Playbook: The Gladiator

THE GLADIATOR:

Description: The worse off people are, the more their struggles are hopeless, the greater their need to watch bastards in even bloodier, more pointless struggles. You're that bastard and they love you with all of their hearts.

CREATING A GLADIATOR

Choose a name, a look, stats, moves, gears, and Hx

NAME:
Beast, Devastator, Matador, Freakshow, Straight Jacket, Samurai, Felon Or Benedict

Half Pint, Medusa, Obsession, Glitter Bitch, 2 faced, Trooper, Acid rain, Vicious, Ada
Loveless Or X

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

Hx:

On your turn:

Choose 1, 2 or 3:
- One of the characters always roots for you. That players gets +2Hx with you.
- One of the characters always roots against you. That players gets +2Hx with you.
- One of the characters thinks the fights are a barbaric waste of time. They get +3Hx
with you.

On their turn:
- One of the characters, you have fought with in an area, either against or at their
side. Get 1 more than what they give you.
- Everyone else, get 1 less than what they give you. Your mind is on other things.

LOOKS
Man, Woman, Concealed, Andryognye

Sweet face, Striking face, stone face, busted face, cute face, rugged face, honest face

Combat wear, fetish wear, luxe wear, barely-there wear, formal wear, ancient wear

Smiling eyes, ruined eyes, calculating eyes, pretty eyes, weary eyes, caring eyes,
wise eyes

Muscular body, graceful body, thhing-of-beauty-body, huge body

GEAR

In addition to Fans, detail fashion according to your look. Have some fashion that is 1-armor for fights.

Get an Arena weapon and a Practical Weapon
Arena weapon:
- Machete (3-harm hand messy)
- Ornate dagger ( 2-harm hand valuable)
- hidden knives (2-harm hand infinite)
- harpoon (3-harm hand)
- Mace (3-harm hand loud messy)

Practical weapon:
- 9mm (2-harm close loud)
- Crowbar (2-harm hand messy)
- big knife (2-harm hand)

MOVES

Get Showman and choose 2 more.

Showman At the end of a grand display of your skills, roll+hot. on 10+, you get surplus from your fans, on a 7-9, get surplus but also get 1 fallout. On a miss, get all of the fallout.

Hot Commodity When a character other than you sets up a showy display of your skills for profit, they roll+juggling(Or 0 if you have no juggling.) On a hit, a special prize of 2 barter can be made from the competition above normal. On a 7-9, the MC chooses 1:
- The job is especially dangerous.
- The Gladiator has to lose in order to get the prize. 
- the Gladiator is competing with someone the Gladiator has history with.
- The job is somewhere treacherous or difficult to reach.
- The job is just gonzo, weird, or embarrassing

Resilent Replace 1 point of Harm with an Edge: Torrid(+1 to Hot), Humbled(+1 to Sharp), Serious(+1 to Cool). You can't get another Edge while you have one, and Edges go away after the session.

Tactical Mind roll+Hard when Reading a Charged Sitch.

Moment of Clarity: When everyone is watching and time seems to stand still, choose a primal truth that you want to convey to the audience. Roll+weird. On a hit, that truth occurs to them in a powerful way. On a 10+, they go do something about it, right now. On a 7-9, The truth only occurs to some people, and some people come away with a Lie. On a miss, treat it as you've opened up everyone's minds to the Psychic Mealstrom and missed.

SPECIAL:

If they don't know your real name, you heal 1 harm.

If they know your real name, they always have the option of forcing you to take a
debility instead of taking Harm themselves.

ADVANCEMENT:

- Get +1 cool (Max Cool+2)
- Get +1 hot (Max Hot+2)
- Get +1 weird (Max Weird +2)
- Get a new Gladiator Move
- Get a new Gladiator Move
- Choose a new option for your Fans.
- Get Reputation from the Operator playbook
- get Artful & Gracious from the Skinner playbook.
- Get a move from another playbook
- Get a move from another playbook


FANS

By default you have about 100 Fans. They love you but they don't know you or live with you. They live in distant communities from each other but some will gather for your fights.
(Surplus: +1 barter, Fallout: desertion)

Choose 2:
- Your fans are particularly hard-core and dedicated. Replace fallout: desertion with fallout: rioting.
- Your fans feel a strong kinship with each other. Add surplus: +community
- This stuff provides a escape from what's going on around them. Add surplus: +distraction
- Its a status thing for your fans to throw themselves at your feet. Add surplus: +acts of worship
- Your fans are huge in number, around 400, and gather from far. Add surplus: +1barter and fallout:+1overburden
- Your fans are active recruiters. Add surplus: +expansion

Choose 1:
- You have few fans, around 25. Surplus: -1barter
- Your followers are a bunch of animals. fallout: +savagery
- Your fans take this shit really seriously. fallout: +Revenge


Barter:

If you're charging someone wealthy for your services, 1-barter is the going rate for:
fighting one opponent in an arena, publicly announcing your faith in them, a month's
employment as a bouncer or figurehead

1-barter will cover your living expenses in a month, if your tastes aren't too grand. 2-barter will cover living with showy luxury, as your fans expect.

One addendum to Showman: Performing in an Arena counts as physical Intimacy and solitude between the audience and the performer, even though the audience members are right next to some sweaty dude they don't know. (Important because I really like the idea of Brainer/Skinner Gladiator mixes)

Very interesting.  A few points as I come across them.

Hx: the third one sounds wrong.  "One of the characters thinks the fights are a barbaric waste of time. They get +3Hx with you."
If they think the fights are a waste of time, they *don't understand you*.  I say it should be -2 or even -3 Hx.

"One of the characters, you have fought with in an area."  To my mind, this is unnecessarily limiting.  Not everyone would fight in an arena.  I suggest you change it to 'fought with in front of an audience/crowd', just to open it up rather (so it can include an impromptu bar brawl with onlookers, for example).

Not an expert in melee weaponry, but why is mace loud but machete not?

Hot commodity and Moment of clarity are awesome.

Resilient is a bit strange.  A session-long +1 to a stat is a massive bonus, especially once they've been able to get a couple of +3s.  Further, as written, you don't even need to do the replacement when the harm takes place.  The basic *idea* behind it is really good, but I think it needs a bit of a rethink.  (Even 'when 2 or more harm is taken (in a public battle?)' and 'Max +3' would make a difference.)

The Specials:
Wait, what?
No, seriously, WTF.
If they don't know your name, it's massively powerful, saving you a week (or 4 days and a barter)'s downtime.
If they do, it's absolutely crippling and unfun. 
If I was playing, I'd never use my 'real name' (what does that even mean in AW?)  If the MC had people suddenly discover it, it'd be a dick move on their part, and the character would never have sex again, for fear of being forever at the mercy of an (N)PC, and being unable to do anything about it.
This is, to me, a terrible, terrible move and needs a total rewrite.

No advancement to gain +3 hard.  Thereby almost forcing them to get one of the other playbook's +1 (+3) hard moves, since they are a hard character.  Strange omission.  Explain, please?

There are 5 moves.  You start with 3 and can buy 2 more.  i.e. you can get all your playbook moves.  Mistake, to my mind.  Don't think you should be able to do this.

I can't help but feel you should have more negative options for your fans, choose 2, but have an advancement to remove one.

By default, 100 fans.  That's the population of an average hardhold!  I can agree with that many people being fans of the arena (given that some will travel from outside the hardhold, but not that many, considering travel is typically very dangerous/expensive in post-apocalyptic worlds - that's where the driver gets his cash, after all), but these are your personal fans.  I would suggest half that, tops.

Re: your addendum: Hypnotic, with this change, on 400 fans is broken, pretty much no matter the result.  Trying deep brain scan under these circumstances will result in your MC murdering you.  Perhaps allow it on one selected member of the audience?

What strikes me is that this almost seems like a Hot playbook, but with a move that lets you 'when fighting in front of a crowd, roll +Hot (NPC) or +Hx (PC) instead of +Hard when going aggro or seizing by force'.  You don't have the moves for a deadly scuffle in an alley, or an assassination - you're a showman.
But that's just my impression, not saying it's wrong to do it this way.

But a promising start, all told.  I'll be watching this with interest.

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

Mace: Because a mace goes thump! And crashes stuff on its way, which also goes thump! Machete just goes *skewer*

Resilent makes perfect sense to me because I'm like "Its the opposite of debilities, kind of" and "You get more hot when you get all bloody!". But I'd want to rewrite it to make clear that yeah, you can only swap the Harm when it happens.

The point of the specials is that its easy and beneficial to sleep with people when you're Devastator, and hard and difficult when someone is sleeping with Dwayne, but, don't you think it would be kind of painful only ever sleeping with people as Devastator?

I didn't notice how standard the +3 advancement was. Maybe I'd swap out one of the Gladiator moves for it, cause there's too much capability to get them all.

I like the idea of more negative options for fans. Couldn't think of cool ones.

About the Fans - Its kind of confusing, because I was thinking that many would be everyone who thinks you're pretty cool, who's ever seen you fight, assuming you've been to maybe 3 or 4 hardholds already. And that's not as many as are going to be in an average crowd. Maybe halving it would be about right.

I think you're right about the adendum.

Specials
I can kind of see where you're coming from, but I see 2 major problems: one mechanical, one flavour.
Flavour-wise: in the RAW, cultural context is gone.  Devastator is as acceptable a name as Mother Superior or Dwayne (although I can't really see Dwayne as being along the same lines as all other names provided, so that one's probably rather exotic).  Without the cultural context of 'Devastator' being more badass than Dwayne, you're just some guy with two names.
Mechanics-wise: you sleep with one person, NPC or PC, and you are their slave FOREVER.  Any time you do something they don't like, they can threaten to shoot themselves and give you a debility, which you can NEVER recover from.  And even if they don't seek personal power over you, you HAVE to dedicate your life to their well-being.  If they join a cult which your gunlugger wishes to wipe out, you have to stop him, else he'll keep on shooting this person until you run out of debility slots, are permanently crippled and they can finally die.
So, while I can see where you're coming from, I stand by my assessment: terrible, terrible move.

No need to swap out a gladiator move for the +3 hard, just do what the Hardholder does - have +1 hard (+3) as a standard advancement.

I'll see what I can think of re: fan flaws.  No time now.

I basically like this as a way to make AW more about violence and showmanship. There are some things I'd think about...

#1 - Is this a battlebabe expansion? If no, then...

Stats, hard over hot, that's cool and works for the concept.

Gear, I kinda wish that the arena weapons were plays on the like classical arena weapons but that's merely aesthetic. On a mechanical level I'd like them to actually be less useful than practical weapons in one way or another. 9mm is good in that way 'cause its close; big knife could be infinite but that only makes it equal to hidden knives. I might argue that hidden knives are a weird arena weapon because they're...hidden.

I dunno. I feel like arena weapons should rely on 1-harm and s-harm in order to draw out fights maybe. Then you get your 2- and 3-harm practical weapons when you need to get shit done.

Moves

Showman's familiar and good.

Hot Commodity is confusing to me 'cause I don't understand the Operator and juggling. I find it interesting but I'm not sure that a playbook needs two very closely related barter-generating moves.

I share SW's unease about Resilient. Maybe something like:

"You have 1-armor when you're not wearing anything else protective, because you know how to take it in a way that hurts less. In addition, once per session when Resilient reduces the harm you take, you can hold +1 Hot, Sharp, or Cool; spend it the first chance you have, and you lose your hold at the end of the session regardless."

Tactical Mind is fine.

Moment of Clarity is fun.

You can probably take some ideas from the Hocus for fans.

I'm just gonna leave the special alone for now but basically my thought is that if it's a dual identity thing, that needs to pervade the other moves too.

Don't listen to these people, Resilient is a great design. However, I might ask if it's really something you want happening every session for a gladiator, or more something you want happening rarely and mattering more. Here are some pitches:

Resilient: The first time each session you take harm, take 1-harm less and take +1 forward.
Resilient: When you take harm, take +1 forward until the blood dries.
Resilient: You get three new debilities to choose from: Serious (+1 Cool for this session), Torrid (+1 Hot for this session), Focused (+1 Sharp for this session). You can only take them once each.
Resilient: The first time each session you take harm, take 1-harm less and get serious (+1 cool), focused (+1 sharp), or intense (+1 hot), to a maximum of 3.(Couple this with reducing the Gladiator's stat totals by 1.)

SoylentWhite:

I'll probably mess around with the Hx options, I kinda think they're all too limiting right now, except for "Thinks the fights are a barbaric waste of time", C'mon, if there's a Touchstone, they have to take that. I also think that that character *would* understand you, because bloodsport is pretty much a waste of time(And maybe the Gladiator agrees with them, ala Death Race 3000), but I don't want to stamp that all over the Gladiator because that'd be heavy handed, but I want to give this one dude the license to fuck with you. Another way you could interpret that is that they're keeping tabs on the Gladiator in a way that the other player doesn't, because they care about what the Gladiator is doing.

My thinking on the Hardness: Yeah, that's totally possible, I might have considered that at some point, but what I'm thinking is that the Gladiator is Hard in and out of the arena, not like a wallofguns like the Gunlugger or a giantcrashingmonster like the Faceless, but like how a Hardholder is Hard but probably spends more time punching people. They're also pretty hot, but not like a Maestro or a Skinner is hot, except for they do look really hot after a fight when they're all sweaty and stuff, in a way Skinners or Maestros probably couldn't pull off.

Except for sometimes they -are- as hot as Skinners/Maestros, in which case, there's a lot of Barter to be made, but there's also some fighting in the cannibal island and some kind of tar and feather match on the way to that pile of Barter.

To be clear on how I was thinking of changing advancement: If I keep with the same number of Gladiator moves, I'd drop one of the advancement options that says "Get a new Gladiator Move" and replace it with a "Get +1 Hard(max +3)", so you'd only have one "Get a new Gladiator Move", which means you could be getting 4/5 Gladiator Moves.

On the Special move: Yeah, I'd probably drop the real-name distinction thing because it doesn't gel with AW so well.

But the other issues might be an issue of differing apocalypse worlds. I like the idea of "You took an extra step to be intimate with someone, and hey, maybe nothing happens with that, or maybe they shoot themselves to torture you and than join a cult and your world is fucked up.". I do think if you share a lot of intimacy with someone and than they shoot themselves to torture you, your world should be pretty messed up. And if you really put a lot of energy into avoiding that kind of intimacy, I don't see a clear way to force you to give out the name, thereby taking you out of "Beasts wonderful post-fight orgies". To me, the MC forcing a situation in where an NPC knows their name without any input from the player is somewhat equivocal to a "Earthquake happens, everyone takes 10-harm" situation, if a bit less obvious.

But maybe this is the wrong way to do that, and I should make the Special less big and glaring to make the Gladiator more friendly to people more harshly opposed to emocalypse world.

Shreyas:

Man, I don't know anything about how expansions work! Maybe? I do want to fight naked now. (You always have that effect on me though.) On one side my favorite Gladiator concepts are Battlebaby, on the other hand I can think of Gladiator concepts that aren't Battlebaby and I'd kind of want to do those.

Yeah, most people I showed it to thought I dropped the ball on the wonderful world of Gear that could open up. Hidden Knives is going out. Some kind of power tool is probably going in. I'm not sure if they should be uniformly less lethal, because I think people showed up tonight for blood! But maybe.

hahah, I really don't understand the Operator/Moonlighting that well either, but maybe it is as simple as get more jobs=get more juggling, be better at setting up cockfights? I really do want to incorporate the seedy underbelly side of arena fights and thought that was a good way to do so.

The version of Resilent I like is "When you take Harm, you can choose to take one Harm less and get +1 to Hot/Sharp/Cool that lasts until the end of the session, and you can't replace Harm again until next session." - Part of me says "If you're playing a Gladiator, it'll be pretty hard to get hot+3(You'd have to take the Skinner move as one of your other moves or some kind of ungiven future malarky), so no limits have to be put in there" But another part of me says "Battlebabes that take this as another move would be crazy", so maybe max+3 would be good.

I have to say that I really like this playbook and will most likely end up making one of my crude trifolds for my players, and since I´ve already started to think about what I would change I might as well post 'em here.

I would probable replace "Resilent" with something like..
Glory: When you fight in front of an crowd or audience, suffer 1 extra harm to to gain an Edge /../ (choose +1 hot/+1 cool/+1hard). You can't get another Edge while you have one, and Edges go away after the session.
To really get the.. badass, sweaty and bloody victor feel. (Or simply, when you win a fight in front of a crowd gain +1 hot, but don’t really seem as.. fun). (Think.. basicly any good gladiator movie/TV-series or Khal Drogo cutting himself on an opponents blade in Game of Thrones)

Hot Commodity seems fun too, but I would move the dice roll to the Gladiator, so that the 'other character' could be an NPC (and if the 'manager' is another PC he could just help as usual, might be a good idea to leave the juggling bonus in there too) without making the MC have to find some dice.. =)

I do like 'big bad fighter'/'normal person' feel of the special move and would keep the healing in, but it feels a bit too much like the Faceless with that huge disadvantage. Something like giving another player holds based on the gladiators hx to them, and then spending the holds to transfer harm to the Gladiator and forcing him to intervene. Not quite sure how to handle that part for NPCs, but could be something like.. how often they have sex.

And a quick note about gear, I would either move hidden knives to practical weapons (and move crowbar to arena weapon for more.. gritty arenas) or allow sevral arena weapons (I do want the option of being the 'bad guy' that pulls out a hidden dagger at the last moment).. Not to mention, more weapon-choices.. =)

I wanna make it into a trifold and try it out in my players when they reach The Ungiven Future. It'll probably need another revision before than.

Re: Hot Commodity - I want to keep the insistence on involving other players. On one hand I think its weird because it gives other players power more than it gives the Gladiator power, on the other hand it makes the Gladiator the center of attention in an undergoing.

Re: The Special - I think its much worse than the Faceless, really. I'm pretty close to dropping it altogether.

One Possibility I was thinking: Roll+Additional sex partners after the first. On a hit, everyone gets a good thing, on a miss, you're too much, everyone gets a bad thing.

I like your suggestions for gear. Consider the Hidden Knives to go in Practical gear, and to change the gear procedure to "Pick two arena weapons"

I like the idea of edges, but I'd like to see more variety or flexibility.

As an example...

---

Edge: Choose an Edge and a Trigger. The first time each session your Trigger occurs and there's a good-sized group watching, apply your Edge.

Edges: Serious [+1 cool until end of session], Torrid [+1 hot until end of session], Humble [+1 sharp until end of session], Freakshow [+1 weird until end of session], Unbreakable [+1 armor until end of session], Bloodthirsty [+1 harm until end of session], or Tag-Team [+1 to assist and +1 when others assist you until end of session]

Triggers:
    Bloodied, but Unbowed: When you mark off your 3rd harm segment.
    Crowd Favorite: When you pander to your followers.
    Heel: When you act mean, vicious, cruel, or spiteful, just because.
    Nick of Time: When you come to someone's rescue.
    Underdog: When you fight outnumbered.

---

These are just examples, but I think this would be a cool format for the move. I'd probably allow a player to take it more than once, with different triggers and edges each time.

For gladiator weapons, I'd like to see things that are more or less common now used in violent, flashy ways. Power tools are great! But also metal signs, baseball bats, two-by-fours, etc...

- Alex

That's neat Antisinecurist, but way too detailed for 1 move out of 5 for a extra character type in my book. I'm probably going to nail it down to a simpler "You get in a fight, you get hot" move.

I'll probably stay away from baseball bats because I want the color to be less pro-wrestling more roman colliseum/pit-fighting/thunderdome, but hey mebbe I'll budge in that direction.

Gladiator weapons:

Bullwhip (1-harm s-harm hand loud)
Big fucking axe/sword/hammer (3-harm hand area messy)
Claw (3-harm intimate worn)
Poison (another of your weapons gets s-harm tag)
Ornate dagger, ornate sword (as the book)

Revised version, more feedback would be grand.

THE GLADIATOR:

Description: The worse off people are, the more their struggles are hopeless, the greater their need to watch bastards in even bloodier, more pointless struggles. You're that bastard and they love you with all of their hearts.

CREATING A GLADIATOR

Choose a name, a look, stats, moves, gears, and Hx

NAME:
Beast, Matador, Freakshow, Captain Bloody Hands, Felon, Benedict, Angeldust, Pyramid, Endless Or Smiles

Peaches, Molly, Marlene, Garbo, Medusa, Obsession, Glitter Bitch, 2-faced, Trooper,  Vicious, Ada Loveless Or X

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

Hx:

On your turn:

Choose 1 or none:
- One of the characters thinks the fights are a barbaric waste of time. They get +3Hx
with you.
- Everyone else gets +1, you've made yourself noticeable

On their turn:
Choose 1 or none:
- On a night that the crowd hated you, one of the characters pulled you through it. Ignore what that player gives you and write Hx+3.
- Everyone else, if they perform with you or do arena buisness, add +1 to what they give you, otherwise subtract 1 from what they give you.

LOOKS
Man, Woman, Concealed, Andryognye

Pretty face, Striking face, Rugged face, Scarred face, Lively face

Showy scrounge wear, fetish wear, formal wear, showy vestaments, ancient armor, sexy skimpy wear

Calculating eyes, Shadowed eyes, indifferent eyes, judgemental eyes, hungry eyes, caring eyes

Sturdy Body, Wiry body, Huge Body, Muscular body, athletic body, sensuous body

Partly shaved hair, elaborate fake hair, no hair, pretty hair, multiple-color hair

GEAR

In addition to Fans, detail fashion according to your look. Have some fashion that is 1-armor for fights.

Get 2 arena weapons and a Practical Weapon
Arena weapons:
- Ornate dagger ( 2-harm hand valuable)
- Mace (3-harm hand loud messy)
- Chain saw (3-harm hand autofire messy)
- Spiked Knuckles (2-harm hand messy)
- Silver Fire Axe (3-harm hand messy valuable)
- Buzz-saw glove (2-harm hand autofire messy retractable)
- Chain lasso (s-harm close)

Practical weapon:
- 9mm (2-harm close loud)
- Crowbar (2-harm hand messy)
- hiddden knives (2-harm hand infinite)
- sawed off shotgun

MOVES

Get Showman and choose 2 more.

Showman At the end of a grand display of your skills, roll+hot. on 10+, you get surplus from your fans, on a 7-9, get surplus but also get 1 fallout. On a miss, get all of the fallout.

Hot Commodity When a character other than you sets up a showy display of your skills for profit, they roll+juggling(Or 0 if you have no juggling.) On a hit, a special prize of 2 barter can be made from the competition above normal. On a 7-9, the MC chooses 1:
- The job is especially dangerous.
- The Gladiator has to lose in order to get the prize.  
- the Gladiator is competing with someone the Gladiator has history with.
- The job is somewhere treacherous or difficult to reach.
- The job is just gonzo, weird, or embarrassing

Torrid Physical damage to yourself and your clothes makes you sexier. Replace 1 point of Harm with a +1 bonus to Hot that lasts until the end of the session. You can't replace another point of Harm this session.

Tactical Mind roll+Hard when Reading a Charged Sitch.

Moment of Clarity: When everyone is watching and time seems to stand still, choose a primal truth that you want to convey to the audience. Roll+weird. On a hit, that truth occurs to them in a powerful way. On a 10+, they go do something about it, right now. On a 7-9, The truth only occurs to some people, and some people come away with a Lie. On a miss, treat it as you've opened up everyone's minds to the Psychic Mealstrom and missed.

Show off roll+Hard when Acting Under Fire as long as someone is watching.

The world's a stage When you make a threat through a spectacle of violence, you can go aggro on people indirectly and to people who aren't present. They can't back off and forcing your harm results in S-harm

Arena Clown When you react to a threat of violence with levity, roll+weird. On a 10+, they stalk off if they're an NPC or mark experience for stalking off if a PC. on a 7-9, choose 1 if its an NPC or let the PC choose 1 otherwise:
- They deal you harm first.
- You recklessly disregard a responsibility
- They chase you off

SPECIAL:

Roll+The number of people you're having sex with after the first. On a hit, you all take +1 forward. On a miss, you're too much, you all take -1 forward.

ADVANCEMENT:

- Get +1 hard (Max Hard+3)
- Get +1 hot (Max Hot+2)
- Get a new Gladiator Move
- Get a new Gladiator Move
- Choose a new option for your Fans.
- Get Frenzy From the Hocus playbook
- Get Reputation from the Operator playbook
- Get Artful & Gracious from the Skinner playbook.
- Get a move from another playbook
- Get a move from another playbook

ARENA

Circle two or three desciption that fit your arena:
- Bared flesh
- Illusions of the far past
- Barbed Wire
- Spotlights
- Live Hazards
- Built hazards
- Dirt and Muck

FANS

By default you have about 50 Fans. They love you but they don't know you or live with you. They live in distant communities from each other but some will gather for your fights.
(Surplus: +growth, Fallout: +desertion)

Choose 2:
- Your fans are particularly hard-core and dedicated. Replace fallout: +desertion with fallout: +rioting (2-harm gang medium 0-armor).
- Your fans feel a strong kinship with each other. Add surplus: +community
- Its a status thing for your fans to throw themselves at your feet. Add surplus: +acts of worship
- Your fans are huge in number, around 100, and gather from far. Add surplus: +1barter and fallout:+1overburden
- Your fans love to throw you gifts. Surplus: +Pretty or useful things, fallout: +litter
- Your fans are successful and elite. Surplus: +1 barter, fallout: +judgement

Choose 2:
- You have few fans, around 25. Surplus: -1barter
- This stuff provides a escape from what's going on around them. Add surplus: +distraction and fallout: +inability to deal
- Your followers are a bunch of animals. fallout: +savagery
- Your fans take this shit really seriously. fallout: +revenge
- Your fans get high and get everyone else high. fallout: +stupor
- Your fans disdain peace, law and reason: fallout: +violence

Barter:

If you're charging someone wealthy for your services, 1-barter is the going rate for:
fighting one opponent in an arena, publicly announcing your faith in them, a threat delivered spectacularly, a month's employment as a bouncer or figurehead

1-barter will cover your living expenses in a month, if your tastes aren't too grand. 2-barter will cover living with showy luxury, as your fans expect.

"1-barter will cover your living expenses in a month, if your tastes aren't too grand. 2-barter will cover living with showy luxury, as your fans expect."

Disregarding everything else I like (and don't) about this book, this line is just genius.

- AD