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Messages - Dwindlehop

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1
Apocalypse World / Re: being fan of the characters
« on: May 12, 2014, 01:56:27 PM »
Thanks for the responses! I think my table has seen player conflict before, but it has never resulted in violence.
Here, I definitely did not announce any offscreen badness to put the player conflict in perspective, and so the player conflict rapidly overtook all other concerns. That strikes me as solid practical advice.

I do think I will return to our normal program of swords and sorcery for a time. It was really myself and the Battlebabe who were keen on playing Apocalypse World, so I'm not sure the others really had a strong feeling about what their AW experience should be about.

2
Apocalypse World / Re: Gigs and how they work
« on: May 11, 2014, 07:50:10 PM »
When someone with a different playbook takes moonlighting as an advance, do they get an obligation gig?

3
Apocalypse World / being fan of the characters
« on: May 11, 2014, 07:34:54 PM »
My AW session last night ended with the Brainer going aggro on the Faceless, the Quarantine shooting the Brainer, the Brainer pulling in-brain puppet strings on the Quarantine to make him attack the Faceless, the Faceless blowing the Quarantine away with an RPG, and the Battlebabe ending the Faceless as retribution.

That was not what I was hoping for? They certainly were all invested in the outcome, so I suppose I succeeded at capturing everyone's attention, but there were some sour feelings in the middle of this action so in general the scene is something I hope to avoid in the future. This is a stable group that has been gaming together for six years or so, though this was only our third session of AW.

I fear I precipitated these events as MC. The Faceless failed a Norman roll, so I told him his mask wanted him to hold the hardhold's water purifier hostage. He was perhaps a bit overconfident from having completely mowed over whatever obstacles I had thrown at him before by violence, so he did not attempt to seek healing for his wounds before laying claim to the hardhold's water purifier, which was an action designed to spark a response from pretty much every character, MC or player, that we had introduced.

Was giving the Faceless a motivation to take something designed to elicit so many hard moves staying true to my principles of being a fan of the characters? I feel like the Norman MC move was a valid hard move to make, but I'm not certain. I think, in retrospect, I probably would have still made that same hard move but I should have told more characters the consequences and asked in the build up to the climactic showdown, as I did not gently remind my players they had some alternatives to aggressive moves.

As an aside, I will note that I think my players used violence a lot more than I had expected, though by the third session they were hip to the fact that the number of souls in their little hardhold was rapidly dwindling.

Any MC advice, from the book or otherwise?

4
Dungeon World / Re: Using DW for PVP
« on: February 07, 2014, 01:15:56 PM »
Good question! My memory is no roll was involved, but it was several months ago. I will ask the GM, but I guess the answer is he was trying to thread the needle between the cleric's desire to ascend to Godhood, remaking the world in his disfigured form, and my wizard's desire to heal reality. With the addition of the God of Healing to our pantheon (because the God of Healing had been the previous Broken God) and my wizard swearing himself to the God of Healing's service, the scales were balanced. Both PCs' visions of the future were achievable.

The primary downside of that ruling was I was surprisingly bummed to end the campaign, because of course I wanted to save the world outright. :) Maybe sometime we will run a one-off, in-media-res epilogue session where I can play my wizard's new class a bit.

5
Dungeon World / Re: Using DW for PVP
« on: February 06, 2014, 05:43:20 PM »
I have never played in a game where PCs were really out to kill each other, trading blows back & forth, or waging a multi-session campaign against each other.

I have engaged in a little bit of serious character conflict, however, though it never turned violent. The climactic session in the last campaign I played featured a cleric of the Broken God (Domain of the maimed, deformed, disfigured, diseased, deranged) who claimed the mantle of the Broken God after freeing him from his bondage. I, playing as wizard of the good persuasion, attempted to prevent this particular vacancy in the pantheon from being filled. I fictionally wasn't positioned to do anything about it apart from casting a spell, though, so I had to succeed on my Perfect Summons but I failed the roll. Once the cleric had achieved Godhood, I did not have any moves left to me but Ritual, which I triggered. GM ruled I needed the tears of the God of Healing to fix my deranged cleric-cum-god friend, so I Perfect Summons-ed the God of Healing to beseech him for his tears. Ultimately, the GM ruled the God of Healing wasn't going to accede to my request so I had my wizard dedicate himself to the service of the God of Healing to thwart the effect of the new Broken God on the world, and chose the new class of cleric.

We, of course, retired those characters at that point.

All this is to say the GM principle "Be a fan of the characters" can be tricky to fulfill when the characters are pulling the GM in different directions. I myself would hope never to GM a true arena-style PVP session.

6
The Regiment / autofire vs. spray in 2.5
« on: January 31, 2014, 02:51:21 PM »
I'm keen to give 2.5 a go! I have been playing Dungeon World with a regular group for a year now, and TR seems like a hack that will be right up my players' alley. I have a few questions before I give Outpost Epsilon a shot, though.

I have been doing the math, as is my wont with new random dice mechanics.
http://topps.diku.dk/torbenm/troll.msp - I added The Regiment VOF attack option at the bottom of the of the User-contributable roll list.

First column is outcome: stress + 10*wounds + 100*criticals. Second column is percentage chance for that outcome. Third column is cumulative chance, i.e. there's a 31.25% chance you do one or fewer wounds with 4d direct fire.
Code: [Select]
4d DIRECT
4   6.250   6.250
13 25.000 31.250
22 37.500 68.750
31 25.000 93.750
40   6.250 100.000

3d FOCUSED
3   3.704   3.704
12 16.667 20.370
21 25.000 45.370
30 12.500 57.870
102   5.556 63.426
111 16.667 80.093
120 12.500 92.593
201   2.778 95.370
210   4.167 99.537
300   0.463 100.000
Against a 0 grit 2 box target, 4d DIRECT: 0% chance of target survival; 3d FOCUSED: 3.704% chance of target survival
Against a 1 grit 4 box elite target, 4d DIRECT: 93.75% chance of target survival; 3d FOCUSED: 57.87% chance of target survival

Code: [Select]
4d SCATTERED
0   0.077   0.077
1   0.926   1.003
2   4.167   5.170
3   8.333 13.503
4   6.250 19.753
10   0.617 20.370
11   5.556 25.926
12 16.667 42.593
13 16.667 59.259
20   1.852 61.111
21 11.111 72.222
22 16.667 88.889
30   2.469 91.358
31   7.407 98.765
40   1.235 100.000

3d DIRECT
3 12.500 12.500
12 37.500 50.000
21 37.500 87.500
30 12.500 100.000
Against a 4 man fireteam, 4d SCATTERED: 1.235% chance of eliminating the fireteam, 19.753% chance of no casualties; 3d DIRECT: 0% chance of eliminating the fireteam, 12.5% chance of no casualities

Q1. I had just about wrapped my head around Soldier vs Group when I realized area or spray: two-targets were, I think, exceptions to that rule as they imply the attack is not resolved by treating the group as a single unit. Do you use Soldier vs Group much in fireteam vs fireteam engagements, or do you reserve it for larger numbers of combatants? Does anyone have any experience with larger numbers of combatants and PCs who want to apply area or two-targets?

Q2. When PCs trigger area or two-targets, do you roll attack multiple times? Multiple attack rolls seem given in the definition of messy considering a change of VOF is part of the tag, so I'm thinking the same applies to area?

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