Tweaked Ruin Runner - is it overpowered ?

Heh, I liked the Pathfinder move. Like you said, it is pretty thematic.

And were you going to change the artifact into a gear option?  If you do so, you could simply make the bolthole choiceless: A small, hidden shelter in the middle of dangerous terrain. It has a stash with oddments worth 2-barter and a small stash of quality medical supplies counting as an angel kit with capacity of 2-stock.

In minor editing stuff, under Scavenger is "find something worth +1barter" supposed to be "find something worth 1-barter". Or is the thing worth 1 more barter than usual?

Rubberduck, it breaks my heart to leave Pathfinder out too, but Ebok points make sense. If you find another way to save the move, lemme know. Hmmm.. what if its bonus are +2 ongoing instead of forward ? Do you think it could work ?

And I like the idea of letting bolthole with just two options (oddments or med supplies) and separating the strange artifact into its own nomad gear option. But doing so would mean a portable augury device, which sounds overpowered to me. (the one from savvyhead is immobile, and the hocus followers are not exactly portable). What do you think ?

About the Scavenger +1barter, its meant as both - if you only pick this option, it means an oddment worth 1-barter, and if you pick it together with, say, a hi-tech object, it means this thing is worth 1 barter more (for a total of 2-barter or more, depending on the hi-tech object).

It's still not clear to me why this playbook should be able to start with +augury, or why augury is particularly related to the playbook?

Oh, the idea is a reference to the Stalker fiction (book, film, videogame), where the protagonists are scavengers hunting for anomalous artifacts which possess weird supernatural effects. Augury was the weirder effect I could find for a AW version of the artifacts.

But yeah, I'm considering taking it out. It would make the Nomad Gear section tighter.

I don't know "stalker" fiction. If I have time in the next two weeks I'll read up on some summations. But as it stands, I haven't had the time to devote to this concept-wise, but from your last comment, I want to go ahead and say this:

The Ruin Runner is about finding stuff in big trash piles, ruins, or hazardous places and then running with the valuable stuff back to people that can use them. Even juryrigging is based around this concept, they just have watched enough people use their scrap that they short-of kind-of know how it works and can try to do it too.

It is a pretty evocative playbook, but it really should be stressed that one of the most fundamental aspects of the playbook, and its charm, is the role it places within the narrative. Its about the fact they're constantly doing stuff for other people. They're good at getting places and daring trouble along the way, but they essentially need someone else there to use their skill set and give them a place. They dont know how to do it alone.

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Again I hadn't read your playbook all that thoroughly, so feel free to dismiss this, but. You seem to have taken a lot of the scrap out of the playbook and put in the tech and this know-how. I worry that it provides an already independent playbook more of the social role that involves them doing these things for themselves, rather then someone else.
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If the focus is about finding strange weird things, maybe you should consider embracing that totally.

Maybe: Drop Scavenger. Use Somewhere out there as the primary playbook move, design it so that it doesn't need a roll. They find stuff like a savvy head works on tech. Literally, its a narrative implication of the class that they can find something that does X. So lets skip the part where X might not be out there, and just give them runner the conditions they'll need to achieve to get X. The work is getting there, just like the savvy heads work is making the thing. That would start you off with a pretty evocative move.

Drop Jury Rigging, this doesn't seem as much of a USE ALL THE TRASH goal, it seems more of a use this weird ass tech. Replace it with a Weird move. I'm not exactly sold on copying the text from anything else, I think you could probably narratively define out you want this guy to interact with the specific loot he's pulling out of the fallen world, and then say what happens on a hit vs a miss, and go from there. I'd personally think that something that combines a theme specific trigger with a mix of jury-rig + the savvy heads read an object. Think about how this move relates to the social placement of the class. If he is just a speced up delivery man then maybe jury-rigging is best after all, but if he is some sleuth backed by tech, maybe there's something more potent he could be using the stuff for.

Packrat is fine. Though If you do start to make this into it's own playbook, it might find a place alongside ruin runner by the end. At which point you'll not want shared moves. I guess a short paragraph of who this guy is and what he does with what he finds/ what specifically he is looking for, would setup that conversation best.

In the Zone, makes me think that this playbook is trying too hard to keep ruin runner alive, and not shifting into where it seems it wants to be. There's not a lot of direct synergy with the other moves as they stand.

Pathfinder, really, I think the Somewhere out There actually does this better. I think perhaps being able to interact with the landscape (as a thing with wants and needs) might make In the Zone a bit more interesting as well, which would also help fill the role this seems to be gunning for.

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+2 Ongoing can be a sure, I'm a fan of you, never fail is fine! But I personally hate it when the players knows for a fact that their +5 stat role hits a partial 7-9 result on a snakeeyes role. I feel that anything that lets this occur is fundamentally removing the realism of the world and thus: is not actually being a fan of the characters. Well once or twice might be fine, but definitely not continuously until the set conditions are fulfilled.

The way I see the playbook, it is more about being proficient in the wasteland. Kinda like the tribal, but where the tribal is mystical and has a tribe, the ruin runner is technological and solitary. Technological here simply meaning that he uses the remains of the golden age. Where the tribal hunts deer, the ruin runner finds canned goods.

To me, his core is that he knows the wasteland, as an artefact from the golden age and a product of the Maelstrom. Immediately following from that is that he can read the landscape, to know where to find stuff, to avoid dangerous terrain, and to use that terrain against others.

In that case he definitely could be a guy that brings stuff back to other people, but he might also just live out there, using his scavenging skills to get what he needs to survive. I guess it all depends on what Silva's view actually is.

All that being said, for the pathfinder, how about +2 forward when you act on the answers, and +1 ongoing the rest of the time as long as you are in this piece of terrain? This leaves it a sitch question, and gives a nice (but hopefully not too nice) boost.

*Exactly* what Rubberduck said. ;-)

About the proposed Pathfinder, I dont know, feels kinda fiddly to me. Ill give it some more thought. *EDIT* Ok, how about this..

Pathfinder: when you use read a sitch to scout a landscape, terrain or location, it counts as advanced.

As per AW book, the advanced version of read a sitch allows you to ask any question you want, not limited to the options listed, if you roll 12+. At first it may seem like a timid improvement, but its not, specially if you remember you can ANY QUESTION YOU WANT, from "how can I pass undetected through this" or "what does that synbarite guard craves?" or even "WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON TO STEP IN THIS SOIL AND WHERE DID HE GO ?". Yeah, shit can get powerful pretty fast, depending only on player creativity. So do we have a winner or not ? ;-D

Ebok:  having Somewhere out There would obfuscate the Tribal, I think, while dissolving the Runner essence. But you have a point about In the Zone. It feels like filler. Suggestions welcome. Perhaps taking it out and increasing the gear options (together with more gear as advancements) ? This would make the character definitely gear-based. (perhaps getting a animal sidekick back, like a dog or a monkey ?)

Aaaaand new version is up: :-D

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByF9qkt14FlUcjU3OWdEUnNlR2c/view?usp=sharing

Tuned down the overall weirdness by taking out both the augury artifact and the Places speak move; Pathfinder gives advanced read a sitch (for reading terrains/locations) with the advanced rules added to the frontpage. Also, replaced the advancement option "get a gang (detail) and leadership" by "pick another nomad gear", as this puts more emphasis on this being a loner and gear-dependent arquetype. I think this is a pretty tight version of the playbook, which I like.

I like it. Though I kinda want an extra move to start. Scavenger + 2. When I look at it as a playbook I want to use, I find it hard to pick only one :p Then again that just means that I have room to get cooler with advances. So.. nevermind. One is good, and then I can pick another move with my first advance.

I also kinda want to add a flare gun to the weapon or gear list. I'm thinking (2-harm close reload incendiary). Can't think of a good gear use for it, but it could be handy as gear-as-established.

Other than that, I think you've got a spelling error in "Pick and extra option on a hit with Scavenger". That should be "an extra option" right?

Wow a flare gun is an awesome idea! I just dont know what to do it gear-wise. xD Perhaps swapping the sawed-off for it ?

I'd rather swap it for the crowbar, if anything should be swapped. Though, I'm a bit iffy about putting it on the weapon list, now that I think about it. It suggests that the flare gun is primarily a weapon. But you probably don't want the scavenger to run around shooting everything with a flare gun.

Maybe give it a move: Once per session fire the flare gun into the air. Any of the other PCs may choose to be nearby, and will arrive on the scene shortly. If no PC is nearby, an NPC will arrive to investigate.