Yeah, the capacity to take "debilities" in order to wipe out Harm that would take you past 9:00 is no longer a thing; there are still ways to cheat death, but it's more difficult and meaningful in 2E.

The new subterfuge moves are cool, and while most of them are variations on the sort of things that good MCs would do under the 7-9 range of act under fire, it's nice to have them codified.

As Ebok stated, Hx has been re-done (it no longer requires you to go around twice). While this streamlines character creation, one very important thing has changed: you are now asking people the questions (e.g. the Hardholder's "Which of you has been with me since before?") rather than telling them. I actually like this a little bit less, because I was quite drawn to the idea that in AW1 even your character concept wasn't quite 100% your own.

I find one of the most subtle but substantive changes is in the new battle moves. The old system of the peripheral battle moves is completely removed, and while its replacement is kind of cool, I don't necessarily think that the best job has been done in the book explaining the ramifications of what being "in battle" actually means in play. I have my own opinions, of course, and there have been a couple of really good, thought-provoking threads on here that have discussed this issue.

Paul, I can't speak for Ebok, but I often do something that sounds similar: the insights gained from opening your brain often serve to establish previously unknown relationships, preferably between the PCs and NPCs. When viewed through the lens of however the PC interacts with the Maelstrom, you see the people and events in your life in new ways.

Example: one of the PCs in a recent campaign viewed the Psychic Maelstrom as pushing his cart up and down the aisles of a massive grocery store, complete with saccharine muzak and weird announcements. At one point he opened his brain about a situation involving strange disappearances, at which point I described him pushing his shopping cart past the meat counter, where he saw a particular NPC in a butcher's apron, whistling a jaunty tune and wielding a cleaver with great gusto and enthusiasm as viscera flew. That, uh, "set the tone" for future interactions with this NPC, for sure.

OK, cool, that'll work perfectly. So interpretive Tarot works best when framed with a "what if I were to do X?" question, but sometimes you can just apply it straight as-is to a situation to give you insight about what's going on. And that's what I'll do here.

The first card (the leftmost) represents forces working in John's favor. In this case, the card drawn is the 8 of Disks, which represents "prudence." Whatever John is going to do from here, she needs to be careful and not hasty.

The second card (the rightmost) represents forces working against John. The card drawn here is the 8th card of the Major Arcana: Justice. Oh, shit, it looks like John is on the wrong side of something. Some action she's taken has put her on the wrong side of "the law," be that the law of the settlement or maybe in this case just vendetta law. But let's take a step back from her immediate circumstance and say it's her relationship with this psychic woman, as that's what started all of this trouble in the first place. Hmmm, a community's laws usually get made for a reason. Uh, oh, maybe the psychic woman (or psychics in general) are trouble. Why could that be? How might it manifest?

The next card (the topmost) is a succinct framing of the problem. In this case, it's the 15th card of the Major Arcana: The Devil. The Devil represents temptation in its most base form, and often represents the destructiveness of those temptations. What this implies to me is that John's "thinking with her clit," and furthermore, the position of the card indicates that doing so is problematic. Is it just a problem for John herself, or is it bigger than that? My money's on the latter.

The fourth card (the bottommost) is a succinct prompt indicating how forces are moving to address the problem posed by the previous card - it is the universe's "solution" to the problem. Here, the card that's come up is the 8 of Swords: Interference. Well, no shit. But what's interesting here again is that the issue isn't one of vengeance for the killed family, or excommunication by the cult or whatever - It seems like perhaps the Veil's goal is less one of payback and more one of trying to stop John. But stop her from what? What is it that John is doing that poses a threat to the existing order? Again, I'm thinking there's more to this psychic chick than meets the eye, and that John is unknowingly playing with fire.

The fifth (central) card represents the stakes, what hangs in the balance. This time, it's the Queen of Wands. Court cards very often signify people. Wands represent force, action (both creative and destructive). The queen tempers this a little bit, in this case being at once both matriarchal and nurturing - although in this context the term "protective" would be suitable as well. Think "Tiger Mom," maybe. This seems like exactly the kind of role that Veil might fulfill. But as a consequence card, this is interesting. If Veil is really the matriarchal protector, what does losing her mean for the hardhold? She's clearly a woman of force and action (as evidenced by her removing John's arm with an axe), but is she also something of the power behind the throne here? What sort of power vacuum would be left if something bad were to happen to her? Maybe Veil is not the real enemy here.

The sixth and final card (placed cross-ways over the fifth) represents an outcome. Here, we see the Princess of Wands. Again, court cards are often signifiers for people. In this case, the card represents someone who is active yet practical. I see this as a pretty good analog for John herself, and in this position it can also be advice to John - and builds further on the other cards in the spread; take decisive but prudent action. Don't be hasty, but don't be passive. Under the circumstances, I'd make a bold play - confront Veil as an equal, get her to tell you just WTF is really going on here. But maybe don't rashly open that door just yet. And ultimately, maybe John's "enemies" really should be her allies, and vice versa.

Is that sufficiently weird and non-obvious that it would help in this situation?

As a side note, there are a bajillion ways to interpret tarot. There are lots of different spread techniques and different decks have different symbology and iconography. Some use the orientation of the card itself to change the meaning (with cards placed upside down having the "ill-dignified" opposite meaning, for instance). The method I used here uses position relative to other cards to determine whether a card is ill-dignified or not (i.e. a single sword card heavily opposed by a bunch of disks, or whatever).

Ultimately, it really doesn't matter which method you use; the goal of interpretive tarot is to present you with pieces of information and then force you to figure out how they fit. Some of these will confirm the obvious, but some of them will yield entirely new or unexpected insights because they'll force you to think outside the box (e.g. when The Moon - indicating deception - comes up in an unexpected place and you have to figure out what it might be that's being hidden, or who's lying to whom about what, or whatever).

Our sessions tend to run about 3.5 to 4 hours. That can cover anything from an afternoon to a month in-game, it really just depends on what's happening. And if there are significant "breaks" in the action for the passage of time, you'd better believe I call for lifestyle while that's happening. I've found that the AW2 lifestyle rules make poverty more pressing and give the PCs more impetus to go out and find trouble.

Welcome! You're definitely in the right spot. Things have been a little quiet lately, but it runs in cycles. But there's tons of stuff in the various forum sections that will be of interest.

1. I know this might not be helpful, but it really depends on your style and the situation. But here are some handy rules of thumb I use:

• Whoever speaks first goes first
• If more than one person wants to do something at the same time and those things don't conflict, have them all declare their intended actions before resolving anything
• If someone wants to wait to see the outcome of another player's action, that's totally cool, but waiting can have its own risks - look to the fiction for ideas for ways to complicate things for them
• If someone hasn't already spoken, ask them what they're doing - this can happen before or after other rolls have happened, but it's important to keep everyone involved
• The more chaotic the situation is, the more I'll jump around between people
• If two PCs are going head-to-head, always give the one who didn't speak first the chance to interfere, and once the first player's move is resolved, always give them the chance to respond with an action or move of their own as the very next thing that happens

2. Again, this is going to depend largely on the fiction. In general, the more dangerous the foe, the more often I'm going to have them act. A particularly fast or vicious foe might very well do something between every PC action. A slower, less dangerous foe might take actions more slowly, letting several PCs "go" before it takes action.

That said, making a move on a PC miss is always an option - just be aware that it might be the monster doing something (lashing out with a damaging attack, etc) or it could simply be the Keeper complicating the situation (you realize your gun is hopelessly jammed and won't be of any more use to you in this fight).

One thing that will help here is simply experience; you'll start to get a feel for how lethal your PCs are and know how often to have the monster act in order to convey the relative "difficulty" of a particular encounter. If your PCs are mowing through the opposition without breaking a sweat, kick up the frequency with which you take actions on behalf of the monsters.

Finally, monsters aren't stupid. Even if they're not intelligent, they probably exhibit some kind of low, animal cunning. Nobody is going to stand there like a dope while everyone attacks them. As such, you should always be looking for good ways the monsters can limit how many people are attacking them at once. Launching a vicious ambush and then fading away before more than one or two PCs have a chance to respond is totally cool and super unnerving. Likewise, using the terrain to limit the PCs is fun (narrow sewer tunnels being a perpetual fave).

3. There are some situations in which a PC might take multiple actions in quick succession (for instance, doing something under pressure to slip, dodge, duck, and weave in past the mass of flailing tentacles before whipping out your enchanted sword and kicking some ass against the monster's actual body). But generally speaking, if it's reasonable to assume that a particular action is going to take some time to accomplish, then it's cool to give other PCs (or even the monster!) an opportunity to do stuff in between the "multiple steps" of another PC's actions.

But for the most part, I like to do things more or less one at a time because I feel like it makes for better narrative flow and leaves "mini-cliffhangers" in the fight (you're past the tentacles and ready to go to town with your enchanted sword; salivating to finally kick some ass, the anticipation as Davis tries to free the virgin from the sacrificial altar before the cultists finish the ritual is killing you!).

4. Everything depends on the monster. If it's slow or weak, then sure, it might get easily overwhelmed; other PCs might simply get to inflict harm on it, no roll necessary. But if that monster is fast or tricksy or has multiple methods of lashing out at the PCs, then everyone is at risk and everyone had better be putting their dice on the line.

5. In general, I gauge it the same way as other harm; is it like getting shot by a handgun? then 2 harm is appropriate. A shotgun or assault rifle? Maybe 3 is appropriate. Being in the blast of a grenade or getting hit by a moving vehicle? 4 harm is not out of the question. Having a roof collapse on you is pretty fucking bad, so I'd probably go 3 or 4 harm. I don't know if MotW has guidelines for falling damage, but those are usually a pretty good gauge for unconventional harm too.

6. As mentioned in the other thread, everything depends on the move's trigger. Look at the trigger condition for kick some ass - if what the player is doing sounds like the trigger, make the roll. If not, don't. Yes, the player may want to get the 10+ result, but if they don't trigger the move then no dice ("Yeah, you hit it with your rifle, but damn, the hide on that thing is tough. You're not even sure you drew blood. You're going to have to try something else to kill this thing.")

Also, for what it's worth, a one-sided application of harm (i.e. shooting at someone who can't shoot back) in AW is NOT the equivalent of kicking some ass, but rather going aggro, a completely separate move with a different trigger and different effects. MotW may make a similar distinction.

7. See above. I'd be surprised if MotW didn't have an analog for go aggro.

(You can definitely read the situation. Always read the situation.)

No, don't read the situation; it's funnier that way. But then again, I'm pretty free with giving out information to people about to do crazy things.

In the last AW campaign I ran, the Driver (Ace) provided quite a bit of the drama in the game. Just by having him there, it gave the game a much wider scope (helped by the fact that none of the other PCs were tied to a specific location). And because the scope was wider, it led us to include the following custom move we had in the game (inspired by an old thread on this very forum):

When you return to a settlement which your character has visited before but which has not yet previously come up in-game, roll+Hot.  On a 10+ hold 3, on a 7-9 you and the MC each hold 1.  On a miss the MC holds 3.  Any time you encounter a new NPC in that settlement, you may spend your hold 1-for-1 to take +1forward with them - they like you, owe you a small favor, or maybe just remember you fondly.  The MC can similarly spend hold 1-for-1 at any time to give you -1forward with a new NPC - they dislike you, you wronged them, or they remember you being an asshole.

The real kicker here was that Ace was Hot-1 and for all of the times he made this move during the course of the campaign, he rolled a hit exactly once. So everywhere the PCs went, there were jilted lovers, jealous boyfriends, and double-crossed arms dealers wanting to have a candid word with Ace. And his player decided early on that Ace had been everywhere, so he always made the move. This was a fantastic way to play up the transient nature of playbook, and worked out really well throughout the campaign.

I like exchange of harm being a prerequisite - if it's worth inflicting violence, the expectation of harm should be built in.

I also have no particular problem with "you fight harder for [thing], even if ultimately you don't get it."

We had a combat in a recent one-shot where the PC (a heartless assassin based on the Battlebabe playbook) engaged in a fight with three opponents. Ultimately, the assassin's goal was to abduct the crown prince (a mere suckling babe), but rather than jumping straight into SBF, the fight shook out as a go aggro (the surprise initiation of combat, killing the first guard), two single combats (to kill the other two guards, who - due to their positioning - couldn't attack him simultaneously), and another go aggro (to get the wet-nurse to hand over the kid). In this case, single combat seemed like the appropriate move because the PC knew he needed to deal with the guards. A single "seize" roll might have gotten him the kid, but he'd still be in a fight (and at that point he'd have been applying his harm to the wet-nurse, not the guards - and they'd have been carving him up while he did it, applying more harm whether he missed or hit). Similarly, a single "seize" might have gotten him out the tower-window and to his escape, but he wouldn't have had the kid.

Like I said in one of these threads, I think the granularity of what is being seized is intended to be more specific under AW2. And if there's nothing specific you're trying to seize, then single combat is the fall-back. It seemed to shake out pretty well in play.