Ordinary World, AK 'hood

The final three playbooks have all their moves now, plus I've tweaked the take the heat off move just a little and modified The Go-Between's Hiring a Professional move, the former so that it is less powerful and the latter so that it is more so.

Next on the agenda: the Looks, some more Handles and a piece on the Marketplace and how it relates to the economy of the gameworld.

Dough

I'm still chewing over this issue (sorry, no pun intended) and slowly coming to the conclusion that dough is so central to the game that I shouldn't have a mechanic for it.

Huh?

OK, so looking at AW and some of it's hacks, their key issues tend not to be measured by any game stat. In AW, the key issue of survival is affected by moves and the narrative, but there aren't any 'survival' points to be gained or lost: the closest it comes to is harm, which is more an indicator that you aren't surviving very well.

Another random example is Monsterhearts, where the key issue is love, romance and sex: yeah, sure, you get strings, but they don't tell you how happy you are with your relationship, its the moves and the fiction again that do that.

So, should I have a stat that measures the wealth of the characters? Or, should their wealth be the thing that the game threatens, the issue they have to fight to protect?

The pros of discarding dough as a stat or commodity is that it liberates the game from a lot of book-keeping and allows character wealth (or lcak of it) to be a narrative concern rather than a mechanical one.

The cons of having no dough are that it demolishes any economic system that game might need: you can't buy stuff in the normal way if you have no resource to spend. Also, it would require a rewrite or scrapping of a number of special moves from the playbooks: I'm not adverse to that, but its a big step to take.

Meeting it halfway, what if dough was an abstract value rather than a concrete one: for example, when you buy something, roll+dough. On a hit you get what you want; on a 10+, choose two. On a 7-9, choose four.

• Take -1 dough
• Take -1 dough.
• Erase a positive tag from what you bought.
• Add a negative tag to what you bought.
• Add a negative tag to what you bought.

Thoughts?

Hey James! I haven't been following your hack very attentivelly, but I do think it's an awesome idea (ever since I saw an episode of Breaking Bad which made me go... "Wait, Walter's going aggro right there, isn't he? This is all totally Apocalypse World stuff!").

Since I don't know what system you have now, I don't know if this will be useful to you at all, but -- how about making dough be the thing that drives advancement?

The thing about people in the 'hood is that they want out of it or they want to be in control of it. And the stuff they need to get there isn't skill or ability, though that helps - it's dough. Dough is pretty the metric that tells you how far you are from the 'ungiven future' so to speak, which is all about abilities that allow you to settle the core problems of the setting once and for all.

I was thinking of making dough the currency of advancement: currently, it's split between heat & debt but the debt-advancement is very fast (everytime you hit debt+3 with another PC) whilst the heat-advancement is quite random (you can roll+heat at the end of every session to try and advance).

Hmmm.... so, extemporising here, what if you took +1 dough each time you reached debt+3? And then when you had dough+5, you got an advance? The heat-advancement could be dropped entirely and have its function subsumed by this, or stay as it is for a parallel advancement track, which I quite like.

Do you need to keep track of dough as a number at all? You could instead check for fictional money-related triggers (taking someone else's money, protecting your property, making a mutually beneficial arrangement) and give experience for those.

Like, if you want to advance as a drug lord, you need to protect your stuff. If you're a small fish looking to grow, you need to take someone else's money. If you're a dealmaker type, you need to make mutually beneficial arrangements.


(Unbased and possibly irrelevant speculation: Make the game about aggregating dough, and it will have all of the players looking outwards to get 'new' money to get into play - at any given time, the within-game economy will not be enough to support all of the players' advancement. Make advancement about actions towards money, and it will have all of the players interested in the same wads of moolah, which they will fight over it, try to bargain over it or protect it. Which is where the game is at. I think?)

I've been thinking about this deeply for the last few days and it could be the way to go; I know for a fact that I don't get a big thrill out of tracking money & gear when I play RPGs and I'm not turned on by big gear lists where everything is statted out. Treating both money and gear as abstracts appeals to me a lot: I want the game to be about the acts and ambitions of the PCs, not how much bling they can hoard.

Therefore, what if every playbook had an assumed 'revenue stream' and the game (especially in the form of the MC's moves) was about threatening those streams. There is already a model for this in the game, where the moves for the Feelgood talk about their suppply of drugs being interrupted.

If it was established that each PC had a basic way of making a living that could be theatened easily by a number of factors, therefore motivating them to act, would that be enough to drive the game? So, instead of going out to earn a crust, the PCs can rely on a certain minimum income, but need to take specific action to preserve that income or raise it. I'm quite seduced by the idea of determining what the vulnerable revenue stream is for each playbook: for example, is it the Mover's vehicle? The Fallen's and Bastion's reputations? This could be cool :-)

Here's the new economic model I've cooked up then; obviously, if I go this route, then all the playbooks will need some rewriting, as will some of the basic and peripheral moves.

The Silent Economy
All the characters in the ‘hood are making a living somehow, whether they’re jacking cars, pushing drugs or just taking bribes to look the other way. As long as they’re making a living, they can afford to do ordinary, everyday things, like pay their bills, buy groceries, go out for a drink with their mates and so on. Like everything in a consumer-driven society, it’s not a problem as long as you’ve got the money to afford it.

In every playbook, there is an entry for Loot that tells you how that character makes a living. As long as they fulfil these conditions, their livelihood is safe and can carry on as normal. The trouble comes when their livelihood is threatened, which can come about in a number of ways:

• When they have to spend a lot of money at once, e.g. buying a car, paying legal costs & fines, etc.
• When someone demands a large sum of money from them as payback.
• When they’re unable to protect their livelihood, e.g. when they are down.
• When a move says so, e.g. when one of the Feelgood’s special moves interrupts their supply of drugs.

A PC whose livelihood is threatened is short: as long as they’re short, they can’t afford to do anything that costs more than a token amount. They can’t pay their bills, buy groceries, etc, and they certainly can’t afford any major expenses.

Restoring a livelihood is part of the conversation between the players and the MC: the fundamental goal of all the PCs is protecting or restoring their livelihoods. Whenever a player restores their livelihood, they mark experience.

Cool. Making the economic basis for living a background thing that becomes a problem every once in a while (or constantly!) sounds great - you can see it in the Wire, you can see it in Breaking Bad, and you can probably see it in real life, too.

So yeah, that sounds great!

A couple of things seem missing, though. There are characters that are about protecting their livelihood and not much more, there are characters who are about restoring their livelihood - like Omar from the Wire, or some concerned Bastion citizen.

But there are also people who are all about bettering their livelihoods (Breaking Bad's Walter White), or people who are all about transforming their livelihoods - crime lords who want to turn their blood money into political influence, respect, and 'honest citizen' status.

I am not sure what that should mean, mechanically (When you better or change your livelihood...). But it seems like those are stories that need to be told, right?

I think those other stories are best told through the fiction rather than mechanically though; frex, you better yourself, becoming a bigger fish in your pond... but in that case, your standard of living also rises, so you might well be earning more, but you're also spending more to maintain that position. You get to narrate new cool stuff about your character's better lifestyle, sure, but they need to make a living just like any other character, so their livelihood can still be threatened by exactly the same things.

I may add some options to some moves that will link the concept of making a living to debt and payback, e.g. you'll be able to ask your friends for a loan, which gives them +1 debt with you or matks them in your payback box if they are an NPC. Crucially though, all this is in the purview of the story: you have to say how it happens to make it happen, you don't just get to do it with no regard as to how your character does it.

I'd see anyone who's aspirations lead to them getting out of the 'hood as heading towards an endgame for their character: it's certainly a goal players can set for themselves and would make a great story-arc for any campaign, but actually achieving something like that should write the character out of the fiction. So that's your retire your character (to safety) advance right there.

Thanks for all the feedback on these ideas by the way: answering your points has really made me think about how I want the game to look in play. :-) Keep it coming!

No problem! It's an awesome idea for a hack, after all.

I'm totally with you on those stories being something that need to be told through the fiction. But that doesn't mean they can't have mechanical implications, right?

They should do steps instead of resolving the whole thing, though. That is to say, mechanical implications that carve up the thing into little bits, like going aggro, seize by force, acting under fire and read a sitch carve up a violent encounter, as opposed to mechanical implications like the Hardholder's Wealth, which sums up a complicated process.


Now the following are ilde thoughts based on fairly recent play experience, so they're not reliable in any way. They seem to be relevant, though, so I'll share them.

So okay! In a game, you start with a capable protagonist, the best man for the job. Which is not to say they'll succeed, but rather that if anyone is going to succeed, it's them. So, like, if there's a Bastion in play, whether or the 'hood is saved from the sharks swirling around it depends on how good the Bastian does (and not some random NPC).

To begin with, the character faces fairly simple problems - Walter White wants money, he makes drugs and finds a guy who helps him sell them. All of this he accomplishes easily.

But things escalate - Walter White finds he needs to kill a drug dealer and then remove his body, only to eventually have an even meaner drug lord take the killed guy's place.

That's where advancement comes in. It allows a kind of bump-around - we find a capable character in a situation he is no longer capable in; he gets knocked around a bit; he becomes better and tries a new approach to the problem.

So character advancement is there to make sure that characters can become capable as the situation escalates. Eventually, it can be expected that it will escalate to the setting-level questions of the game (what is the maelstrom and how do we deal with it? Can a person thrive in the post-apocalypse? Can a person escape the 'hood? Can a person live a good life in the 'hood?).

So how you advance is the story of how you become capable to deal with the setting-level problems. In AW, you do that by being cool, hard, weird, and etc. In the 'hood, I imagine, you become capable of dealing with setting-level problems not because of skill or ability, but because you deal with your money and your name succesfully - you get more money, you protect what you have, you spend your excess, you deal with a shortage.


Now, since I believe all of the above, I think that your game will be awesome at looking how characters deal with problems as they arise... But that it may or may not (that is to say, not depending on the game as written) address any of the big questions of the settings. I'll have a game where I'll get to see how the Blur tricks people, gets into trouble for it, and then tricks them again to solve his problems. But it'll be harder to see if the Blur ever gets enough cash to set up a life that isn't a lie, or one that is a more beautiful lie than it is now.

To get that stuff, there need to be real, rule-supported ties between dealing with money in all of the ways possible and advancement and, through it, various game bits.

Any of this make sense to you?

My thinking is, there's two ways to approach that kind of development on the story level.

First, the handwavey version, which goes like this: ok, so you advanced a few times and raised your name and wise, but what does that say about your character? Are you actually a well-connected, respected, smart criminal? If you pick those advances you should be, so either pick them and start playing your character that way or play your character as developing in that direction and then pick those advances to reflect that.

The second, mechanistic version, is to bring the dough stat back in some form, but one that measures your standard of living rather than  the specific amount of money you have. Maybe dough could act as a buffer to your livelihood, so instead of it being threatened, you take -1 dough instead... but dough is also used as a measure of how big a fish you are; perhaps, when dough reaches 6+, its time for your character to move to a bigger pond, or just buy their current pond lock, stock and barrel.

Personally, I like the freedom of the handwavey version: I get to narrate what my advances mean for my character, feeding that development back into the story and thus slowly changing the 'hood. When I feel its time for that character's story to end, I retire them, negotaiting what that means in the conversation of the game as usual.

I can see the appeal of using a mechanistic approach though: it makes a very definite statement about your character if they have dough+3 instead of dough=0. It also gives players something to actually strive for, instead of merely trying to hold onto... but then a lot of that is covered by the regular advances anyway. S I'm very much in two minds, but curerently leaning towards a handwavey appraoch.

If anyone else wants to jump in on this, I'd appreciate a third opinion.

In the end, I've come down on the handwavey side: there is a dough stat, but it's not linked directly to an absolute value, so its up to the group to decide what's worth 1dough, what's worth 2dough, etc. In general, you can spend 1dough to represent a large sum of money, say around £500-£1000, but it can be more in your game if you want it to be.

Also, if your livelihood is threatened, you can spend 1dough instead, so it acts as a lifeline, but obviously that's just throwing money at your problems and you don't get the experience you would have gotten if you'd restored your livelihood.

All the playbooks are now in the process of being updated, with a loan-shark style character to be added who exploits this new economic model in the game.

One of the main reasons I've gone for this abtsract take on the wealth & sucess of the characters is the very excellent Dead of Night campaign I ran a couple of years ago, where one of the PCs went from being a convicted criminal to being Pope. All of his journey and progress came about in the storytelling; sure, the advancement of his character reflected the narrative progress, but it didn't dictate it. I like being able to narrate suitable fates for characters without having to check if they're eligible for them or not (except in My Life with Master, but that's a whole other story).

So, if it's your goal for your character to get rich enough to own the 'hood, or buy their way out of it, then that happens as agreed between the players and the MC in the conversation: you'll need to collect dough to reflect that progress, but there's no hard and fast rule like '10dough=millionaire.'

Now I just need to playtest the darn thing...

Sweet. I guess, games mechanics wise, all I meant to say was - have an XP move. "When money changes hands and enters yours, mark XP."

Support your lifeline threat sticks with sweet XP carrots.

All the playbooks are now adapted to the new economic model of the game, which also means the Shark has joined the party now. Still a few tweaks to be made here and there, but I think the playbooks are largely ready to go.

After a long hiatus from the project, I've got back on top of it and produced a semi-final document in which all of the playbooks have been properly formatted to be printed out and used at the table. The new draft is available here; if you do get the chance to give it a try, or even a quick read, I'm agog for any feedback!