It's also worth pointing out that Brainers aren't particularly tied to the weirdness of Apocalypse World, or even the psychic maelstrom -- I mean sure, a very small number of their moves reference it (usually on a miss), but most of them are just a particular flavour of social manipulation that can operate on a completely different level than the Open Your Brain stuff.

Or maybe put another way, Open Your Brain is such an overwhelmingly powerful/important move that all you need to get weirdness in your game is have players/character who are willing to use it. Brainers, with their high +weird, may have slightly more incentive than others, but I mean... who doesn't want to commune with bizarre mysterious mojo? In our game I think the Chopper ended up with the highest frequency of Open-His-Braining, and the other two PCs were an actual-Brainer and an Angel whose character concept included the words 'psychic prostitute.'

Weird, I always thought River was Firefly's battlebabe, pretty straightforwardly. But maybe I just never thought it through.

As for the sex move, it seems to me that a character based on +cool, in a game that Vincent has specifically said is about loyalty, would form a pretty obvious counterpoint/ratcheting-up of the basic issues of the game. Here is a character who is built to be immune to attachment -- to ignore the threat of violence -- to be unphased by basically everything -- if the player wants to go that way. Think about how many things in the game (mind control, combat medicine, social compulsion) are modelled by 'you can do X, but it counts as acting under fire' and then consider that the battlebabe is the closest thing to a cahracter who just gets to shrug that off.

The battlebabe is a blank slate when it comes to who and what you will decide to fight for (compare to the Operator, tied to gigs; the Hardholder; the Brainer, requiring puppets; etc.) -- that's the source of the character's power and also thematically important in a game that is about relationships and interdependancy.

This sounds very cool. I am curious how you see NPCs working in this game, especially now that you have a 'hardholder' equivalent (fiction-wise, instead of just in terms of moves) -- the initial description suggests an extremely sparse population, but I feel like AW depends very heavily on its excellent NPC-related advice to spur action on the part of PCs and express/build on Fronts. I really like the idea of these semi-lost, semi-lonely adventurers, but my own experience with AW was super-focused around how our PCs interacted with and reacted to the choices of the people around them.

Is the idea here to maintain the importance of NPCs while drastically reducing their number, or to displace NPCs in favour of locations and stars and mysteries, or some other option altogether? And in either case, do you have any specific thoughts about how that will work, and how the rules will support it?

Sometimes?

But in terms of authority, yes, if there needs to be authority on the topic of my character's thoughts, then I am the one who has that authority. In most cases, though, that sort of authority is not necessary or part of the fiction. But if I decide at some point to say what my character is thinking, then it seems to me that this should stand to the same degree my describing any of his other actions does.

Are actions fundamentally different from thoughts, in terms of leeway for multiple interpretations? I don't think so, though they might seem that way at first. But if I say 'Kim feels guilty about not marrying Peppering' that seems simultaneously as definite as 'Kim pulls out her gun and shoots Jiminez in the back of the head' and yet not really all that definite in terms of what it says about my character in the fiction. So while I appear to have authority over 'what Kim is thinking' I only really had authority over one very small moment -- because I only needed it for that long -- and Kim's thoughts (and the context for that particular thought) remain as opaque as ever.

I'm curious to hear about this Bliss Stage game -- there are probably dimensions to this question well beyond what I am talking about.

I played Kim in our AW game. Kim was an Angel by training but made her living mostly as a prostitute. She could channel the dead while having sex, though it generally wasn't something she did on purpose.

Kim had been raised by the local Cult, whose influence over the area -- founded in their access to and knowledge of advanced medical training and supplies -- was considerable, and the initial focus of our game. Kim left the cult a year or so before play began, for unspecified reasons that probably involved them trying to run her life and marry her off to a cult 'father.' The Cult's ideology consisted primarily of an interpretation of the Psychic Maelstrom -- they believed that the maelstrom was the aggregate of the spiritual and emotional state of everyone who had ever died. The cult believed that the apocalypse was the result of human suffering -- too many unhappy people died, and the maelstrom became contaminated and eventually lashed out. They wanted to reduce suffering and therefore restore the maelstrom to a preapocalyptic state. The Cult's methods were the usual cult methods: hierarchy, control, and sex.

Anyways, my guiding principle for playing Kim was that when people asked her for something, she would give it to them. She was smart enough most of the time to make sure that they paid, or to negotiate sensible terms, but if push came to shove in the end she would always say 'yes.' This really solidified for me in the third or fourth session, when the group's Brainer managed to Deep Brain Scan Kim and asked me 'In what way are your mind and soul vulnerable?' The answer was a paraphrase of the above: if someone asks for something, sincerely and with genuine emotional need, Kim will always say yes.

Interestingly enough, this did not turn out to be a major handicap in Apocalypse World. Kim's overall trajectory was from a sensible, pleading, frustrated/disappointed Angel to an angry, demanding, ass-kicking Battlebabe -- but I never really felt like she ever compromised the core of her personality. It seemed inevitable, really, but over our fourteen+ sessions I just kept helping people and giving them what they wanted as best I could -- and then pursuing what I felt to be everyone's best interests as aggressively as possible, in the meanwhile. The fiction constantly revealed that Kim felt guilty about almost everything, and took on more and more of other people's sufferings and responsibility -- but at the same time I found myself confronted with the surprising fact that she could take it. It was fun to play someone with all the characteristics of a martyr, but who ultimately had no interest in martyrdom.

Judging by the immense disappointment of his actual guitar playing once the shit hit the fan, I'd have to vote for Battlebabe.

(Actually even without the snark that would be my vote. Dude is supremely cool.)

It is a heavy bonus, but you are also within 2 harm of being dead at that point. It's possible the move would work fine without scaling, though, if that was a concern. My perception is probably coloured by my experience with the game -- in our dozen+ sessions I think we only had PCs at 4+ harm once or maybe twice.

Er I also realise from your phrasing you may have misread -- it's +2 to hot rolls only, not all rolls. Another option would be to limit the bonus to seduction rolls only -- so you end up with pretty good odds of being able to worm your way out of a lot of deadly situations, but only if you are willing to put out (or pretend to put out) to whoever's involved.

Okay, if the first move is ditched that's definitely on the road to awesome. That said, I am in agreement that the list could get sharper, too. For me it's not so much the redundancy as the vagueness. This stuff about knowing about clauses doesn't seem very strong to me, it seems like the beginning of a whole lot of ultra-arbitrary GM decision-making without any structure or intent provided by the move. I think that by 'there are clauses only you know about' what you mean is 'the deal is particularly favourable to you', and vice versa. If the intention is that the actual clauses will be fabricated on the spot by the GM, and that will then become an entirely-fictional advantage... well that seems like a tall order. Specific consequences of the clauses seem like a better fit.

For a pick 3/1 I'd get rid of the clauses and go for something like:

* Your part of the bargain is easily fulfilled.
* You know what your part of the bargain is.
* Something about the wording or the history of the pledge gives you an advantage. Take +1 forward in future dealings with the other party.

Also I assume the basic hit/miss is 'the contract is actually useful for what you are trying to do' vs. 'you invoked the wrong deal, sucker' -- but something about 'on a miss, pick 0' make me unsure. But I mean, this is AW, a miss means you are fucked, not just less-advantaged. You were looking for wall-climbing and instead you got web-spinning, and oh by the way this will cost you your firstbrood, which any arachnid scholar will tell you means your first one hundred children.