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Messages - J. Walton

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16
blood & guts / Re: Advancing basic moves
« on: June 08, 2011, 01:50:32 AM »
I'm still thinking about "overplayed" and what that could imply.  Looking over the advanced moves and viewing them as being roughly comparable in scope, I think I see what that might mean. Advanced Act Under Fire, Seduce/Manipulate, and Open Your Brain seem particularly susceptible to being treated like superpowers.

Vincent, here's a thing I just thought of: are there examples in the book of players rolling 12+ results with advanced moves?  Maybe that's part of what's messing people up, not having as much to go on in this case.

A couple more specific questions:

On advanced Seize, you say "Taking doubly definite hold of it would mean, I dunno, marking it as the character's in some profound existential way."  And both the abstractness of that and the "I dunno" part make it sound like a mystical, intuitive thing, no so concrete.  Is that because it's so context-specific, depending on what you're seizing?

The other place I get confused is on advanced Seduce/Manipulate, where at the end you say "By now the players are bone weary from knowing that every single NPC is, at her heart, only a potential threat to them. Now, this one person, they can breathe." And that's really powerful, evocative language, but it only seems to describe the first time a character gains an Ally. But if they have Hot+3 and the advanced move, it could happen once a session or even multiple times in the same session.

17
blood & guts / Re: Advancing basic moves
« on: June 07, 2011, 02:00:45 AM »
It's interesting to hear you say that, Vincent.  How is rolling 12+ pretty regularly not guaranteed to turn things crazy or silly after a while?  It just ends up breaking my suspension of disbelief.  Honestly, after I rolled a 12+ a few times, I'd rather retire the character than roll another 12+ result; that's how much I feel like it affects my experience of playing the game, when it happens a bunch.

18
Yeah, before my current game started, I kinda decided in my head what the Maelstrom would be like (ghostly echoes of some kind), but kept it flexible enough so I could see what the players did and how they interacted with it. Once it became clear that it was driving people crazy (psi-harm, since we had a quarantine) it began to take shape and then, the past session, when people started using augury, things got clearer real quick.

Good call on casts and weapons, Vincent. I'll have to think more about that.  People in the games I've played have definitely used the Maelstrom to gain the fictional positioning needed to make otherwise impossible moves.  Like opening your brain or using augury and then moving from there to do something else, like reaching into somebody else's mind or seizing control of crazy weird tech or something.

19
Dungeon World / Re: Adventuring Gear
« on: June 05, 2011, 03:40:02 PM »
I agree with John and Saint and everyone else who says the +1 is unnecessary and confusing.

Like, if I have a rope, there's lots of things that I can do, fictionally, that I can't do without a rope. That's already an advantage!  Why do you need the +1?  And then I can keep doing those things as long as I have a rope.  Plus, after all, maybe your "hard bargain" requires losing your gear or the DM's move is to "take away their stuff," which already serves to whittle down their supply.

Also, that allows magical equipment to be significantly better than non-magical equipment.  A +1 magic rope is now pretty badass!

20
In the games I've played, the Psychic Maelstrom is usually a Front, actually, but sometimes it manifests as a Threat in specific circumstances.

In the game Tony Dowler ran, for example, the Psychic Maelstrom was the ghost of the past, which we could reach through playing rock music.  When our Hocus-led band played "Helter Skelter," we used augury to accidentally summon Charles Manson into our apocalyptic future. Charlie became a specific Threat (I think, since I wasn't running it), but he manifested from the Maelstrom.

Likewise, in my current game, the Maelstrom is related to the restless echoes of everyone who died in the apocalypse.  That's all we know at this point, but those echoes have already manifested in a number of ways, driving at least one member of the quarantine's stasis insane, haunting our faceless and now our quarantine too, and making our touchstone crazy until she learned to control the voices in her head.  Those are all threats, potentially, that are related to the Maelstrom as a front. 

Then again, when people use augury or other moves  (open your brain, healing touch, visions of death, etc.) to interface with the Maelstorm, sometimes the Maelstrom acts as a threat and makes threat moves when they fail.

21
Apocalypse World / Re: How many sessions to a campaign
« on: June 05, 2011, 03:18:45 PM »
My sense is that the game really starts getting good around session 3-4, when the players have bought enough advances that they have made strong choices about who their characters are and they know enough about their environment to have plans and aspirations.  Then, once they buy the expanded basic moves and switch to another playbook (around session 6-8, depending on how fast they're piling up XP), things change tone again and the campaign builds to a climax.  Finally, as people take on second characters and some characters retire to safety, die, or change fundamentally, the campaign either wraps up sometime between session 9-12 or things can continue on, ramping up again with a new set of characters.

That's been roughly the arc in the 3 campaigns I've been involved in so far.  So I'd suggest playing at least 6 sessions and figuring it will take around 10 or so to get to the end of a "cycle" of play.  But I'd be interested to hear if that matches the experiences of other folks who've played it through multiple times.

Thing is, in Apocalypse World, the MC doesn't have to plan for a particular length. It really depends on the players and how soon they accomplish or get out of the game what they want.  Players can retire their characters to safety pretty early on if they want or do everything they want to do.  Really, the MC is there to support the players in playing as long as the game is engaging and exciting (for the MC too!) and you should wrap things up when it feels done.

22
Apocalypse World / Re: The part of the secret
« on: June 05, 2011, 03:10:10 PM »
Everything that the characters do -- including their conversations -- is performed in front of all the players in every AW game I've played.  Sometimes, when the group has been split and played separate sessions, stuff happens in one group that the other group doesn't know about, but we generally talk pretty openly about what's happening in the other group.  We haven't really seen any value in keeping secrets from players, even though, sure, the characters have lots of secrets from each other.

That said, characters' motivations and past experiences and such can be "secret" because we've only dealt with some of that in play at any given point, and we learn new things all the time.  For example, in my current game, we know that Sonya, the quarantine, used to be batshit crazy from the Psychic Maelstrom but that she spent some time in a floating space monastery and learned to control it.  But we don't really know where she's from, originally, and how she was driven insane.  Probably Sonya's player has some ideas about her history, but those are all flexible until they spill out "in public" during play.

23
Apocalypse World / Re: Is Fighting supposed to be Seize By Force?
« on: May 31, 2011, 12:33:15 AM »
Go Aggro is perfect for violent situations where what you want to know is whether the target gets away unhurt or not; Seize by Force is for violent situations where what you want to know is how much hurt it costs the PC to achieve their objective.

I actually like that division too, Daniel. Makes sense to me and isn't that different from what I was trying to suggest above.

However, experience has led me to feel strongly that seizing metaphorical stuff or "someone's life" is often bullshit, as is having the "do what you want" of Go Aggro be "die." I feel like, when players declare those kinds of aims, they are often searching for a simple "kill a dude / inflict harm" move that just doesn't exist in Apocalypse World, at least in my mind (outside some playbook moves, maybe). They're resisting how the game tries to structure violence and it makes some of the choices inherent in the moves (like "suck it up or do what you want" or choosing between the various options on Seize) completely meaningless. Does it matter that you "inflict terrible harm" if you're Seizing the guy's life? Not really. It may not break the game, but it creates some tension that's not necessarily productive. Definitely something to be careful with.

24
blood & guts / Re: Advancing basic moves
« on: May 29, 2011, 01:54:39 PM »
Personally, my preference would be to allow you to advance 1 basic move for each advance you spend, and that you can do it twice, so each character can only open up 2 moves.  As it is, players are most likely to advance the moves that they have the biggest bonus in (+2 or +3) and that leads to more of a sense of diversity and difference among the characters.

That said, part of the point of advancing all the moves may be the unexpected results that occur when someone rolls a "natural 12" when doing something relatively insignificant.  In my experience, though, those instances can sometimes feel jarring and bizarre instead of really cool.  Like, when you're just trying to manipulate someone to give you their keys and all of a sudden they become your Ally, it doesn't really make sense sometimes.

25
I like it a lot. Now make moves and stuff for psi-harm and s-harm! :)

26
Apocalypse World / Re: Is Fighting supposed to be Seize By Force?
« on: May 29, 2011, 01:45:08 PM »
In my experience, shooting a dude is sometimes Go Aggro, sometimes Seize By Force, sometimes Acting Under Fire, and sometimes it's not a move at all, it just happens.

In practice, I break it down kinda like this:

1. typically, it's Go Aggro: you're shooting some dude and that dude doesn't want to be shot, but you're insisting.

2. if the PC doesn't really care about the harm they're taking and/or is trying to seize a particular objective, regardless of the cost, that's Seize By Force (Seizing means the PC takes harm as well), but that doesn't happen very often, as it's not very smart in AW unless you're a Gunlugger, Faceless, or some other tough-as-nails bruiser who can suck up the harm

3. sometimes, a PC is being shot at and the question is really can they get the other guy first, before he gets the PC or one of the PC's buddies or some other thing; then it's Acting Under Fire (the fire is getting shot at and the need to do something quickly, and the acting is shooting some other dude)

4. finally, sometimes the PC has set things up perfectly or the dude they're shooting is not really taking precautions or is otherwise at their mercy (tied up, not paying attention, looking the other way, distracted, etc.); then I just ask the PC how much harm they do and it just happens.

Hope that helps.

27
Apocalypse World / Re: New Campaign: Objects in Space
« on: May 28, 2011, 05:58:10 PM »
We played the fourth session this week.

Just a few days before the game, we learned that Cy (Grace's player) was going to be moving to another city, since his wife had just gotten a new job.  So, over a terrific dinner of Chinese food with the other players (Cy had to bow out), I proposed that Grace was -- unbenownst to any of the other PCs -- hit by a ricocheting bullet during the fight and collapsed later that day. Due to the bullet being lodged near something important, Rice (Peppering's wife, coincidentally and the ship doctor) decides that they better refreeze her in a stasis pod until they can decide what to do, since they don't have the medical facilities here to deal with it. The other players agreed, since it would allow us to have a reunion game with Cy at GoPlay or PAX, since he's planning on coming back for those.

More in a bit.

28
Apocalypse World / Re: New Campaign: Objects in Space
« on: May 28, 2011, 05:15:09 PM »
So Jamie's been posting tidbits from our game over on SG's Bite-Sized AP threads, but I thought I'd try to catch this thread up a bit, since we've had 2 sessions since the last post.

The letters above, which sounded really good when I was writing them, ended up being a little bit awkward in practice, especially Sonya's. Skipping Peppering's takeover made it difficult for us to figure out what exactly had happened and who was in which half of the station, because Sonya chose to resist and picked all the options except for the last one. So I said that maybe she had gathered Anya and the children and taken them to the part of the station with the stasis and Trench's old pod, but that somebody had blown the station in half during the fighting.

In the end, I learned that Love Letters are not really a replacement for properly framing the starting situation to kick off a session.  Sometimes you want to actually play that shit out instead of just having the letters simulate it.  Important to learn.

Meanwhile, Trench decided to go all the way into his new role as Grand Vizier and Royal Consort, getting into a close but nonsexual relationship with the Queen (the person in the golden demon armor from the previous session).  He also made contact with Vladamir after the quarantine failed his attempt at infiltration of the hive of the Sun Children and sent him back to check on the station.

Vlad returned to the station and docked on the half with his stasis and Trench's pod, helping Sonya get Grace into the psi-isolation chamber before she completely de-thawed, preventing the Psychic Maelstrom from overwhelming her again.  Then, the three of them made contact with Peppering and agreed to a prisoner exchange where Corbett and Vladamir would be traded for some of the children and recent mothers who were still on Peppering's half.

Meanwhile, the Queen informed Trench that the time was approaching when she would resign her rule and depart for the Sun Chariot, a mythical space barge that they tracked on an apocalypse-era monitor (the treasure they kept secret).  She asked Trench if he would escort her to the Chariot and then return and conduct the search for a new Queen (one of the jobs of the Grand Vizier).  Trench agrees.

When the day comes, a giant 2001-style rotating, wheel-shaped station (with artificial gravity) comes into view.  It is painted gold and covered in pseudo-Egyptian kitsch like it's the Luxor Casino.  Trench pilots the Queen there on a converted cargo sled, wrapped in gold ribbons and fitted with statues of snakes, and then they go inside to find that it is, indeed, a space casino filled with just 20-30 people, most of them very old, despite the huge amount of space.  They are ruled by a High Priest who has tried to preserve the faith in the gods despite declining religious fervor.  Nevertheless, the Queen is happy there, though Trench leaves her as she is slowly recovering her strength, having lived her entire life (?) in zero gravity.

Back on Legacy station, the prisoner exchange goes poorly for Peppering as Vladamir shoots him in the face. Jamie wanted to know if he should roll Go Aggro for that, but I waved it aside and asked how much harm he did (3, to his face, so... dead).  This was definitely one of those cases where the players have set it up and you just let it happen.  With Peppering down, the struggle with Pellet and his gang was over pretty quick as Grace manipulated Pellet into calling a truce and Pellet got Jackabacka and Balls to stand down, though not before a hail of bullets went ricocheting around the inside of the station.

And that's how the third session ended.

29
other lumpley games / Re: Valley of the Shadow: DITV + Justified
« on: May 19, 2011, 08:30:28 PM »
Thanks, folks!  Yeah, I was thinking some about Winter's Bone too.  There's probably room for both some of the good-natured humor of Justified and some darker desparation as in Winter's Bone. I need to do some more thinking and research about the darker aspects of southern and western VA. 

Near the NC border is where NASCAR came from (due to moonshine smuggling) and there's still a lot of old dirt tracks down there where people continue to race home-built suped-up cars. But I bet there's a fair amount of meth-cooking and other stuff in those areas now.

Apparently southern West Virginia is among the highest regions in the nation for prescription drug abuse, often Oxy.  And that spillover across the border from WV may be partially why they decided to dispatch some actual marshals to Harrisonburg.

30
other lumpley games / Re: Valley of the Shadow: DITV + Justified
« on: May 19, 2011, 03:12:52 PM »
An idea for a case:

Case #1, Damn Yankees

Jessup Dooley and his "unit" came over from West Virginia to play Union soldiers in a reenactment of the Battle of McDowell, part of Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862.

During the "midnight raid," an annual bit of shennanigans in which the "Confederate cavalry" ambushes the encamped "Union regulars," Jessup was non-fatally shot and brought to a local hospital. The trouble is that he's violated his parole by leaving West Virginia and, furthermore, is not allowed to be in possession of firearms, much less carry them across state lines (making it a federal crime), even if it's his great-great-grandfather's Pattern 1853 Enfield (anachronistic for this particular battle, but Jessup's not really a stickler).

But the real problem is not Jessup but figuring out who decided to load their rifle with an actual Civil War-era musket ball, easy enough to dig out of the soil around here, rather than adhering to reenactment regulations. The local police are calling it an accident but Jessup claims that somebody's gunning for him.  Really, this is C'ville's jurisdiction, but they're busy assisting the FBI in a manhunt for the "DC sniper," who's reportedly hiding somewhere in NoVa, and are more than happy to leave you to deal with this fiasco.

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