Hacking AW to make a settingful, semi-crunchy game?

I still have a soft spot for the old-style games with an impossibly detailed setting and an absurd number of books. There's something cool about playing in a defined world that extends beyond the borders of your character's lives, and having the details of the fiction backed up by mechanical effects. Unfortunately, playing such games is never as fun as reading about them, because they're pretty invariably poorly designed, and there's nothing especially thrilling about having to look up what guns White Knight employees use, and what their damage value is.

I don't think this means that such a game couldn't be done right, however. The two big problems, it seems to me, are that:

1) The fiction and the mechanics are pretty loosely linked. The differences between a Horizon security guard and a Triad enforcer might be pretty huge in the fiction, but they both have ten hitboxes and a 3 in Pistols.

2) On the other hand, in a feeble attempt to respond to problem #1, there are often so many fiddly little modifiers and interactions that you need to look up six different statistics just to shoot a guy. You need to know the mook's Body and Armor, and also your bullets' armor-piercing value, and also the penalty for fighting in a semi-dark room, and also...

What is needed is a more modular set of mechanics with a tighter connection to the fiction. It seems like Vx might have given us that.

What I'm imagining is essentially a world built on custom moves. This isn't so different from the way fronts work in standard AW, except that a lot more would be predefined by the game text. Consider the following moves:

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When you are stopped by a Horizon security guard and decide violence is the answer, roll+hard. On a 10+, it goes swimmingly. On a 7-9, choose two:

-He gets away, and will almost certainly cause you more trouble later.
-He gets a com message off to a superior. Backup is coming.
-His cyber-eye was recording. They've now got you on file.
-He hurts you in the struggle. Take 1-harm.

When you are squeezed by a Triad enforcer and decide violence is the answer, roll+hard. On a 10+, all three. On a 7-9, choose two.

-You successfully get out of your obligation.
-The Triad higher-ups don't hear about it.
-You haven't made an enemy out of the enforcer, because he's either cowed or dead.

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Obviously I haven't thought about these particular moves for very long, but I hope they get across the general idea. They're very different and tied to the fiction, and they're easy to apply.

You can even pull fancier tricks, like the ones Vincent and John Harper are talking about in their Knife & Candle hack:

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When you have the Astral Perception quality, add the following question to the Read a Person basic move:

-Does this person have any hidden magical talents?


When you have the Unimpressive quality, remove the following option from Seize By Force:

-You impress, dismay or frighten your enemy

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I don't have any concrete plans for what the actual game would be (all the examples are from Shadowrun, because that's the rules-heavy game I'm most familiar with, but they're just by way of illustration), so I can't really ask for specific feedback. I guess I'm wondering if this seems at all plausible. Are there any obvious pitfalls? Anything I should definitely keep in mind if I pursue something like this?

Honestly, a heavily detailed setting (like, say making apocalypse world = shadow run) is best as a reference. And it's only going to work if everyone at the table is already in love with shadow run. A detailed setting is a not a compelling setting nor the best setting for your group. I've given up on making Bulwark a 'detailed' setting and i'm probably just going to tighten up my basic moves and add a few lists of Gear, Qualities and Crap. Maybe rewrite the Kits as needed.

Playbooks and the basic moves are the what setting hacks revolve around in my mind. Custom Moves are already covered by Fronts and Advancement.

You could ditch the playbooks all together and just say: your stats sum to +3 and you start with three moves. If you pick a Kit as you first move you get it. If you pick a kit after your first Move, it's not as strong. 

Qualities are really hot but still contained pretty well within the original mechanics (see Brainer gear; 2 gear counts as one move).

It's also important to note that advancement isn't the only way to get Moves/Gear. If you can make it happen in the fiction (given fuckery) you should get it (intermittent rewards).

I mean, yeah. That's how Apocalypse World is set up, and it's brilliant. I plan on playing it a lot and enjoying it. That's also how the hacks we've seen so far are set up, and they seem excellent too, I'll probably play some of them. That's not in question.

On the other hand, there are some people who just honestly prefer a little (or a lot) more to be pre-defined, for any number of reasons, some of which I mentioned in my first post. I know that some of my friends definitely feel that way, and in certain moods I do as well. Unless you're claiming that this could never be as enjoyable/satisfying/whatever as the AW method, then the only question is whether AW (or at least the basic structure of the moves) is a good tool to create a game for those people to play.

I'm not sure what you getting at.

Yes?

I mean things like Rogue Trader / Dark Heresy, Knife & Candle, BSG, Set Apart are all settingful hacks. I mean WH40K and Exalted are pretty much the definition of settingful hacks.

Personally, I took that desire out behind the chemical shed and slit its bloated throat some time in the last year or so.

I realize that many of the hacks are building on detailed settings, and that's cool. But they don't have the same relationship between fiction and mechanics I'm looking for, unless you are writing a ton of new custom moves on a regular basis. Which is fine, but why not put that effort on the game designer (who has more time to think and playtest) rather than the play group?

EDIT: Put it this way. There doesn't seem to be any conceptual difference to me between a GM creating a front with custom moves and a book creating a front with custom moves. The advantage of the latter in certain situations for certain groups is apparent to me, and doesn't strike me as something worth arguing about. The question I'm interested in is whether there is anything I'm missing about why that wouldn't work.

There's no reason that it necessarily wouldn't work.

I'll mention two things though:

First, I'll quote what I said to Jeff in his Song of Ice and Fire thread:

Also, I would take Vx advice about the 'basis' for all the moves dead seriously. Looking that some of hacks, I feel like the designers understood the method and form of the moves (trinary outcomes, lists) but miss the point that they exist never to model the fiction or complicate the tactical options but to serve the fiction, to move it forward and complicate it in relation to other characters. Without this, the core mechanics of Apocalypse World lose their teeth and turn into a cute and complex reworking of Otherkind and GHOST/ECHO.

Apocalypse World isn't about the apocalypse, the world or sex and violence (sure, it contains those things) but, to me anyways, Apocalypse World is about people and their relationships to each other.

And second, that the interests and needs of the hacker aren't going to be the same as the MC and their group. The abundance of hacks attest to this.

Either the designer is writing for themselves and their group, or they're writing for some imaginary audience (which is no one.) What could be missing is my group and our wants. I take on the 'burden' of design during prep by making Fronts. I am uniquely qualified for this, more so that any absent designer.

Let me put it this way: I think hacking AW is awesome. If you're hacking AW too that's even more awesome. If you come up with a big book of moves and crap for Shadowrun like Tony did for Apocalypse D&D that could be awesome too. I'm not a fan because I don't like OD&D or dungeon crawls. But my buddy Adam does and he's having a great time with it. That's awesome.

However, what I feel like you're getting at is like a closed-design setting. All the Fronts and Custom Move are all already done for me and match up with the setting details like a GURPS supplement. I could hack it if I wanted to but in theory there shouldn't a reason too. Is that what you mean by:

 

Having the same relationship between fiction and mechanics I'm looking for.

If not, please enlighten me. If it's not that I'm not sure what kind of relationship between mechanics and fiction that you're looking for.

However, what I feel like you're getting at is like a closed-design setting. All the Fronts and Custom Move are all already done for me and match up with the setting details like a GURPS supplement. I could hack it if I wanted to but in theory there shouldn't a reason too.

Yeah, I think that's the idea. It's important to keep a fruitful void there, you don't need a move for everything. And I would also almost certainly still encourage MCs to invent new moves and the like if needed. But it shouldn't be necessary for the MC to creatively extend the world and the mechanics, the way a good AW MC has to.

Again, I want to emphasize that I'm not advocating this as a method for every hack ever. I just think it might fill a niche for certain gamers that isn't very well filled yet.

Your two concerns are really, really important. Those are the sorts of things that prompted me making the thread in the first place.

First, about the basis of the moves. I think this is completely crucial. There wouldn't be any moves that went "When you drive a car" or "When you reload a gun". However, I think you can make fiction-modeling moves that nonetheless still fit Vx's criteria. From the book itself, this move is a great example of what I mean:

If Grome gets his hands on you, he ties you to a table and
you know he’s really fucking good at that. If you try to escape,
roll+hard. On a hit, you can escape, but at a cost. On a 10+,
choose 1; on a 7–9, choose 2:

• it takes you over an hour and leaves you exhausted. Take
s-harm (ap).
• you suffer for it; your arms and legs are torn bloody before
you’re done. Take 1-harm (ap).
• ultimately you need to bribe Ipe, Grome’s sister, to help you. It
costs you 1-barter.

It's all about a conflict of interests between named characters, but it's still totally flavorful and very specific. I'm imagining a game built on a whole slew of moves that look like that.

The two mook moves I made up on the spot in my first post are interesting corner cases. They're sorta about a conflict of interest between the mook and the PCs, but not really. More importantly they're about the conflict between the PCs and the mook's boss. Whether that's good enough or not is an interesting question, and one I'm not sure I have an answer to.

The second concern, about the designer not having knowledge of the group, is also important. This means that there needs to be enough variety for there to be things to latch onto for different groups, and room for the MC to put their own spin on things. I think I was speaking a little carelessly when I talked about the book creating fronts. It should give you all of the material you need to create a front (custom moves, factions and tensions, maybe some characters), but deciding what parts of that will come together to create the fronts the PCs face should probably still be up to the MC.

I don't think this is particularly radical. I mean, Dogs in the Vineyard gives you a really specific set of situations and responsibilities, and still manages to be appealing to a wide variety of people.

I want to focus on this for a second:

What could be missing is my group and our wants. I take on the 'burden' of design during prep by making Fronts. I am uniquely qualified for this, more so that any absent designer.

I agree that this is awesome. Having what is essentially a custom-built game made for your group is really cool, and a big part of why AW is awesome and I want to play it a lot. But having that work at full capacity requires you to have a motivated and competent designer in your group (and probably for that person to happen to be the MC), which is just straight-up untrue for some groups.

I have some friends who are good GMs, in the sense that they create memorable NPCs and have good instincts for driving the story to interesting places. That doesn't mean they would have any interest in studying the move structure and Vx's principles so that they could make up great custom moves on the fly. I imagine they would much rather just look up those moves in a book, so they can get on with the meat of the story. That's a big part of the motivation, here.