change your character to a new type

The Driver giving up his ride is obviously a case in which he must be switching playbooks.  But it doesn't follow from that that the Driver switching playbooks means he must be giving up his ride.

Just giving up the A no shit driver seems reasonable.
I mean... He doesn't forget how to drive, but the fact that he's a super-driver isn't important anymore.
I could see this work in game. "I'm not that guy anymore, pal. I have a goddamn city to look after, now."

Sometimes you get to keep your bus, sometimes you don't. It depends on everything. The rule is that you leave behind what's your old life, you bring with you what's you, and you and your MC together work out which is which. It's straightforward and clear.

Christopher, nobody here can help you, it's between you and your MC. None of our opinions here in this thread matter at all.

If you and your MC really can't agree, somebody's not playing the game. More rules, of all things, won't solve that.

Sure, and rules aren't exactly what I'm looking for.  More like variety of perspective.  Anyway, this discussion is being good for me, so thanks everyone.

Cool! Then I can help too.

When Rose, our maestro d', became a hardholder, she didn't keep her establishment, but she kept living in it. She just handed its daily operations over to the most promising of her staff. She didn't have to give it up at all; it became an independent success that she could enjoy. 

Although it's a bit meta-gamey I would be concerned about the ex-driver sucking as a character compared to the others if she lost a no-shit driver, due to the stat block being pretty crappy for a driver out of their vehicle. Plus it makes no sense to me that they suddenly become worse at driving!

They lose their one-with-the-vehicle focus, maybe.

I, for one, as an MC, would likely have no problem with an Ex-Driver keeping both her ride AND "a no shit driver."  Ya know, assuming it makes sense in fiction.

I don't think this would make the character "over-powered" at all.  In fact, she's likely to be as "shitty" stat-wise as an Ex-Driver who loses "a no shit driver."  After all, if she's no longer The Driver, how much time is she likely to be spending driving?

I don't think this would make the character "over-powered" at all.  In fact, she's likely to be as "shitty" stat-wise as an Ex-Driver who loses "a no shit driver."  After all, if she's no longer The Driver, how much time is she likely to be spending driving?

Yeah, I don't think anyone's saying the issue is them being overpowered. The issue, for me, is that the character isn't different. Why shouldn't she spend the same about of time driving as before? The game is still rewarding that.

If one of my players brought this concern to me, as written in the OP, I'd have them drop the move and the ride. If they didn't bring it to me, I'd let them keep it. But the OP sounds like the only reason a playbook change is happening is because the game is forcing him to change through the exhaustion of other improvement options and the desire to keep stuff from the original playbook feels to me like a desire to mitigate change in the character, which isn't something I'm interested in at my games.

I'd have them drop the car and the move. If they weren't interested in doing that, I'd recommend retiring the character and playing a new playbook. One of the things I like about AW is that the upward trend in effectiveness has a ceiling at which point the game naturally moves laterally. I'm not fighting the upward trend as much as I'm advocating the lateral one.

I tend to look at AW like a television show and I hate shows that drag on with the same character dynamics. Personal preference and all that.

At the beginning of each session, for each move held over from an old playbook, roll+(that playbooks stat). On a 10+ no problem, you still got it. 7-9 getting rusty, use it this session or lose it. On a miss you're just not so great at that any more, it's gone.

Just for fun. Moves for moves.

At the beginning of each session, for each move held over from an old playbook, roll+(that playbooks stat). On a 10+ no problem, you still got it. 7-9 getting rusty, use it this session or lose it. On a miss you're just not so great at that any more, it's gone.

Just for fun. Moves for moves.

That's pretty nifty! I wonder if it might work better redone to be an end-of-session move instead? With +1 if you used the move, or +3 if you used it more than once.

Could be.

My version is more like "Oh shit, I better use that"
Your version is more like "Oh shit... I forgot to use that!"

Both cool, different flavor.

Actually, I would leave the rest the same - I'd give the player the next session as grace before taking the move away.

So more like this:

At the end of each session, for each move held over from an old playbook, roll+(that playbooks stat). Add +1 if you used the move this session, add +3 if more than once. On a 10+ no problem, you still got it. 7-9 getting rusty, use it next session or lose it. On a miss you're just not so great at that any more, it's gone.

You literally could not lose something you used a lot in this case, you'd have +5 or so.

Here's how something like this cropped up in another game.

The skinner, with each passing day, is becoming more like a battlebabe, and so the change in playbooks is only a matter of time. When she started out, she was established as having a guitar, and she would put on performances, playing guitar and singing, for her Artful & Gracious move. When she flips to battlebabe (because again, it's a when, not an if), then, does she have to give up her guitar, like the driver has to give up his vehicle? Well, that seems odd, if the playbook change necessitates the loss of the instrument. But I could see her purposely choosing to give up her guitar, to signify her change in being. She's a battlebabe now, not a musician.

However, it has become more apparent now that her singing is a signficant part of her Artful & Gracious move, her chosen art. So...if she becomes a battlebabe, does she have to give up her singing voice? That's hyperbolic, of course, but it might be better understood as, "if the Artful & Gracious move was, for her, a core component of being a Skinner, does she have to essentially give up everything attached to that move? Does she have to give up the move itself? Maybe when she becomes a battlebabe, her chosen art changes to something like 'combat' or 'doing murders' or some other good old cliche?"

I think that what this illustrates to me is that the context thing of what makes sense to abandon actually goes one step further. The choice of what this character does abandon is so much more telling than saying "She has to abandon her guitar, she has to abandon her position as a singer in the club." Something needs to have changed, certainly, to get across that she's a battlebabe now, and not a skinner. But to me, the responsibility to portray that shift does not fall on some prescriptive "give up these pieces of equipment" thing; it's much stronger if it's embodied in a specific choice, made by the character (and the player).

So maybe that's one possible answer. Does Annette have to give up Bus? Well, no, not necessarily. But Annette does have to have changed in some fashion, so that she's not who she was before. The exact form of that change is up to you, so long as it's there.

It's more like asking a penetrating question, "How did you change?", as opposed to saying, "CHANGE, DAMMIT!"

Also, Scott, that's a really interesting as a custom move, but it worries me with regard to some of the moves that are harder to use. Would Moonlighting be a move, for instance? How about Insano Like Drano? How about Oftener Right, which relies on other people coming to you, as opposed to you doing anything? How about Touched by Death? I could see this move working well in some games, then, where everyone's okay with losing some of these long-term moves as part of the attrition of switching playbooks, but I could totally see other games where this move would not work at all. Still, really cool to ponder, neat stuff.