No sweat!

If you're including verbatim text from Monster of the Week, you need the copyright holder's permission. The best thing to do is to contact Michael Sands directly. Tell him the text you want to include and ask him for permission. He'll tell you how to proceed.

You need a license to publish someone else's game, like if you wanted to publish an edition of Apocalypse World, or to publish a game derived from someone else's characters and world, like if you wanted to publish a literal Star Wars game. You don't need a license to publish your own game about your own characters and world.

You can definitely call your game PbtA. If you want to use the little PbtA logo, I'll send it to you. I like to reserve it for finished games, so let me know. If you're doing your book design / PDF design for publication and you're ready to put the logo in place, email me, I'll set you up.

Stardust Blues is a good title!

-Vincent

You too!

Thanks for asking these questions. I enjoy answering them!

It's A.

-Vincent

I'm glad to help!

I remember debating with myself whether it should be automatic (+area -reload), automatic (+area), or automatic (+autofire -reload). It never came down to a clear-cut aesthetic decision for me. By the look of it, it never quite came down to a final decision at all!

I think that if I were to rewrite the list today, I'd go with automatic (+autofire -reload), but ask me again tomorrow and I don't know what I'll say.

-Vincent

edit:

Aw, I missed an opportunity here. Here's what I should have said:

If the battlebabe player comes to you and says "I'm picturing like a .357 magnum, but belt-fed, here's what I came up with," is this weapon okay?

• Crimson's Bad-ass Belt-fed Magnum: handgun automatic big (3-harm close area)

That would have been MUCH more bad-ass than some old uzi or whatever.

You didn't quite understand me. I also didn't quite understand you. It's okay! We can sort it out.

Point 1:
The player should choose a base and 2 options, both from the lists provided. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

Point 2:
There's a contradiction between the playbook and the MC book. How are we to resolve it? Here are the candidates:

• automatic (+area)
• automatic (+autofire)

My answer is: oops! When there's a contradiction or ambiguity in the rules, give the player the benefit. In this case, the player doesn't have the MC book and doesn't even know that there's a contradiction, so you should go with automatic (+area).

Point 3:
The structure of the list suggests that these benefits are all balanced, equivalent. Right?

• +1harm
• +ap
• +area
• +range
• +valuable
• -loud
• -reload

Goodness no.

If what you care about is raw numerical killing power, +1harm is the best tag to choose, followed closely by +area, with +ap and +range next. -Loud and -reload have some tactical value, but it's hard to assign a number, and +valuable obviously doesn't have any.

"But Vincent, if the options aren't balanced, what's to stop the battlebabe player from always choosing the best options?"

Nothing! The battlebabe player should choose the options that they want. If what they want is raw numerical killing power, they should choose +1harm and +area. That's fine.

Reload, especially, can throw you off if you're coming from other game systems. Apocalypse World isn't based on an economy of turns and actions, at all, so reloading your weapon is a matter of cinematic visuals, and possibly pacing, NOT a mechanical opportunity cost. You might be thinking that reload effectively halves the damage output of the weapon, but that's not correct. For instance, when the PCs are setting the rhythm of a battle, "I slap in another magazine and keep firing" satisfies the reload requirement and might easily let the PC make a battle move and inflict harm again right away.

In other words, reload DOES NOT mechanically counterbalance +1harm, or indeed any of the positive options. The game's cinematic underpinnings just don't work that way.

Point 4:
You asked: "how does "automatic" pairs with base weapons with "reload"? Do I have to take "semiautomatic" and then "automatic" or is it really that I can take automatic and keep "reload" as it is?"

It turns out that I misread this question. Let me try to answer it more carefully.

First, yes, you can take automatic (+area) and keep reload as it is. This would mean that every time you pull the trigger, you empty the magazine. This weapon is legit:

• Crimson's Room-sprayer: handgun automatic big (3-harm close area reload)

Second, Apocalypse World uses the area tag for two different things: lots and lots of bullets (thus "automatic") and explosions. If you look through the rest of the game, though, the weapons with both area and reload are all explosive, grenade launchers and mortars and stuff.

Would it be a problem to let the battlebabe player cross out automatic (+area) and write explosive (+area), and create this weapon?

• Crimson's Grenade Pistol: handgun automatic explosive big (3-harm close area reload)

No, it wouldn't be a problem. As MC, you're allowed to say "no, stick with the list" if you prefer, but if you feel like going along with the player here, it will cause no problems at all.

Along the same lines, would it be a problem to let the battlebabe cross out semiautomatic (-reload) and write belt-fed (-reload) instead? No, it definitely wouldn't.

Third, the terms used - semiautomatic automatic autofire area reload - are pretty confusing.

If the battlebabe player comes to you and says "I'm picturing like an uzi, but belt-fed, here's what I came up with," is this weapon okay?

• Crimson's Bad-ass Belt-fed Uzi: handgun automatic big (3-harm close area)

Well...

As MC, you're certainly allowed to say "oops, no, if you want to remove reload, you'll have to drop big and add semiautomatic (-reload) belt-fed (-reload) instead. There's no way for you to have realized this, but that's the rule." If that's what you prefer, say that.

Would it be a problem to say "cool! Looks good," even though technically the battlebabe player made a mistake?

Because the terms are confusing, because reload isn't a strong balancer anyway, AND because the game just doesn't depend on keeping real automatic weapons out of the hands of the battlebabe, then when I'm the MC, I go along with the player here. You can too, if you want to, without worrying about messing up the game.

Point 5:
What if the battlebabe player happens to be looking through the Extended Refbook, and finds this weapon, and it seizes their imagination, and they come to you and say "please, MC, I know it's not possible to create this as a custom weapon, but can I please have it anyway? I love it, I want it, I need it, please?"

• Flamethrower: close, area, d-harm: not being on fire, volatile, refill:OOO

As MC, you're certainly allowed to say "yeah, no, make your custom weapons like the rules say, if you want a flamethrower you'll have to somehow get one in play. Yikes."

Are you allowed to say "yes! Yes! OMG yes, of COURSE you can have a flamethrower! Hooray! I can't WAIT to see who you're going to light on fire with it!" Yes you are.

Technically speaking, you're creating a custom move that gives the battlebabe a flamethrower instead of one of their starting custom weapons. The game's rules allow you to do this, under "Advanced Fuckery," any time you want to.

The implications of this are serious and far-reaching!

But I'm not worried. I think you have a pretty good handle on what you're allowed to do as MC versus what you've agreed to do as a play group, and how the rules provide a hard constraint even while they allow you to change them.

-Vincent