New Playbook: The Pilgrim

Hey folks.

I'm pretty new to Apocalypse World (first game will be Danny_K's pbp).  But I like to fiddle with rules and come up with new content, even when I don't know the game very well yet.  What can I say, it's a compulsion.  So here's me playing around with the system.


(Not at all specifically inspired by Book of Eli)


Playbook: The Pilgrim

In the old days, a pilgrim was a person who was going to a place… someplace far away, and better, hoping to find something at the end of the road that would make their lives different.  These days, there’s no place worth going.  Some people are still always wandering, still looking for someplace better, but now they’re looking for a place inside their head.
This sort of character, the wanderer with a mission, is certainly a staple of apocalyptic fiction.  I can understand why Vx wouldn’t include it… perhaps it’s too archetypal, too staid, too boring, or just doesn't do anything that another playbook doesn't do just as well.  Maybe it violates some other obvious principle of AW I’m overlooking, like the prohibition against status quos.  That said, I thought it would be fun to model, so I thought I’d give it a go.

Names:
Daniel, Eyes, Tyke, Barracks, Rintin, Ballad, Soak, Emelie, Eyrie, Mr. Silence, Vice

Look:
Man, woman, transgressive, ambiguous, concealed

Tattered rags, combat gear, furs & hides, or patched uniform
Scarred face, tattooed face, rugged face or beaten face
Cold eyes, hard eyes, vacant eyes, lost eyes, or shining eyes
Lean body, scarred body, small body, stringy boy, or muscled body

Stats:
Cool+1, Hard+2, Hot+0, Sharp+2, Weird-1
Cool+0, Hard+1, Hot+1, Sharp+2, Weird+0
Cool-1, Hard+0, Hot+1, Sharp+2, Weird+2
Cool+1, Hard-1, Hot+1, Sharp+2, Weird+1

The Mission
You have a mission, something that drives you, pulls you forward.  It is to:

Find, protect, or guide
A
Person, place or idea

Here’s the kicker.  Whatever your character’s mission is?  It's a delusion.  There is no hidden utopian enclave in Alaska that survive the Apocalypse, no destined Messiah-child who will lead us.  Your character will have to come to terms with this eventually.   Or not.  


Basic Moves
You get all the basic moves

Pilgrim Moves

Choose 3:

I’ve Seen Such Things…:  When Acting Under Fire, roll+sharp
(Both Cool and Sharp are very powerful stats, and linking them is nasty stuff.  That said, I like the idea, so I’m throwing it in)

Deadly Reflexes:  When someone attempts to sneak up on you, roll+sharp.  On a 10+, both, and you can act in response (it will be under fire, of course).  On a 7-9, choose one, and choose a response (it will be under fire).
*You know who it is
*You know what their immediate intentions are

(I’m not sure I’m happy with this one.  I want to simulate the bit where the friend/love interest comes over and touches the sleeping/facing away character, only to end up nearly killed as they react.  Idea being on a partial hit, you either get to know who’s approached you, or why, and base your reaction on that possibly drastically incomplete information)

Indomitable:  You get an extra Harm level between 6 and 9
(This move is invisible to NPCs.  If they don’t make sure you’re really dead, they may well leave you with a scrap of life left)

Lead By Example:  When you Lead By Example (means what it says on the tin), you roll + hot.  On a 10+, choose 2, on a 7-9, choose 1.
*People follow you
*People abandon their beliefs
*Gain a Follower
(With this move, a Pilgrim can tear apart a Hardhold or inspire peasants to fight an army.  However, he has to do it to do it, and he doesn’t know the outcome until he tries.  A Pilgrim’s life isn’t safe.  To clarify, if you choose “People follow you”, you will get people to follow your example, but they won’t change their fundamental beliefs, and therefore there are limits to what they’ll do.  If you choose “People abandon their beliefs”, then you change who they are, but you won’t change what they’ll do for the moment.   If you choose “Gain a Follower”, then your MC will choose an NPC, and that character will both Follow You and Abandon Their Beliefs.  Follow you for forever, at least until something changed.  When inspiring a crowd, a Pilgrim’s influence is powerful, but transitory.  A Follower is permanently affected.  They don’t stop being a Threat, though.  Nothing’s quite as dangerous as someone whose saint betrays them.)

Will is the Weapon:  When killing a fucker with your bare hands, you have armor-piercing.

Hx
On your turn:
Tell everyone -1.  You don’t open up much as a rule.
Choose one player. They’ve heard of you.  Tell them to take -2 or +2, as they will.

On the others’ turn:
Whatever they tell you, add +1.  People reveal something of themselves when they’re around you.

Pilgrim Special
When you have sex with another character, they set their Hx with you to +1.  They can choose to give you +1 or -1 forward.  Attachments can help you, but they can distract you from your mission.  And you just don’t show your true self in bed.

Gear
You get:
Fashion that equals 1-armor

1 Practical Weapon
*Handgun
*Rifle
*Machete

1 Unusual Weapon
*Bow/Crossbow (2 Harm far reload)
*Throwing Knives (2 Harm close infinite)
* Sword (3 Harm hand valuable)
*Stun Gun (2 s-Harm ap hand hi tech)

Pilgrim Improvement

+1 Sharp (Max 3)
+1 Cool (Max 2)
+1 Hard (Max 2)
+1 Weird (Max 2)
Get a new Pilgrim Move
Get a new Pilgrim Move
Get a holding and Wealth
Get a gang and Leadership
Get a move from another playbook
Get a move from another playbook

Some thoughts of my own:

I feel odd making it a high-Sharp playbook.  Cool seems more appropriate, but the Battlebabe is already the wicked-Cool playbook, and filling the same design space again makes it a little odd.  And it does make a fun contradiction: why does this person, who understands the world and people in it so well, follow a delusion?

Lead by Example is obviously a finicky move.  The concept is important, I think, but I'm not sure if what I have achieved what I want.

The archetypal Pilgrim is a wanderer, which can have an impact on a group of PCs.  That said, no more than the Hardholder does, if in a different direction, and the Pilgrim doesn't have to wander

This would be an obvious character to give a move that gives him powers relating to following his mission, maybe even a Profile like a car/bike or the Faceless's mask.  However, I've never like that type of power.  It's way too easy to make everything a facet of following your mission.  The Driver at least will have to come out of his car at some point, and the Faceless has to deal with wearing the mask.  That said, without that power, the Pilgrim may be unable to accomplish his mission against the odds stacked against him by Apocalypse World (nevermind that it's guaranteed not to exist in the first place).  Maybe that's the point.  I might be stacking the odds too much with the "your utopia doesn't exist" bit, but when I see that sort of thing, as a player or GM, I immediately think I'm supposed to change that.  Impossibility is relative.

What do people think?

I love it at first glance. Especially as I'm plowing through the Wasteland comics, and Michael is totally a Pilgrim. I will try to post some more creative feedback after some sleep.

Shouldn't the pilgrim pick 2 moves, rather than 3?

I'd say that maybe you should stick with your initial thought and make Cool+2 instead of Sharp+2 in each line. Of course, the Battlebabe is super-cool, but that doesn't mean we're not allowed any other playbooks that go that way. Especially as the Pilgrim is otherwise very different.

I don't think you should mandate that the goal is a delusion. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't and either way, discovering it in play is probably more enjoyable. I'd certainly be reluctant to play a character that starts out with "you have a driving goal that you'll inevitably fail at". Having a driving goal that quite likely is empty is way more interesting.

For Indomitable, maybe you should make it not that there's an extra tick on the countdown, but that if the pilgrim reaches 12 then they'll stay alive without medical help? That gets the same thing across, but doesn't have a new mechanism to power it.

Some good ideas here. Lead by Example is pretty neat. I like the high sharp, it means he can read people and then tell them about themselves, like prophets always do.

Deadly Reflexes is no good, though. The player has no choice as to when/if they use it. I think that moment you want is probably just a character moment, not a rule. But you could try having the character automatically deal 1-harm to someone who surprises you.

Stats are too high, too. Vincent breaks them down here:
http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=91.0

@ Mike Sands

Oops.  I had for some reason thought the rule was that stats ended up adding up to 4, not three.  That's what I get for not double-checking.  I think the rule is that if it has a +3 stat line, you get 3 moves if you don't have something else (gang, holding, angel kit)?  

As for cool... you're probably right.  I'd like to listen to a little bit more feedback if it's all the same.  

As for the delusion bit, I think I agree with you.  I tend to like heavily designed games (like, hey, Apocalypse World!) and mandating a goal be a delusion appeals to me, but might not to everyone else.  

As for Indomitable... I like new mechanics!  Unique mechanics make characters fun and interesting and badass.  I think it's somewhat different to get a new wound rank, too.  It means you take longer before your wounds get worse without help, and gives you more weight to throw around knowing you have a solid extra bar of protection than anyone else.  That's assuming it doesn't break the game in some way I'm not seeing.

@ Johnstone

Good point on Deadly Reflexes not being by player choice.  I'm not sure that dealing 1 Harm automatically is quite what I'm going for either.  Having some way to react to surprise in-general seems very much in character.  Is it an insurmountable problem?

Getting surprised in AW isn't usually something the MC sets up as a problem for the player to contend with, in my experience. It's something that happens because of a failed roll. MC makes a move, and the move is... surprise! Dude snuck up on you.

Or the MC should offer details and ask what the player does. "You're asleep, but you sense something creeping up to you, what do you do?" If the MC has decided it's an axe murderer and the player says he wakes up and checks it out, as opposed to attacking right away, the dude can plant the axe in him.

Having a high sharp is the best way to fight surprise -- or I should say, hitting 10+ on your roll to read a situation. Then you the MC can tell the player about the dudes who are about to sneak up on him. The player can read a situation right before he wakes up, and once he knows the axe murderer is there, he can leap up and either act under fire, seize by force, or go aggro before the axe murderer can attack.

Make sense?

*nods* Does indeed make sense.  I guess that's the sort of thing I need to play before seeing. 

I'm concerned about this character's level of detachment. The Pilgrim doesn't seem to need relationships, need connections, or need particular social dynamics. The fact that "they just don't reveal their true self in the bed" exacerbates this feeling for me.

It'd be rad if when you have sex with someone, you create some sort of unfinished business that tethers you to the community.

Also, it'd be rad if "Lead By Example" were an automatically-included move, because it makes the Pilgrim a creature that is connected to others, and I think that's vital.

Mmm, good points.  The archetype is someone who doesn't get attached, but that doesn't make for good party dynamics.

I loooove lead by example, but drop deadly reflexes. The GM already has fair rules for what s/he can do to the characters, and all other moves are active, not passive. Active is more fun.

And sharp is definitely right for this character. I can see Cool working as well, but I like the thought of a guy who is passionate and goal-focused about something rather than detached from everything else.

Also, I agree that this character needs connections to the world around him. Perhaps you could give him some sort of gigs, like the operator, things that tie him to the world, things that needs fixing before his pilgrimage continues. Things that his compassion or drive latches onto and won't let go of. The sex move is a great oppurtunity for this.

But then, you'd be playing Dogs in the Vineyard. :-)

Anyway, I love the thought of someone who still cares, and has to balance his dream with the compassion or duty he starts feeling for people around him.

But I don't know. Perhaps you don't really need a playbook for that?

I mean, all the playbooks are so morally neutral. Nobody, save for maybe the angel, are out to do good or pure, in fact most are violent or scary people. The belief in a better world is something the characters has to find or discard during play, and this is coded into The ungiven future. Perhaps you should make the pilgrim a little more ambigous, a restless fellow rather than a person on a holy quest. Could be greed, curiosity, zeal, ambition, compassion, desperation or just plain restlessness that drives him - Simply put, a travelling character that can't let go of the idea that things should be different.

The Pilgrim works really neat with AW's concept of switching playbooks for experience. I can see a character that comes to a point where s/he needs to walk for a while.

Anyway, I love the thought of someone who still cares, and has to balance his dream with the compassion or duty he starts feeling for people around him.

Kind of like how I'm sitting here and hoping for updates on this neat new thread I found, instead of preparing an improv day or blogging about gender and roleplaying.

I don't have much to add, except this very much reminds me of the guy from the Postman. The book; never saw the movie.

Maybe it would be nice to have a move to Reveal the Secret Truth to someone, with effects somewhere in between Seduce/Manipulate and Frenzy?

Say... when you Reveal the Secret Truth to someone, roll +weird. On 10+ hold 3, on 7-9 hold 1. Spend your hold 1 for 1 to have that person:

• Bring you something you need
• Fight someone who is in your way
• Spread the word about the secret truth
• Get out your way so you can pass

On a miss, they think you're a phony, a heretic or just bad news.

Rummaging through my old comics collection I realized why this character felt so right to me; Warren Ellis' Just a Pilgrim comic book fits it to a tee!

I like Indomitable even though it might be weird having an 11.30, "it's not quite midnight yet," but I can live with that. Deadly Reflexes should just be dropped though, I'm in agreement with Arvid on why. If you just like the flavor of the name of the move, Deadly Reflexes, than exchange it for I've Seen Such Things..., getting to roll+sharp when under fire could definitely be due to Deadly Reflexes.  :)

In regards to Mike's Reveal the Secret Truth suggestion, I think that KreenWarrior's original Lead By Example does almost the same thing, but in a more fitting manner to how I see the Pilgrim character.

Based on the pilgrim in Just a Pilgrim, I'd love to add the following character move to the list.

Sharpshooter: when going aggro on a fucker at a far distance using some sort of rifle, roll+sharp instead.

Stats are too high, too. Vincent breaks them down here:
http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=91.0

Johnstone is definitely right here, although Vincent isn't in the post that's cross-referenced. Please see my Character Analysis PDF, which breaks down every stat line of each character (along with some other details).

Mmm, good points.  The archetype is someone who doesn't get attached, but that doesn't make for good party dynamics.

I think the archetype is someone who doesn't want to get attached, but does anyway.  After all, guys like Sanjuro and Blondie can just keep walking, but they usually don't.