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Messages - Zed

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Monster of the Week / Re: Playbook fonts
« on: July 23, 2013, 01:03:11 AM »
on a related topic, is a large version of the image of the toothy monster that's on the MotW dice available anywhere? I'd love to have one to decorate my GM screen with.

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Monsterhearts / Re: Turning Same-Sex PCs On
« on: June 09, 2013, 06:36:54 PM »
I might think that if one were to object to loss of agency dictated by the Monsterhearts rules, it would be with the Darkest Self. "How come I have to go face the monster alone just because my Chosen had sex with the Mortal? That doesn't make any sense!" Singling out Turn Someone On seems... selective.

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Monster of the Week / Re: Preparing to run at a con
« on: April 19, 2013, 01:58:26 PM »
One other thing I was thinking about... maybe scaling the starting luck down to, say, 4 given that it's a one-shot... has anyone played with varying the starting luck for one-shots?

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Monster of the Week / Re: Preparing to run at a con
« on: April 15, 2013, 04:37:26 PM »
Quote
For history, I suspect managing the numbers of connections will increase the time to sort it out by at least as much as you will save by reducing it.

I'm planning to steal a technique from Todd Furler, who GM-ed a game I played at BigBadCon last year -- he had us create table tents for our characters, and as history connections were made to someone, that character's tent would get a red tab. The rule was that everyone had to have one red tab before anyone had two (and everyone ends up with two.) So the last player to select in the first round gets "stuck with" some given player for a history connection, but then the selection order reverses and that player becomes the first to select in the second round.

It went pretty smoothly and the management didn't add much time.

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Monster of the Week / Preparing to run at a con
« on: April 15, 2013, 02:21:32 PM »
I'm preparing a game to run at a con at the end of May (KublaCon, near San Francisco.) To speed character generation, and to simplify guaranteeing balance and niche protection, I was planning to offer only 5 playbooks for 5 players, and choosing the stats in advance, each having +2 in exactly one stat:

The Professional: Cool
The Flake: Sharp
The Mundane: Charm
The Spooky: Weird
The Chosen: Tough

(If a 6th player really wants in, I figured I'd keep the Sidekick in reserve, pre-selecting the stats choice that doesn't have any +2's.)

Players will select their own moves, as normal, and I'm planning to make history a little shorter, with everyone choosing only two history relationships (making sure that they get distributed evenly so it's also the case that everyone was chosen for two history relationships, so with incoming and outgoing, each player has four history connections.)

Thoughts? Would you feel frustrated if you showed up at a MotW game with this much determined in advance? Any other suggestions for handling a MotW one-shot at a con?


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Monster of the Week / Re: I need to really understand how fights work :)
« on: February 22, 2013, 02:48:04 PM »
There's one situation that still frustrates me sometimes: hunters attacking (with ranged weapons) a monster that lacks a ranged weapon (or ability.) Without the opportunity for exchange of harm, it can't be Kick Some Ass. Unlike the situations in which it makes sense for damage to be automatic without a roll, it seems like ranged attacks are always uncertain and warrant one.

Mostly, I've been calling for Act Under Pressure, but at least once I didn't really like that option. In the Mongolian Death Worm scenario, the Summoned was lugging a water cooler bottle and had climbed on top of a dinosaur skeleton, lying in wait where he hoped a worm might appear (the Hunters had cleverly used the museum's air conditioning to make everything cold except one region to drive the worms there.) A worm did, and he threw. But it wasn't all that tense a situation -- the worm wasn't in position to hurt anyone; it was moving slowly and there would be plenty more opportunities to attack it.

 

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Monster of the Week / Re: Funder mystery collection PDF
« on: December 30, 2012, 01:10:19 AM »
any plans to offer this for sale to the missed-the-indiegogo-campaign crowd?

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I've squeezed the basic moves onto a single sheet in 11-point type. I changed some of the words for brevity, but I hope the meaning remains clear. It includes the advanced versions.

Below are landscape and portrait versions for both letter-size and A4 paper in both OpenDocument (for anyone who might like to edit them) and PDF.

landscape letter odt

landscape letter pdf

landscape a4 odt

landscape a4 pdf

portrait letter odt

portrait letter pdf

portrait a4 odt

portrait a4 pdf

So far, I only have a letter-size portrait version of a Hunter's reference sheet that could be printed on the flip-side of the basic moves. In addition to what's on the current one, it includes info on armor, healing, and weapon tags.

hunter's reference portrait letter-size odt

hunter's reference portrait letter-size pdf

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Toward making my own Keeper's Reference, I pored through all the playbooks' weapons and found some inconsistencies and oddities. Some of these I'm guessing were deliberate design choices; some I suspect are errors; some I think were cases of things intended to be distinct weapons but described with the same names, in which case I think distinct names would be helpful (so that, say, a reference sheet can list one "hunting rifle" and know its tags without worrying about the Mundane and the Professional meaning different things by it.) (I'll make up my own resolutions for my table, but I thought some of these might be of interest toward corrections for the second printing.)

9mm's (Flake, Initiate, Monstrous, Professional, Spooky, Wronged, Divine, Snoop) and assault rifles (Wronged, Professional, Hard Case) don't have reload. (I'm assuming this is on purpose to reflect large magazines that aren't liable to run out mid-battle.) 

The Snoop's .32 revolver isn't loud.

The Wronged's assault rifle is close; the Professional's is far; the Hard Case's battered assault rifle is close/far. I'd expect close/far to be appropriate for all of them.

The Hard Case's battered assault rifle doesn't have loud.

The Wronged's and Hard Case's hand cannons don't have reload.

The Mundane's hunting rifle has 3-harm and reload, but the Flake's, Professional's, Spooky's and Wronged's are 2-harm and don't have reload. I'd expect all hunting rifles to have reload.

The Wronged's sawn-off shotgun and the Hard Case's automatic shotgun have reload; others' shotguns (Expert, Flake, Wronged, Monstrous, Professional, Spooky, Hard Case) don't.

The Expert's, Flake's, and Wronged's shotguns have loud; the Monstrous', Professional's, Hard Case's, and Spooky's don't.

The Initiate's Sniper rifle has 3-harm; the Professional's has 4-harm; neither have reload. I'd expect a sniper rifle to have reload (though of course one could have a large magazine or just be an assault rifle with a scope.)

The Hard Case's sub-machine gun has 2-harm and reload; the Professional's has 3-harm and doesn't have reload.

The Wronged's huge sword is messy but the Monstrous' isn't.

The Initiate's big axe is slow, while the Wronged's huge axe isn't. The Mundane's fire axe is 3-harm like the big axe and huge axe, but is neither slow nor heavy.

I'd expect the Divine's trident to be hand/close like the Initiate's and Exile's spears are.

The Monstrous' brass knuckles are quiet (which isn't defined in the weapon tags) and small; the Wronged's is stealthy (which isn't defined in the weapon tags); the Flake's is none of the above.

The Wronged's fighting knife is quiet, which isn't defined in the weapon tags, and which none of the other knives are. What does quiet signify?

The Snoop's pocket knife/multitool is hidden (which isn't defined in the weapon tags); the Mundane's is small. Are hidden, stealthy, and small synonymous?

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Monster of the Week / Snoop: relaxed producer move, absence thereof
« on: December 06, 2012, 09:42:01 PM »
Given that the Snoop has a specific optional move to have a relaxed producer, should the Keeper take that as an obligation to throw job-related complications at Snoops who didn't take the move?

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In general, starting ratings choices add to 3. But of the playbooks in the rules, Snoop, and Exile, the Mundane is the only one for whom all of the sets of ratings add to 3. There are a few 4's (all of the Exile's are 4), and a bunch of 2's.

Is all this deliberate?

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Apocalypse World / Re: Making Sense of Brainer Moves
« on: August 02, 2012, 08:11:42 PM »
I'm curious why the Boroughs chose to find out about Pellet's lowest moment if he really wanted him to spill the beans on his buddies. As John says, you can use the info to get what you want, but there are other choices in the move that seem more likely choices if you want to get info out of them. How is your mind and soul vulnerable, seems good fodder for interrogation. For what do you crave forgiveness and from whom, might give you a something to trade.

I'm the player of this Brainer. I was hoping for a result that might have been more directly applicable to manipulating him, maybe something that might apply to Pellet's current life. But it was also the first brain scan of the campaign, so I was trying the options on for size. "How is your mind and soul vulnerable?" is the next one I did; what we did with that info resulted in poor Pellet having certain health problems that have precluded further interrogation...

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