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

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

The MC chapter will remain essentially unchanged apart from where, thematically, it makes sense to rename principles and moves.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Rare: Medical treatment at a private health clinic

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

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

Lost Places:

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

This is one of the new playbooks I'm putting together for a AW hack for

Contested Ground Studio's A|State.

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