Move Stat Question

Hello there,

I recently picked up the sprawl and I'm dissecting it alongside my favorite co-player, and some questions have come bubbling up. I hope the community here doesn't mind if I share them in this thread as they do so.

The first big one:

The moves in AW tend to use a playbook's main stat for their function, and often include a move that allows them to use that main stat in other, highly-used moves for that playbook. To give an example: the brainer is going to have weird +2. Of their 6 moves, 1 is a weird bonus, 3 roll +weird, and 2 substitute +weird for other stats (one for hot, and one for sharp). In other words, this character is (a) fucking weird, and (b) highly competent. All the playbooks have a similar effect, though not all are 6/6 like the brainer.

By comparison, looking at the Sprawl book, I see the hacker in particular is quite diversified. The hacker seems to require +synth, +mind, +edge, and +cool to run the Matrix moves, and has no playbook moves to transfer their competence at +mind (or whatever else) over into other moves.

I was wondering what the intention here is? I see that for some things you can replace normal rolls with +synth if you have the appropriate cyber-parts, so I can see a general sort of push to incentivize people to chrome up. The flip side is, as far as I can see, even if the decker wanted to chrome up, it wouldn't affect most of their moves, so that doesn't seem like the underlying design decision.

Can anyone clarify for me what they feel the effect on gameplay is of this change in stats emphasis, and de-powering of deckers is? The other playbooks don't seem so diversified, so it seems like an intentional decision.

I've noticed this as well. To me it's not a bad thing. Having a character using a single stat for every move seemed really broken to me. I am curious if it was on purpose.

Hi miedvied

Early iterations of the Hacker were more focused, but because the matrix moves are the main moves that apply while in the Matrix, having those moves focused meant that the Hacker was nearly always rolling at +2, sometimes at +1 and never at lower numbers. Rolling at +2 all the time is pretty boring.

The high competency of the Hacker comes from moves like console cowboy that give extra hold to avoid dangers, programs which give a host of specialised bonuses not available outside the matrix, and the 7-9 results on the Matrix not being as dangerous as those outside the matrix.

So my answer is that they're not de-powered, but the balance is different, and that's intentional. Have you found that they seem less competent in play, or is this an observation from reading? If from reading, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts after playing them, and if from play, I'd be interested to hear why the things I outlined above didn't help.