The Modern World

It seems pretty silly to be considering a "hack" when I have so little experience with the AW system, but I've just been going crazy since I discovered AW and all its other games.  Despite this, I feel like all these games are "almost" what I'm looking for, but not quite.

I played the Spirit of '77, and while I don't dig the 70's theme, I loved the mechanics of the game (and still find it among my favorite of the AW hacks, mechanically).  It's almost what I want, but it was built to support a slightly different theme than what I'm looking for.  Like that product, I'm looking for cinematic action but also some kind of supernatural drama, like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, X-files, that sort of thing. 

I was amazed by the mechanics of AW engine.  I loved the idea that the players rolled all the dice (as players like to do) which freed up the GM to focus completely on narration.  I never realized how much it bothered me to go from "narration mode" to "game mode" to "narration mode" and back again until I didn't have to do it anymore.  At most, I'm just jotting down notes when stuff happens. 

In addition, I simply love that there was a lot about the mechanics that felt appropriate for gaming in a modern setting.  The rules seem to support roleplaying in a modern world in exactly the same magnitude that the d20 system utterly fails at it.  So that's kind of what I'm looking for... a good "core" modern rulebook to play out some of my favorite modern-fantasy settings.  Basically, I want a single system that has mechanics suitable for handling cinematic action, supernatural drama, crime mystery, and maybe a touch of science fiction ala StarGate or X-Com.  I think the Apocalypse World can handle this pretty well with its focus on drama, dramatic consequences, and character-focused abilities/stats.  If anything, Apocalypse World has a little too much drama and I might tone that down a bit. 

I don't think this will ever be an "official" or "published" hack in any sense, in part because I think its the opposite from what a lot of AW fans want from an AW product.  I'm looking for a good "core" rulebook for modern games that I can add on simple modules to such as "Aliens" or "Magic" to customize the game for particular settings. 

So far, the AW product that has intrigued me the most is Monster of the Week as it comes the closest to the theme and openness I'm looking for.  Unfortunately, I think Michael Sands and I have different design philosophies.   I think he's more comfortable with "story games" than I am.  Like there's references to some characters simply "inflicting harm" by narrating a situation in which they can inflict harm without taking any in turn?   Meanwhile, it bothers me, really bothers me, that there's no "shooting" action in a modern game where most characters get firearms and the focus of every game comes down to a fight scene.  But I think their idea of when to use moves differs from mine, as I want to use moves and dice in any dramatic situation, since dice are a primary mechanism for introducing new consequences and escalating the action/drama. You want to shoot the guy, okay, but that's a move... which means you might just be making things worse.  Despite the fact that there's no "shooting" move, no "go aggro" move, and no fighting move of any kind that doesn't involve you taking harm as part of inflicting harm, "use magic" is a basic move, which apparently anyone and everyone can do without restriction.  To me, the moves feel disjointed from the focus of the game, and so I need to hack. 

My ultimate question when it comes to moves is, "What will the players be doing?"  Even better, "What will the players be trying to do?"  If there's something players are going to be doing a lot, and its important to the genre or setting, and it could have dramatic consequences, I think it should be a move.   Now, this can be a little ridiculous, like "When players are gambling over a game of pool..." but yeah, if the setting and story is set in a pool hall then... yeah, why not?  If it's only for one adventure, then it should be a custom move for that one location.  If its for the entire setting/campaign, then it should probably be a basic move.   IF its something only PCs are likely to want to do, even better.  Here's another example, "When players reveal their true identities to someone..." Clearly that's something pretty setting-specific, but imagine a setting where all players belong to a secret government division of undercover alien investigators.  You'd think at some point they might reveal themselves to gain an advantage, and since they can all do it, this is a good choice for a basic move.  Since my focus is on replicating the "cinematic action" and "supernatural drama" of certain movies and TV shows, this is relatively easy, as I just have to watch these shows/movies and try to identify those points where I say, "hey, that looked cool.  A player might want to be that guy doing that thing". 

So anyway, my ultimate criteria is "would players want to do this," and if so, I think it should be a move.  And that's why I'm shocked at the lack of a "shooting" combat move in some settings where shooting and firearms seem quite common. 

So I'm starting with the basic moves.  I'm adding a few, combining a few, tweaking a few.  I'm trying to think of things players will want to do during a game, and trying to make sure I have rules for it in place.  For example, I added a Smash Object move, in case players want to kick down locked doors or destroy the mystical object raising the dead.  I got rid of "reading a situation" because that felt too tactically oriented and replaced it with "investigate my surroundings", which can alert you to danger but also be used to find clues, track people, and get information about things that happened in the past.  My other two "get knowledge" moves right now are Research and Sense Motive (used with Sharp and Charm, respectively).  I also add options for the types of questions that can be asked to try to recreate the kind of knowledge that people actually research to do their group-briefings in shows like Buffy and Leverage.  Some of this was inspired by the changes in Monster of the Week. 

Altogether I have around 15 basic actions right now, which may be a bit much, but some of the moves are similar to each other.  I'll post more specific information as I continue to work on and playtest them. 

Right now I'm calling this project, The Modern World.  It's not remarkably creative, but it gets the point across. 

Some more specific details...

At the moment, I have no equivalent to History, Hx, Strings, Bonds, or whatever.  Like Monster of the Week, the history step will just be asking questions about your history and how it involves (this other character).  This may change later, but is the assumption I'm going with for now.  This means I'll be adding in some additional way for players to earn XP, likely by declaring and completing group objectives and personal objectives.

The attributes I'm using right now are Tough, Quick, Sharp, and Charm.   Not much to say here..  The attributes kind of speak for themselves. 

During the design process I'm also picturing those as my four categories of player-characters, the Tough Champion, the Quick Champion, the Sharp Champion, and the Charming Champion, and so I'm trying to make sure they all have basic actions they can perform, that they each have some role in combat scenes, they have each have some role in mystery solving, etc. 

I'm not sure what actual playbooks I'll be using at the moment.  For now, I'm content to use the playbooks in Monster of the Week, as they really are excellent.  Eventually, writing up my own playbooks - or frankensteining my playbooks from bits and pieces of others - will probably be my last step.  This started as kind of a project to adapt Monster of the Week to "my style" of game, but I'm perfectly happy with most of the playbooks other than maybe one or two I'd like to rename.

I took an idea from d20 Modern and am asking every player to select a "background".  This plays out similiar to the "choose your background" step in the Crooked playbook of Monsters of the Week, except this applies to all characters.  This basically represents your former life, before you became a Champion.  The available backgrounds to choose from are: Academic, Artist, Athlete, Celebrity, Criminal, Dilettante, Doctor, Domestic, Executive, Nomad, Military, Police, Religious, Reporter, Rustic, and Technician.  Each one has a list of 3-6 moves/traits, and you can select one.  For some of them, the same move/trait is copied among different backgrounds.  For example, "Computer Savvy" is a move that you can select if you have the Academic, Criminal, or Technician backgrounds. 

One problem I'm going to have is how much overlap to have between the backgrounds and the main playbooks, and whether or not any overlap there is a bad thing.  Like, I was picturing have a Criminal or Thief playbook -- does that overlap too much with the Criminal background?  Should they have a similar move selection or completely different?  Essentially, your background is your "Former" life, so a lot of overlap shouldn't matter, I guess.  Like maybe you were Military, but now you're a Criminal.  You would have very different abilities from someone who grew up in a life of crime.  On the other hand, does that mean I should have a corresponding playbook for each background?  Or if someone wants to be a Celebrity, should the Celebrity background completely cover that leaving no need for a corresponding playbook. (The "American Idol"?)

At the moment, my basic moves lists are:
- Act Under Pressure (similar to Act Under Fire, but to resist fear or act normally under tension or surprise, uses +Sharp) SHARP
- Avoid Danger (basically roll +Quick to avoid bad stuff, this is Act Under Fire)  QUICK
- Move Stealthily (just a renamed 'avoid danger' to make it clear how to handle this situation) QUICK
- Manipulate or Bargain (mostly the same as Seduce or Manipulate from Apocalypse World) CHARM
- Research (taken from Monster of the Week, changed a bit, kind of a replacement to Open Your Mind?) SHARP
- Help Out (taken from Monster of the Week, except gives a specific "aid bonus".  A player can use only one "aid bonus" on any given roll.) SHARP
- Throw object (basically ranged attacks without firearms.  Throwing knives.  Grenades.  Whatever.) TOUGH
- Smash object (bash doors down or destroy breaktable objects.  I'm considering removing this and working it into Move Stealthily.)  TOUGH
- Sense Motive (this is the same as Read a Person in Apocalypse World, except it uses +Charm) CHARM
- Investigate Your Surroundings (a blend and middle ground between AW's "Read a Sitch" and MotW's "Investigate the Mystery") SHARP
- Defend (similiar to Monster of the Week, but with more clarification.  On a 10+, you draw the danger but can try to react to it.  On a 7-9, you just draw it.) TOUGH
- Open Fire (you try to take down a target with a firearm) QUICK
- Medical Care (a basic move to heal and stabilize a character, but has a list of complications - on a 10+ you get one, on 7-9, three.  I might decide to simplify this later.) SHARP
- Physical Assault (the basic melee "Attack move" that players can declare when asked for their action.  On a 10+, you don't take any harm and can perform the Combo with Followup move) TOUGH
- Combo With Followup (I'm not sure yet if I will keep this move. It's optional to roll, but can only be rolled if you rolled 10+ on a Physical Assault) TOUGH
- Demand With Force (this is basically "Go Aggro".  I combined Seize with Force and Go Aggro together, and then later renamed it to Demand With Force to make it easier to declare) TOUGH
- Fight Back (a quick reaction, like 'avoid danger', but instead of avoiding it, you attack the source of danger before it can hurt you.  Uses the same mechanics as Physical Assault except you can't Combo with Follow-up) TOUGH

There are three moves here that were designed specifically to be reactions.  That isn't to say all the moves can't be reactions, but three have that specific role.  When "{something bad} happens, what do you do?", these are the goto actions.  They are Avoid Danger, Move Stealthily, Act Under Pressure, and Fight Back. 

"The guy pulls out a gun and aims it at your head." 
"I act under pressure and continue the deal, uninterrupted" or "I avoid danger, and get crash through one of the windows."  or "I fight back, and punch the guy in the face."  "I Move Stealthily and give a subtle signal to Merideth."

This is the main conceptual difference between Physical Assault and Fight Back.  Fight Back is ultimately a reaction to danger.  Physical Assault is something more premeditated.  Mechanically, the only difference is that one gives access to the Combo with a Follow-up move.  The reasoning is, while I like the idea of fighting back as a reaction, I want to keep the action simple and smooth.  In this case, I want the players to know the likely consequences for the roll before they even throw the dice, without having to look down at lists or make decisions between different options... my GOD, there's no time for that, a sword is swinging toward your head!!!  And so I wanted the Fight Back move to me mechanically simple and fast, just like the Avoid Danger move. 

I don't like looking at lists very much.  Maybe I'll eventually get used to it, but I prefer rules that can be easily memorized and "pick 2 of these off this list" isn't something that's easy to memorize.  So it was important to me to have basic attack actions that might get repeated a lot to be simple, such as Open Fire and Physical Assault.  On a 10+, you inflict your harm.  On a 7-9, you inflict harm and take harm, or with Open Fire something else bad happens. 

Still, I liked having the options available in some form, and so that's where the Combo With a Followup comes into play -- it's the move with the list of special combat tricks like disarm the opponent, move him where you want to go, knock him out cold, etc.  You can only use it if you get a 10+ roll though and only for Physical Assaults, not Open Fire, Demand With Force, or Fight Back.  So now we have a list of special combat moves that may become available in combat, but the opportunities for it won't come up as frequently.  That seems thematic, should streamline play a little, and gives special potential benefit to both melee attacks and melee attacks done "on your turn" or when you are the aggressor.

I'm still not sure I'm happy with it.  I will probably be making a couple different versions of Physical Assault, with and without Combo With a Followup to see how they run in actual play.   I know I really want 10+ to be "you take no harm" though, because the idea that you might get hurt while attacking feels more like a "7-9 roll" situation to me.

I don't have a "harm move" like Apocalypse World does.   In Apocalypse World, you get knocked out on a 10+, you're okay on a 6-, and on a 7-9 you suffer a temporary annoyance off a list.  While, instead, I'm doing what Monster of the Week does (mostly because I like the way it reads in many of their examples), where the MC just chooses an annoyance off the 7-9 list.  No roll.  The MC just does a hard "harm move" and we move on.  It's one of the few times when I like their "narration instead of dice rolls" play-style.  "Only 1 harm, but he cut a deep gash down your leg and you're on the ground." or "You wipe the blood from your eyes and realize he's gone.  Both doors are open."

So the 10+ on the Combo With a Followup move is supposed to make up the lack of a "instant knockout" result to choose from on a table (which is important for taking out mooks and guards and salespeople), while the 7-9 options on the Combo With a Follow-up move and the advanced "pick one of these" moves normally found in attack moves such as "move the character where you want" or "inflict +1 harm".   

Anyway, those are the attributes, backgrounds, and basic moves I'm working on for now. 

My goal now is to watch a bunch of TV shows and say, "Okay, players are going to want to do that!" And then I have to decide if its going to be a character move (limited to certain playbooks and/or backgrounds), a special move (limited to certain campaign settings), or a basic move (available to everyone to at least try). 

Two things I really love about this game are how well the mechanics can deal with situations that don't work well in other games, despite their most convoluted attempts. 

-A police officer pulls out a gun on the robber and yells "Freeze". 
What is this in other games?  Are you setting yourself on Opportunity Fire?  Are you Delaying Your Action until he makes his?  Is it Intimidate?  Negotiate?  Do you want to match your initiative to his? 
DEMAND WITH FORCE.  "If he doesn't freeze, I shoot him in the leg."

-The Rage Demon tries to pull your buddy out the window, but you manage to get the car started and Vroom.  Just for yahoos, you turn the car around and ram into the Rage Demon before driving off.
What is this?  An opposed grapple check?  Do we check the opposed strength?  Does the seat belt add +2 to your roll?  A dexterity check, maybe?   What's the to-hit bonus of a car, anyway?  Does it matter.  Should we use your drive skill instead?  How much hitpoints does the car take off?  Will this modify the challenge level? 
AVOID DANGER.  Escape momentarily from the nasty Rage Demon.  Your buddy would HELP OUT, but he's busy getting the car started.
PHYSICAL ASSAULT.  Your weapon is a car, which is slow but accelerating and probably does 3 damage.  On a bad roll, your car may take damage and that will hinder your getaway.  On a really bad roll, you might crash or pickup a demonic hitchhiker.

Both these events happened in the last sessions of d20Modern I ever played.   That's when I realized, you need a totally different and flexible mindset to govern gaming in a modern setting. 

I added a fifth stat, Spirit.  It's only really necessary if you ever decide to pickup a little magic later on, as its basically "the magic stat".  It's also used to resist some supernatural and psychic effects, but its mostly a "dump stat" right now if you're not a Spirit-based Champion.

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So I'm working on the playbook concepts, and so far I think I have 16 I want to use.  These playbooks represent people who may have once been ordinary people, but have learned that the world is very complicated.  Supernational corporations exploit the weak and control whole governments.  A New World Order is gathering power every day.  Not just one, but several, alien species have visited the Earth.  Plus, as the world becomes more connected we learn that ancient threats of magic and monsters are still with us and gathering in strength. 

These players represent ordinary people who have left their lives behind and dedicated themselves to either working with an organization or striking out on their own to basically confront the madness head on.  They are Champions, fighting a secret war.  Maybe they are trying to save the world from a major threat.  Maybe they are just trying to save one person from terrors he cannot understand and doesn't believe in.  Maybe they are just trying to find out what else is out there and where the next threat is. 

So each of these takes what I consider to be a good archetype for a "modern adventures game" and have their concept injected with a year or so of monster fighting, mystery solving, and trying to stay alive.  So all of these playbooks are designed to be fairly believable ordinary people -- and you can select options to make them that way -- but all of them have just a touch of weird to them, too. 

At least, that's the idea.  They're not finished yet.  Most of them aren't started yet. 

Here's the list of concepts so far:


Alien Hybrid (a human modified with alien DNA and/or technology)
Aristocrat (the front face of the group, half 'wealthy traveler' and half 'suave superspy')
Confessor (an agent of The Church trained to save souls and fight supernatural threats in the name of God)
Field Agent (a special agent with the backing of an influential government agency)
Hunter (a violent criminal dedicated to the extermination of a particular threat, organization, or monster type)
Investigator (hardcore investigative journalists dedicated to finding the truth about what's out there)
Ninja (added to appease a friend of mine.  He likes martial artists.  To be honest, I'm not sure if there's much difference between Ninja and Thief.)
Nomad (the ordinary 'everyman' who is seen too much and been pushed too far)
Occultist (a character specializing in ritualistic magic and enchantment; or a master of warding, binding, and summoning spirits)
Professor (the expert researcher, scholar, antiquarian, and mastermind of the group. Good at studying and improving magic artifacts.)
Protector (a warrior or martyr dedicated to preservation of innocent life at all costs, defends the group, protects civilians)
Psychic (a powerful telepath who can mess with people's minds and see the future, at a personal cost)
Scientist (the analyst, technical specialist, and healer of the group.  They specialize in tinkering with gadgets and alien tech.)
Soldier (a special operative trained for either solo wetwork operations or squad-based tactics)
Thief (a character whose infiltration, stealth, and prestidigitation skills border on the supernatural)
Wizard (a modern spellcaster who specializes in improvisational magic and protecting the group from magical effects)

Another fundamental goal of mine has been reversing many of Vincent's terminology changes.  A lot of people seem to like to keep these, but I find them kind of intrusive.  It does help give the game its own distinctive "flavor", which I suppose is part of the point, but I don't think my target audience will appreciate it.   

I'm hoping to take my game into game stores and play some pickup games, and I don't want people hung up on terminology so I'm trying to use terms commonly found in D&D and "traditional games".  As cool as the Apocalypse World flavor is, my game isn't as distinctively different and may not need the terminology changes to reinforce that difference. 

In fact, if you think about it, the whole idea of The Modern World is that at first glance it should look very familiar, but as you go deeper under the surface you realize that things are different.  In a way, I'm trying to make the rules reflect that.  Everything I love about the Apocalypse World rules are still there waiting to come out during play, but the structure and terminology of the game should be friendly, inviting, and familiar. 

So instead of "harm" and "harm as established", I've got damage and wounds.  I don't have any terms that say "hold", "forward", or "ongoing", instead I use brief explanations when they come up, "You receive a +1 bonus when rolling your next Tough move", for example, or "you can ask the GM up to 3 questions from the following list". 

I try to use words like attack, damage, melee, ranged, wounds, xp, attributes, traits, bonus, penalty, ... things traditional roleplayers will be used to.  I've replaced "hand" range with "touch" and may later just change that to "melee".  I have damage types right now: sharp, heavy, magic, burn, and bullet, mostly so I can have a wider variety of armors available.  "Tags" are being renamed to "features", and I'm including stat blocks with items that usually have them such as weapons, armor, and vehicles to keep the information separate from the features.  I'm considering changing "GM moves" to "effects", but I'm not sure yet.   

The most important thing, and really the reason I started all this, is that whenever a move (or MC move) or failure of some kind says that something happens to a PC, I try to specify whether the PC has the opportunity to react with a move of his own.  Apocalypse World seemed pretty clear about stuff like this, but some of the other 'Powered By Apocalypse World' products seemed a lot more vague.  It's an important goal of mine to be clear on this.  For example, the Defend basic action allows you to redirect danger from an ally to you on a roll of 7+, but on a 10+ you can react to the danger normally and on 7-9 you can't. 

I've taken out all the Hx stuff, for now, but I may add them in -- possibly as optional rules.  That part will depend on players' reactions and how the game flows either way.  Unlike Apocalypse World (which has an awesome distinctive flavor and style that I'm not trying to copy), the Modern World is a more traditional game in which a group of player work together against outside threats presented by the GM.  (Yeah, I renamed "MC" to "GM".  I understand that an Apocalypse Engine MC is very different than a traditional "GM", but that kind of stuff can be handled in the GM Agenda and Principles section without needing to add a new unnecessary term.)

Speaking of which, I get the point of a GM Agenda.  I think that's awesome, and I've been trying to put some thought into mine.  But I think too many people copy the Apocalypse World principles without really thinking about it -- I mean, the Principles, in many cases, are what make a setting unique.  The fact that an MC "looks at everything through crosshairs" in Apocalypse World is what makes Apocalypse World waaaay different from, oh say, playing in Greyhawk or Sherwood Forest.  I don't think that's a Principle that should just be lightly copied into any setting. 

Other Principles seem to not make too much sense, in that they don't seem "principle" to the game or setting.  In this way, I'm thinking of renaming the whole "GM Principles" section to just "GM Tips & Suggestions" or something.  Anything stronger than that probably should be in the Agenda.  Take "map everything", for example.  Is that really necessary?  I mean, it's good advice... but its not like we're playing a totally different game or somehow playing the game incorrectly if we don't map stuff for a few sessions in a row.   "Be a fan of the player characters", however, is awesome advice for just about any setting.   "Tips & Suggestions" are probably easier to read than laying down "Principles" like you're violating some sort of rule. 

Maybe it's like the hard/soft move thing.  Agendas are hard moves.  They can't be violated, they are in effect, you must obey them.  The "Tips & Suggestions" are ideas I'm throwing at you, but you can avoid them or modify them if you want.

Anyway, where was I?  Terminology.  I'm considering changing "moves" to "actions" or "traits", but I haven't decided yet.  I like "moves" right now because it implies action, physically doing something.  However many "character moves" seem more like "traits" to me.  We'll see what I do with that as I fill out the playbooks.  I might change "GM moves" to "effects", character moves to "traits" (some of which are also moves), and leave basic moves as-is. 

With the PCs getting less experience without marking attributes or gaining Hx, I've added "objectives" and "motivations" to earn extra XP.  In addition, I was thinking of introducing something similar to Fate's open-ended aspect system, using xp instead of hero points.  I'm having trouble thinking of a name for it though.  I'm considering calling them "reputations" because they are things "everyone knows about your character", and I was going to introduce a rule that says player characters gain 1xp whenever a reputation (belonging to any player) causes you a setback or complication. 

This kind of replaces the idea of character tags.  Instead, you can gain a reputation that says "I'm always broke because I have a gambling problem." or "I have a crush on Bridget." or "The Irish Mafia thinks I have their money". 

After a fight with a werewolf, one player may want the reputation "I killed a werewolf."  Other NPCs will react to this reputation, and any player can call on that reputation to introduce a new problem into the narrative, in exchange for xp.  Perhaps at some point the whole group will earn xp when they learn that a pack of werewolves have come to town to find out who killed their youngest pup.

That's the idea right now.  For now I'm calling it "Reputation", because that can be anything (and because calling it "History" might be confusing for AW veterans).