This is great stuff, thanks all.

Particular props to Fabulist. This...

Harry Potter casts third level spells from page 126 of the Player's Handbook. Ged opened his brain to the world's psychic maelstrom.

...this is brilliant.

I've always liked the idea of "magic" as raw and powerful and unpredictable and costly. Sorcerer's making costly deals with demons, Carrie using augury and choosing to leave in "bleeding instability," etc. That said, I'm currently working on a hack right now that involves witchcraft, and I've been finding myself leaning back towards specific "spells" as a means to covey a specific color for the games setting. Not sure if this is a good thing or not, but hey, it's a work in progress.

DWeird, I think you hit the answer I was looking for on by bringing up that quote. In a lot of my games, when I ask "what does the maelstrom look like for you," I get a lot of disjointed ideas - the random media crap-soup. I've always imagined tapping into the maelstrom as a universal experience, but now that I think about it, I kind of like that the maelstrom would fill itself up with whatever the viewer brought to it.

I still can't really wrap my brain around the idea of just "opening your brain," like releasing a clenched fist to something that you always know is there. Well, I guess I get the concept, I just have trouble imagining the sensation or what the experience would feel like.

Hi all,

So I'm making another run at a custom playbook. The idea with the Load-Bearer is kind of the "down in the dirt hero who can't stop taking on other people's burdens." My initial concern is that the moves are a little too straightforward and not "apocalypse-y" enough yet. I'm also curious if this concept sounds like something that would be interesting to play. Anyways, I wanted to put it before ya'll for public scrutiny and peer review. Please toss me your feedback!

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Introduction

There were once these things called productive industry and division of labor and civil rights. Now those things lie in crippled husks among the other dead memories of the golden age. Now we work to just keep ourselves alive. Now we live off our own blood and sweat, our broken backs and calloused feed and gnarled hands and tired hearts. We toil beneath the hot sun and the angry eyes of the maelstrom, always fighting an uphill battle for our lives, our hopes, and our dreams.

Some of us just aren’t cut out for this type of life. But some of us are strong enough to carry others through it.


Stats

Cool+2 Hard+1 Hot-1 Sharp+1 Weird+0
Cool+2 Hard+1 Hot+1 Sharp+0 Weird-1
Cool+2 Hard-1 Hot+1 Sharp+0 Weird+1
Cool+2 Hard+0 Hot-1 Sharp+2 Weird-1


Moves
(choose 3 or 2 - not sure yet)

No-nonsense: When you read a person, roll+cool instead of roll+sharp.

Atlas: When you take on completely someone’s burdens or cause, mark experience and take +1ongoing with that person until you betray their trust.

Protector: When you fight to defend someone, or drive off an attack against them, you get +1ongoing for the duration of the fight.

Of the people: When you are in a community that you have sweat, fought, and bled for, you get hold 2. Spend your hold 1-for-1 to receive a gift from the people as though they were a Hardholder granting a gift (your MC will decide exactly which options are appropriate given the community). Any time you take on a significant risk or task for the people, add 1 hold.

Take a bullet: As long as you are within hand reach of someone, you can choose to take harm they would have instead taken from an incoming attack.

Unbreakable: Ignore the effect of your first debility, as it is taken or ongoing from this point forward. You still are whatever debility was chosen (shattered, crippled, disfigured, or broken), it just doesn’t keep you from doing what needs to be done anymore.

Special

If you and another character have sex, you may use Atlas even if you don’t have the move.


Your Labor
You are a major cog in your community. Choose 1 or 2 labor jobs that you are involved in:
? Pit Mining (construction/deterioration)
? Smelting (tools/waste)
? Dirt Farming (food/hunger)
? Holding repair (protection/vulnerability)
? Junk Collector (wealth/without needed items)
?
?

When the Hardholder rolls for wealth, roll+cool. On a 10+, add your surplus to the community, regardless of the wealth roll’s result. On a 7-9, you don’t modify the results either way. On a miss, add your labor's want to the community, regardless of the Hardholder’s result.

If no one is playing the Hardholder, use this roll when a weath roll would normally be called for.

So I've noticed that in many of my AW games I tend to lean towards a more sparse apocalypse - i.e. one holding with maybe a few others known of on the distant horizon, with everything desolate of human life in between.

I'm curious to know a couple things from ya'll:
A) How populated are your apocalypses?
B) What the scale of your regions are - Is travel between holdings measured in days? hours? weeks? Are your holdings a few buildings, a section of a city? How far reaching are the burning flats?
C) Does having a more populated region with lots of little holdings and communes seem counter to the "not enough to go around" nature of AW?

Oh damn, those are good links - thanks Lin_fusan! Okay, so example rewrite 1:


Keeler the Battlebabe walks up to Leema the Savvyhead and says that he wants Leema to make a bomb. Keeler scores a 7-9 to manipulate and decides to make it acting under fire. "Come on Leema, you wouldn't want to disappoint me now, would you?" Leema says "fuck off," and goes back to working on that water filter. But now she's acting under fire to get it done.

Leema rolls:
On a 10+, whatever, Keeler's not that hot.
On a 7-9: "Leema, you get the filter done, but this thing isn't going to work for more than a few days without regular maintenance."
On a miss: "So you get the water filter done and installed, and your sure it's good. But a few days later, people start getting kind of green in the gills..."


So here the leverage is disappointing Keeler (because acting under fire was chosen), and the acting under fire applies to what Leema does instead of making the bomb.

Also, if I'm right here, that also seems to mean that a PC can decide to Seduce or Manipulate another PC whenever they want something from them, and determine who/what they are offering as leverage after the roll. This could be as simple as fear of disappointment or Keeler saying "Come on Leema, don't be a fuckface," which generally wouldn't suffice as leverage for NPCs. Is this right?

(Vincent, if you could weigh in here that would be awesome.)

That makes a balls load of sense.

Still not sure about the Angel thing though. If you pay to have them on call, are you expected to pay them for each resuscitation too? I get paying them for stock spent, but paying them again every time they do what you hired them to do seems odd. Is the "successful resuscitation" kind of like a "I don't know you. You want me to save him? What have you got for me?" sort of thing?

I'm a little confused on some of the character service costs. In the book it says that 1-barter will get you:

"an act of murder, extortion, threat or violence executed by a
battlebabe, chopper or gunlugger."

But will also get you

"a week’s employment of a battlebabe or gunlugger as bodyguard,
gang leader, or thug-on-hand."

Assuming that employment or bodyguarding will likely involve violence, threats, and murder, how does this resolve? If I hire a chopper for a week, and he kills someone while protecting me, does he get to charge me an additional barter for each person he kills? Or each act of violence he commits?

Similar things come up with the savvyhead and the angel. If I pay for an Angel to be on call for a month, do I also have to pay for each successful resuscitation that she does within that time frame?

To me, the former option seems like a one time charge, unless I ask for a specific person to be killed or a specific show of force beyond watching my back. The latter option seems multiple charges, in that yes, you pay me to be on call, but you also pay me for the work I do (or at least cover the material expenses).

Thoughts?

I put together a trifold document base for creating things like moves sheets or playbooks. The document uses Microsoft word, and functions best in "publishing layout" view. Make sure to get all of the free AW fonts before you download these, otherwise the fonts in the document will reset and get all ugly-like.

So, two questions on seduce or manipulate.

First: Leverage. Do you need to have leverage that the person your manipulating cares about, or does the simple presence of leverage allow the roll to happen, and how well you use it is based on your hot roll?

Second: Groups. Can you seduce or manipulate multiple people if the leverage you have works on all of them?