Aeon World : Cthulhutech hack anyone ?

(cross-posted with Story Games)

Consensus about Cthulhutech seems to be "background and artwork are brilliant, rules are kind of shitty."
Consensus about Apocalypse World seems to be "rules are absolutely awesome."

How come nobody tried to do a AW hack for the Ctech background ? Until now that is.

pdf file: advisor.pdf
pdf file: major.pdf
pdf file: fifth_engel.pdf

My rules to hack the thing is : the less changes, the better. Right now the changes are :

• minor name changes : "weird" becomes "other", "barter" becomes "budget", "surplus" becomes "giri" or "asset", "gig" becomes "objectives", "gang" becomes "unit", "disease" becomes "taint", "followers" becomes "contacts", "augury" becomes "breach", "insight" becomes "intel" and I let go of hungry and famine for now but might find something more appropriate.

• the Shock countdown : works exactly like the Harm countdown but for psychological damage. Shock is a tag that things or actions have, and work like harm, except it's always area (everybody who see it takes shock). Stability works like armor for your mind. Has anyone come across a better way to handle mental breakdown in AW?

• added some tags : mech (works like gangs- err, units with size and all but you have to pilot it instead of giving it order), behemoth (a size tag bigger than large)...

So far I've done the Ashcroft Advisor, the Major and the Engel pilot. My goal is to map everything 1:1 if possible and change only fluff if I can. So far the Advisor is exactly 1:1 the Hocus, the Major is more or less the Hardholder (had to change an option here and there) and the Engel pilot is the Driver with a big Eva instead of a bunch of cars (I had to retool the vehicle rules a bit).

I'll post them here as soon as they're done.

Thoughts, reactions, ideas, corrections, insults ?

EDIT : the Major and the Fifth Engel playbooks.

Me and Johnstone are doing a more extensive hack of AW in a similar vein over in the Bulwark sub forum, rather than just a a reseelve.

That's some nice graphic design though!

Yeah, I wrote some notes for an AW hack of CthulhuTech, and some of the stuff I posted in the Bulwark section is from that.

Damn nice layout on those sheets, I like it a lot. Here's some notes you might find useful.

1.
I did the stress track same as you, but for debilities I picked the first four insanities I could write simple and fun rules for:
Compulsive (act under fire to avoid compulsion when stressed)
Dissociative (hallucinates under stress)
Obsessive (act under fire to avoid object of obsession)
Phobic (suffer stress when confronted with your fear)

Although for my Planet Algol hack, I have a Contamination clock, and I used stat penalties for that one. It's just another kind of injury, though. Insanity should affect your behaviour.

Or, you could just have players roll+cool to avoid going temporarily insane when confronted with mind-bending stuffs.

2.
I imagine tech stuff plays a much bigger role in CthulhuTech, so I'd separate that from Weird, probably have 2 stats named Technical and Psychic. I'd change open your brain to access the net, roll+technical. Use psychic for having a hunch/sixth sense, and of course magic and psionics. I don't like Other as a stat name, by the way, it implies that I should write extra stats of my choosing after it.

3.
I don't think the Driver rules are the best ones for the engels. The Tagers should use the Driver rules, and engels should either just use the character's base stats or different stats inherent to the particular engel. Giant robots are just people at a different scale, otherwise the interaction is pretty much the same.

When you play this, please tell us, I'd like to know how it goes.

Here's a Scribd collection containing all the PDF so far. Still missing: the Keeper of the Arcane playsheet, the Moves playsheet and a Aeon World factsheet.

http://www.scribd.com/collections/3035009/Aeon-World-a-Cthulhutech-Apocalypse-World-reskin

I'll come back to you both a bit later, thanks for your feedback.

The role of tech in C-Tech: I'm not a big fan of extensive gadget and weapon profiles. I like the elegance of AW tags. Simply swapping "A-Tech" for "Hi-tech" is enough for me. As for splitting the "weird" stat in two: in C-Tech, magic and tech are closely related. Most if not all the major technological advances where made through arcanotech. Basically, without a-tech, the world would be no different - sure, computers would be slightly smaller and medecine slightly better, but no flying cars, no unlimited power, no antigravity, no nanotech. The only archetype who uses tech a lot is the A-Technician anyways, who deals as much with the other side as any sorcerer. I didn't feel the need for a split. A gun is a gun is a gun, except when it can eat your soul.

Driver and Engel, Tager and Gunlugger: I don't know. The driver is an ace behind the wheel, and I wanted the Engel pilot to be like Maverick in Top Gun. You put top notch pilots in those rare, expensive warmachines. I wanted the cocky, devil-may-care feeling that the Driver perspire for my Engel archetype. Plus neither the Tager nor the Engel can change "rides" under normal circumstances. To me the tager is an individual that can't be parted with his own weapons of mass destruction and can take an army by themselves but are a little dead inside - that's the gunlugger right there.

Also, my goal isn't to do the definitive C-Tech / AW hack. It's just to prep up my next game. I always found C-tech intriguing and well done setting-wise, but the rules just didn't carry what the setting needed IMHO. AW did in several ways, I found out after I started playing it. These are just a support for my own campaign that I'd thought I'd make public. If you're on your way to do a proper C-Tech hack, great! I'm really curious about it, I'd read it and steal from it for my campaign!  But I'd rather start with AW and add custom moves along with a campaign moving than *writing* about a game that hasn't started yet. I needed the reskin to start that campaign. Custom moves will follow.

About the design : the maddest prop to the C-tech art team and Skiler Alldrege who designed the revised C-tech charsheet, from which I "borrowed" (stole, that is) a lot.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38615321/Cthulhutech-Character-Sheet-Revised

I think it's interesting how you see the Driver. I think of the Driver as having a prosthetic device that gives him bonuses when interacting with other characters, which isn't always in effect. The ability to change cars isn't something I think of as important, really, but the human-level interaction is. In my mind, the giant robot doesn't go aggro on a human, he just crushes the entire building. The human either gets out or he dies.

Have you seen the Faceless playbook? The way you describe the Tager sounds like it would be good as a Faceless hack, where you pick a weakness when you're not in monster form instead of getting driver-style bonuses. I would have reskinned the Gunlugger as Soldier or Special Forces, but maybe that's a bit boring.

If I end up finishing a sci-fi AW hack, it'll probably be a Bulwark thing, not a CthulhuTech thing. But I could post the notes I made if you like, so you could use whatever ideas you liked.

Doing just enough hacking in order to play is probably the right idea. I did some extensive playbook redesign in order to play Planet Algol with the AW rules, and it was a lot of work!

Okay, I just got my hand on the Faceless playbook and fuck yeah you're right, it's near perfect. The weakness rules are very, very appropriate, and the moves too (asking advices to your tager symbiont? Hell yeah!) The only problem is the Faceless isn't the one-man-army I envisionned the Tager to be in C-Tech.

I think I'm going to merge the two, and maybe rethink the Engel. Thanks!

PCs are pretty much one man armies from the get go - just give them a few fuck off weapons and 2-armor and they'll be killing lots of folk.

If the PC really wants to be a one man army and not part of a Tager team, then they take the advance "NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH."

I think that the sex moves are out of tone with Cthulhu Tech. I don't know if they should be changed or not, but I think they shouldn't exist.

Sorry If I'm bothering you... are there any news on this hack? it shows a lot of promise...

Hi. Thanks!

No, not anytime soon, I'm affraid. I'm crazy busy right now — I'm busy polishing the french versions of Apocalypse World and Dungeon World plus trying to earn real money and all. And after that, I've got some other game-related things coming up I'd rather focus on. One of these things being a *World-derived post-cyber game based on a Jenna Moran setting (think ghost in the shell, mostly) but I'm still figuring out how to publish that thing. I'll try to release a beta in a few months, maybe around november, but shh.

I see. You have indeed a lot of projects that are very cool. I'm fond of both apocalypse world and cthulhutech and I would like to play your hack with my gaming group in the near future. Maybe I'll need a Psychic Booklet as one of my players has such a character. I'll share it here if the game gets run if you don't mind I share it here. plus feedbacks from actual gaming :)
I wish you good luck with your projects and I thank you for sharing this hack.

Thanks! Oh, and by all means, make it yours and post your results! I put that hack together because I was super-bored and I'm not sure it work, but if it does, or spectacularly doesn't but you somehow make it work, or if you add anything, please share!

I still have the INND templates if you want to do your own playbooks.