Introducing some playbooks i done written

First one's THE HERMIT

The Hermit

What's left in the world when everything worthwhile has turned to dust? There's you, and them that did it.

CREATING A HERMIT

To create your hermit, choose look, stats, moves, gear, and Hx.

NAME

Don't choose a name. The other players will decide what they call you after you introduce yourself, by look alone.

LOOK

Man, woman, concealed, or withered.

Ragged wear, vintage wear, scrounge wear, or straight-up rags.

Scarred face, rugged face, frightened face, pockmarked face, innocent face, lean face, weathered face.

Rheumy eyes, milky eyes, wild eyes, distant eyes, kind eyes, starry eyes.

Wiry body, bent body, slender body, corpulent body, youthful body.

STATS

Like a brainer, but Weird -1.

BASIC MOVES

You get the basic moves just like anyone.

HERMIT MOVES

You get these:

Walks By Himself: You start with insight+0. When you stand alone, you get +1 insight. If you show yourself to another, by speech sight or sign, your insight goes to 0 and you get nothing for it. If you get insight+4, reset it to 0 and mark experience.

A Dark and Quiet Place: When you open your brain, roll+weird+insight.

And one of these:

Scrounge: When you need a thing, you know where you can probably find it. Roll+insight; on a 10+ all three. On a 7-9, choose 2:
- You get it or close enough, up to 1-barter.
- You get -1 insight (If you don't pick this, you get -2 insight.)
- You didn't have to leave something behind.

Speak Of: When you repeat someone's name over and over, and you don't stop to say any other thing, roll+insight. On a hit, they appear by the end of the next session; don't matter who or what or how, even if they're dead or lost or gone away across the sea. On a 10+ they don't know why. On a 7-9, MC chooses one:
- They came lookin' for you.
- They came lookin' for another PC and you sent them.
- They are followed.

GEAR

You get one, maybe two:
- A good stick
- A good seat
- A place what keeps the rain off your back
- A dog or whatever, it knows a coupla tricks

HX

When it's your turn, ask, who's the stupidest of you lot? Tell that person +2. Everybody else, tell them -1.

You don't know no one. Don't write down what they say, put down -1 with everybody.

SPECIAL

If you and another character have sex, everyone opens their brains. Not just you and them, the other PCs too. After that, permanently lower your insight by 1 - i.e. change its range to -1 to +2, reset at +3 - and so on if you do it again.

IMPROVEMENT

The usual kind - gear, another Hermit move, stat improvements but not Weird. Whatever.

Withered as a gender? Fucking A*. In fact, the work you've done on Look and Name is excellent.

I'm not sure I'm digging Insight though. I'd probably have to see it in play before I could grasp how it worked.

Good read, Tim. Thanks for the good words!

I see you also noticed that Insight is a trap. I'm experimenting with problematic characters (the Hermit is your 'sit in a dark corner and drink silently' guy taken to 11) as a way to figure out how to make playbooks that are better.

Next up: the Child.

When I play the hermit, I just won't show up to game night. Win-win for everyone.

I'm experimenting with problematic characters (the Hermit is your 'sit in a dark corner and drink silently' guy taken to 11) as a way to figure out how to make playbooks that are better.

Ok, now I get you. I sitting here thinking "What the heck, Shreyas? You know this game, and that's a very disconnected character idea with some real issues." So ok, now I want to see all the stuff you're working out, because then you'll probably come up with something excellent.

first hermit commentary

The Hermit is problematic because he specifically fights against interaction with other characters by not only having moves that support being a loner (Scrounge) but also moves that benefit from it, and so your Hermit player will always push back against any attempt to integrate him into the action.

Also, Speak Of is problematic because the coolest way to use it is to bring people back from the dead, which frankly is definitely going to upset anyone who worked to dead them.

and now for the child

Oh Meg you are going to like this so hard

The Child

Not everyone in the world is a grownup. You're a kid and everybody knows it.

CREATING A CHILD

To create your child, choose family, name, look, stats, moves, gear, and Hx.

FAMILY

You've got a mama, a papa, or both; they might not have birthed you but now they're your keeper. Ask the MC who they are, and if they're an NPC ask the MC what their name is.

Mama, Papa: When you name your kid don't please be a jerk about it. People are gonna call him names anyway.

NAME

If your mama or papa is a PC the player gets to name you. Otherwise, go look at one of the many other child playbooks on this forum.

LOOK

Boy, girl, tomboyish, effete, ambiguous, something new

Oversized grown-up wear, hand-me-down wear, homespun wear, scrounged designer wear

Baby-fat face, clever face, bright face, open face, curious face, dirty face

Dewy eyes, dancing eyes, guileless eyes, sleepy eyes, dark-lashed sensual eyes

Little body, pudgy body, delicate body, sturdy body

STATS

+2 Hot, weak in Sharp and Hard.

BASIC MOVES

You get the basic moves just like anyone.

CHILD MOVES

Choose one parent move that affects your mama/papa:

That's Not The Way I Taught: When you fuck up, the blame's on them.

Distracted: When you're around, your parents act under fire. When they're not around, you act under fire.

Hot Link: Your parents always know what you're up to, no matter what.

Thanks Mom: Whenever you need an object that would fit in a purse or handbag, roll +hot. On a hit, you managed to steal it from your parents earlier. On a 7-9, they need it right now, and don't have it. On a miss, you stole it, but on the way it came apart or broke somehow.

You pick two:

Helpless: When others help or interfere with you, they roll+your hot.

It's Not Nice To Hit Kids: When you're harmed, all the adults around you can get +1 Hx with you; if they do, they are acting under fire when you're around, until you're healed.

Whine: When you get a 7-9 on Persuade or Manipulate, you treat it as a 10.

I'm Scared: When you ask for safety or comfort, persuade or manipulate, but for PCs they get to mark experience twice if they do it.

A Growing Boy: (or girl) When you eat 1-barter's worth of food in a sitting, you get +1 forward until you're hungry again.

GEAR

You get fashion appropriate to your look, and two of these:

- A good pocketknife, not a weapon
- Useful string (infinite)
- A slingshot or boomerang (s-harm far infinite)
- A teddy bear (1-armor but that destroys it and mama has to make you a new one)

HX

When it's your turn, pick:

- The person that stares at you. Tell them Hx+2.
- The person who you listen to. Tell them Hx+1.

If your mama/papa are PCs, tell them HX+1.

Everyone else gets Hx-1 because hey you're a kid and even though you're an open book, no one cares to read it.

No matter what anyone else tells you, write down Hx-1 because you're a self-absorbed prick. Damn kid.

SPECIAL

If you and another character have sex, do the top item on the list and cross it out, until you get to the bottom one. Don't cross that one out.

- They hold 3 over you. They can spend their hold, 1 for 1, to persuade/manipulate you like they rolled a 10.
- They hold 2 over you, as above.
- They hold 2 over you. They can spend their hold, 1 for 1, to persuade/manipulate you like they rolled a 7-9.

IMPROVEMENT

Uh, I dunno yet. I think maybe you can get a gang of kids. Pieces of gear from your mentors. Etc.

Is the game that you've deliberately written playbooks you feel are flawed and we're meant to guess how? Or is this a serious attempt to explore some tropes of playbook design and make them work?

Either option is cool, but I'm curious and wary, now, of looking like an idiot.

Tim, it's however you want to play it! My plan is to post a playbook and come back a little later with some analysis of why I don't think it would lead to good play. I don't intend these to turn into playable books in any way, because frankly I think these are flawed at the conceptual level and can't really be made to work.

The Child is all about griefing, endangerment, and pedo. You don't want to endanger a child because it's mean and AW sucks but it's not definitionally mean. (Here I use that word to indicate ignoble as well as jerky) But there are great reasons to endanger this kid! He's an xp factory for everyone!

The parent moves are a way for the MC and the child to give grief to another player - even if they're not wielded that way, it's what will come of them. I think it's a reasonable way to model how you deal with your kid in AW (we are actually playing a game with a teenage son-of-a-PC NPC right now) but it sucks to be on the receiving end.

The non-parent child moves are like a battlebabe's - they draw attention and trouble without providing solutions to them. Unlike a battlebabe, though, the child simply consumes attention and resources.

And I think the creepiness of playing a juvenile in a game as sex-charged as AW is a big problem, which is why the sex move works like it does.

Tangent: I giggled at your comments about "Speak Of", because I've had a player use "Visions of Death" to bring people back to life that had "died", and to kill off NPCs that weren't even connected to the fight at all. They were actually really clever in how they applied it, but it did make for some interesting speculation as to the intended limits of the move.

Initially, I thought you were making a very clever dig at the other custom playbook threads. One that I that thought was maybe too funny.

I think that high-lighting bad play / playbooks is brilliant.