Snuffed - A Morbid Hack

Aw Christ, I completely dropped the ball on this - I've found a group that can do 1AM EST Tuesday, and I can totally fork you in if you're free, but I got completely sidelined getting those guys set up that I didn't update you.

I am all kinds of freaking dumb, I swear to God. If you can't make it, I'll see if I can arrange a BFA-specific session.

So hey, that thing I was trying to do actually happened. A couple of fine folks from the Drunk N' Ugly forums carved a bloody swathe through a small town in South Dakota, in an adventure we might finish a little later on, but as it stands, I think everything went rather well. Three hours of terrible people doing terrible things to perfectly nice NPCs, plus some really great critique at the end of it all. A great experience to play with these guys, and I can only hope I get to commit further atrocities in the future with people here, too.

One word of warning, there's some intermittent popping from the mic an other audio cockups throughout the recording. My b, yo.

The MP3

YouTube Links:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Aftermath & Critique

A key point that's been brought up in these playtests has been player motivation and bringing the group together, and now that I've had one 'mission' scenario and one 'sandbox' scenario played out, I've started to collate what needs fixing/fleshing out, so I'll keep a list here for keeping track:

* Give players more reasons to interact/team up with one another.
* Figure out how to make the playbooks more than inventive toolkits for causing pain.
* Collate moves into 'Public' and 'Specific' to help with cross-playbook move choices. Maybe alter/expand some playbooks to have viable selectable moves.

That being said, one thing I'm noticing right now is that this system lacks real long-term appeal. It's mechanically fine for one session, but I get the feeling that it's going to be hard for players to connect with, essentially, a bunch of antagonists whose only purpose is to hurt other people. It's essentially enforced murderhobo rules without the benefit of the cast being technically good guys. I'm kicking ideas around, and I'll come back to this in a few days ideally with a fresh perspective, but I'm getting this nagging feeling that this scenario and style would be better suited to a more intensive sit-down-and-play system than the more narrative-focused PBTA engine.

Blah. Here's hoping I can figure something out.

Two things. Firstly, do you think it's about time this got it's own sub-forums, the second is that being a murderhobo isn't always a bad thing, especially when you are literally a soul-eating monster. The issue for me is pressure. In AW, the monthly barter cost prevents turtling as an individual without significant preparation. Turtling as a group after gathering enough resources to be sustainable is excellent gameplay and strategy.

How about this: At the end of the session, spend X Creep (5, 10?). If you don't roll+barter spent instead. 10+, pick one, 7-9, MC picks two, 6- something bad. The options are related to the spirit fading, becoming less real, and leaking energy. Other players can boost you back up enough, but there is a constant pressure to "farm" the mortal realm for enough creep to survive. Using it to heal and boost is suddenly a serious cost. Teamwork is rewarded, but so is backstabbing to get an edge.

How does that sound?

Aw Christ, I completely dropped the ball on this - I've found a group that can do 1AM EST Tuesday, and I can totally fork you in if you're free, but I got completely sidelined getting those guys set up that I didn't update you.

I am all kinds of freaking dumb, I swear to God. If you can't make it, I'll see if I can arrange a BFA-specific session.

No worries man! It's just a game. I'd still love to play but if you mean 1AM Sydney time I don't want to stay up that late.

Two things. Firstly, do you think it's about time this got it's own sub-forums, the second is that being a murderhobo isn't always a bad thing, especially when you are literally a soul-eating monster. The issue for me is pressure. In AW, the monthly barter cost prevents turtling as an individual without significant preparation. Turtling as a group after gathering enough resources to be sustainable is excellent gameplay and strategy.

How about this: At the end of the session, spend X Creep (5, 10?). If you don't roll+barter spent instead. 10+, pick one, 7-9, MC picks two, 6- something bad. The options are related to the spirit fading, becoming less real, and leaking energy. Other players can boost you back up enough, but there is a constant pressure to "farm" the mortal realm for enough creep to survive. Using it to heal and boost is suddenly a serious cost. Teamwork is rewarded, but so is backstabbing to get an edge.

How does that sound?

I like the notion of putting players on a rolling platform to keep stuff moving, but I'm not sure if that might tip the balance in the favour of certain playbooks who can brute force Creep out of NPCs. I'm thinking maybe creating a new sheet for all the playbooks much akin to the 'Rage' section in the Revenant playbook, where you put down your drives, emotions, desires, etc.

You start off with some basic notes, then when you act upon them, you can flesh them out a little more. If someone helps you act upon them, you can expand your own, or agree to expand one-another's and mark XP for doing so. Once you've put, say, three or four notes into a section, you can work out what 'closure' would be to you, whether that's revenge, understanding, power, etc, at which point that aspect can be tapped to give you +1 ongoing during relevant situations.

Say, a Gloom has been developing their Desire route and they've come to the conclusion that they just want their work from their mortal life to get the recognition it deserves. Thereafter, whenever they use their skills as a performer to accomplish something meaningful to them, they can tap that Desire route to take +1 on the roll. MC caveat would still apply to prevent ludicrous spamming, as well as ensuring players create a specific enough end result.

No worries man! It's just a game. I'd still love to play but if you mean 1AM Sydney time I don't want to stay up that late.

Also, Spigot, totally sorry 'bout that. I do have another guy who was looking to play but couldn't make the session, so if you're interested in playing a one-shot, I'll see what I can whip up. American EST was what the last group were working on, but we only started that late because one of 'em finished work at midnight. Anyway, I'll see what I can do.

Definitely do all of that, but maybe have fictional rewards rather than numerical, or if anything XP/Creep/limited use bonuses. I feel that doing something like that should have it's own, equally obvious reward written into the Drive/Desire.

Regarding being able to brute force creep, invariably those playbooks find it most difficult to make and maintain useful NPC-relations. Sure, the Ripper might be able to head down to the mortal realm and churn out 5 Creep at regular intervals, but what about the Gloom that got a deal with a minor demon to provide entertainment at parties every second weekend and can get a loan of 10 Creep or more whenever they need it? I think if the afterlife was more fleshed out about deals, manipulations and negotiations, while the mortal realm is a combination farm/playground the non-murderhobo classes (especially not my Swarm) might have a more interesting time.

Totally agree on that. I think the afterlife needs to be the supporting foundation more than the mortal world - that's something entirely on me to actually do when running these tests, but maybe some way of adding this to the playbooks would be useful, too. I'll have to chew it over some more.

Another thing I need to think about is paring down some of the mechanics. The entire card-based NPC generation sounded fun on paper, but in practice it was clunky, hard to keep track of and didn't really add anything to the experience. This would mean rewriting some of the moves, the Gloom and Skinjacker in particular, but considering that we're considering adding more stuff for players to juggle, making some of the other stuff less cluttered might be a nice idea.

Spending Creep also might need less crunch to it - assigning limits to what's supposed to be weird ghost mojo feels a little stilted, whereas in-test last time, a situation came up where the Ripper's pet chainsaw gained a temporary supercharge by using the 'Drain Creep' aspect of the Traumatize move. It was a nice twist to the scene, it had a mechanical benefit (+1 to whatever Bert did next), and it was entirely organic without needing resource management.

Basically, I'm starting to think that rather than treating Creep like a resource that can be stockpiled, it could be simpler to treat it as a Surplus/Satisfied/Want balance.

You roll +Eerie at the start of the session. On a 10+ you've got Surplus. On a 7-9 you're okay, but you could be better. On a Miss you're going to start suffering if you don't feed.

Then, when you're in-game, you can declare 'I'm going to use my mojo to...' and then tell the MC what you want to do. The bigger the request, the more the player puts at stake, the more they have to gain and lose, so it's not a safe bet. That way Creep becomes a scarcer, but much more fluid and useful resource, without the need to stockpile it for future events.

Problem is, it winds up sounding a lot like the Influence move, which steps on another mechanic.

BLAAAAAAARGH this is hard.

I reckon just reducing the constraints would add enough fluidity. Using the surplus/want scale is fine and all, but what if the players want to set up some sort of trade? Without a numerical backing, barter becomes a little more difficult.

How about when you use creep you roll+creep spent. Means that you don't exactly know how much you will need to heal/supercharge, but you can just flood your essence with power and hope for the best. It would be awesome if 10+ had bonus effects as energy just pours off you.

Also, the same as barter: ask how each player gathers spiritual energy. Memories, life force, memes? Who knows?

Also, Spigot, totally sorry 'bout that. I do have another guy who was looking to play but couldn't make the session, so if you're interested in playing a one-shot, I'll see what I can whip up. American EST was what the last group were working on, but we only started that late because one of 'em finished work at midnight. Anyway, I'll see what I can do.

Oh in that case I can easily make it. Yeah I'm interested in whatever you can offer, thanks.

I REVIVE THIS THREAD WITH NECROMANCY MOST FOUL

And by that I mean Jesus it's been a while since I posted here.

So I've been knocking away at this system in the background for quite a while now, running playtests, etc, and I think we're nearly there. The playbooks are pretty much complete, although I've yet to get some skins played extensively, and the rules have been fleshed out and clarified to a reasonable level.

See below for the revised rules and playbooks (with artwork done by the fabulous Crazon of the Al Dente Rigarmortis podcast):

Core Rules WIP

Illustrated Playbooks

I'm now thirsting for playtests and thoughts on how things stand. If anyone has anything they want to bring up, please do!

The artwork, oh my. Very Fallout, matches the tone of the game perfectly. Since Ripper is my bae, I noticed that "Needs More Gun" has a reference to "Tenacious", which I haven't been able to find anywhere. Stay tuned for a playtest which may or may not occur tomorrow.