I've been designing games on forums for almost 10 years now, and I need to warn you: no game was ever designed on a forum. Forums are great for brainstorming and getting some feedback, but the real design work happens when you're by yourself, late at night or in the shower or staring grimly at a half-written text file.

Accordingly, here's my caution.

Designers: don't get attached to what you or anyone has said in your forum. It's probably not what you're going to do, in the end. It's just talk.

Fans: don't get attached to what you or anyone - even the designer! - has said in a hack forum. It's probably not what the game's going to do in the end. It's just talk.

There's a cycle I've observed, over and over: first there's lots of forum activity, then it falls quiet, then there's lots of forum activity, then it falls quiet again. The quiet phase is when the designer's actually working, and the forum is a distraction to the designer's work.

Fans: if you post in a forum during a quiet phase, and the designer ignores you, it's probably because the designer's working. When a forum goes quiet, it probably doesn't mean that the designer needs something to kickstart her interest, it probably means that she's doing the real design work she needs to do.

And finally.

Everyone: the usual outcome of real design work is an abandoned game. Only rarely is the outcome of real design work a finished game.

The best thing you can do is relax, work hard, and let the process do its thing.

Good luck!

GenCon. John Harper's the MC. Matt Wilson's playing a chopper, Elizabeth Shoemaker Sampat's playing an angel, Marc Majcher's playing a battlebabe, I'm playing faceless. I don't remember anyone else's names, but my name's Zuto.

Elizabeth's angel and I have a thing. She's got a horribly scarred face but I think she's pretty; she thinks I must understand what it's like, since I always wear my mask. It's a cute, unconsummated 2-way crush thing: "aw, the hulking meat-giant and the scar-faced healer are sweet on each other! But they're both shy! Aw."

I'm the LT of Matt's chopper's gang, and Marc's battlebabe is my best friend. She recently helped me do something terrible, and the rest of the gang doesn't know it. We ambushed and massacred some people under the protection of this warlord guy in the swamps, shit got out of hand, and we (inadvertently?) left a survivor, Matilda. Matilda is the person that Elizabeth's angel gets her medical supplies from.

Play opens in this warlord's stilt-compound, with Elizabeth's angel and my Zuto walking over to Matilda's to re-up on morphine, with Matt's chopper and Marc's battlebabe kicking back in what passes for the bar in these swamps. It goes all wrong pretty much immediately. Matilda keeps Elizabeth's angel occupied in her hut while three of her friends close in on me on the bridge, the warlord's guys surround Matt's chopper and Marc's battlebabe where they're drinking on the roof of the bar, and suddenly everybody's shooting and diving and crawling and grabbing a dude by the face and drowning him in the swamp.

It's a half-hour battle. Elizabeth's angel and I manage to connect with Matt's chopper and Marc's battlebabe at the end of it -- oh, too much to tell. In sum: the faceless is a fucking beast in a fight.

The fight ends with:

Me sunk under the mud, open-brained, clawing toward the surface.

Marc's battlebabe, my best friend, in the jaws of a 40-foot apocalyptic hell crocodile, who's tumbling with her through the swamp. She's at 10:00 harm and counting.

Elizabeth's angel, my crush, bargaining desperately with the world's psychic maelstrom for our lives. The maelstrom will give her two of us, and she chooses me and Matt's chopper. She always figured Marc's battlebabe for a bad end.

But Matt's chopper, our boss, isn't willing to let Marc's battlebabe go. He's in the swamp too, fighting with the crocodile to save her, and now Elizabeth's angel's in the swamp, fighting with HIM to save HIM. The swamp lets me go, per its agreement with Elizabeth's angel. I reach the surface and my mask wants me to go finish Matilda now that Elizabeth's angel isn't there to get in my way but I want to help my friends, so I'm acting under fire, and I hit with the 7-9, and John says "sure no problem, you can help them, all you gotta do is take your mask off for a minute so you can think clearly."

On the faceless character sheet there's a checklist, choose 2, for what you are when you're unmasked. I look at it. Unmasked, I am:
x Grotesque. Every PC who sees me goes immediately to Hx+3 with me.
x Ashamed. I have hard=0 until I cover my face again.

I stare at that for a long time.

"Uh, sorry," I say. "I've gotta go finish Matilda."

Elizabeth's face! Oh my god, Elizabeth's face. She bargains with the fuckin world's psychic maelstrom to save my life, and I run the other way.

--

Things after that went further to hell. I don't remember whether I killed Matilda or not. Marc's battlebabe died. Matt's chopper and Elizabeth's angel straggled themselves out somewhere, betrayed and sad. I dunno.

After the session, I showed them what had made the decision for me, x Grotesque and x Ashamed. I'd refused to show them during play, out of shame. Matt, Marc and John nodded and said "ah..." in understanding, but it made Elizabeth mad.

"Dude, I was GROTESQUE, and I was ASHAMED, the WHOLE TIME. You're a COWARD."

The end.

This topic has been moved to Western World.

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=322.0

So that's good.

This topic has been moved to Necrology.

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=203.0

So that's good.

-Vincent

This topic has been moved to Sagas of the Icelanders.

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=75.0

So that's good.

This topic has been moved to Fingers on the Firmament, so that's good.

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=149.0

So far, when people have asked me about Apocalypse World, my sales pitch has been to blink stupidly, scuff my feet, and perhaps mumble. Ask Nathaniel Cole, I did exactly that to him at GameStorm.

Help! I'm hopeless. What would you say?

-Vincent

The battlebabe and the driver are exceptions, but for the rest of the characters:

Each stat line sums to +3.
The first +2 counts as +2, but a second +2 counts as +3.

Not much to it!

The battlebabe:
The battlebabe balances same as the others, then gets +1cool. This isn't, as it happens, a stat thing, it's a move thing. For moves, the battlebabe is a "you get this 1, plus choose 2" character, same as the hocus, but the move that all battlebabes get is +1cool. I chose to list it right in with the stats instead of as a move for more complicated reasons, having to do with cool as such, to serve imbalance between the stats in the game. It's easy to get +1weird, for instance; it's hard to get +1cool.

Imbalance between the stats is an essential part of the game's color-first design, by the way. Balancing the stats overall would be counter to the game's design philosophy and goals.

The driver:
The driver balances 1 down, to +2, when she's not in her car.

Now, most of the characters get 2 character moves, but some get 3. Maybe I'll talk about that next.

In going through the characters' stats to make this post, I spotted two exceptions. On one line the driver balances to +1 insted of to +2, and on one line the operator balances to +2 instead of +3. I'm going to look closely at those before I go to print and work out whether I have stat-imbalance reasons for them, or if they're just mistakes.

-Vincent