Johnny the driver says: I drive straight at him to make him swerve.

It's chicken, right? What move is being triggered here?

To me, it's go aggro, and the thing Johnny wants the other guy to do is get out of the way. But on a 10+, the other guy can just suck it up and force Johnny's hand (ie, force a head-on collision). So they exchange harm? That's weird for me -- I don't normally think of exchanging harm as something that happens when you hit going aggro on 10+.

I don't think it's seizing the road by force because that means the other character's player has to decide if he's chicken before Johnny even rolls his hard -- that is, he doesn't get a chance to back down... which seems to be the opposite of what playing chicken actually is.

And it's not acting under fire... like, playing chicken is all about who is hardest, right?

So what do yall think?

Thanks, that clears those up.

Our quarantine ended up with Weird = nill. How are folks dealing with this in relation to custom moves powered by weird? For example, the book has example custom weird moves involving mud fish parasites.

My intuition is to say that the quarantine, upon resisting mud fish parasites or whatever, just rolls +0, but the playbook distinguishes between 'nill' and '0'. Is this distinction just simply to make explicit that the quarantine can not open his brain (because weird is nill, not 0) but CAN do other weird stuff? Or does the distinction imply that the quarantine can't do ANYTHING weird (including resisting mud fish parasites, because weird = nill, not 0)?

Thanks.

-- Christopher

I fixed the link. Sorry about that. I haven't done much with this in the last several months. Let me know if you play it.

James: by default, the Outlaw doesn't have any warrants or anything against him. I was thinking mostly of Curly Bill and his Cowboys from Tombstone.

I also don't think the Trick Shot is really a dominant class. He specializes in showdowns, and that's about it. Right now, I actually feel his is one of the weakest classes, flavor-wise, and folks from my group who've looked at my draft agree. I'd appreciate some input on making him more interesting.

Chan: a friend of mine also suggested making 'race' type moves (like the foreigner, the Mexican, etc). What kinds of things would you suggest?

I think the playbook ideas you've suggested (Sorrow, Loyalty, etc) would make good GM front-backgrounds similar to the scarcities in AW. Any ideas there?

edit -- also, I need to work more on the baron playbook. I kept some of the holding stuff from AW without really thinking clearly about it. Having 200-300 people in your town is pretty low for a booming town growing up around a railroad or a mine. Duh!

Stepping out on a limb here...

I've been messing around with this Old West hack of AW. You can find it here. It's not quite complete, but I have the following classes (some of them are a little weak, so help me improve them!):

The Trick Shot -- fastest gun in the west. This guy is into making a name for himself by winning showdowns. He's also pretty wicked in a fight.

The Law Man -- the marshal or sheriff. This guy organizes a posse and goes after people to serve warrants against them or collect the bounty on them.

The Gambler -- the con man; the face. This guy is always in and out of schemes, cheating folks to get rich quick.

The Thunderheart -- the Indian brave slash shaman. This guy can disappear into the wild without leaving a trace. He's also got some quasi psychic open-your-brain stuff.

The Outlaw -- the Chopper, pretty much. The outlaw has a gang, and the wild lands between civilized steadings are his domain.

The Baron -- the Hardholder, pretty much. A town has built up around this guy's enterprise (eg, his mine or his railroad). There might be a sheriff and a judge, but they default to his authority.

The Madam -- she has the dirt on everyone, and she trades in secrets and social favors. If you need something and you don't know how to get it, she's usually the one you want to see.

The classes are a mix of adaptations from AW plus my own moves plus moves I've seen floating around on these forums (eg, I know I stole moves from John Harper, and from the Smiler, the Abacus, and the Cabal, just off the top of my head). If anyone sees a move they invented and has a problem with me shamelessly stealing it, let me know and I'll pull it down from the document.

We haven't playtested this yet (mostly because my group has had a hard time getting more than 3 of use together at a time for the last month). We'll probably playtest it starting in late November. But I really wanted to start getting feedback on it, as I've only had limited experience hacking AW before.

So please, play it out and let me know what you think.

I think the question here is that if a debility like Weak a) gives you a -1 to STR and b) doesn't affect your Load, which of the following is the case:

1. the debilities discussion on pg23 is wrong
2. the character sheets where Load = x+STR are wrong
3. For some reason, a -1 to STR doesn't alter your Load

It's particularly irksome because pg 23 says the fact that your mod is affected, but not your base score, implies your Load isn't affected, which further implies case 2 above.

Good catch, megazver.

Thanks for the feedback!

@ technai:
I had thought the human racial move would be ongoing. If a witch has a piece of your hair or clothing or something, that's powerful mojo. What is your opinion?

Re: the familiar, I might just eliminate the line about it having moves at all. I had envisioned that it just carries out very simple tasks, like searching someone out or spying, and the action gets adjudicated by the constraints of the fiction.

Re: Bewitchment, I think each effect is going to be a conversation and agreement between the player and GM. I really wanted the witch to have a lot of versatility, as opposed to having a canned set of effects she can create. Magical folks in myths and stories have all sorts of cool stuff they do, some of which they just improv on the spot (or during prep). Gandalf and Sauron have a shouting match to create/prevent an avalanche. Maleficent and Ursula appear to manufacture on-the-spot effects to debilitate people. Schmendrick is probably a level 1 or 2 wizard capable of a host of (mostly useless) effects. So the witch gets that kind of versatility (ala SORCERER). She’s creating effects, imo, not just cursing folks. But the GM has the power to step in and say ‘No, you can’t bring down the stars from the sky. What you can probably do is [something similar but smaller and more reasonable].’

For the Sage Altar, you might be right in regards to how much Charm to give out, but let me explain my thinking. This class' magical resources don't work the way the other spell casters' do. The cleric and wizard don't have as strong an incentive to use up a resource like the witch. Highlighting yourself to the enemy is dangerous, but having your spell backfire or get wildly out of control is really bad (it threatens the whole party for the rest of the fight, probably). So the witch is probably expending her magical resources a lot faster than the cleric and wizard. I think having 4 uses of magic for the witch is pretty good, considering the cleric and wizard has more than that at level 4 (or sooner, if either of them take the numerous moves that allow them to prepare spells for free or for one level lower, such as Prodigy and First Aid). What do you think?

Charmed Weaver: I have an expert move on there that boosts maximum Charm to 5, but given what I just said about the serious resource consumption inherent to the class you might be right to move this down to the advanced list.


@Dracones:
This is also a concern of mine. I think it’s a conversation between the GM and the player, but I don’t have ideas for guidance on the damage dice of damaging effects. A witch can apparently do anything within her imagination that she and the GM can agree on. I personally intend to allow extra d6s for bigger effects (given that the wizard’s fireball is 2d6). One consequence of allowing bigger damage dice for bigger effects is the juicy prospect of the effect backfiring or getting out of control and becoming a huge threat to the rest of the party. What do you suggest as far as explicitly codifying its use?