Stat Specialization in Character Type Moves

Okay, so, in working on Dragon World I've found myself sometimes writing up character types whose type-specific moves tend to use the same stat. The Explosive Mage's moves are pretty much all roll+eldritch (I just renamed "magic" as "eldritch" BTW). Sometimes it's natural to do it that way, and other times I feel like I'm letting some D&D4e stuff creep into it. The actual Apocalypse World playbooks seem to vary what stats the different character type moves use a bit more, but I wanted some outside perspective on how much of a spread there ought to be.

Are your stats too one-dimensional?

Like, Toughness instead of Hard? Because in AW Hard and Cool aren't really physical, mental or social descriptors but all three and then some.

I think most playbooks should be hitting 3/4 of the number of stats regularly and the other 1/4 sometimes, with the option through advancements and stat-lines to focus on one or two stats and and mostly ignore one.

Like how a Brainer could sorta get away without ever rolling hot or sharp, sometimes. But not easily, totally or without a bunch of advancements.

In Apocalypse World as such, the stats aren't on equal footing. It's slanted, like. If you're water, you flow away from cool, toward weird. Being cool requires effort and dedication, and becoming more weird is kind of the inevitable way of things.

"Becoming more weird" means three things. (1) Getting weirder, like going from weird+1 to weird+2. (2) Using weird for more basic moves, like getting Unnatural Lust Transfixion or Seeing Souls. (3) Getting brand new things you can do with weird, like Frenzy or Bonefeel. In all three of those ways, getting weirder is easier than getting cooler.

Hard is second place to weird.

So what happens with the Apocalypse World playbooks is that the ones that emphasize weird, like the brainer, have lots of weird moves and are kind of overwhelmingly pro-weird, and same thing with the ones that emphasize hard. The battlebabe, though, emphasizing cool, has relatively many sharp, hot and weird moves, and relatively few cool moves.

Whether a similar stat slant should exist in your game, I don't know. That's up to you! But that's what's going on in Apocalypse World.