[Playbook Idea] The Lost Boy

So I was all stoked about this a couple of months ago when someone pointed out that there were already two playbooks like it out there. Here is my take on Spooky Kids in the Apocalypse.

I'm interested in critique and play testing.
xo ross


The Lost Boy??
No one talks about what happens to the children, the lucky ones died in childbirth, others taken by wolves, orphaned by rival gangs, starve, or just get turned them loose with a can opener and a jar of muddy water while their mother's cry and the other's hang their heads. And the ones that do survive, against all odds. Well, no one talks about them either.??

Creating a Lost Boy

??Name
?Donnie, Optimus, Rex, Bean, Kazu, Dwarf, Dog, Simon, Bird, Kid, Boy, Schwin, K-Mar, Razz, Link, Pony, Muffin, Chainsaw, Dakota, Spoon, Gunner, Who-Man, Bear, Stupid, Ray, Char, Leaf, Sam, Frankie, Lucy, Charles,??Look?child, young kid, older kid

male, female, transgressing

skinny body, little body, awkward body, disfigured body, lean body, long body?
dirty face, scarred face, young face, tattood face, burned face, round face

wild hair, tangled hair, patchy hair, burned hair

grey eyes, feral eyes, dead eyes, wolf eyes, one white eye, sunken eyes, sparkling eyes?
scar on one cheek, thin face, missing ear, gap-toothed, filed teeth,


Stats?Choose one set?
Cool +2 Hard -2 Hot +1 Sharp +1 Weird +1?
Cool 0 Hard -1 Hot +1 Sharp +1 Weird +2?
Cool 0 Hard -2 Hot 0 Sharp +2 Weird +2
?Cool +1 Hard -1 Hot +1 Sharp +1 Weird +1?

Gear
Scrounge Wear or Skins worth 1 armor
Oddments worth 1 Barter


Choose Two Makeshift Weapons

Oven Cleaner, 1 harm (ap), blind
Sling 1 harm, close, far
Lawnmower Blade 1 harm, close
Padlock and Chain 2 harm, close, messy
Scissors 1 harm, close, concealed
Maltov Coctails, 1 harm, area, fire, reload
Roofing Nails 1 harm (ap), maim
Barbed Wire Garrote, 1 harm, entangle

Chose One Serious Weapon

Grenade, 4 harm, area, messy, loud, expendable
Magnum 2 harm, close, far, reload

Basic Moves
?You get all the basic moves except for Seduce or Manipulate, instead you get Cry Wolf,
in addition choose 2 more Lost Boy Moves??

Lost Boy Moves

??Cry Wolf?
When you cry for help, or call someone out, roll + Hot?
10+ Any normal person would come running to help
?7-9 Any normal person would come running to see what is going on?
Miss and if they come running its probably to shut you up??

Just A Kid?
Unless you give them reason, NPCs view you as not a threat. If a player acts to hurt you, they are Acting Under Fire.

??Sharp Teeth?
When they don’t know what you’re capable of, your harm is (ap)??Disarming?People tell you things they wouldn’t tell anyone else. When you read a person you get +1 Hx with them.

Take by Stealth
?When you try to steal from someone, or destroy something they have, roll + sharp
?10+ you get all 3?
7-9 pick 2?
-you do it?
-they don’t see you
?-you get away?on a miss
- you get caught in the act
?
Wolf Eyes?
Animals and have a strange attraction to you, when you want them to do something roll +Hot? 10+ hold 3?
7-9 hold 2
As long as you have a hold on them they treat you as the alpha.
?-they tell/show you a secret?
-they steal something to impress you
?-they do something dangerous for you?
-they defend you?miss


Origin (pick one)

The Lost Boys
Gain a gang and fortune, [small 2 harm 1 armor, +stealth, wants: hunger, discipline]

Romulus
You were raised by an animal, take +1 Hard and +1 Sharp, and + Companion :
choose one: dog, hawk, wolf
you can sacrifice your companion to avoid taking harm. You keep the bonus.

Child of the Malestorm
+1 weird, + Augury


Special Move?
If someone risks their skin or makes a sacrifice to offer you help, and you accept, you both mark Xp ?

You forgot the definitive feral kid weapons:
scrap metal boomerang
sharpened hubcap

You forgot the definitive feral kid weapons:
scrap metal boomerang
sharpened hubcap

Those are in my Feral Kid playbook :) (well, the hubcap isn't but maybe I should put it in)

Ross, I like this one too. Not too much overlap with the other two custom kid playbooks, as far as I can see.

I'm a little wary of dropping seduce/manipulate for cry wolf, because it looks like cry wolf is significantly more limited. It would work just as well as in extra, I'd say.

Sharp teeth could maybe just be that the kid can do 1-harm hand ap when unarmed. Basing it on something that isn't always clearcut seems like a mistake - what counts as someone knowing what you are capable of?

Also, I'd just make all of them have a gang of kids. That's the most evocative of your origins, to me. Plus, a gang of kids is something new and interesting for AW. I'm sure it would lead to cool stuff.

The special move is good, I like that one a lot.

I have to say that while there's some great Lord of the Flies and Thunderdome potential in a gang of kids, in your average AW game the idea is right at the line of too disturbing for me. Not so much the idea of feral children who hunt rats and/or kill people (that's just real world kids to me). More that I'd never be able to properly put them in the crosshairs like the NPC's would. Picture your last gang vs gang battle, now picture it with all the casualties on one side being under 12.

One thing: 'transgressing' doesnt see right to me. Mabiguous, yes, but trangressing says to me that you're making an explicit statement that sexualizes your presentation of your gender. It's a Battlebabe or Skinner choice, not something an actual kid would put that much thought into it.

Strong agreement on the point made upthread about the sharp teeth move. It makes little sense to have it available if the kid is actually gong after someone with a knife or whatever.

-JC

There is this question of how to treat kids differently in AW. The Lost Boy subs out Seduce / Manipulate, and has a non sexual sex move. If you want your character to grow up and have sex, you do it by taking another playbook.

Mike: I like your idea of making the pack of kids default. I agree it is the most evocative of the options. I'm interested in trying to make the Basic move substitution work (Seduce/Manipulate for Cry Wolf). The balancing could happen either in the move Cry Wolf, or somewhere else in the playbook.

Jim: I like Ambiguous, I originally went with trans-gendered, then switched to transgression at Jackson Tegu's suggestion.   I think Vincent chose that word because it didn't have a hard definition, you make it your own, like barter. How do others feel about transgressing? Is that a sexual word for you?

Nomad: Yeah, little  kid getting killed, not fun. Rufio and the Lost boys? still not fun, but I could see that happening in AW. I agree that this will be a boundary for some folks.

I think to make swapping out seduce/manipulate work, you need to provide something that provides the same end goal - so whatever move you put in place, it has to allow the player to get what they want. The cry wolf one limits that to when you are asking for help, so it doesn't quite provide the same results.

Maybe the lost boy could get leverage more easily, based on their young and innocent nature?

Ross-

I think Ambiguous nails it. It describes the little kid buried under a mop of filthy hair with a voice that hasnt broken one way or the other yet.

Why do none of the child playbooks have explicit sex-triggered specials?

If I have gritty apocalyptic fiction with children in it, I want to be exploring the impact that sex has on them. I want to be exploring child and teen sexuality. I want to know what happens when a child is told that there is no place in their world for children and that they have to grow up fast.

While I'm intrigued by subbing out Seduce/Manipulate for something else, I really wish this special started with "When you have sex...."

Joe, speaking for myself (and the Last Child playbook I wrote), I particularly like the "when you and another character have sex, you are no longer a child" move, because I define a child as a person who is not yet sexually mature (barring interference) and thus is not able to give informed consent. Which means sex moves are not triggered in any case. Ross seems to indicate a similar understanding in reply #5 (and correct me if I'm wrong).

But the wording you use brings up an interesting and related point (bear with me). The idea that children should be "innocent" and "carefree" is a construction originating in social classes with enough money to shield their children from economic hardship, resulting in the extended adolescence we see in today's society. Once this idea is firmly entrenced, we can see a middle-class researcher of working life in 19th-century Britain being amazed at an 8-year-old girl who knows how to sell stuff and make money, and has no fanciful illusions about it. Poor people can't afford to support children for very long, so they teach their kids how to make money as soon as possible. That you write both "child and teen sexuality" puts you firmly outside that understanding. Teenagers are not children, unless there's enough money there to allow them to remain "childish." Neurochemistry, physical development, blah blah blah. I mean economically, of course, but then again, it also comes back to sexual maturity and real consent triggering special moves.

And on that subject, there are reasons people shy away from considering children and sex together (and including both in their role-playing games), whether they know them or not. Children introduced to sex before they are mature enough grow up basically more like sociopaths than they would otherwise (this is my description, others might disagree). So, a) knowing this, I'm not interested in exploring it any further, and b) this would argue for the biological line between child/adult being more important than the economic line between child/adult -- if you have to pick only one specific point for division. Given a certain amount of squeamishness (distaste, reticence, whatever), it makes sense that we would be setting the adult/child dividing line at sexual agency/no sexual agency and not at independent/dependent (income/no income).

I think Johnstone's got it right here. The sex moves in Apocalypse World kick in when the sex is fully consensual.  The manipulation, exploitation, or situational oppressive practicality of early sexual activity, especially before physical maturity, should not trigger a sex move.

Sure, it's grim. Sure, they gotta grow up fast. I'm running a game now where 20 seems to be on the old side, and there are only two known people over 40 out of nearly sixty characters. But unless the whole crew is some sort of Children of the Corn, no-one alive over 16, sort of deal, that's not a game that has power dynamics than can support fully consensual adolescent sexuality.

Thanks for the thoughtful replies, Margolotte and Johnstone.

I think this absolutely goes beyond the purview of design philosophy and into the realm of personal sexual philosophy. At least, it does if you want the conversation to be interesting (and that's where you both took it, thankfully).

I think that the very concept of consent is an interesting one. I want to explore its borders and edges. The notion that children can't give sexual consent is taken as a given in our society. In the apocalypse, does that hold true? The fact that children are denied sex moves in playbook design feels like it's preventing that exploration, in a way.

I recognize that it's deeply transgressive and dangerous and awkward narrative territory to explore. Apocalypse World is already leaps and bounds ahead of many roleplaying games in exploring uncomfortable sexual territory, and so maybe I'm asking too much.

But, yeah. The "when you have sex, you're no longer a kid" thing totally doesn't address the kind of narrative space that I want to address. Further, I think it says untrue and unpleasant things about what childhood means. Namely, it says that childhood is when you have your innocence, and adulthood is when you don't. I don't think that's true, and furthermore I hope it isn't true.

So, yeah: I guess it's totally fair that all of the playbooks have removed child sex as a possibility, or used sex as a way to emerge from childhood. Absolutely fine if that's how they understand child sexuality, or that's their comfort level with child sexuality. It's just not exploring the narrative space that I want to see explored.

Hrm...

Maybe their special move could be triggered by seeing someone else (other PCs, maybe?) having sex? The idea that kids should never, ever see that kind of thing is pretty recent, and also an economic luxury. That gets at the idea that you're learning something about someone else by seeing them when they're vulnerable and intimate, but without quite the level of discomfort that potentislly nonconsensual sex might carry.

I cant see anything else that makes sense to trigger a special move that wouldn't taek it too far away from how the others are triggered.

-JC

Man...I don't know what to say and keep it on-topic.

The notion that children can't give sexual consent is taken as a given in our society. In the apocalypse, does that hold true?

It isn't even an entirely ubiquitous understanding here in suburban America.  It's clear to me that the notion must be one of: plain old false or meaningless.  What does "fully consensual" mean when any two personalities will never, ever have exactly the same leverage over one another?  All the reasons that someone can give for why a child can't provide informed consent also apply to adults to one degree or another.

I know for absolute positive that ten and eleven year old people can engage sexually without being corrupted; without becoming adults; without losing any essential innocence.  And I know again, for sure, that people at age twelve can engage people at ages sixteen and seventeen without any of those effects.  And I've met other adults with childhood experiences like mine who were likewise witness to people being unharmed by childhood sexual activity.

Given my stance on this topic, it seems like I should put forward what I do think the effects of sex for a kid are.  It seems like it should be a trust thing.  Something like:

When you have sex with another character, you can't help but trust them.  If they're a PC, you each take +1 Hx with each other.  Either way, your partner holds one against you and can spend it to ask for your help with something.  If you do, mark xp and if not, turning your back on them is acting under fire.

I also wanted to make it a thing where you decide if it was a positive or negative experience and then do different things but it got too fiddly.

Christopher,

Interesting. My thought was:

When you have sex, take +1Hx with everyone else. If this is your first time, highlight Weird.

The first clause is simple: having sex will make you understand adults way more clearly, even if it fucks up your self-knowledge in some kind of critical way. The second clause is simple too: sex is deep, messy psychic mojo.

It's clear to me that the notion must be one of: plain old false or meaningless.

Man, I don't know that this is true, at all (if I'm understanding you right). I think that children aren't the innocent untouchables we make them out to be, but I also think that children have a very under-developed ability to filter experiences and make independent decisions. In my opinion, we hit murky waters almost immediately.

The best answer I can formulate is "this stuff is super messy and problematic, but denying that it exists isn't a reasonable approach, neither is denying children the totality of their agency."