Avery Alder and I are gearing up for a Kickstarter for her post-apocalyptic queer game Dream Askew & my Jewish historical fantasy hack of it, Dream Apart. They are PbtA games, but with a "no dice, no masters" system (shared GMing, and the narrative economy of fail/succeed with a cost/succeed managed by tokens).

Playtest kits are here: https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/belongingoutsidebelonging

 

I'm still actually working on Shtetl World, the long-form, dreidels-instead-of-dice AW hack version of this game. We had a couple of really fun playtests at Camp Nerdly and I am trying to drum one up for Wiscon. After that I will probably post a link here to the Google Doc of the current rules...

I wrote some code to test out the dreidel mechanic's probability characteristics -- both a web page where you can try out the dreidels to get a feel for the results (which could also be used to play the game, if you lack dreidels) and a more analytic program which lists the outcomes of all the possible dreidel tosses at different levels of stats.

Dreidel simulator: http://benjaminrosenbaum.github.io/shtetl-world-tools/
Code (including the python analysis scripts) here: https://github.com/benjaminrosenbaum/shtetl-world-tools

I've realized that there's a new Principle I need to add to my Apocalypse World games, one that is quite counterintuitive but which I think is implicit in the game design, and that's that one of the scarcities is a scarcity of room.

Let me come at this from an odd angle -- from out on a limb -- and say that it seems to me that if AW had to look back at all the games that came before it and pick one cardinal sin that it wanted to stand against and uproot, that sin would be railroading. And in doing so, AW explicitly disallowed railroading, built a game against railroading, and tried to find other solutions for one of the primary causes of railroading; and failed to address the other most common cause.

I have not done a statistically valid survey, but I would bet that the most common causes of railroading are a) that the GM has overprepared a bunch of content, and needs to force players who wander away from it, back into it, and that b) "to keep the party together". Or, more broadly: that the plot and narrative needs of the game are misaligned with the social needs, to wit, we came together to play a game together, and we want to play up against one another's characters -- but the characters themselves don't have all that much in-game fictional need to treat the other characters as the most important and crucial people in the world.

AW handily solves a) by making plot emergent, and when I'm MC'ing, I never find myself tempted to apply force to get the PCs back onto "my plot". because there is no "my plot", just what the PCs do and what comes of it.

AW has some tools to attempt to solve b). It throws the PCs at each other, it allows the MC to arbitrarily stick them together by simply declaring a scene, it tries to entangle them with Hx, it provides threats for them to unite against.

In my games, this doesn't help for all that long. The PCs are thrown together at the beginning, but pretty soon, left as they are to follow their own drives and visions, they disperse, and the game is a series of unlinked one-on-one PC-and-MC exchanges happening roughly in parallel.

When I say "keep the party together" I don't mean in the same room or even facing the same threat. I just mean affecting each other, inhabiting the same set of concerns, the same landscape, thematically connected.

I think the solution is to make room scarce -- put impassible deserts and emptinesses in the characters' way, force them to fall back on the same limited set of resources, to struggle over the same small world. There are bits of the rules that imply this, but it's never stated. and so I didn't do it. In my games, food and water and physical safety and love and understanding and peace have been safe, but room hasn't -- PCs have all hied off to other hardholds, over mountains, into the psychic maelstrom itself, off into separate stories.

I'm betting the reason it's not in the rules is that for Vincent and the people he plays with, it's intuitive: he's interested in small communities, in people flung together, and that impassible deserts seem not even worth mentioning, because he's just not that interested in what lies beyond them. Whereas me and my gang are naturally expansive, and ready to drop doors to other planes and being swept off to other lands into any game at the drop of a hat. Our PCs have no in-game reason to stick together, and until now I haven't had the Principle of throwing them together.

Given the earlier conversation we had (http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=6791.msg29835, http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=6728.msg29909) on the topic of religious diversity in the Dark Ages and in AW:DA 0.1, I thought y'all might be interested in seeing what I did with the stuff Vincent came up with for 0.2, in the PBP game I jumped in on with Ich, Borogrove & co over on GotExp.com.

I love the way that, between the 0.1 and 0.2 playtests, peoplehood and religion have morphed from a couple of preset elements into an entire people-and-religion-generating kit. I also like how well the Court Wizard can be made to correspond to the "not from around here, and know things you don't that will be useful to you" archetype we talked about in those earlier threads.

For context, this campaign is set in an area where the Algonquian-speaking Lowa are cheek-by-jowl with the formerly dominant Greek-speaking Aristidites; after the fall of the Empire of Eagles, the former revolted and asserted dominance over the latter. There are slaves, and a large Freedman population who are forbidden to own land or bear arms; mechanically, this is my character Meir's People (though I'm wondering if I should create his sect, the Dorshei HaOr, as a People even though there are only two of them present in the campaign setting and they aren't really known for anything there -- to themselves they're Dorshei HaOr, but to the people around them they're Freedmen).

I'm hoping there will be an interesting tension between the very tribal/Dark Ages mentality that the other characters and Peoples represent, and Meir's fundamentally cosmopolitan/ideological/survival-of-late-antiquity Gnostic-sect worldview.

I am also coming to the conclusion that the current instantiation of AW:DA doesn't really want to be historical fantasy, nor does it want to be fantasy, nor does it want to be fantastical history -- it wants to be fantastical alternate history. In other words, the game doesn't so much encourage you to make up historically-inluenced fantastical cultures out of whole cloth, nor to recreate real historical episodes, as much as it encourages you to mix-and-match elements from real history in a "it might have been" mode.That's the effect of having Greeks and Algonquians as the two major groups duking it out in the wake of the "Empire of Eagles"''s withdrawl; the Romans *could* have settled Greeks in, say, Iceland, and the Algonquians *could* have reached it be canoe? Or maybe not that precise, but at least "what if these two groups had met?" So, on a smaller scale, that's what I went for with the Dorshei HaOr, remixing elements of real late-antiquity Gnosticism...

---------------

Meir ben Rachel HaDoresh, the Court Wizard, an untypical man of the Freedmen people, originally of the Dorshei HaOr.

Bold: 0
Good: +1
Strong: -1
Wary: +1
Weird: +2

Meir is a member of a Gnostic Hellenistic-Hebraic sect, the Dorshei HaOr (seekers of light), which lives in the decaying war-torn cities of the more populous and ancient regions to the Southwest. He had a family and livelihood as a scholar there, but, in his thirties, his city was destroyed by invaders and he and his family were sold as slaves; he has not seen them again.

The Dorshei HaOr believe that the world we live in was created by Samael, an evil Demiurge who betrayed the true God, and that Samael controls everything that happens in it. The world is a prison, built to contain and diminish human souls, which are flecks of light that were broken off of the true God in the primordial battle. The true God is not merely powerless in this world, but unutterably remote: Meir has no right to call upon HIm, nor any other God, nor would it do him any good if he did. But Sophia, the daughter of the true God, sacrificed herself, allowing herself to be imprisoned in this world's prison-hell in order to aid and comfort the imprisoned souls. She, too, cannot act against Samael; but she appears in this world in the form of human wisdom and inquiry, which offers the possibility of allowing the soul-flecks of light buried within our corrupt bodies to escape, at death, beyond the world-prison and merge with the Godhead. (When consulting the other world, Meir meditates on the subtle traces the imprisoned Sophia has left in the observable universe). The purpose of this life is to endure the torments of this world while steadfastly pursuing wisdom and the good. Everything Meir has experienced to date has strengthened his convictions about this belief system. When his rights are denied, the True God is never outraged, because the entire world is an expression of the great betrayal of Samael.

The Dorshei HaOr use a matronymic naming system, which is why Meir's full name is "Meir, son of Rachel".

As a slave Meir was sold many times, eventually ending up, in his forties, sold to Lowa -- possibly via the Fortunate Gull -- when the slave trade was still active (or at least still tolerated behind the scenes?), before the new political dispensation. He worked in Lowa for a decade as a slave, beginning as a tutor for wealthy Aristidites families, eventually becoming a trusted personal advisor, prized for his literacy, numeracy, eloquence, and broad experience of different forms of the administration of estates; eventually, in recognition of his services, he was freed. Despite his comptence and reliability he is often sullen, withdrawn, and even bitter; however, during the political upheavals he involved himself in attempts to mediate between the factions. Although he failed in his efforts to forestall bloodshed, he was able to aid some of the children he tutored to escape, while impressing the new rulers enough with his skills and rhetoric to be incorporated into the new power structure. and this also meant that he was retained as an advisor under the new dispensation. In fact, his fortunes rose; with the dearth of men of learning after the uprising, he became a court advisor to the Stronghold. His position is precarious, and some resent him. As a Freedman, he has no right to bear arms, nor to possess land; he engages in some business dealings which have allowed him to accumulate some wealth, which he has mostly invested in his library, and in ransoming Levi (see below).

Meir is now in his fifites, an advanced age for this area. He speaks fluent Greek and Hebrew, and a smattering of Skraeling and Arabic; he is, of course, not permitted to actually speak Hebrew or Arabic in Lowa.

RIGHTS

• Meir is literate in Greek and in Hebrew (which latter he is, however, forbidden from speaking).He has the right to own and read books, including religious, legal, historical, and administrative texts, and to conduct writtencorrespondence beyond simple message-passing and note-leaving.
• Meir has the right to step out of his earthly life and journey in other places, as a result of his training in Gnostic meditation, which has slackened the tie between his soul and its corporeal prison (without, however, allowing him to escape the world of Samael). When he chooses to do so, he rolls his Weird. On 10+, Meir chooses his destination, and has both wits and strength therein. On 7–9, he chooses his destination, but the firrst time he misses a roll in that other world, he returns at once to earthly life. On a miss, the MC chooses his destination.
• When Meir encounters something unnatural, he has the right to roll his Wary. On 10+, he asks the MC 2 of the following. On 7–9, he asks 1.
  
  • Is this a thing of old ways, new ways, or ways unknown to me?
  • What manner of person made this thing, or is it its own?
  • For what does this thing hunger, or by what has it sated itself?
  • What would this thing make the world into, if it only could?
  On a miss, he asks 1, but the thing may ask a question of him in return, from this list or of its own devising, which he must answer truthfully.
• Meir has the right to rest and relief from all labor and strife, one day out of every seven.
  

HOUSEHOLD
Meir is the head of his household, such at it is: he occupies bare rooms within the Stronghold, which he shares with Levi ben Talia HaDoresh, a fellow member of his sect (though not anyone he knew personally) who he was able to locate, ransom, and free; thus Levi is also a Freedman. Levi is despondent, morose, and somewhat self-destructive; he occasionally works as a laborer, but, despite the fact that he is also literate, no one will have him as a tutor or accountant; he's too much of a pain in the ass. Mostly he sits around all day in Meir's apartments bemoaning his fate.

The household has:
A library -- roughly 50 codexes and scrolls in Greek and Hebrew (and an occasional document in Persian or Arabic which neither Meir nor Levi can read), very strong in eschatology and mystical speculation but also with some geography, history, linguistics, and medicine.

Mostly Meir and Levi eat bread, fruit, mushrooms, and boiled eggs, but once a week a Lowa girl, Nuna, comes to cook them a meal.

PERSONAL BELONGINGS
Clothing: A rough tunic and trousers
Drinking cup: A tin cup engraved with allegorical Gnostic figures (tree, dragon, broken clay vessels and light streaming from clouds), bought from a trader.
Knife: dull, cord-wrapped, barely fit to cut an apple.

The title says it all. The milieu is his own vast imaginative fantasy world, reminiscent of Dr. Who, Silver Age Marvel cosmic Lee/Kirby shenanigans (Dr. Strange, Thor, Galactus and the Silver Surfer) and Dune/Star Wars style planetary romance. 

Noah would love any feedback.

http://tinyurl.com/galaxy-world-game

So my first question about the wicker-wise is: in what sense is "Inflict 2 Harm upon another, unwilling, with no
benefit of armor" a "sacrifice"?

I mean it might be a sacrifice, if there's no one around you want to inflict 2 Harm on. But it might also be a direct-damage attack on an enemy that you don't have to roll for. Is that the intention? Indeed, this "sacrifice" might be the primary effect you want out of the charm, in that case.

You're facing an enemy who is wounded but will yet see another sun rise. He's wearing armor; you're tied to a tree, and he's drawing a bead on you with his longbow from 20 paces away.  So you just do something random -- charm the peasant girl watching from behind the bush to fall in love with a sparrow in the tree above her, but only for an hour or less (the first sacrifice) -- so that you can do 2 harm to your enemy, past armor, as the second "sacrifice". Bam. The enemy drops dead, and you wriggle free of your bonds. Charming the peasant girl was just for amusement value, to watch her desperately woo the sparrow as it hops from branch to branch. The "sacrifice" was the real point of the action.

Note that the enemy in question could be a PC, who you just offed, and you didn't have to roll for it (so there wasn't even anything to interfere with, if the game had interfering).

Is this the intent? Or is it the intent that the sacrifice be an actual sacrifice -- like, "inflict 2 Harm upon an ally, servant, or friend, unwilling, with no benefit of armor"?

I'm just sharing this because I'm quite pleased with it. I expect it may have been done before. Comments are welcome.

An eleven-year-old Savvyhead NPC [1] in our game is about to become a PC, and we're writing up the character sheet. She's an orphan from the wastelands, formerly of a horrific group of brigands who she was rather glad to escape from. She is therefore wary and has trust issues.

Since she's eleven, it makes no sense for her to have a sex move. Here's what she has instead:

Savvyhead Junior Special
When another character takes care of you like a parent, and you let them, they automatically speak to you, as though they were a thing and you’d rolled a 10+, whether you have the move or not. The other player and the MC will answer your questions between them. Otherwise, that move never works on people, only things.

I figure this would work for orphaned/emancipated/independent prepubescent PCs of lots of character classes -- "when another character takes care of you like a parent, and you let them" is probably going to be about the same bar emotionally, the same emotional risk, the same intensity, and not entirely dissimilar downsides and upsides, as the way the sex move works for adult characters.

Presumably, the other character's sex move won't trigger. Though if the Maestro D' hooks the Savvyhead up with something, that might (or might not?) count as taking care of her like a parent...

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[1] => I realize that no NPC is ever actually a Savvyhead; they may be *called* a Savvyhead, but they're not a Savvyhead like the PC Savvyhead. But there was no PC Savvyhead, and now she is one.