Why are followers so hard to get?

Only the Skinner has the option to pick up followers as an improvement, even though acquiring insight (or madness) and starting a cult seems like a pretty natural character arc.  I'm especially surprised it's not an option for Angels, considering the deep associations between religion and medicine, and the psychic/empathic powers an Angel can get.  A Brainer, too, would make a scary-ass cult leader with Unnatural Lust Transfixion. 

Are they omitted just because those playbooks ran out of advancement slots?  Or because Insight and Augury are too big a deal to give out easily?  Would there be any reason not to let a player substitute one leadership improvement for another?  It's not a big problem for me in any event, since by the time you played through your prophet's awakening and proselytizing, you'd probably hit Ungiven Future and be able to straight up change books to Hocus. 

PS: also curious why Battlebabe gets Leadership rather than Pack Alpha.   

Or because Insight and Augury are too big a deal to give out easily? 

I hope not!  I have a threat with a custom move that can give a PC both Insight (into one issue/problem/question) and an experience point.

PS: also curious why Battlebabe gets Leadership rather than Pack Alpha.

Really?  I felt like this was fairly obvious.  I think it's mostly to distinguish more of the differences between the battlebabe, gunlugger, and chopper.  The battlebabe is a lot more smooth and a little more cerebral.  If the gunlugger has a gang, she'll just beat the chumps down if they get out of line.  The battlebabe is too cool for that.

Only the Skinner has the option to pick up followers as an improvement, even though acquiring insight (or madness) and starting a cult seems like a pretty natural character arc.  I'm especially surprised it's not an option for Angels, considering the deep associations between religion and medicine, and the psychic/empathic powers an Angel can get.  A Brainer, too, would make a scary-ass cult leader with Unnatural Lust Transfixion. 

Are they omitted just because those playbooks ran out of advancement slots?  Or because Insight and Augury are too big a deal to give out easily?  Would there be any reason not to let a player substitute one leadership improvement for another?  It's not a big problem for me in any event, since by the time you played through your prophet's awakening and proselytizing, you'd probably hit Ungiven Future and be able to straight up change books to Hocus. 

Remember that you can always take followers from another character playbook. So the gunlugger can get followers as well, if it works for your game.

I see the advancements as Vincent's vision of the sort of archetypes he sees in ApocWorld.

You can't actually take Followers form another playbook because it's not a move.  Fortunes is, but it doesn't do anything if you don't have any followers. 

=Vx, page 181If there’s a move in another playbook and it makes no mechanical
sense for your character — like fortunes but you have no
followers, for instance — then for goodness sweet sake don’t
choose it. Choose a different move, one you can actually make

You could just as easily format it such that the gang came with Pack Alpha and followers came with Fortunes.  So in fact, the rules are specifically set up to prevent you from getting leadership options that don't come in your playbook.

 

So in fact Vx consciously If there’s a move in another playbook and it makes no mechanical
sense for your character — like fortunes but you have no
followers, for instance — then for goodness sweet sake don’t
choose it. Choose a different move, one you can actually make

You can get followers by descriptive improvement, same as you might get a car or a new gun. Like, you might be this angel you're talking about, and in play you might accumulate a bunch of people around you who are into you and who generally do what you tell them to do. Then, taking fortunes from the hocus playbook would make perfect sense.

Skinners are the only ones who can get followers prescriptively, the only ones who can choose them from a list instead of having to make them happen in play.

-Vincent

I wanted to add:

Having followers but not having fortunes is fine, it's just like having a car but not having a no shit driver. They're followers, they do what they do, they just aren't good for anything movewise yet.

I do wish that insight were more common. I think it's a neat move. I hope it shows up in lots of custom moves.

-Vincent

Quote from: Orion on July 27, 2010, 01:24:36 PM

PS: also curious why Battlebabe gets Leadership rather than Pack Alpha.

If the gunlugger has a gang, she'll just beat the chumps down if they get out of line.

'Sright about that.

More to the point of the thread, though, I think there's a bit of terminology involved. Followers and Gang have enough similarities and enough differences that both are useful, you just take the one that's useful to -you-.

Well, I pictured the battlebabe's hold on her gang being all about her presence, her charisma.  The violence she dishes out is terrifying and beautiful and intoxicating and you love to watch and fear to leave.  As such it makes sense to me that a battlebabe would reassert her hold by "making an example" in some super-cool way with her crazy weapons.  There's nothing "cerebral" about a battlebabe in my mind.

Meanwhile, the gunlugger is neither as hot nor as cool as the battlebabe, so the gang follows out of either straight-up fear or self-interest.  Gunluggers also have a pseudo-military vibe going with their first aid kit, their ability to fight gangs, etc., so it seems more likely that they would get Leadership going.  Especially since they have the option to take a holding, why wouldn't they lead their gang like a hardholder does?

There's nothing "cerebral" about a battlebabe in my mind.

Ha!  I was about to try to quote the stats to prove my point, but it turns out the gunlugger can start with a sharp of +2 whereas the sharpest a battlebabe can start is +1.

So "cerebral" was probably the wrong word.  Regardless, we definitely have different views of the battlebabe.  I don't really picture them usually making "examples" of their minions.  In my mind, as I said, they're too smooth for that.  Too cool.  Their minions already know what will happen if they really get on her bad side.  She doesn't need to make examples.

Because a hardholder has more to lose. If Keeler loses her gang, she can roll with it - so what, they were pissers anyway and who needs 'em, she's still a gunlugger. If they get shot up, that sucks, but it's also what they signed on for when they decide to hang with her. If a hardholder loses his hold on the people in the holding, it blows who he is wide apart, and could cost him the holding. A hardholder can't rule by fear alone, or the very stability he's worked for is at risk.

A gunlugger might care for his gang and build on mutual loyalty, and a hardholder might control her holdfolk through webs of fear and intimidation, but there's definitely a different vibe .

Well, Fnord, if you wanted to cite rules, Perfect Instincts means that (some) battlebabes have a hefty incentive to spend more time planning their move than gunluggers do.  That said, I personally would play up the instinctual, intuitive aspect of that, and assume that the the character exectues with unhesitating grace what took the player a good deal of thinking to gin up. 

I played a Battlebabe that got a gang through story rather than through improvement. I think Damson kept ahold of her gang as sort of a deranged den mother, keeping them entertained and taken care of, rather than keeping them lusty or scared shitless. It worked pretty well.