Playbook: The Damaged

The Damaged

This world is harsh for everybody, and those it doesn’t kill, it doesn’t necessarily make stronger. Maybe you were abandoned, maybe you saw too much, maybe the psychic maelstrom hit you enough to make you crazy but not enough to be a visionary. You stay alive, scraping along on this and that. Most people ignore you, and most of the time you prefer it that way.

But somewhere inside you there’s something no one recognizes, something that one day might change the world.


Creating a Damaged

To create your Damaged, choose name, look, stats, moves, gear, and Hx.


Name
Kid, Tommy, Betsy, Flowers, Old Chris, Rummy, Cap’n, Jesse, Haywire,

Look

Man, woman, ambiguous, transgressing, or concealed.

Casual wear, tattered uniform, survival wear, fantasy wear.

Innocent eyes, bloodshot eyes, no eyes, haunted eyes, weeping eyes.

Cute face, sad face, blank face, haunting face, screaming face, or gaunt face.

Young body, broken body, scrawny body, worn-out body, .


Stats

Cool=0, Hard=0, Hot-1, Sharp+1, Weird+2
Cool=0, Hard=0, Hot-1, Sharp+1, Weird+2
Cool=0, Hard+1, Hot=0, Sharp=0, Weird+2
Cool=0, Hard+1, Hot-2, Sharp+1, Weird+2


Basic Moves

You get all the basic moves.


Damaged Moves

You get these 2:

Just a...
Pick one of the following:

• Kid: when you try to seduce or manipulate another player’s character, roll+Hx instead of roll+hot. An NPC, roll+cool instead of roll+hot.
  Addict: Each day, roll +cool. On a hit, you take +1 forward for the day. On a miss, you either lose 1-barter getting your fix, or you take -1 forward for the day.
  Burnout: Pick another playbook, and one move from that. Roll +cool. On a success, you can use that move once
  Crazy: +1 Weird, -1 Sharp

Not worth a bullet

In combat, as long as you don’t Go Aggro or Sieze by Force, no one can do the same to you either.

And choose 2 more:
You mean like this?
When another character fails to gather information or acquire a resource, you can roll +sharp to succeed where they failed

Ear to the Ground

People tend to ignore you and sometimes they let information slip. When you read a situation or person, roll +weird instead of +sharp

Amscray

name your escape route and roll+cool. On a 10+ you’re gone. On a 7–9, you can go or stay, but if you go it costs you: leave something behind, or take something with you, the MC will tell you what. On a miss, you’re caught vulnerable, half in and half out.


Fools, children and drunkards

When you do something Under Fire, roll +weird instead of +cool.

Gear

You get:

• One small knife (1-harm hand)
  Oddments worth 1-barter
  Fashion suitable to your look (you detail).

Hx

Everyone introduces their character by name, look, and outlook.

List the other character's names.

Go around again for Hx. On your turn:
Tell everyone Hx+1. People may not like you, but everybody knows you.

On the others' turns choose the player with the highest hot and tell them Hx+4. If it's a tie, choose. You pick one person as your protector.


Damaged Special

If you and another character have sex, your Hx with them on your sheet goes immediately to +3, and they immediately get +1 to their Hx with you on their sheet. If that brings their Hx with you to +4, they reset it to +1 instead, as usual, and so mark experience. This works even on the Battlebabe.


Damaged 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.

Each time you choose to improve, choose one of the following. Check it off, you can't choose it again.
__ get +1 cool (max +2)
__ get +1 hard (max +2)
__ get +1 sharp (max +2)
__ get a new Shifted move
__ get a new Shifted move
__ get a new Shifted move
__ start a new playbook. The Damaged has been transformed. The Kid grows up, the Addict sobers up, the Burnout gets his mojo back, the Crazy learns to use her abilities


Barter

By a combination of scrounging, begging and menial jobs, you can sustain yourself but with no surplus. On a cool roll, you can have 1-barter to spare

In a world of badass mofo's and twisted fucks who use their twist for their own ends, I'm not really sure where you're going with this, but mechanically, here's what I have to say:

Addict: Each day, roll +cool. On a hit, you take +1 forward for the day. On a miss, you either lose 1-barter getting your fix, or you take -1 forward for the day.

For me, this should read:

Addict: At the beginning of each session, roll +cool. 10+, you take +1 forward and don't need to score again this session. 7-9, you just used up the last of your stash. 6-, you're out of junk. Take -1 ongoing unless you're actively trying to find a fix, and until you do.

It's more brutal, but also more realistic. Guess it depends which is important to you.

The rest are all things that were pointed out to me on my first playbook, so here's me pointing them out for you:

Hx and Special: No other character has anything that says +4.

Special: Making your sex move impervious to the battlebabe's sex move creates a type of one-up-manship that opens a whole mess of post-apocalyptic worms. Such things should be avoided.

Improvement: You list 3 "get a new Shifted (sic) move". I'm flattered, but aside from the fact that you likely meant "get a new Damaged move", the damaged only have 4 moves to choose from. From the original 2, we could only ever choose 2 more. Additionally, no other character (iirc) can ever choose all of their other moves. It helps differentiate one hocus from another, and one damaged from another.

This reminds me of The Shell. So, obviously I think the concept is cool...
http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=1464.0

Thanks to commenters about the corrections. Definitely part of the 0.2 version.

In post-apoc movies, the steely eyed outsider who comes to town (i.e. the Battlebabe) often forms a relationship with a person who is either outside of, or at the bottom of, the town's social hierarchy. Think of "the kid" archetype in Road Warrior, Six String Samurai, and Steel Dawn (a direct remake of the classic Western Shane). It's implied that "the kid" is strongly influenced by the hero and carries on his legacy when he or she gets older.

In Westerns, think of Lady's alliance with the fallen preacher Cort in The Quick and the Dead. In Rustler's Rhapsody (a meta-fictional Western), the Town Drunk approaches the Singing Cowboy and says he doesn't want to be a Drunk anymore; he wants to be a Sidekick. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the town drunk sobers up, catalyzed by the influence of the hero.

This is the theme I wanted to get at: transformation. Either maturation or redemption.

I concede that overriding the Battlebabe's signature ability is probably not a good idea. Any idea how to address this?

My suggestion there is simply to remove the last sentence. I definitely get more where you're coming from now, but I think forcing the Hx in this way is problematic. Maybe another move that influences Hx instead?

Off the tippy-top of my head:

Something to Aspire to

Whenever you witness another character doing something you think is really hot, roll+whatever stat they rolled to do it (or their primary stat if they didn't have to roll to do it). On a 10+, you mark experience and Hx+1 with them. 7-9, choose one of the above. 6-, you take -1 forward 'cause you know you'll never be that good, not ever.

You could maybe even make this roll cascade into your damage of choice. So, for an addict, if they fail this roll maybe they really, really need to score right now, and maybe the kid tries extra hard to win their approval. I'm just spit balling here. Good RP opportunities though.