Thanks for posting Nils! My thoughts...

Yes, without intending to we very much made this a one-shot rather than the first session in a campaign. Quite typical for our group, as we tend to escalate stakes rather quickly and usually burn out our campaigns by the fifth our sixth session at the latest. But no worries, we will have a better start next time, now that we are a bit more informed!

It's interesting to note that all the things that didn't work that well had to do with me forgetting parts of the game's instructions. Like pushing a bit more to have the characters be allies from the start. Not like here, just fellow travelers without any reason to trust or help each other. Or like forgetting the to do it, do it-rule when it came to interfering, which made those rolls seem abstract or meta until I remembered.

A matter of taste, as well, that I carry with me from the game, is to make an effort not to let human lives get too cheap, at least in the protagonists' eyes. I mean, I love it that the world is such a harsh place and all, but I can feel a bit degraded myself and lose my engagement when the protagonists, or their gang in this case, constantly strive to behave like fucking savages . A matter of taste, as I said, but in the future I'll try to steer players away from that kind of character.

A funny thing, in the example about serious harm and taking debilities Vincent mentions that he's never seen that kind of violence between player characters in actual play. We went way beyond that on our first session with the game! :)

A couple of things I'm wondering about is if we made brain whispers to useful and experience progress too swift. When Smith the brainer was taking cover from the gang's fire, he was firing off brain whispers as fast as the player could shout it out, via his brain relay in front of the cover. One thing about this was that it seemed very potent. Sure, a miss would have led to a hard move by me, but with +3weird he didn't miss much. Has anyone experienced this as an issue?

Also, with weird highlighted - new to the game we naturally found that interesting - he made two advances in like two minutes of in-fiction time. And about the same with the chopper and his highlighted hard. I'm not personally bothered by that, but I'm wondering if I've missed something, if it's not intended to work that way?

Anyway, the game itself was as awesome as it seemed before, and actual play experience is bound to improve.

Gonna reread the book now that I've tried tried it in real life! :)

I might borrow that Mantle stuff for a thing or other. Looks great for a nobles-heavy setting.

Amigo, that looks like some very nice stuff! Please fill us in when you've got more stuff detailed!

Nah man, I think you should go the opposite way on some of this with the lovers. Maybe you all have different kinds of lovers in mind than I do, but when I think of The Lovers, I think a couple that's all about trying to be together but having to fight all hell for it, again and again. It's not being a dynamic duo that defines them.

So I'd give them bonuses not for being together but for being separated, especially when they're trying to get back together. The times when they're actually in each others arms should only come intermittently, though not never, I suppose. But those times are not where the drama is.

Way cooler, I think. And you wouldn't have to make one mute.

I miss the original Pit Bull a bit, that was Darth Vader-cool. Couldn't it be a free move that doesn't take the place of any of the more useful ones? I don't think it's overpowered, since it only gets used when the character leaves play.

Brett, awesome idea! Looking back over my rpging over the years, I've always been looking for stuff like this, but it usually didn't work that well in the olden-school days. So of this i approve!

Oh, and a comment on this:

As a side note, have you ever noticed that the secondary characters in Mad Max are always ten times more interesting than Mad Max?

This is an old and obvious observation about the difference between different storytelling activities, but still. In a film like Road Warrior, the protagonist is little more than a focus to give the audience a viewpoint on the world around him, which is why it is suitable to have him as neutral a character as possible. Just a bit of charm to make him likable. And a bit of heroism to make us cheer for him.

Since rpgs, on the other hand, puts the player-audience underneath the skin of the protagonist it doesn't hurt one bit that the character is exotic or extreme in ways that would be problematic in (mainstream) film. Hence, it is beautiful and right that we use RPGing to dig into and explore and enjoy completely different heroes than the movies usually give us (come on, how often isn't the bad guy waaay cooler than the hero!).

So, again, I totally approve of the Faceless!

Cool. I'll probably have more later on. But I guess you're not interested in feedback on typos and stuff in this?

(Oh, and you've got a message, since that still doesn't seem to be flagged.)

Scandinavian as I am, I'm looking forward to diving in!