My playbook - need help

Hey everyone,
I have an interesting campaign running this summer. By ‘interesting’ I mean that I have twelve players, many of which, have full real lives (meaning that showing up to a session every week is difficult for some. My solution? Get as many players as I could and use ‘tears’ in game to explain away why one character that was there the session before has been replaced with a new one. Fun part is: all characters go through the ‘tears’(they aren’t actually tears- I just can’t think of a better word) whether they show up to next session or not. And they get ‘randomly’ placed somewhere on the map (there is a narrative that makes all of this make sense but I won’t waste too much time on that). Point is this - the narrative must always be moving forward, and certain systems within AW can slow things down (and some things are changed to make things easier on first time tabletop gamers). AW is awesome as is but some things needed to be changed for this situation. Assume everything that isn’t changed in here remains the same as in the original playbook.

Give me your thoughts, opinions, changes, all in all just tell me if any of this 'broke' the game or if you have suggestions.
-jack 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1efaOsLYh5U68iVFAHDLYTod9_xilKWsjyZoESdbpAvE/edit?usp=sharing

Been notified that this should be called a 'hack' and not a 'playbook'. So inb4 I get yelled at again for that small mistake in terminology.

Some thoughts.

HARM
There is no reason, even in your situation, where the complete removal of the Suffer Harm roll is a good thing. It is the roll that makes the injury narrative, that changes the dynamic, that makes it more then lol whatever hp. You can be narrative, sure, but the roll puts that power in the hands of the player, rather then the MCs arbitration. This is very important feature. Although granted I dont use it either, I use the when you suffer harm, roll +armor hack called blood and guts (I think). That keeps the same high is good, low is bad, consistency, removes Hp tracking + Healing baggage. In the end it's your call, but this is one of the more important features of the AW system.

HEALING
Convoluted. If it works for your group then do it, but if you haven't ever looked into the above mentioned hack, I'd advise doing so first. It removes the need for this attempt.

SAVVYHEAD
Hate it. The savvy head is suppose to be able to make everything, or try anything, they are the mad scientist--the crazed engineer, the overly medicated herbal grower, or your atypical garage junkie. Your change does nothing but make this class less cool, and you do so in a way that adds nothing. You can always say it'll cost x-barter x-ammount of time, or you'll need to  get some sample of that leaking nuclear core first, but that will probably kill whoever goes to get it. Etc. You have full mastery over the cost already, scripting it this way is hamfisted and doesnt serve to improve AW according to your previously laid out goals.

My strong suggestion: Don't worry about hacking the rules to make them run faster. The game already runs fairly snappy as-is. Don't worry about getting the players all together or explaining their absences, either - the game already assumes they aren't always in a group and works fine under that assumption. Else, what use is the Savvyhead's bonefeel move?

Instead, worry about bodies at the table. 12 players in the same campaign, I dunno, maybe you can make it work if you rotate them out or something, though it'll be messy at best. 12 players at the same table, my direct experience says won't work at all. Not one little bit. 8 players at the same table won't work. 6, just maybe. I personally wouldn't go any higher than 5, and prefer 3 or 4.
I suggest you don't break those numbers unless you want sessions where at least one or two players have to sit there the whole time without getting a chance to do anything at all - which was a regular feature of the 8-player game I ran. Even when we were missing a player or two. Too many players at once, and the whole game becomes a confusing mess where nobody really has enough screen time to accomplish much at all, certainly not to make something of their world. Plus, you, the MC, can barely get an NPC in edgewise.
That's what happened when I did it, at least.

Me, I'd either split into two groups of ~6 and get one of your friends to be the other group's MC, or else just pick 5 or fewer of them and play with the smaller group alone.

(Not convinced? Imagine twelve people in a room, all trying to have a meaningful conversation together, and you tell me how that goes: Awkward at best, right? Or about half the people are barely saying anything? In my experience, conversations with 12 people tend to naturally splinter into conversations between 3-6 people anyway, you know what I mean?)

It's not twelve at the same time - it is a rotating cast consisting of twelve- each session consisting of 3 - 5 players based on everyone's availability(hence the tears - which has been renamed to dust)... So far the system is working great - but, much like the game itself I'm very willing to change when needed. And you guys have made some great points that I will absolutely take with me. (I would link you our first session recording to get your thoughts but, my mic is so bad it is almost killer.)

And as far as the changes to the infirmary and go. Those are stationary places that exist either in the main town or where ever the players would think their base of operations are, am I correct? Ok, well to put it plainly -  the chances of my players going to these places are pretty slim. (For reasons I could go on and on about. But, know that we did consider taking the approach of Itmejp's The West Marches - i.e. having the players return to the 'main town' at the end of every session and decided against it.) So, instead of taking the infirmary/work space away from my players I gave them a way to create one on the fly- the rest of the rules in relation to the infirmary/work space ... Maybe the way I did it was convoluted- and I'd love your suggestions as to a better way. But, does why I did it make sense? Or am I too blind to see how stupid this is... :/
 

They exist where you and they decide they should exist. One of my Drivers drove his Infirmary around as an armored ambulance. He also had his garage on a Tugboat, so :).

Yeah, nothing says you can't just say something like "Hey, maybe you've got like a tent and a folding cot in your pack, and you can set them up when you need to use the infirmary. Sound good?"
If you do that, you could make a custom tent-setting-up move or whatever if you really wanted to, but I don't see that being very useful. Might as well stick to "Okay, you set it up, cool. What now?" If anything intense is going on (hah in-tents) then maybe they're acting under fire. (Moving patients about, ditto.)

Juggling twelve players, I think the toughest thing will be making sure the stuff they do is all relevant to each other. So, don't skimp on the PC-NPC-PC triangles, I'd say, (maybe, hah, more like PC-NPC-PC-PC-PC pentagons?) and announce future/offscreen badness that has implications for as many of them at once as possible. But I never really pulled it off very well in my game, so that's just me guessing what might work.

I don't know if AW's at all the right system for it, but heck, I'd play a post-apocalypse-themed West Marches game. That sounds awesome. 

Just out of curiosity, which playbooks are you using?

Actually a thought just occurred to me...

If these players are being ripped into and out of the world through tears, even say skipping over vast areas of space like one day in blasted Urban New York and the next in parched white-bone Vegas, you can say that taking these moves act as sortve an anchor. Since the tears are weird, and the maelstrom is probably involved, it's perfectly reasonable to say a player might have some ... limited controls if purchased through an advancement.

I don't know exactly what you're doing, this may or may not work but enough preamble. If your Angel chooses a move to give himself an Infirmary with a crew of two, there are a number of ways to figure this:

a.) The angel gains access to a node or device or somehow uses his weirdness to anchor a specific place to himself. Say with a certain key he can turn in most doors, opening it reveals his lab. Until the key is turned at a new location, that door (no matter where it used to lead) now leads to his lab. If something comes through the other direction of the original door, they step out as normal, but turning around would be the lab. Let his assistants be bound to the location. Robots, AI, Machinery, Some kids that rift with the room rather then based off some unknown clock, etc.

b.) The angel is somewhat anchored to similar locations. So anytime he drops into a new place, he drops in nearby to  or just inside of a lab which happens to have enough of whatever (or after a bit of work) to get up and running to suit the needs of the session, for that session. Maybe the crew here aren't important and you just give the lab the benefit of the doubt, letting him keep watch over any patients with some type of hi-tech gadget or just plain old luck (if something bad happens, it happens when the doc walks in, rather then when the doc walks out). Typically, if the lab has anything else with sentience, that sentience should be treated as a NPC with needs, wants, and PC-NPC-PC triangles as normal.

c.) The angel's infirmary could also be carried in his bag of delicious hi-tech gadgetry full with Xray hand scanners and enough chem kit + herbalist know how to make just about anything from what's laying around. If you give him a crew, maybe they bounce with him at all times, and that's something special that been cooked up between those involved. Maybe its a drug they take all together, or what not. Maybe they're gathering up the supplies so when trouble hits in the session, these two are ready with the doc to start up shop. This is an interesting way to handle things cause the two of them will likely become pretty important to that pc, and better yet, will likey be out alone in dangerous places while they're preping the neverending mad-science custom to the scene (all types of vulnerabilities there should the hard roll or the incidental PC sighting come calling). Its also interesting because say a normal challenge like: I need to get INJURED GUY to my infirmary quick, but its going to be a risky trip! Would just be replaced by, I need to find minions X and Y so we can save this guy! Bring them here, or lets go find them! etc. Same effective challenge, just a different swing.

Other examples from other playbooks could easily fall into a similar style of correction that makes it work for that character, while enforcing both their personalities and the inherent logic of the world. It also helps keep certain logic for keeping PC-important NPCs out of harms way when the PC most bound to them (the crew, the followers, the gang) isnt around to get involved. You dont want to kill the Hocus' followers without him having some role in the fiasco, after all.