New Playbook: Horseman

Now if I wrote a move where you get a hold that increases your psychic powers every time somebody commits suicide in your presence, that would be my idea of an always-evil character.

That's just ridiculous.  Nobody would EVER write a move that evil.

;-)

It could just be that I want a different playbook than you do. I'll write one up and you can see what you think. Really it seems like you want Frazetta and I want John Wayne and that's cool.

Cool, I'd like to see that.

The rewritten Famine definitely fits with Severian (and thus with the idea that this playbook could be a dark redeemer, not just a dick). No specific examples from the book come to mind, but one way you can look at the genesis of Book of the New Sun is as Catholic theology turned into something people at a SF convention would want to wear as a masquerade costume - so the idea of fasting as purification, inspiring people to give up their worldly attachments to better contemplate the ultimate, totally works for me.

(Another way to look at where the New Sun came from is that Wolfe sat down with the OED, contemplated all the possible ways the words therein could be combined, and one by one rejected all the ones that weren't perfect expressions of awesomeness).

This is badass, dude. Hot on wheels. I think it'll work as long as everyone is aware that this character is inherently evil.

It makes for an interesting "play to find out", at least. Will the Horseman redeem himself or die cursing the world with his last breaths?

It may violate one of the opening prescriptions for the game, though: that the players should know each other and not start out antagonistic. Do you think that will be a problem?

Nah, I don't think it would be much of a problem. I'd point out the possibility of antagonism to the players, and if they're not cool with it, I'd tell them not to maybe not use this playbook. The Hx rules means you need to know at least one other PC, although now that you mention it, they might be a little weak. Oh well!

Cool! I'm gonna print it out and have it as an option for my players; I'll let you know if/when it gets picked and how it works!

Don't print out the stuff in this thread, I have something better for you.

Because it proved to be so (un)popular, I have written The Horseman up in proper style:

You can find a 4-page pdf of The Horseman, front-of-the-book style, right here.

You can find The Horseman in 2-page miniature booklet format over here.

Enjoy!

Great work on the character and the PDFs Johnstone! Any chance we'll see the rest of the Harbringers of Doom, the Riders of the Apocalypse? I.e. Pestilence/Plague/Conquest (on his white horse), War (riding a red horse), or Famine (on his black horse)? As you can see, I see of your current Horseman as Death (on his pale horse). Nicely done regardless.

Nah, I did some other nasty, anti-hero-ish playbooks, but this one's good for the whole theme, I think.

Hey Johnstone, any chance you used some freeware tools to make the PDF, and if so, would you please share the template?

Actually I did it the hard way. The rulebook layout I did in Word2000, legal landscape with two colums, default margins, and most of the fonts are free. That was easy.

For the booklet pdf I imported one of the originals into Photoshop CS2 at 300ppi, and then modified it with the text function. Then I imported the pictures into InDesign which I still haven't learned how to use, centered them on two pages and exported as a pdf. So you already have the "template" I used, such as it is.

Alright, I'll try the hard way myself then.  :D

Considering that Apocalypse World is post-apocalypse, I'd think a terrific method of making this character more morally complex and suitable would be to consider that s/he was a Horseman that heralded / brought about the apocalyptic event... and now, Left Behind style, is stuck in a broken world of their own design. It certainly puts the idea of redemption (by switching to a different playbook) more up-front-and-centre than if the character was driven to complete its higher purpose which had not yet come about.

Groovy, though. I thought about Horsemen as NPCs for my own game and this gives me some good ideas. The idea of the steed as a human is so gut-wrenchingly awesome/awful.