Great stuff Danny, thanks. I particularly like the following.

The cult thinks this guy has a direct line to ultimate truth and they expect him to fix all their problems, right?  Anything goes wrong, people fighting, not enough food, somebody's baby got sick, it all harshes the mellow and ultimately people look to the Hocus for guidance and solutions.  I think your interpretation of judgement works well.

Yeah, this will be fun! I hope he keeps failing his Fortunes rolls.  :)

I'd call BS on this.  If the followers had wanted to take responsibility for their own actions and hard luck, they wouldn't have joined his cult in the first place -- unless it's some mystical claptrap about how the harvest wouldn't have failed unless they had doubt in their hearts, so everybody needs to sing twice as loud next time.

Love it! Truth did do some totally crazy ass stuff in both his Frenzy roll, and in opening his brain to see what to do about his mutilated follower. For some reason buzzards are tied in to his cult, and they took care of the dying girl... cleaned it all up.

I think once you've got the cult members and practices roughed out, it will be a lot easier to come up with...

This thread has made me come up with a crazy amount of cool questions for the hocus, and I that you're right in that once a few details have been settled things will clear up.

Hey Chris, is that "Eulogy" quote actually from Dune? (Yes, I'll damage my geek cred by admitting that I've never read Dune.)

For the first, maybe he's their guide, not their leader. They travel with him, but he answers to them if they wind up in the wrong place.

Makes sense. Something like the hocus even being a puppet of sorts started forming in my head during the typing of this post, but I'll let their exact relationship materialize in play. I will definitely ask the player how he sees his character's relationship to his followers.

It's kind of a pain to do! If someone will, that's great. I'll try to get to it myself when I have some time, but it won't be soon.

I agree with it being a pain to do, but even more so for me I would think, as I I still feel that there's a disconnect in the rules on how to actually get from the 1st Session Worksheet to creating your first Front.

Why are Resources not listed for Threats? Why are the Fundamental Scarcity not listed for Fronts? Sure, there's an "Expresses" heading on the Front Sheet, but in the example in the rules it lists "Corruption" which isn't one of the eight Fundamental Scarcities and there's no mention of why "Expresses" is a category on the Front Sheet.

Had the rules at least used the example 1st Session Worksheet as a base for the creation of the sample Front and four Threats, it would've been possible to puzzle out the procedure, but as it is I feel it's the weakest part of the whole book. It feels like some part of the process is left in the head of the designer, perhaps it was imparted to some playtesters, but I cannot find it from just reading the book.

By the way, octoscott, thanks again for sharing your process with me, of how you got from your 1st Session Worksheet to your Fronts.

There's a Hocus named Truth that fills the leader role in the game I'm MCing. Truth is a fucking wacknut (weird+3), and has the move frenzy. Here are his Followers:

Description: Truth's cult. They travel with Truth. Taken as a body, they constitute a powerful psychic antenna. Eager, enthusiastic, and successful recruiters. They aren't really Truth's, it's more like he's theirs. They are decadent and perverse.
Fortune: +1
Surplus: 1-barter, Augury, and Growth.
Want: Judgment, and Savagery.

Firstly, how do I handle his follower's wants contra the fact that Truth's followers aren't really his, it's more like he's theirs? I don't really understand how to decipher what a cult of people willing to travel with a hocus, but not because they're his followers, but because they somehow see themselves owning him, and that coupled with the want: judgment it has me confused. Would someone please give me a few pointers, tips or ideas?

Secondly, of course Truth failed his first session fortunes roll. His followers blamed him for being in want, a follower was mutilated by another, then they turned their fury on Truth himself. The hocus used frenzy to have the followers brutally butcher the maimer and calm them down for the time being. I saw Truth pointing out that the followers were to blame as the truth, is this correct in general (in our story it obviously was)? I mean, since fortunes is tied to the followers, if they're in want it should in general be their own fault, right?

Thirdly, any tips on how to handle augury? My first question for the hocus' player when he wants to use augury will probably be, "what is augury?" What is it in your games?

Btw, the other two characters in our game are Damson the battlebabe, a loyal follower of Truth the hocus, and Shithead the chopper who is puzzled by how Truth dared stand up to him, and perhaps on the fence of also becoming a cult member.

I think well when putting words in writing, and just typing this up gave me a couple of new ideas.

Great advice in general cwilbur, but I especially like the bit on structuring character generation. I could've used that during my own char gen session, as I went through what you describe in helping a bit here, then a bit there, and back to here again... It would've been a whole lot more effective had I helped one player at a time, and the other players would've been more involved as well. Top notch stuff.

At first glance I love it (but I'm in migraine hell and not at my full wits). I especially like what you did with Somewhere Out There, as I tried to do something similar for a playbook I created and you accomplished just what I tried to do, but a lot more elegantly.

Very cool Johnstone, good work. I'm working on some playbooks myself, but want to get more actual play before I finalize them. Thanks for all the font sleuthing, so I didn't have to do that myself.  :)