In one game I MC'd I had a Faceless in the group, who wasn't some kind of large brute, but a doctor who had been forced to do some nasty stuff by a rival gang, and when he ran away he picked up a dented hockey mask (thus the name “Dent”) that protected him from them, but wanted to keep the doctoring personality at bay. (This was his pre-story that we found out slowly in the game.) He started out as the Gang's bonesetter due to some innate capability (having picked up “Healing Hands” from the Angel playbook quite early), and turned more and more into an Angel as time went on, with much internal fighting between the doctor and the mask.

I could not find this “Czege Principle” stated in my copy of My Life with Master. The search continues…

Yep, that's an example of what I meant. In general, I'm looking for the idea of not just asking the players “What do you do?”, but also about other stuff that might be something that would traditionally be in the narrative authority of the GM. In particular if it's a question that establishes something that the player could, but would probably not have said themselves (the “you don't have your guns and armor with you” part), but than gives them a good bit of authority back.

Hmmm, now I feel like I need to reread Apocalypse World (something I should probably do anyway at some point). Some skimming first…

One of the questions you give as Mikael's playtest questions is “Why can you only fit two people in the cabin of the Tank?” This is precisely that type of question: It establishes that indeed only two people fit into the Tank, but leaves it open to the player why.

From the first session part, the “Marie, Bran, you two are trapped outside of the holding, you’re hunkered down inside an old gutted RV. Outside, six of Dremmer’s gang are setting up camp, looks like they’re settling in. They don’t know you’re there, they just blundered in on top of you. What are you two doing out here, anyway?” or the “Keeler, this person named III corners you that night. She’s fucking pissed off, she comes straight at you, fists first. What did you do to her?” are also clear examples of this type of question.

But some of the questions you suggest in the passage on Opening Your Brain are also like that, such as “Who was your first kiss? Tell about it.” or “What’s the worst hurt you’ve suffered that you can’t remember?” – They both establish that a thing has happened, but then disclaim the decision of how.

The general thing-to-do of “Turn questions back on the asker or over to the group at large.” does not have the “leading” part to it, but is otherwise kind of this.

Off to look through Forge archives and the Mountain Witch rules for this principle, then…

Hi there,

I was thinking about Agenda, Principles and Moves for a game where Greek Mythology is remotely real.
In that context I decided that it might be interesting to look at what different instance of games powered by the apocalypse give as Agenda, Principles and moves. You can find the result by following https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nFDjLfYRKwRuSdRuw3QvpBhv4TCBh9W9URXvSa5DB8o/edit?usp=sharing. I found some interesting patterns, but of course there are artefacts in how I decided to set some moves on the same row that are only remotely comparable, or only with some deep thought. But maybe it's interesting for someone.
Currently it contains AW, DW, Monsterhearts, Monster of the Week, AW:DA and SotI. Feel free to add more if you wish, and to move around associated moves/principles/… if you have a reason.

Use note: When sorting for another game (I left it sorted by AW:DA), select the whole table, including the first column, and then sort (with headers) by "G", then by the game that you want to take as focus, to not mix Agenda, Principles, Moves etc.

Curious patterns:
The split between Principles, Always say and Some more things is not always clear. Not all games have all three categories.
Many games have a Move that is somewhat good for the PCs, but can lead to problems.
A lot of the differences come from different wording and different focusing (splitting a short principle into two long ones, etc.), but that can lead to games feeling seriously different. (This is not surprising, but it's noteworthy that it works.)

Hi,

I know you have already drawn your conclusions from the playtest, and I'm sorry it took me until now to put the following things in writing. Some of the notes below may be misunderstood from my notes during the session. I may correct any misunderstood notes later.

I organised an AW oneshot a few weeks ago, and ended up not running it, because we started according to the Co-MC suggestions, and then someone else had a better idea to start than I did, so I passed on being the GM.

When creating our place, it was a bit difficult to come up with names for peoples and nearby places. The language-based name lists seemed to imply that peoples and place names should also depend on languages, but there are no guide lines.

I had not printed enough peoples sheets, and also more peoples creation rules sheets would be good, so people can create peoples in parallel. If your next iteration ends up with stuff that is needed multiple times, an estimate of how frequent stuff is needed on the table would be helpful.

Did we miss an indication of how wealthy characters are?

Are the seasons supposed to follow the yearly seasons of spring, summer, harvest and winter, or are they of arbitrary length, a time during which circumstances are comparable or something like that?

What is the mechanical trigger of “sizing someone up”? In particular, do I need to interact with them, or can I do that from a distance?

How does small-scale stuff interact with large-scale stuff? I think this question turned up during a small battle, in which the influence of individual PCs' actions was comparatively large in “enemies incapacitated” or similar.

During a small battle, we managed to outnumber our fighting enemies 3 to 1, because some of them were incapacitated and some out of range (it was a battle between three boats, so some melee fighters on a boat could not come closer to the action), which scewed the odds extremely in our favour. Are we supposed to have such an immense difference in fighting capability?

The gods did not seem to really play a role at character creation, and did only rarely turn up later.

Leap Into Action reads like a nice move, but when successful allows quite a few choices given the fact that not all of them may be applicable. We felt that either there need to be more options to choose from (I may remember later what we considered missing), or less choices.

Is it on purpose that hindering other characters is not in the rules, but helping is?

By chance I tried it yesterday, yes it is!

Ideally, I want But It Wasn't Me! to be an ability where the Host marks experience if someone stops him, and the person doing the stopping gains a string on him. Or the reverse, because there are two scenarios: either the Host is embarrassed because they cannot control themselves, or the stopper is embarrassed because stopping you is uncomfortable (have you ever asked someone with autism to stop pacing or talking out of turn?). I'd like it to be triggered under certain conditions, like as a 7-9 penalty, so that you aren't rolling every scene to see if your character is getting railroaded.

Cool.

While a lot of similar MH skins deal with a secret identity or power that you absolutely under no circumstances can reveal, the Host is the opposite. Everyone knows you're crazy, but you have no way of telling them that it's not you, because what does that make you sound like? Crazy still. Most of the abilities deal with ways of mitigating how much the Guest influences you, and ways of making you feel normal.

Yep, I get that. And it's particularly those abilities that I consider worth stealing. (The character in my AW game does not try to blame it on someone else, she's pretty much accepted the memories from the maelstrom as hers, but she's indeed considered quite crazy now, claiming she has a wife down in London, which everybody knows is a large crater and wasteland, but that she isn't gay, and would appreciate some way of control over herself and feeling normal.)

[…] putting yourself in imminent physical danger […]

I wasn't sure if “imminent physical danger” was what you meant, because to me “treacherous” has some other connotations, as well.