Apocalypse Warhammer

Is it just me or does the Warhammer 40,000 setting seem perfectly meshed with AW? I'd looked at Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader and decided that the mechanics were a "no, thanks" for me - AW seems to do nearly everything you'd want a WH40K roleplating game to do.

Obviously not monetizable though (I reckon GW would give Lucas a good run for IP protection!).

I actually had a pretty similar thought, and someone mentioned it over on one of the Vanguard threads.

I like the directions Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader take the setting (i.e. emphasizing the oppressive and sucky nature of the empire rather than treating that as a positive thing) and how they emphasize insanity and corruption and other unpleasantness.

But I totally agree that the mechanics made me go "yuck" when I read through them. And the preplanned adventures leave much to be desired. That being said, all of the setting information provided is really pretty good - detailed, but leaving you room to do your own thing.

So, on to some practicalities!

I've been thinking about how to make a sanity/corruption system work in AW, and I'm thinking maybe you just treat it as another class of harm. You have the option of taking 'debilities' (phobias, mutations, whatever's appropriate) to avoid 'injury' or 'death' (here being more serious psychosis or mutation or what not).

I also think that the spellcasting rules presented in Apocalypse D&D make a pretty neat fit for psychic powers (with a chance of perils of the warp and/or losing sanity/corruption and/or having crazy warp emanations).

Oh, and all this being said, I'm almost positive that you could play a game set in Necromunda (with the gangs and the underhive and so forth) with zero hacking at all. Except maybe changing the names of some of the weapons. Otherwise, totally perfect fit.

That's all I've got right now. I've put together a pretty good picture of the rules via the development blog, discussions, this forum, various hacks, and Vincent's main blog, but I'm waiting until I have the real rules in front of me to cook up anything concrete.

I was also think about a parallel Harm meter that tracked something like Sin, Corruption, Madness &c. Not unlike the Madness meter in CoC or Dark Side points, it would be a kind of Faustian bargain where the more filled in it is the closer you are to going over the edge but you get some evil perks too.

I enjoy the theme that one must become a 'monster' to fight them. Rather than that sort of 'all this blood shed and violence is totally okay because I am the Good Guy.' I might take some cues from Unknown Armies and the power scaling in Changeling: the Lost. I.E., habitual magick and violence makes you all fucked up and the more you fight what you hate the more you become it.

Nathan, I totally agree! That would be the one downside to just doing a straight harm conversion for mental/spiritual damage - there's no accelerating rate of consequences, no death spiral.

I just feel like a straight "gain insanity points, when you get to X you're crazy" would feel tacked on, and I'd like the mechanic to really integrate with the rest of the system.

I really like the implications of your insanity/corruption/monsteriness/whatever being something that is useful. . . but only in tasks that make you crazier/more corrupt/more of a monster/whatever, with an eventual bad end for your character if you stay down that road.

I think 'crazy' is a often abused concept in RPGs. Actual madness isn't really that fun or interesting. Both as a sociology student and in my personal life, I can say that the lived experiences of things like depression and anxiety disorders brought on by trauma, often subtle, aren't things you'd typically role-play. They certainly aren't empowering or beneficial in anyway. Moreover, having a stat for that doesn't do it any kind of justice. It's something that needs to be addressed in fiction, apart from the mechanics.

However, I think something like for each of the five (is it six?) countdown stages you could have negotiated stakes for each one. The death spiral is going to be different for every character. Making them almost like Beliefs in Burning Wheel could work well.

Thus, stage one of corruption could be a cold-blooded murder, turning your back on a friend, or aborting a child. Whatever. Then, if the player is decided to cross that line, then they and the MC negotiate or up the stakes in regards to that path. There should be significant mechanical rewards for going down it. Maybe a new custom move. Also, the MC should get the move Whenever a character gives into temptation, make as hard a Move as you like can.

There should also be hard but clear conditions for redemption. Again, set like Stakes.

It'd look something like:

(x) Leaked information to the Cult of Shadows

Move: Preternatural Calm: Roll +weird instead of +cool when you act under fire to hide something. Or it could be like: Other players always fail (or -2 or &c) to read a person on you, never mind NPCs figuring out what you're up to.

Redeem: Confess your betrayal. 

() Attend one of their Rituals.

It seems a little involved, both fictionally and mechanically. Although, I almost like it better than regular advancement.

It's not really any of my business, but I don't love the negotiated stakes. That's your job as designer! Don't dump it off onto the players, they don't have the leisure or the perspective to reliably get it right. The right thing should be there waiting for them, created by you.

Like your example, in fact (supposing that I'm reading it correctly).

My recommendation would be that you create (1) half a dozen interesting corruption countdowns yourself, maybe with rules for when a character can switch from one to another; and (2) directions for the MC who wants to create her own original ones. But your assumption should be that the eventual players are usually going to use the ones you've created, not need to create their own.

-Vincent

Nathan, I'm sorry through my lack of clarity to have implied that I thought "being crazy" was cool or interesting in it's own sake! A more fleshed out way to say what I meant is that in a game that focuses on "horrible things man was not meant to know" and "becoming a monster to fight monsters" I like the notion that there is a mechanical, as well as a fictional, temptation to tread that path. So basically what you said here:

There should be significant mechanical rewards for going down it. Maybe a new custom move.

Now, one way of going about that that I find intriguing is inspired by the way the "Cthulhu Mythos" skill in Call of Cthulhu is largely necessary to deal with the horrible creatures from beyond, but it subtracts from your sanity score. In other words, the implication (or maybe it's outright stated in the rules) is that even though you are *right*, you are still going *crazy*. It was to this sort of Lovecraftian madness, the horrible truth you can't really handle, that I was referring to when I implied that losing sanity points should make you more effective in some way (when dealing with the source of that madness).

@Vincent: I think I agree with you on providing the lists and the means to make lists, but that's probably just because your games have totally convinced me of the value of a good list of hard choices. I like the element of choice in picking permanent debilities with benefits and trade offs over suffering enough harm to make you dead or almost dead (are debilities still in the rules? I have a patchwork set of rules in my brain from the dev blog and hacks).

Negotiated Stakes is really poor word choice on my part. Sorry for that. I meant that you might take about it with the Players first before you set its condition. Talking with the Players about their characters helps me find where they're not in control. You're right that it shouldn't be their choice as to what the conditions are. The MC should present them as tempting but damning; both mechanically and in the fiction.

They'd be like the count down timers for Fronts, except they'd be for PCs explicitly. I suppose a list of generic one would work too. Understandably, it would fit better with the other design themes of AW if it was a premade list or package with a few hard choices.

I don't see the "madness meter" as a player Move, or even so much as a parallel Harm meter but as a micro-Front. So that the custom moves, countdown clock and description are all compressed into one thing. While the player is getting a few extra moves, it should be constantly providing opportunities for the MC to make hard moves and advance the fiction.

What I like about it is that each PC becomes a Front in their own right. Both to themselves and to the other PCs. Mechanically it's all out in the open but it's more hidden in the fiction. I think it could create the right kind of tension with the group.

This strikes me as more than passingly clever:

I don't see the "madness meter" as a player Move, or even so much as a parallel Harm meter but as a micro-Front. So that the custom moves, countdown clock and description are all compressed into one thing. While the player is getting a few extra moves, it should be constantly providing opportunities for the MC to make hard moves and advance the fiction.

What I like about it is that each PC becomes a Front in their own right. Both to themselves and to the other PCs. Mechanically it's all out in the open but it's more hidden in the fiction. I think it could create the right kind of tension with the group.

That would also be an excellent way to run a "dark pact", I think. Make a custom move for the threat (the demon the character strikes a deal with) that provides advantages to the player in exchange for advancing the front, and allow the front to tick forward descriptively as well (like the character does something wicked and evil). 

Moving this discussion to Bulwark, cause it's not really about Warhammer 40k anymore!

It's not? Cos I was talking about Dark Heresy when I mentioned "Dark Pacts"

Right!

Maybe it's own thread in Hacks? Cause I'm feeling like is a discussion about the Madness Meter and not WH40K anymore.

Fair enough! Sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude or anything, a more clear statement would have been "I was still connecting these techniques primarily to a WH40k context" but as you pointed out, rules for madness/corruption/other death spiral things have a wide application to multiple worlds (including Bulwark, which I'm following with interest)

Okay, so as per Vincent's suggestion in one of the threads on hacks, I'm putting up a list of "things characters do in Dark Heresy" as a starting point for figuring out what sort of basic moves and character type specific moves are necessary to develop. Anybody else interested, please pitch in!

(n.b. I'd also be plenty interested in Rogue Trader and other 40k universe moves, but right now I figured I'd focus in on the context I find most interesting, which is Inquisition related stuff)

Things Inquisitors' Acolytes (Can) Do:

• Fight monsters/demons/aliens/cultists/people that get in the way
• Research Lore, Forbidden and Otherwise
• Psychic Powers/Sorcery
• Go Crazy!
• Become twisted and corrupt!
• Travel from Planet to Planet
• Sneak Around
• Break into Places
• Interrogate People
• Use technology they don't really understand
• Build technology they don't really understand
• Whip mobs into a frenzy
• Engage in business, shady and otherwise, for cover

That's all I've got so far without any reference in front of me.