This is really cool! Building monsters is so much fun and I love how you can make anything from a friendly docile beast that just wants to protect you to a horny house destroying beast that wants revenge on you. I could see an entire hack being stuff like this.

Removing read a person (and then giving it back) seems heavy handed. Maybe just give a shitty sharp stat and that sweet alternate read move?

I think the insect body should have the instinct "to spawn" to differentiate it from mammal. Mammals just like to fuck, insects care about laying thousands of eggs.

Another body type: a flock (instinct: to grow out of control or maybe to leave thing s behind (puppies, feces, disease, memories)). Maybe it makes the relationship too impersonal?

The howl and read a pack move are both very hot! To make howl usable against a PC a rewrite could look like this:

When you howl you get the effects of going aggro on all enemies within earshot with the demand being "flee in terror". If they suck it up they take s-harm.

@nerdwerds: I assume pain and fear no matter what, my apocalypses are usually places where the thousands of years of culture we have now are mutilated and facts such as the fucking and pregnancy link are not widely known and even how people are generated (after all, you don't see the pregnant women of some tribes much less the births (also I usually include some societies based completely around still working machines for spinning adult bodies or quarentined vaults with much less functional wake ups)).

@Pau: I want the move to have profound fallout because there might not even be a birth a session framed. To reduce the ridiculous mortality rate a better trigger might be "When you assist in a complicated delivery" and the fallout without assisting being up to the MC.

@Wood: I wanted the Angel to have a reason to get a high Weird without looking at other playbooks. I also considered what kind of people the apocalypse would have as midwives: the hocus, the brainer, the savvyhead but not the hardholder, chopper or operator. I think sharp would work well too, a driver would be a cool midwife.

@Praion: Yes. I love the angel kit move but healing hands seems so cheap in comparison (and it can deal with the first two ticks as well). Also it gives any weird class an easy way into healing making the Angel sidelined. Thirdly I suck at coming up with hard moves following a failed roll for opening your brain.

Information stat: cool
You get true information by remaining cool in the face of a sea of misinformation. While some people can deduct what is true or not most people need to remain stoic to not be swayed by emotional anecdotes or beautiful hypothesis.

Default stat: weird
When something unexpected comes up you too have to be unconventional to deal with it. Think sideways and multidimensional or find an unobvious shortcut.

Looks to me as a crowded cyber-space setting near the singularity. Information getting is all about sorting out the noise and avoiding being caught by a meme net. Because the world is changing so fast most challenges are new and can't be managed by traditional skills or wisdom.

Hot shit, finally a kid which isn't the annoying wildling retard stereotype!

Yes! Chasing those bonuses they roll dice and dice rolls drive the fiction the more the greater the chance of something unexpected.

I've been thinking about just trading harm for harm when someone is "just fighting" and not doing a flanking manuever or something. Being lazy about combat is something you can afford when you outgun people big time.

Me and a friend were biking from Sweden to Paris last summer. It was a good experience because it taught us that using a compass and very basic or no maps at all can get you places in the planned amount of time. Also, cities are awful mazes that will trap you for half a day or more.

Asking for directions is vital. Locals will warn you of obstacles not obvious on maps and  advice you on places to sleep, eat and drink well and cheap. My friend doesn't like bothering strangers and I don't know a shred of french or german so whenever we were lost I'd walk up to a local and speak nonsense language while flailing my arms till my friend was so embarassed he had to come over and talk.

Duct tape is the solution to everything. Ripped bags, tents and even broken bikes can be fixed with it. In a hilly region in the north of france the cog disc things on my back wheel came loose so there was no traction. The nearest settlement was a couple of hours away, all around were rolling wheat covered hills as far the eye could see. We rolled to a hazel bush and with two branches as stabilizers and lots of duct tape my bike worked again (and four more days). My friend flew home earlier than me from Paris. When I was going home I figured I'd sell the bike instead of taking it on the plane so I wrote a sign saying "€15" (the real worth was somewhere closer to €100 but I wanted to get rid of it quick) and went out with it. Before I even left the hotel a guy wanted to buy it. We didn't share any languages and he didn't have even change so eventually we settled on €20. To make sure he wasn't gonna feel cheated or anything I pointed out how the rear disc things were broken and my primitive fix and that now the highest gear didn't work at all. "OK, OK" he surrendered and gave me €50.

Because AW is a game that depends on hammering home the fiction! Like, if someone with a handgun said they wanted to shoot a guy 300m away you'd just say "that's not close enough, do you really want to waste your bullets?" and if someone says "I read her!" about someone who had their tongue cut out you'd be like "you have to find a way to communicate well first, do you know how to write?".

AW is also about what Vincent thinks is correct. Like, people listen to hard people (and only hard people) as leaders. To manipulate someone you need leverage. Most people do not survive a shotgun blast.

By changing the game you're saying something about how you think the world works and one of them if "wearing armor is not always the best choice". It clashes with other people's view of reality when you say stuff like "armored gangs are harder to lead". The only people whos perception matter of course is you and your players.

Back on topic, me telling you what I think armor penalties should look like :)

Since tags are a functional way to do fictional/mechanical stuff in AW, why not add the tag -cumbersome to any cumbersome armor? Then you can use the MC move "activate their stuffs downside" plus have a nice tag as reminder. So if they blow a roll to do some crazy stunt (or hit with a 7-9) you can be like, you won't make it being so emcumbered, doff your armor and you can do it.

If the effectiveness of armor is what irks you you could simply downgrade all armor. Light armor doesn't protect against harm at all (but maybe gives a bonus to the harm-move?) and heavy obvious armor give 1-armor.

You could say that quality metal and skilled armorers is fucking rare and that 2-armor costs like 6-barter and that nobody can start with it for themselves or their gangs.

2-armor must include a bullet proof helmet with a tiny slit to look through, to read a situation you must remove the helmet and thus downgrade your armor to 1-armor temporarily (then opening your brain during battle becomes a better option <3 battlefield instinct).

Bullets > frying pans. Armor only counts vs. melee weapons.


North Hollywood Shootout: a guy or two in homemade armor fight a medium gang of police officers for over half an hour.