New Playbook: The Radio

So last year I experimented with making a playbook. And then I actually got to run 2.5 Apocalypse World campaigns, and that scratched my itch.

I haven't been playing (boo!) lately, so I dragged out the old playbook and tried to polish it.

Any comments and criticisms are welcome. Anything to make it pop will be much appreciated!

THE RADIO (version4)

There were men and women, wise men and women, who warned of the coming apocalypse, who hid supplies and made preparations to wait it out. You follow in that tradition, warning people of the new coming disaster... because life can always be worse. But really, you’re ready to survive without them since you don’t expect people to see reason.

CREATING AN RADIO
To create your radio, choose name, look, stats, moves, gear, and Hx.

NAMES
Newsboy, Anchor, Mic, Shout Out, Feedback, Voice Over, Offscreen, Beat, Tagline, DJ, Turntable, Spin, Tape Deck, Fadeout, Blogger, Anon, Spam, Broadband, Router, Wireless, Autotune, Three-Dog, Stern, Gross

STATS
Choose one set:
Cool+1 Hard=0 Hot-1 Sharp+1 Weird+2
Cool-1 Hard+1 Hot=0 Sharp+1 Weird+2
Cool=0 Hard-1 Hot+1 Sharp+1 Weird+2
Cool+1 Hard-1 Hot=0 Sharp+1 Weird+2
Cool-2 Hard+1 Hot-1 Sharp+2 Weird+2

MOVES
You get all the basic moves. You also get receivers and one more radio move.

LOOK
Man, woman, ambiguous, transgressing, or concealed.

Rags, old military clothes, fetish-bondage wear, or t-shirts and jeans.

Disheveled face, grizzled face, emaciated face, plump face, or ashen face.

Dead eyes, sunken eyes, tired eyes, deep eyes, ruined eyes, or sad eyes.

Flabby body, skeletal body, toned body, crippled body, or scarred body.

GEAR
You get:
   1 personal weapon
   1 paranoid weapon
   fashion suitable to your look, including at your option, a piece worth 1-armor

Personal weapons:
 many knives (2-harm hand infinite)
 baseball bat (2-harm hand)
 machete (3-harm hand messy)

Paranoid weapons:
 sniper rifle (3-harm far hi-tech loud)
 shotgun (3-harm close messy)
 hunting rifle (2-harm far loud)

HX
Everyone lists their characters by name, look, and outlook. Take your turn.

List the other character’s names.

Go around for Hx, on your turn:
   Tell everyone Hx-1. You keep to yourself.

On the other’s turns, choose 1 or both:
   One of them knows something or does something you really admire. Whatever number that player tells you, add +1 to that.
   One of them knows something or does something you really detest. Whatever number that player tells you, add +1 to that.
   Everyone else, you haven’t had the time or interest to learn about them. Whatever number they tell you, subtract -1 to that.

At the end, find the character with the highest Hx on your sheet. Ask that player which of your stats is the most interesting and highlight it. The MC will have you highlight a second stat too.

Radio Moves
Receivers: You get a small stable of 4 antennas. If you speak aloud, your antennas can hear you. In turn, you can hear, see, taste, feel, and smell anything your antennas similarly experience. If you and they speak aloud, you can communicate as if you were right next to each other.

You cannot read their minds, and they cannot read yours, or any of that shit.

[Note to the MC: Don’t forget to treat each antenna like a real person. Name them, give them desires, etc.]

Static: when you interfere with someone who’s rolling, you can choose to roll+weird instead of roll+Hx.

Conspiracy theorist: share a vision of future doom with another player's character. If the player acts on that information, they take +1 to any rolls they make while doing so, and you mark an experience circle.

Remote viewing: you don't have to be physically present to use the radio moves static or conspiracy theorist, or any of the basic moves, but you do need one of your antenna present and active in the situation.

The medium is the message: each time you open your brain to the psychic maelstrom, you can insert information as if you had picked the same option under augury (cf. hocus).

Cloud sourcing: you can ask the world’s psychic maelstrom for the name of the person who can help you best with your current problem. State the problem and your proposed solution and roll+weird. On a 10+, you get their name and current location. On a 7-9, you get the name and location, but someone else also learns the name, location, and reason for your query. On a miss, someone else learns the info, but you don't.

Survivalist: you have a well-stocked and high-quality first aid kit. It counts as an angel kit (cf) with a capacity of 2-stock.

Radio Special
If you and another character have sex, the other character automatically becomes one of your antenna.

Radio Improvement
Whenever you roll a highlighted stat, and whenever you reset your Hx with someone, mark an experience circle. When you mark the 5th, improve and erase.

 get +1cool (max cool+2)
 get +1hard (max hard+2)
 get +1hot (max hot+2)
 get +1sharp (max sharp+2)
 get a new radio move
 get a new radio move
 get a workspace (detail) and oftener right
 get followers (detail) and fortunes
 get a move from another playbook
 get a move from another playbook

[Note to MC: yes, if a radio chooses the psychic antenna option for followers, they are all receivers.]
---
 get +1 to any stat (max stat+3)
 retire your character (to safety)
 create a second character to play
 change your character to a new type
 choose 3 basic moves and advance them
 advance the other 4 basic moves

HIDEOUT
Choose which of the following your hideout includes. Choose 2: it’s hidden from view and a secret from everyone, it’s booby-trapped, it’s armored (1-armor), it has an escape route or backdoor, or it sits in a maze of twists and turns.

Your hideout has food, water, and other supplies worth 5-barter.

It has enough room to house a small family.

This seems very much playable! Most of it seems clean and crisp and very "oh damn, I wonder how that will work in play" on the same level Vincent's playbooks make me feel when I first see them.

Still, improvements possible in some specific cases! Suggestions:

A 'gear' list for the antena-NPCs - no other reason than to help the MC or player think up personalities/names for them. Maybe get to choose what they are, like the Hardholder or Hocus do. Or, at least like the savvyhead/operator has, a list of names. "You get a small stable of 4 antennae (maybe Typo, AM, Notch and Carver)."

Survivalist I don't get. Not a playbook much predisposed to violence, is it?

Conspiracy theorist seems fictionally appropriate, but... It kind of feels flat because this is the post-apocalypse. Conspiracies are either lamer than the Big Thing That Happened, or are something your neighborhood madman is already sprouting, or are 'worse than the apocalypse', which will likely make it some weird gonzo stuff (the nuclear holocaust was caused by aliens!). It is also a very mild reskin of some other moves that doesn't even do what those moves do - Oftener right and whatever the Quaraintine's thing is establish a certain relationship between player characters, and Conspiracy theorist really doesn't. If you're going to keep it, maybe add a way to affect NPCs, too?

So I don't know about those.

For a reporter-type playbook, there is also a lack of "get into trouble for this boon here" move. How about this:

Live from the scene! - when you're in a dangerous situation and want to broadcast it live, roll +weird. On a 10+, anyone who can see or touch any of your antenae get to see and hear and feel what you do, and you get to keep your wits about you, too. On a 7-9, you can still broadcast well, but you can't do anything else for the duration. On a miss, you link everyone to the maelstorm direct instead.

"You get a small stable of 4 antennae (maybe Typo, AM, Notch and Carver)."

- Yes, thank you. In fact, it shall be yoinked!

Survivalist I don't get. Not a playbook much predisposed to violence, is it?

- All my survivalist friends have a fully stocked medical kit in their bunker/closet/hidey hole. It seemed what a loner-type would have this in his stash.

Conspiracy theorist seems fictionally appropriate, but...

- Yeah, it is actually a near-copy-paste from the Touchstone, but with hope flipped with doom. It was not very original. I do want something to compel the Radio to broadcast, but I'm at a loss at the moment.

Live from the scene! - when you're in a dangerous situation and want to broadcast it live, roll +weird. On a 10+, anyone who can see or touch any of your antenae get to see and hear and feel what you do, and you get to keep your wits about you, too. On a 7-9, you can still broadcast well, but you can't do anything else for the duration. On a miss, you link everyone to the maelstorm direct instead.

- hmm... this is interesting... let me think on it...

I really like it.  It's got a technology vibe but also a bit of a voodoo loa quality.  Spooky as hell, but in a distinct way from the Brainer and the Hocus.  I also like the "failed prophet" aspect of the playbook -- they prepared, they saved up, they tried to warn people, and they've been warped by the Apocalypse worse than most.

I'd like there to be some explicit failure modes with the antennae, though -- it's seems pretty risky to send your soul across the maelstrom into somebody else's body.  What if somebody or something else gets hold of a body instead, so you've got some kind of angry ghost or demon running amok with a body for a certain amount of time? 

Also, what if there's problems with crosstalk between antennae, or antennae blurting out the things the Radio is saying or thinking at inappropriate times?  That happened a lot to the nasty sorcerer in Tim Powers' brilliant Last Call. 

What happens to the Radio if the antenna he's riding gets killed?  You know that's going to happen. 

Other thoughts: I'd make the Radio's sex move work one time only on PC's.  That's still nicely fraught but doesn't totally disempower the other character, especially since they can show up to get revenge without risk of getting puppetted all over again.

I'd like there to be some explicit failure modes with the antennae, though --

- I'm on the fence and very uneasy about this. I originally required the Radio to have to roll Hot to get them to manipulate their antenna, but a kind person pointed out that forcing someone to roll at doing their custom playbook move was kind of weak sauce.
 I envision the MC using the narrative and a hard move instead to bring some fuckery onto the Radio through his/her antenna.

What happens to the Radio if the antenna he's riding gets killed?  You know that's going to happen.

- In a previous version, I had the Radio take 1-harm(ap) if the antenna got hurt, but it seemed a little clunky. Really it's up to the MC to make the antenna real enough so that the Radio wouldn't want the NPC to get hurt. And a dead antenna sounds like perfect fodder for a MCs hard move against a Weird roll...

Other thoughts: I'd make the Radio's sex move work one time only on PC's.  That's still nicely fraught but doesn't totally disempower the other character, especially since they can show up to get revenge without risk of getting puppetted all over again.

- Well, the Radio can't actually control his/her antenna. He/she can only really communicate, so it's less disempowering, and more annoying. And the PC can choose not to have sex with the Radio, right?

The Hx moves are disappointingly generic, but maybe that's just because I don't have a strong handle on the concept -- which seems to be shifting dramatically from version to version?

The idea of using people as psychic antennae is super-interesting, for example, and seems to form the core basis for most of the moves, but I have no idea how it relates to the current playbook summary -- what does the doomsayer/survivalist nut have to do with the psychic who 'rides' willing subjects' bodies?

I feel like the playbook would also seriously benefit from some hints about how the PC has convinced these people to basically let him/her possess them. There also doesn't appear to be any way for the PC to acquire new antennae, short of having sex with someone. To me these are two birds crying out desperately for a single stone: an evocative move that allows the PC to recruit new antennae, or at least hints at what the beginning of that process might look like (e.g. a move that allows them to make someone a temporary antennae.) The key here may not necessarily be the mechanics of the move, but what the colour and the mechanics together suggest about how this vaguely-parasitic relationship begins.

Now it is possible that you intentionally mean for the Sex move to be the only way -- which is ultra-creepy and great, but really makes the whole concept feel even less coherent to me. If it's a dude who fucks people and then, y'know, gets to live inside their head... awesome, but let's see more moves (and colour text) about just how crazy that is, instead of leaving it as a sort of secondary implication of the mechanics.

P.S. An obvious Hx question related to the above might be: One of them briefly acted as your antennae, that person gets +3 Hx with you. Or maybe: One of them is good friends with one of your antennae: you have been watching them without their even knowing. Etc.

I feel like the playbook would also seriously benefit from some hints about how the PC has convinced these people to basically let him/her possess them.

P.S. An obvious Hx question related to the above might be: One of them briefly acted as your antennae, that person gets +3 Hx with you. Or maybe: One of them is good friends with one of your antennae: you have been watching them without their even knowing. Etc.

- Hey, I'm wondering (after pondering your comments for a while) if a stronger, more evocative set of Hx descriptions might resolve what I think are several, but related issues of playbook concept?

I'm not sure if they would resolve all the things I was talking about, but they would definitely be extremely helpful in more clearly defining the playbook concept, as you say. And of course a Hx move could also hint at or reinforce however it is you imagine the Radio recruiting new antennae. Whether they would be adequate on their own, I don't know, but if you start there it might help reveal other places where descriptions/summaries/moves could be tweaked.

I'm not sure the lack of move-based ways to get new antenas is that big of a deal. To begin with, four is plenty. If you want to get more, you engage the fiction roughly the same way a savvyhead does when he wants to get a new workspace - he goes out into the world and gets it in whatever way the MC decides that should go.

As for Hx... I hate Hx as a mechanic but love the questions. They're the one way you get to establish a certain relationship tone between the character, some of the other PC's, and the world at large before gameplay even begins.

Though, for that stuff, you need to get a good handle on the central concept - what's the most important thing for the guy? That he's newsman, a psychic freak, or a loner survivor?

It feels a lot more clear to me how a savvyhead might go and acquire a workshop, than how a psychic possessor demon might go and acquire more willing possessees.

Well, like I said, I don't really know what's the focus of this playbook. If it's about being a psychic possessor demon, there aren't really that many moves to leverage to make that work (as in, what are you going to *do* with all of those antenas that you can not control, just see and hear from?).

If it's about being a 'newsman' or 'survivor' more, then the playbook is good as is - the antenas are not a maelstorm infection that's spreading, they are a very limited resource that needs management.

Four antenas is plenty, especially knowing that they will never need to be in the same place together, so chances of them all being lost is low. If you do need more antenas, there are a couple of failsafe options - you can sex people up, you can get followers with an 'augury' option.

Now, if he wants to get new antenas and it's not clear to him how, there are cool moves that allow you not so much to do that as to set it up in the fiction - Cloud sourcing allows you to go and look for a such person directly, Medium is the message allows you to put in an 'ad' in the maelstorm for one.


This is pretty much a question of how whether being a Radio's antena is something that he can do to you despite your wishes (psychic possessor demon) or something like having a special skill that can be hired out (newsman and his journalists). Personally, I'm far more interested in the newsman angle, but it's not really my playbook to decide.

Just, you know. Sometimes setup doing it moves are better than doing it moves, depending on what you're trying to accomplish.

This playbook started out with the physical possession angle, but that really wasn't the way I wanted to go, so I cut it out of version 4.

It's supposed to be a survivor newsman; a loner who doesn't want to or have to interact physically with the world and wants to transmit his/her/its message to the world.

There is also supposed to be a dichotomy in that he's kinda dependent on those 4+ antenna, but his Hot isn't so hot, like a loner survivor who realizes he's not completely self-sufficient, or an angry blogger who obviously wants an audience even though he or she is sitting alone in the dark in their bedroom for days.

That's awesome!

You seem like you have a good handle on the needs the Radio has by virtue of being the Radio, which is probably half the job of doing a proper playbook. Your Hx should reflect that relationship. Like...

One of them is your most loyal viewer - tell that player Hx+3.
You get your food and drink from one of them on the rare occassion you leave your hideout - tell that player Hx+1.
Everyone else, they know the voice but not the man behind it. Hx-1.


Next thing is what the world wants from the Radio. Is he employed for the information he provides? Hunted for it? Mostly ignored? That's the other half of Hx questions.

HX
On others' turns, ask one of them if they would like to be one of your antenna. If they say "yes" set they're starting Hx with you at +3, regardless of what they tell you. If nobody says "yes" pick somebody who you want to become one of your antenna, if it happens get an improvement.
Everybody else, take the number they tell you.

Just a thought.

I think the antenna themselves should be fleshed out by player options a little more, like the way a Maestro'd can flesh out their cast & crew a little bit.

After a few revisions and edits with the author, I finished up the trifold pdf today

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9cu0IVYfHtiN0xoWndPN05MY2M/edit