the toffs and the middle class, they're alright, jack. They can get credit. Us lot? The drudges, the mudlarks, the flowghosts, ordinary people trying to just live? We get almightily screwed. We can't get no fucking credit. It's all barter with us. Wanna loaf of bread to feed your family for a bit? Gimme a week's worth of processed nebelweed. Can't get it? Well, don't fucking eat then! See what I care.

While the macrocorps exist in their cocoons, safe from the deprivation of the street and spending their credit to buy the shiney toys they just can't live without, on the streets, there is no credit. Just the cold hard reality of barter.

In A|State, the economy is delineated into bands of scarcity. Goods or services are either very common, common, rare, very rare or scarce and then individually priced. This fits in with a system based purely on a cash economy. For barter, less so. Rather, I'd like to use the relative scarcity's as a system of barter and a cash economy.

1-barter
Very Common: Sideband TV service for a year,  eating out at a shitty roadside vendor, nebelweed for a day, a months rent in a shithole.

2-barter
Common: Additional factual TV channel for a month, gas for the home for a month, sustenance level food for a family of 4 for a month, edge, scrape, or escape for a day, medical treatment at the local quack, a months rent in a higher class shithole.

3-barter
Uncommon: Telephone service for a month, electricity for the home for a month, 1 litre of purified water, Ghostfighter glue,

4-barter
Rare: Medical treatment at a private health clinic

5-barter
Very rare: Eating out at a posh restaurant with tables and chairs and plates!,

6-barter
Scarce:...


Barter move: To buy what you want, you need to have as much barter as the price of the item you want. Roll+smarts,
On a 12+, you drive a hard bargain, pay 1 less barter than the price given.
On a 10+, you buy what you want for the agreed price, subtract that many barter items from your possessions.
On a 1-6, you can buy it, but it'll cost you 1 more barter than listed. He saw you coming, and has some large lads with sparklocks as his complaints department. Subtract 1 more barter from your barter items than the original price. Don't have enough barter? Better find some more, or you'll be meeting the complaints department.

Barter involves the tangible acquisition and trade of concrete assets. You've either got it or you haven't. But at least if you don't have it, you could go scavenging, or stealing, for it. Barter is a 1-1 exchange on the list above.

Credit move: To buy what you want, you only need a credit of 1 or more, regardless of its price. Roll+rep,
On a 12+, your credit is more than welcome, in fact you get upgraded (+1credit).
On a 10+, your credit is of course accepted, your credit remains unchanged.
On a 1-6, you can buy it, but if the price is greater than your current credit, it'll max out your card, and that means the Collection Agency will want their dues. You don't want to fuck with the CA, their complaints department involves Tintenel power-armoured drop troops. If the price is less than or equal to your credit, they hold your card and you don't get squat, now you're credit-less. Your choice chum.

Credit is the opposite of barter. It doesn't exist. It is a measure of the perceived ability (rep) of the indivual to repay it at some point in the future. Want more credit? You gotta buy more. Of course, max out your credit and you're screwed. Credit doesn't even see the scarcity as an issue. If you've got credit, you can buy the item.

I see credit being the preserve of the uber-wealthy in the macrocorps, and barter for the streets and alleyways. Barter has to be real concrete items. You have  to say what each trinket or item is to your character. Credit is just that, a card with a series of numbers and a bar code. Yay.

John

8
Apocalypse|State / [Apocalypse|State] - The City
« on: September 03, 2010, 09:05:46 AM »
So, CGS's A|State. What is it, and how can AW be made to bring it to life?

I think A|State was my gateway game into the world of the indy/small game publishers. It got me to the forge, where I was confused. It led me to Burning Wheel, which is my go-to game of choice. It was the stimulii that changed what and how I play rpgs. Problem was, I really wasn't a fan of the system for A|State. Loved, and I mean really loved, and still do love, the setting, but I just couldn't get past that system. I tried NWOD, then BW and then I read AW.

A|State is a post apocalyptic setting. You've got the calamity striking down civilisation in the dim, dark past. You've got all that remains from the Bombardment and the Shift stuck in one place. The City. A circular metropolis of unimaginable size and population, with a sickening level of inequality between the industrialised, hitech and uber-wealthy macrocorps hiding in their shiny, well-protected fortresses. You've got pseudo-Victorian, smog-laden and acid-rain pelted burghs full-to-bursting with the uneducated, unwashed and starving populace all toiling to survive against horrendous odds.

There's no escape from The City, it's outer boundary is a wall of something that disappears any poor bugger who steps into it. There's the Shifted, bizarre mutants and things that appear from nowhere, kill for seemingly for no reason whatsoever, or, more scarily, they may even help you. Lost Places make entire tenements or people, or vehicles just...disappear.

The City is decaying. There's no central authority to maintain or rebuild The City. Anarchy, deprivation and decay are underlying themes of this Hobbesian dystopia. It is AW in a city. An industrialised, anarchic city to be sure, but with just as much misery, depravity, loneliness, want, humanity and weirdness to make it a great fit for AW.

John

9
Apocalypse|State / [Apocalypse|State] - The Lost Places
« on: September 03, 2010, 08:20:13 AM »
Lost Places:
Quote from: A|State page 39
A lone man walks down a darkened alley, never to emerge on the other side.
An emaciated dog runs from nowhere into the middle of a crowded street.
Children scrabbling in cellars and basements, playing to blank out the misery of existence, find one of their friends gone. Forever.
Squads of heavily armed troops disappear while on patrol, their screams faintly floating on the breeze.
Half heard voices from nowhere, partial glimpses from the corner of an eye.
These are the Lost Places.

Ok, so Lost Places are a by-product of The Shift? No fucker knows for certain. Not even the wack-job scientists of the Shift Studies Group. I mean, they do tests and they make these fucked-up theories that sound a-o-fucking-k, but really? They don't have any more of a clue than your average drug-addled drudge slaving in some god-forsaken factory.

So what do we know?
  • People, animals, trinkets, even whole sodding buildings...gone. Just fucking gone, man. One minute they're there. Then...nothing.
  • Finding a Lost Place? Yeah right. Looking for it won't find one, people just, well, stumble across them. Poor buggers.
  • Some snotty-nosed ex-mike fighter told me once you can't even photograph Dark Places. Nothing on the photo, she said. Nothing. How screwed up is that? She didn't say what you do see though...
  • Oh, there are plenty of stories about Lost Places. Torture lane, The Pit, The Torment. Loads of stories, whispered in shitty gin palaces and skanky Edge-dens. But again, would you believe those wacked-out fuckers?
  • The Shifted are connected to the Lost Places. We think. They're not gonna tell us though, so who knows?

Initial thoughts for Apocalypse|State.
1. Lost Places replaces The Maelstrom.
2. You don't look for Lost Places, well you can, but you ain't gonna find one.
3. LPs and the Shifted are connected.
4. Drug use is rampant in The City. How to connect the dots?
5. Your weird stat is related to LPs, but how?
6. What's inside the LPs? Where do you go when you enter? Canon states there's no return from the LPs. Is it death? Can it be used as a fail result with certain drugs?

John


10
Apocalypse|State / Apocalypse|State - Fronts
« on: September 03, 2010, 04:00:22 AM »
Fronts
Fronts remain fundamentally unaltered from AW (see AW pages 136-150).

Fundamental Scarcity
The City is a place of startling inequalities, and away from gleaming towers and fortresses of the Macrocorps, life is shaped by adversity and scarcity.
  • Hunger (Food is always an issue for those too poor to escape the grinding poverty and oppression of the streets)
  • Thirst (Whether it be a thirst for knowledge, freedom from persecution, freedom from want. Everyone in The City thirsts for something they don't have).
  • Ignorance (...is bliss? Ignorance gets you a Hirplakker Commune gunship going mental on your block when that little strike you organised over fair pay interfered with the factory production cycle. Everyone in The City knows that knowledge is power, or more accurately, lack of knowledge gets you killed.)
  • Fear (The Shift, that your neighbour has more than you, that your children will die of malnutrition and not care for you when older...)
  • Decay (The City is literally falling apart, decay is rampant, physical, psychological, spiritual)
  • Despair (There's only two ways to leave The City, by your hand or by another's)
  • Envy (There’s always someone in The City who covets what you have)
  • Ambition (Want your neighbour's windmill? fucking take it! No fucker's gonna stop you, as long as you have the biggest balls, guns or friends. Generally in that order.)

Threats
These are the 5 categories of threat.
  • Demagogue
  • Grotesque
  • The City
  • Affliction
  • Brutes

Demagogues
A demagogue threat is the demagogue, his gang or organisation, and other people under his control. There are 6 types of demagogue.
  • Capitalist (impulse: to own and sell)
  • Communist (impulse: to consume and swarm)
  • Prophet (impulse: to denounce and overthrow)
  • Fascist (impulse: to control)
  • Collector (impulse: to own)
  • Predator (impulse: to hunt and dominate)

Grotesques
A grotesque is still fundamentally a person, a human being, yet their humanity has been crippled, either eaten away over time by the insidious nature of The City, or shattered in one horrific moment. The names of the grotesques are taken from (or perhaps it was vice versa) the 6 suits of a standard 80-card pack of playing cards that is so prevalent in The city.
  • The Daemon (impulse: craves satiety and plenty)
  • The Priest (impulse: craves restitution, recompense)
  • The Assassin (impulse: craves pain, its own or others’)
  • The Temptress (impulse: craves contact, intimate and/or anonymous)
  • The Captain (impulse: craves mastery)
  • The Warlord (impulse: craves overthrow, chaos, the destruction of The City)

The City
The killing fields of the contested grounds, the grand Cathedral of sideband media,  the rusting, brooding menace of the iron Bastion and the hulking caverns of Crossbar Terminus. These are just a few of the places within The City that make life so interesting for its inhabitants. The locations of The City can be broken down into 6 broad threats.
  • Prison (impulse: to contain, to deny egress)
  • Breeding pit (impulse: to generate badness)
  • Furnace (impulse: to consume things)
  • Mirage (impulse: to entice and betray people)
  • Maze (impulse: to trap, to frustrate passage)
  • Fortress (impulse: to deny access)

Afflictions
An affliction threat isn’t a person, it’s something threatening that people are doing, or that is happening, or that has come to be.
  • Disease (impulse: to saturate a population)
  • Condition (impulse: to expose people to danger)
  • Custom (impulse: to promote and justify violence)
  • Delusion (impulse: to dominate people’s choices and actions)
  • Sacrifice (impulse: to leave people bereft)
  • Privation (impulse: to impoverish people)

Brutes
A brutes threat is a group of people, with or without a leader. Acting in crude, perhaps provisional, concert.
  • Chaser (impulse: to victimize anyone vulnerable)
  • Devourer (impulse: to consume someone’s resources)
  • Ganger (impulse: to victimize anyone who stands out)
  • Cult (impulse: to victimize & incorporate people)
  • Mob (impulse: to riot, burn, kill scapegoats)
  • Family (impulse: to close ranks, protect their own)

11
Apocalypse|State / [Apocalypse|State] - The Ghostfighter
« on: September 02, 2010, 10:45:52 AM »
    This is one of the new playbooks I'm putting together for a AW hack for
Contested Ground Studio's A|State.

Quote from: A|State main rulebook
The ghostfighters of The City are a breed apart from the common guffer or militant trooper, having honed their skills in knife fighting and stealthy attack to a remarkable degree. The most talented of ghostfighters are prosperous and in demand. Untalented ghostfighters are dead. A ghostfighter is quite simply an individual who has trained themselves to a high degree of expertise in stealth, infiltration and armed combat. Do not make the mistake of thinking that they are assassins. They are stand up fighters, preferring to look their enemy straight in the face before delivering the killer strike. Many notable figures employ a ghostfighter or two as unobtrusive bodyguards at exorbitant prices.

Creating a Ghostfighter
To create your ghostfighter, choose name, look, stats, moves, gear and Hx.

Name
Choose a first name, a family name and/or street name from the list of names on page 6-7.

Look
Male, female, to scarred to tell
Street clothes, all dogskin and chains, combat gear, suited and booted. 
Scarred, tattooed, fidgety, thousand-yard stare, piercings.

Stats
Stats (Cool, Hard, Rep, Smarts and Weird) range from -1 to +2, distribute stats so that the total equals +3.

Basic Moves:
You get all the basic moves

Ghostfighter Moves
You get:
The patter: The street-talk of the ghostfighter is full of belters. dancers, tans and stookies. You can fully understand and converse with another ghostfighter using the patter. Those unable to understand the patter have no idea what you’re talking about.

Choose 2: 
Scarification: Physical and mental scarring is an occupational hazard for a ghostfighter. When you suffer harm from a blade (self-inflicted or whatever), and the character’s harm countdown reaches 9:00, you may choose the following instead of the list on AW page 165.
  • Physical scarring (describe): +1rep (max 3)
  • Mental scarring (describe): +1weird (max 3)

Every tattoo tells a story:  Some have none but they are very much in the minority. Most ghostfighters have five to ten tattoos, and a sizeable number have many, many more. Some even have almost all of their skin covered in some sort of tattoo, living works of martial art. When you show your tattoos and talk about the stories behind them, no one who can see and hear you can do anything but watch. You command their absolute attention. If you choose, you can exempt individual people, by name.

Live & die by the blade: When you fight using only a blade you get +1armour.

Infamous: You exude an aura of barely-suppressed violence and imminent trouble. When you go aggro on someone, roll+rep or roll+weird.

Markain fighting style: When you fight using a blade (only), you sacrifice some defence for a punishing attack. Roll+cool.
  • On a 10+, you are a whirlwind of bladed fury, you inflict +1harm.
  • On 7-9, you strike with scary speed and accuracy inflicting normal harm, but you have left your opponent a gap to capitalise on, take -1 forward.
  • On 6-, like a noob, you’ve have left yourself extremely vulnerable to attack, the MC should inflict significant harm or offer a hard choice.


Demeloque fighting style: A more cerebral and defensive fighting style emphasising wearing down your opponent and striking fast and hard when they’re tired and make a mistake. When you use a blade (only) roll+smarts. On a 10+, choose 2, on a 7-9 choose 1.
  • Inflict harm.
  • They take -1 right now.
  • Your harm is ap
  • Take +1 forward


Ghostlike: While many Ghostfighters have messy public and bloody fights there are also a substantial number who do their business far more quietly. When you infiltrate a place in order to kill an NPC, roll+cool.
  • On a 10+, you get in, kill your mark and get out, like the ghost that you are.
  • On 7-9, you get in and kill your mark, unfortunately you’ve been caught standing over the still-warm body, blade in hand.

Gear
You get:
  • 2 weapons.
  • Oddments worth 2-barter.
  • Fashion suitable to your look, including a ghostfighter’s coat worth 2-armour.

Weapons (choose 2)
  • Boatman’s hook (2-harm, hand, messy)
  • Butcher’s blade (3-harm, hand, messy)
  • Garrotte (hard-harm, intimate)
  • Half Llife (2-harm, ap-1, hand, hitech)
  • Llife (3-harm, ap-1, hand, hitech)
  • Long Llife (3-harm, ap-2, hand, hitech)
  • Mudlark’s fist (1-harm, hand)
  • Razor gloves (2-harm, close, messy)
  • Sword (3-harm, hand, messy)

HX
Everyone introduces their characters by name, look and outlook. Take your turn. List the other characters’ names.

Go around again for Hx. On your turn,
  • Tell everyone Hx+1. You put yourself out in the public view.

On the others’ turns:
  • Choose the character you trust the least. Whatever number that player tells you, ignore it; write Hx+3 next to the character’s name instead.
  • Everyone else, write whatever number they tell you next to their character’s name.

At the end, find the character with the highest Hx on your sheet. Ask that player which of your stats is most interesting, and highlight it. The MC will have you highlight a second stat too.

Special
If you and another character have sex, you take +1 forward. At your option, they take +1 forward too.

Improvement
Whenever you roll a highlighted stat, and whenever you reset your Hx with someone, mark an experience circle. When you mark the 5th, improve and erase.

Each time you improve, choose one of the following. Check it off; you can’t choose it again.
  • get +1hard (max +2)
  • get +1rep (max +2)
  • get +1rep (max +2)
  • get +1smarts (max +2)
  • get +1cool (max +2)
  • get a new ghostfighter move
  • get a new ghostfighter move
  • Improve your dojo (workspace, detail)
  • Improve your dojo (workspace, detail)
  • get a move from another playbook

Barter
If you’re charging someone wealthy for your services, rep-barter is the going rate for one murder executed or one week’s employment as bodyguard.

John

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