I have seen the Labyrinth, but so long, long ago, all I remember is that muppets are involved!

The "just do it like AW, but have bad stuff happen with the black die" was something I considered at one point. I don't know. I'd have to fiddle with it.

I'd say for now, if the +1 is the easy fix, try it that way.

So, I've made a hack! It's a two-player (one GM, one player) fantasy thing based on child adventurers going on epic quests much bigger than themselves. You fight Monsters, run from Goblins, and try to get a kidnapped princess back to her home in another dimension.

You play a Goblin who's made 7 or 8 years old, cast out by your kind, trying to get the princess (a weirdo human-esque girl from another dimension) back to her home. But the Demon King is after you, and you'll have to defeat the Monsters he's hidden his soul in first before the way is laid bare.

You can find the playtest document here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BwQFfBABRn2BeFJVZUtJbmhSc0NWY0RrbVVnQnhaQQ

A moves sheet is here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BwQFfBABRn2BRm9DamM3SmZUWENISnBuQ0I2dEZuUQ

And a character sheet!: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BwQFfBABRn2BejJBdFpUR0dSN2FuRDJmenJ2a2JLdw

An MC sheet is coming shortly.

I'm looking for people who can throw in one or two sessions (or more is fine!) by the end of March!

(came up with a solution to just publicly post the playtest, so we're solid! Disregard any previous nonsense this post said)

In the mean time, I'll use this thread to post up art for the final project as it trickles in, answer questions, and discuss anything related to it. Thanks!

1. Why the Touchstone's sex move? It has you scribble out possible advancements if you screw someone you don't love. Where does that fit in with the character? I'm not saying it doesn't! I'm saying I don't quite understand the angle.

2. The Quarantine can ask questions about the past at the beginning of each session. The MC answers questions on a hit, but on a miss, the player answers instead. Why? Specifically, why is that the miss option?

Hardholder's way too much of a stretch. You have to squint to see it. Operator's nice and tidy, with maybe a dash of the Hardholder's personality, I'd say.

Imagine the playbooks as broad strokes and not personalities. Like, Jayne's a conniving and scheming Gunlugger - just being a troublemaker doesn't make him a Battlebabe, even though that's what Battlebabes will sometimes do. The Battlebabe just lets you use that behavior as currency.

Like, Vincent will have to give you final word, but I don't think you can find their mates by drawing analogues in their personalities and antics: you have to look at the basic description.

Kaylee is a Savvyhead, because she's good at working on things - sometimes spooky good. Don't concern yourself with, say, her cheerfulness, her heart, or her undying optimism. Just that she's a techie. Your savvyhead can have any kind of personality, after all.

Wash is a Driver because he pilots the main vehicle, and because he's most competent behind the wheel, so to speak. Don't concern yourself with his knowledge, capability, or enduring love for his wife. Just that he drives.

Mal is an Operator because he commands a crew of people and takes jobs, some of which go well, some of which don't. Yeah, he runs his crew with a bit of Hard, just like a Hardholder, but that's really it. Your Operator could be a jerk, also - hard-hearted, stoic, "the crew is my family". Your Hardholder could be the exact opposite.

In that way, Jayne becomes the Gunlugger because he dishes out hardcore pain, has a lot of weapons, and is the baddest ass (no offense to Zoe and all, but I'd much rather have Jayne as security when it gets down to it - providing I can pay him enough.)

Going along at character creation, I've never had anyone deviate from the Looks, Eyes, Body, etc. bit. "I have a lush body, I wear fetish-bondage gear, I have arresting eyes, all fine." I'm sure it happens, but I'm talking about personal experience - it's never happened, for me.

Names are another thing entirely.

This isn't about "Do you let your players pick names other than from the lists?", because that conversation's been done to death. I'm talking about why they would even want to. For reference, nearly all of my players have selected their own names, using the list of names as a color reference, like how you might scroll over some old-timey biblical names when you're thinking what to call your characters in Dogs in the Vineyard.

No, you can tell a player, "You get to be either a Gunlugger or a Skinner. You get to be either really Hard or really Weird, but not both. You can have this feature on your gun but not that. Are your eyes like this or like this?" And you go on and on, narrowing it down even more, until you arrive at a person. They don't resist! Do your players? Maybe. This was the same when we'd play Vampire, and they were all, "Gotcha, I can pick from this list of clans. I get to pick from these powers. I get these abilities, these skills."

But when you enforce naming conventions, that's when I've seen major contention.

Names means something else above and beyond everything else about a character - at least for my players, anyway. And I've played with a lot of different people! They'll take forever, maybe hours or even days, to find the right name. We're talking having giant lists of baby names in different cultures bookmarked, and going through them in painful detail to find just the right thing.

I found this especially relevant due to AW's list of names, a small selection it wants you to pick from at the start, and my players' insistence on deviating, despite being cool with every other detail.

Do names imply more about a character than their eyes, their clothes, than what they say? Can slapping a bad name on an amazing character ruin things? Does a name have more power than we think? I'm curious as to everyone's stories and thoughts on this.

Best dice for Apocalypse World, or Bestest Dice?

http://q-workshop.com/showitem.php?nritems=1&kid=6nukszcz&colortlo=&lang=EN&sell_type=DETAL

Found a link to the place on RPG.net. They've got apocalyptic dice of all colors under the "NUKE" category. Even a glow-in-the-dark set! Fancy.

Played it with my girlfriend just now. She gets spooked easily. Unfortunately, this didn't do it for her - but that was mostly my clumsiness, and we're both eager to try again. I GMed, she played, and she's willing to do it the other way around, though normally she doesn't like GMing.

This went very slow, very awkward. I can't say there were very many navigation problems: we both understood to draw, to turn to things. It took her a little bit to remember she could discard her hand before drawing, but then she was using that to her advantage like a boss. I have no doubt that going into it next time, when we know what's up, it'll go smoother.

We got to a point where we were looping around a lot, a lot of interacting with ghosts but they didn't really do much towards her, so we were drawing cards and hopping pages but not really anything was happening. The idea I had was a couple who used to work in an old factory back in the thirties, they were a couple because the woman was cheating on her husband with this guy, and this guy was in a position of power and tried to burn the place down, and he hunted them down in the halls and bashed them over and over with a big sledgehammer. I couldn't really think of much evidence to show for it - threw some skeletons down there, showed the place in supreme disrepair. But I couldn't think of a way for it to be really transparent - there were just some ghosts here, and I couldn't think of any logical way to convey what kind of crime had transpired to them to the player.

Instead, she was really just trying to get out and get away from the ghosts. She met one, a male ghost, all smashed and distorted, trying to do his job, repairs around the big open room she was in. She ended up leaving this room because the ghost started calling her by name, and screw that. The next room featured a woman ghost - the pacing felt weird, not dramatic or tense, just "get to the point", I was keeping the game's timeframe in mind - and this woman was trying to escape, and in her hellish ghost world of the past, the place was burning and she was trapped. The player attempted to leave, only to find a big set of locked doors barring her way. The ghost noticed her and tried to get her to help her escape, but the player couldn't figure out how: she wanted to leave through those double doors, but there's no way to open them! Locked, rusted shut, something. So eventually the ghost gets pissed and threatens her for not cooperating, and pulls off a layer of sheet metal from the wall and all its nasty, rusty nails, and throws it at the player. She leaps out of the way and returns to the room she just came from - no other way out!

This room was empty now, so she headed up to an office on the second floor. She goes inside to investigate and the male ghost from before enters, muttering about people being after him, saying he's got to leave. The ghost notices the player and attacks her, she gets strangled and dies. The end.

Afterwards, the player noted how dismal most all of the endings were. Appropriate, given the story we're telling. I don't feel comfortable saying the game didn't go well since it was awkward and our first time with a new system, especially one as weird as this (in a good way: my girlfriend asked, "Why doesn't he just make a goddamn d20 game like everyone else?", in jest).

We weren't aware at first if the player was supposed to read aloud the section they turned to. Like, it tells you on 2 to pick what you hope the ghost doesn't do, and the way her hand went, she told me that and what the ghost did instead. At this point, we weren't telling each other what our sections said, so when I started having ghosts do other things that were on the list, we had to stop for a moment and figure out how transparent this information is supposed to be. We went with her telling me everything from the player's book, and me being kind of secretive about my information. Not sure how it was supposed to be handled.

The repetition got kind of bad, because it turned into, "I can't think of a logical reason why these ghosts would do this, so they're going to stay to their own devices." Even after we did the back and forth and figured things out, I guess I just made some piss-poor ghosts. It was a little frustrating, letting the pace of things be dictated by the jumps and card draws, because we felt like it was trying to get us to do one thing but we wanted our characters, NPCs to do another.

Next time, at least, we're going to draw a map.

Also, first time around, we didn't realize how much prompting and improv would be required of us. It was jarring, and led to some bare-bones description. It didn't feel cohesive. There were a lot of instances where we read things and thought about the consequences, but it led to some weak narration. We didn't have any idea where we were headed or what was expected of us. I know it's just a playtest document, and it's without any glitz or glamour, no introductions or supporting information really, but as per request, I'm playing it as if it were a complete game.

We liked it though. We're eager to try it again. Probably some of the issues we had can be tidied up with a bit more experience under our belts as well as a deeper narrative, knowing now what's expected of us. However, I'm worried that there's only four, five games tops to be had out of this, that even though it all loops around to help craft a ghost story, that it's a very limited tale, and not one I'd want to revisit that often. But it's really neat.