New character sheet: the Snoop

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New character sheet: the Snoop
« on: September 05, 2016, 05:30:23 PM »
I've played for a couple months now and eaten up all the additional character sheets I could find, but one particularly struck me as interesting. I like the detective side of the Marmot's character without being a literal animal, foraging for food, and getting pregs. I talked to our MC and with his help, I distilled the more hardboiled detective trope from it into a character sheet. Obvious credit to Lehman and Baker, creators of the Marmot. For your consideration I'd like to submit The Snoop. https://www.scribd.com/document/323092358/The-Snoop
Criticism welcomed.
I'd specifically like to see a game of cat-and-mouse between the Snoop and the Turncoat in a campaign.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2016, 05:42:09 PM by Luke W »

Re: New character sheet: the Snoop
« Reply #1 on: September 06, 2016, 04:01:32 PM »

Seems like an okay playbook for a very, very particular type of AW game. Laying the genre assumptions of hard-boiled detective fiction on top of the genre assumptions of post-apocalyptic fiction makes for an odd match (like, who are these naive people you are gonna lecture? have you been to the apocalypse lately?) -- but I can see it working in a particularly urban, status-quo-y sort of AW game. (If the goal is simply to design something in the same satire-y/weirdo space as the Marmot/Space Mammal, then this is obviously not much of a concern.)

Other random impressions:

* The 'extra snoop perk' is like, hiding in the corner -- but it contains a bunch of kind of nutty things, including several that seem like they should just be Hx questions. Using the word 'ally' is confusing, because there are allies and there are allies (see: the advanced seduce/manipulate move.) Also literally nobody in their right mind is ever going to choose an extra barter from that list.

* Really not a fan of +1 sharp as a playbook move, unless you are quite sure about making this available to all the other playbooks in the game. The only playbook in the basic game that can get sharp +3 is the Angel, and they get it as an advancement; even the other sharp playbooks can't get sharp +3. The same thing is done with cool -- those stats are limited on purpose, so if you're going to override that you should do so for a good reason.

* Wake up and smell the etc. -- apart from the difficulty of finding naive people to lecture, the results of this move seem kind of... boring? You mark experience? You convince them? It doesn't really seem like this move is pulling its weight, fictionally. Contrast with the Hocus' 'speak truth to a mob' move, which seems to occupy a similar space.

* The Special Move just feels totally, jarringly out of genre, especially when the rest of the playbook is so very genre-y. Something more like the Driver's special move would make a lot more sense.

* Expert interrogator also feels out of genre, but not as jarringly. I'd rather see a list of genre-appropriate questions you get to add to Read a Person/Situation.

* The Raymond Chandler move is amazing and hilarious. But it also kind of assumes the player/MC understand the genre conventions at work, and if they do not I can see this being a headache to 'justify' in the fiction.

* Practiced intuition and Dive for cover both seem sensible and fine, but neither really seems 'worth' a move, especially in a generic game of AW: most of the time as MC I'm just going to tell a sharp character if they're being followed, or hint at it heavily enough that they could read a situation if they want. Similarly, rolling +cool to get approximately 1.5 armour once in awhile seems a bit underwhelming.

* Whole lotta roll with +sharp moves.

* Clues keep getting referred to as though they are mechanical objects, but then... they never actually seem to act as mechanical objects? Like, you talk about starting with an extra clue, and getting '1 clue' from moves, and I have a whole giant section of my playbook labelled 'CLUES' -- this makes me feel like they're supposed to some sort of Barter-type thing (vs. just being, y'know, clues)... but I never spend them, or trigger other moves off them, or anything?


Re: New character sheet: the Snoop
« Reply #2 on: September 08, 2016, 01:09:43 PM »
All good criticism, thanks. I'll screw around with it some more and post the updated version in a while.