Writing Playbooks

I've written a few playbooks now, and I've looked through a lot of really promising builds for playbooks and some that are just atrocious. Having scoured the Barf Forth Apocalyptica forums and committed to memory many of the random details from Vincent about how he wrote the original 11 playbooks, I feel pretty confident in writing this step by step process for writing a playbook.

Step 1: Have an open-ended concept
This is key. Your concept is everything, it helps define what you're going to write about the playbook. But you can't cling to it like a bible. Your vision of the archetype can't be constrained and must be open to interpretation. The best playbooks have a concept which is clearly understood and open to enough interpretation that it doesn't force the character to behave a certain way. The archetype molds to the character, not the other way around.
Look at the core playbooks and you can see the archetypes clearly: the Brainer is a weird psychic, the Angel is a competent medic, the Driver is a car obsessive, etc.

Step 2: Balance isn't everything
Every playbook has a stat block that usually includes a "best" stat. In almost every instance, the stat blocks add up to a total of +3 (+2 +1 -1 +1 +0 = +3). In some instances a character starts with two stats at +2 and those break the mold, but those stat lines also have a consistent math of adding up to +2 (+2 +2 +0 -1 -1 = +2), the price you pay for starting with two +2s is one less beneficial point.
Also, every playbook should start with three moves, or things, that make it distinct. These don't need to be balanced in power with other playbooks, as long as the character simply has 3 things. Look at the core playbooks and they all have three things to start: the Gunlugger starts with a choice of 3 moves, the Driver has their car (1) the no shit driver move (2) and then a choice of a second move (3), and the Savvyhead has their workspace (1) and a choice of 2 more moves (2 and 3).
Again, there are some playbooks that break the mold, but these tend to be balanced within themselves:
the Battlebabe only chooses 2 moves to start, but they have a Cool +3 and that's their third thing
the Hardholder only has their hold and a gang, with moves that accompany each, however these are bigger than the holds and gangs other playbooks can get as improvements, plus the Hardholder explicitly never needs to spend money for food and lodging
the Operator gets gigs and moonlighting, plus one more move, but the Operator's gigs outnumber what other characters can get as improvements

Step 3: Scarcity is the name of the game
One of the key things when writing moves and improvements for your playbook is to remember the theme of scarcity. In other words, you can't get all of the options! Nothing is perfect in Apocalypse World and you're always left wanting a little more, this should apply to character improvement as well. If your playbook has 5 moves to choose from and you can choose 3 during character creation, then you should think about adding a 6th move, maybe even a 7th move, or limiting the "get a new playbook move" improvement so that there's one move you can't get.
Again, look at the examples with the core game:
the Skinner starts with 2 moves and can get 2 more through improvements, but there are 5 Skinner moves total
the Gunlugger starts with 3 moves and can get 2 more through improvements, but there are 7 Gunlugger moves total

Step 4: Peer review
Share your ideas with your gaming friends and ask them for criticism. Share your ideas in the forums and ask for criticism. There is no better resource for criticism than a gaming community, just remember to not let all criticism affect your work. When I first shared the Wolf some people noted the villainous nature of the archetype and said they didn't think it fit with the game, I ignored that criticism because FUCK YOU! Don't tell me how to play the game! Just because it wouldn't be fun for you or your group doesn't mean it won't be fun for me and mine. Those kinds of criticisms about the theme and tone of your work are useless. In a way, they are just an outsider reaction similar to that lack of trust one displays at the gaming table when somebody else is narrating the action.
But when somebody says "Hey, it looks like your math is wrong." or "Isn't this move just a weaker version of going aggro?" Those are valid. Listen to them.
Scratch that! Listen to everybody. Just keep your bullshit detector on a high frequency.
And don't wait until your playbook is finished to share it either. As soon as you have something to work with you should be talking about it and sharing it to see where the cracks are. Poke and prod at your work until you think it's solid.

Step 5: Play it!
Once you think your work is solid, you have got to play it. Get other people to play it if you can. Play it, play it, and play it some more. Because you will never have played it enough and somebody might still find something wrong with it.

That's all I've got. Good luck!

Introducing THE DOG

Everybody's got to eat, and humans have most of the food. It's win-win as far as you're concerned because most people seem to like you just because of what you are, without even being able to get to know you. If foraging and stealing isn't working for you, you do have other abilities you can rely upon.
Man's best friend. If they only knew.

When I was talking with Willow Palecek about fleshing out the missing spots of her The Boy & His Dog playbook, I spent some time re-reading the novella by Harlan Ellison titled "A Boy and His Dog" and I woke up the next day from a dream where I was a dog like Blood, telepathic and in the wasteland, and I mentioned the dream to Willow saying it would be an unusual spin if the playbook were for the dog and the human companion was the NPC that you could control and guide. Her response was "You should write it!" So I did.

SOME NOTES
1) The playbook is a little bit derivative, but my original write-up for the "psychic dog" archetype was incredibly complex and by trying to simplify it I realized that some of the things I had written were simply unnecessary.

2) Ears up, nose down is my rewrite of Willow's Somewhere over the wasteland move, which I felt the original was too harsh on the player, and Third nostril is just the Angel's Sixth sense. Once I had given the Dog a +3 in Sharp as one of it's main "things" I felt the move was perfect and didn't want to rewrite something new and convoluted to do a similar thing. Besides, the Angel's Sixth sense is identical to the Driver's Weather eye so I also didn't feel I was breaking a rule of playbook creation by having an identical move with a different name. Then Lassie come home is not identical to Bonefeel but I used Bonefeel as the starting point. The hold from Lassie come home is triggered by wanting to help or interfere with another PC, so it's meant to act as a "that dog that's been following you was just waiting for you behind the door" or "that dog that's been following you leaps in through the window, attacking that guy" sort of move.

3) The human companion is a unique feature of the playbook, separate from the A Friend in the Wasteland starting move. They always have +tele-radar so the dog will always have at least one person they can consistently communicate with. The A Friend in the Wasteland move doesn't give +tele-radar because another character might conceivably take that move. Think of A Friend in the Wasteland as the "I'm getting a loyal follower" move. It's written in such a way that the character could be a confidant or ally, like Batman's butler Alfred or Batman's sidekick Robin, but when The Dog has a follower they get +tele-radar.

4) You're a psychic dog! is not a move. That's why it's on the back of the playbook and it's not listed as a starting move. It's a feature of the playbook, and other characters should not be able to get it, unless your MC is running a very weird game.

link = the Dog playbook
if you use this in your group, I would love to hear about how it played, please e-mail me with your stories:
nerdwerds AT gmail

Dear HBO

Hi, I love you HBO.
I just wanted to get that out there, because you were a part of my life when I was growing up and though I haven't seen you in years, I have seen a lot of the things you've made. I saw so many movies when I was growing up thanks to you. Movies that helped define my tastes and my interests. I remember when we got our first HBO viewing guide in the mail, and I remember my family preparing to see the new premiere movie every week. Even if we had seen them in the theatre months earlier, knowing they were coming to our TV screen thanks to you was exciting. Chariots of Fire. Terms of Endearment. Platoon. Star Wars. Quest for Fire. Never Say Never Again. The Road Warrior. Splash. Beverly Hills Cop. Predator. I remember watching them for the first time or revisiting an enjoyable film again all thanks to you. That intro where the HBO logo appears and the viewer is sucked into the side of the O and then the inside of the O becomes the screen where the movie is about to play, I remember seeing that for the first time and getting as excited to watch a film as I might sitting the front row of a theatre and dabbing popcorn into my mouth.

And because of you I saw a lot of weird indie films, TV series, and original programs that weren't available on regular broadcast television. The Hitchhiker. Encyclopedia Brown. Not Necessarily the News. Dream On. Fraggle Rock. Kids in the Hall. Tales from the Crypt. Braingames! Oh man, I miss Braingames! Those shows were all awesome!

Now, you might notice all of my cherished films and shows all come from a certain era: the 80s. That's because in the 90s we had to drop HBO from our cable plan. In fact, things were so tough that we didn't even have cable at all for a few years, but when we got it again HBO wasn't an option because it was just too expensive. And hey, I was a kid and my main job was attending school, so any vote I had was null and void anyway. But now I'm an adult. I pay my own bills and I could get HBO too. Except, it's too expensive.

See, it's only expensive because I have to go through the cable company, and they'd rather sell me 300 channels I don't want for quadruple the cost of your channel before I can even get the option of spending some more money to get access to your programming. But the difference between those 300 channels and you is only twenty measly dollars. Now I spend about $15 every month to watch movies from Netflix, and they have a huge selection. In fact, they have a lot of your shows on DVD so that's probably the main reason I'm subscribed with them. I'm looking at your current programming line-up and you have about 17 shows that are under your production and I have to think, if you made your programs available online as a subscription service like Netflix you could cut out the cable company as a middleman and sell your shows directly to people like me. I would gladly pay $15 a month just to watch those 17 HBO programs, and what's really funny about that is that I probably wouldn't even watch all of them. But I would still gladly pay!

The rules for broadcasting have changed. Pirating shows is rampant as old companies refuse to adapt to the new technology and try to lock down their services, usually only to the consternation of those who want to watch and always to no avail. Once it exists, it's out there. Once you've broadcast it, it can be recorded, uploaded, downloaded, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. The guys who are going to come out on top are those who look ahead and innovate and embrace this format that future customers have already embraced and know inside and out. In fact, I can watch any of your currently broadcast shows whenever I want for free.

And yet, I am still willing to pay you $15 a month to watch your shows! Because I want you to succeed, and I want you to keep making shows that are awesome. I'm just not willing to pay my cable company the $60 a month admission for the privilege of paying you $15 a month to watch those shows on a timetable.

Now, maybe you have some deal with the cable companies that's more lucrative for you to stay where you are, and that's cool. Business is business, right? But, as long as you're locked into a relationship with some big jerk who keeps trying to dig deeper into the rest of our wallets, I and a lot of other people have $15 set aside just for you every month that you're not getting.

At some point you have to start wondering between the options of using a middleman or reaching your customers directly: which business is more lucrative?

What is Apocalypse World?

For distribution at conventions and introducing to new players, I created this informative brochure about Apocalypse World in the style of a character playbook from Apocalypse World.



link = What is Apocalypse World?

http://www.apocalypse-world.com

Introducing THE WOLF

The world is a dangerous place filled with smoke and mirrors, it’s a steaming pile of crap where others bicker and fight over meaningless twaddle. They circle each other like dogs, waiting to bite the closest friend with a leg up. You’re in this world too, but you see through the smoke, you’re above the crap, and you have the leash. You just have to teach them all who’s really in charge.


Originally written in a flurry of activity as a response to the Solace. I was never entirely happy with some of the moves I had written and one move in particular was rewritten five times before I eventually just abandoned it and wrote something new to replace it. This is probably the third version of the playbook, but maybe not the final version since I still need to playtest it.

SOME NOTES
1) The Wolf is a villain. It gives a player the opportunity to be an additional threat impulse, but they will have to contend with NPC threats just like the other players. I initially planned on calling the playbook The Instigator and He's got a gun! was the first move I wrote. This quickly changed when I embraced the concept that a player might want to actively be a wolf of the maelstrom (as described in the Solace playbook).

2) Many of the moves are literal reverses of the Solace's moves. He's got a gun! is the opposite of Disarming presence, Taking care of business is the opposite of An understanding, and Howling into the wind is the opposite of A higher standard. The Wolf is not just a predatory character, but I envisioned it being the antithesis of the Solace.

3) The suitcase of secrets was my take on the opposition of the Solace's threshold. I don't expect NPC wolves would all have suitcases, but this Wolf does because it is THE Wolf. I envision the suitcase as being a direct conduit to whatever sentient force might exist within or as a part of the world's psychic maelstrom. The suitcase is not just a tool for the Wolf, but it's an object that allows the MC to barf forth apocalyptica every time it's used, carried, or looked at.

4) Finally, keen eyes might notice that when you retire your character you can do so "as a threat" and this is exactly what it means. You give the character to the MC and they can keep using it as a threat impulse within the game. In general, I think retiring your character should give the player a bit of dictatorial control as to what happens to that character, and being able to say that your old Wolf is still out there fucking with people is just too cool to pass up!

link = the Wolf playbook
if you use this in your group, I would love to hear about how it played, please e-mail me with your stories:
nerdwerds AT gmail

Dungeon World Resources

Dungeon World Content Mega-Post - Updated 4/3

I update this post regularly. If you would like anything you've made to be added to this post, email either jeikobu73 AT yahoo (he's the primary maintainer) or nerdwerds AT gmail (this is my blog). As this post ages, some of this content might disappear. If you find any of the links below are dead or wonky, please let me know.

Link to the original post on Something Awful



:siren: Scrape and Evil Mastermind's Dungeon World GM's Guide :siren:

Are you just too confused about everything Dungeon World has to offer? Fret not, for you have a handy guide! SA's own Scrape and Evil Mastermind have come together in a collaboration to create a veritable compendium of clarifications, examples, and insights on building worlds that players can enjoy. For all peoples who are interested in Dungeon World! Also includes additional classes and races brought about by Emong and his wonderful contributions.



Other DM Aids:
aldantefax's Career Move ideas
CADPAT's C'thulhu-style front and custom "sanity" move
CADPATs Deck of Many Things
Evil Mastermind's Madness Mechanics
Evil Mastermind's Quicksteel items
Fenarisk's Homestead playbook
Glazius' Gnomes
gnome7's Basic Rules cheat sheet
ImpactVector's Campaign and Adventure Fronts
LemonCurdistan's Base Class Alignment Moves list
LemonCurdistan's Base Class Racial Moves list
madadric's tribute to Michael Jackson
madadric's Heartseeker Talisman item and Rope Bridge custom move
MadRhetoric's Paladins of unusual races
Mattie's Character Sheet Spreadsheets (Ich's additional spreadsheets, in the same format)
Neceros' character sheet with auto calculator and form fillable boxes

Monsters:
:siren: Captain Indigo's Monster Creation tips
dwarf74's Basic D&D monsters
Evil Mastermind's Elemental liches, in progress, includes Elemental champion compendium classes
Evil Mastermind's Mind Flayer
jonthegm's Wight
LemonCurdistan's Draigs and Spiderhorse
Mikan's Last Stand Monsters (DTRPG link)
PublicOpinion's Ecology of the Void
PublicOpinion's Handmaidens of the Spider Queen
PublicOpinion's Hollow Man
PublicOpinion's Liar
PublicOpinion's Morddreggoste



New Classes:

alternate Thief Character classes, by Justin Schmid

Compendium Classes, by Tim Franzke
Androc's Arcane Duelist
Arrrthritis' Beastmaster, in progress
Asininecurist and gnome7's Noble
berenzen's Elemental Knight, in progress
Desty's Merchant Prince
devilmaydry's Conflux, in progress
ElegantFugue's Marksman
:siren: Elmo Oxygen's Medic
Ergonomix's Mastermind
EscortMission's Beguiler, in progress
Fenarisk's Assassin
Fenarisk's Leader
Flavirus and Okasvi's Augur
Flavivirus' update to Sage LaTorra's Battlemind
:siren: GimpInBlack's Gladiator
Glazius' Giant weaponry
gnome7's Alternate Playbooks Packet (Artificer, Mage, Priest, Templar)
gnome7's Cultist
:siren: gnome7's Dashing Hero
gnome7's Drider
gnome7's Improved Fighter
gnome7's Improved Wizard
gnome7's True Friend
Evil Mastermind's Warlord, in progress
Kai Tave's Warlord
Kaja Rainbow's Imposter
KillerQueen's Diabolist, in progress
Lemon Curdistan's Shaman
:siren: madadric's Spellslinger (DTRPG link)
MadRhetoric's Oracle, level 1-5 teaser version
MadRhetoric's Sharpshooter, level 1-5 teaser version
MadRhetoric's Swashbuckler, level 1-5 teaser version
megane's alternate Wizard moves
:siren: megane and gnome7's Mage
:siren: Mikan's Warlock
:siren: Mors Rattus' Initiate
Nemesis of Mole's Automaton Bard and Storm Wizard
Nemesis of Mole's Vampire Killer
NinjaDebugger's Ninja, in progress
Okasvi's Elf
Okasvi's Scholar, in progress
:siren: Rulebook Heavily's Namer
Sears Poncho's Charlatan
Shamblercow's Hardened Convict
Shamblercow's Necromancer, in progress
:siren: TheLoneAmigo and gnome7's Artificer
The Supreme Court's Necromancer
:siren: TombsGrave's Psion
wrl's Knight, in progress
wrl's Hot Shot, in progress


Compendium Classes:
Androc and gnome7's Compendium Class Pack, which includes the Assassin, the Cursed Knight, the Demiurge, the Firebrand, the Juggernaut, and the Swashbuckler
Androc's Ascendant
Benly's ...Harbinger?
bugcatcher's Monster Tamer, in progress
Desty's Zombie
Emong's Compendium Classes.txt ZIP file
Emong's Doppelganger
FrozenGoldfishGod's The Chosen
gnome7's Marked Ninja
Hugoon Chavez's Dragon Marks
KillerQueen's Jojo's Bizarre Adventure compendium classes
Lemon Curdistan's Avowed
MadRhetoric's Wishbearer and Eternal Protector
Mikan's ...Broken Spirit?
Mikan's Monster Hunter
Mors Rattus' Ronin and Blindfighter, don't know how long they'll stay up
Okasvi's Miscellanious Compendium Classes
Okasvi's Immortal
Okasvi's Vampire
PublicOpinion's Hat Master
PublicOpinion's Honorary Librarian (includes extra race options)
Tollymain's Leviathan Master
Tollymain's The Aware



Settings and Adventures:
aldante_fax's Infinite Dungeon
Danoss' Living Dungeon World
FIGHTING-MAN's Streets of Marienburg, a Warhammer Fantasy playset of World of Dungeons.
GimpInBlack's Dark Sun World
InfiniteJester's Mutant World. a Gamma World hack
madadric's Land of the Dead
Mikan's Twin Spirit Isle
Mors Rattus' Seventh World, a Seven Seas hack
PublicOpinion's Agram's Temple


Published Books:
Dungeon Planet


Support
If you'd like to support the various goons who make these wonderful things, you can throw money at the following places:

Mikan's Fünhaver Industries
Gnome7's DTRPG publisher account
madadric's DTRPG publisher account

My Kickstarted Games

In order of projected release here are, with brief commentary and excluding video games, all of the games or game-related kickstarters I have thrown money into.

Farmageddon: Estimated Delivery: July 2012, got my game 1 month late

New Fire: Aztec RPG: Estimated Delivery: July 2012, still being worked on

Champions of ZED: Estimated Delivery: August 2012, draft finished but where is the book?

Cure the Darkness: Estimated Delivery: August 2012, haven't played it yet

Dwimmermount: Estimated Delivery: August 2012, LATE and it looks like it's moving forward again

Our Last Best Hope: Estimated Delivery: August 2012, got my book but haven't read it yet

Zombicide: Estimated Delivery: September 2012, EARLY

Axes and Anvils: Estimated Delivery: November 2012, seems dead in the water

OGRE Designer's Edition: Estimated Delivery: November 2012, production difficulties

Fate Core: Estimated Delivery: March 2013, got some pdfs but the book is late

Spears of the Dawn: Estimated Delivery: March 2013, was delivered 2 months early!!

Ehdrigohr: Estimated Delivery: April 2013, slow moving but consistent

Tavern Cards: Estimated Delivery: April 2013, regular progress and updates

Adventures Dark and Deep Players Manual: Estimated Delivery: June 2013, it's looking good

Numenera: Estimated Delivery: July 2013, I expect that if this is delayed it will still release this year

Achtung! Cthulhu: Estimated Delivery: August 2013, KS still in progress

Horror on the Orient Express: Estimated Delivery: August 2013, they might be late but I'm not too worried

Deadwood Studios USA: Estimated Delivery: September 2013, KS still in progress

Green means delivered on time, or not delivered yet but not late
Yellow means late but delivered
Red means late and not yet delivered

It's hard to write a review of a game that is written on the back of a business card, so I'll limit myself to three words:
So fuckin' cool!

link = Vast & Starlit

Dwimmermount Debacle

I know what it's like to suffer loss. My grandmother had Alzheimer's during the last years of her life. I sat with my grandfather and held his hand as he died and whispered "I love you" after his final stuttering breath.
I know what it's like to be depressed. To wake up every day and see no solutions to my problems, to have no energy, to waste time in front of the TV only to realize the last 12 hours were spent doing nothing.
I don't believe in a god that takes an active role in our lives, and have never bought in to the idea that suffering is a blessing from god, or a trial of faith, so I never had a spiritual outlet that I felt comfortable turning to for support. Prayer can only take you so far until you realize it's just a mantra for meditation. Churches can do nothing for me, and the writings of Thomas Payne and Benjamin Franklin stir more evocative spiritual feelings in me than anything I've ever read in the bible.
I don't have a family either, at least not a supportive one. It sucks growing up as an outsider in school but I was always an outsider in my own home as well. I've never felt like I could trust anybody in my family, not with secrets and not with emotional support, not even my brothers or my parents.

Why do you need to know all of this? Because this is my frame of reference.

Here are the facts as we know them:

James Maliszewski hasn't responded to emails from Autarch in three months.

James Maliszewski hasn't paid artists for their work on the Dwimmermount project.

James Maliszewski wrote a post six weeks ago asking for prayers and compassion.

The kickstarter for Dwimmermount raised over $48,000 with over 1,000 backers (www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/dwimmermount)

Tavis Allison, from Autarch, plans on going to James'es house to meet with him face to face

Some people think James'es behavior shows that he has taken the money and run.* Maybe not run off, but that he's not going to deliver on his responsibilities. Some people think he's just incapable of dealing with his father's death and has cut off communication unwillingly.

I don't think James is a thief, but I suspect that there's more to his silence than just grieving. Perhaps he's embarrassed or ashamed of being silent for so long. Perhaps he just doesn't want to touch his computer and has no idea of what is being said about him. Perhaps he's planning on finishing up what he needs to do to complete the Dwimmermount, but he's just putting it off because he knows he's not in the right frame of mind. Who the hell knows? And that's what is so maddeningly frustrating about this situation. Nobody knows what's going on. It's certainly easier to look at it from the outside and think James is keeping the money and never going to finish the project because he has divorced himself from all conversation, he hasn't interacted or spoken up. The only presence he's made known is to tell people how much shock he's been in, and that was six weeks ago.

The delays have been going on for longer than three weeks, or even three months. The first delay happened last summer. I've been there, I know what that's like when emotions get in the way of work. For myself, as somebody who has lived through stress and depression and tragedy, the hard truth is that somebody has to kick him in the ass and tell him that over a thousand people gave him money to see his vision become a reality, and that should mean something to him. He's had enough time to grieve. Three months without contact? He has time to write a multi-paragraph post about the shock he has been in for months but he doesn't have time to write a three sentence email to Autarch? He doesn't have 5 minutes to send the money he owes to his artists? He can't spare 5 minutes every other week to perhaps write one sentence, 144 characters or less, about what kind of progress he's making on his emotions?

My sympathy and patience are exhausted upon hearing this news. It sounds like the visit from Tavis might be exactly what James needs to pull himself out of his doldrums. Until Tavis reports back on his visit, I'm of the opinion that the only thing James can do to redeem his behavior (or lack thereof) would be to own up to it and either hand the project off to somebody else or promise to get back to work. Even if work on Dwimmermount wasn't finished for another year, the silence is the part that makes all of the rest of this situation totally unacceptable.





* Re: Your Dungeon is Suck. I think the criticism written by it's anonymous author is valid more often than not, it's unfortunate they feel they need to hide behind the safety of anonymity to dish out their critique or resort to puerile jokes in order to be heard, but then again, they have more readers than me so what the fuck do I know?

It amazes me what some people do with their LEGOs.

Apocalypse World fiction: Introducing Tully

I'm not much to look at.

No, that's not true. I really am something to look at! I'm uglier than a turd left to dry out on a plate of moldy cheese, okay? I'm not embellishing or exaggerating either. I'm a freak and I'm proud. If that bothers you it doesn't bother me. Most of the time I just ignore the staring, sometimes I even pretend it's because they can see who I really am underneath all of this applesauce. And what is that? A being of pure joy. No, not really. But the world is shit and deep down everybody wants it to be cool again, and I may look like a walking hemorrhoid that just popped but deep down I'm the best friend you'll ever have. I bet you're wondering what I could possibly look like that is so darn tooting awful, huh? Well, I'll tell you.

Most people who look at me aren't really sure where my skin is, but it's underneath all of the mash sliding down my body. I'm confident that if I scraped all of this dirt off of me you'd see a scrawny body with no muscles or paunch anywhere, and the skin would be hugging my bones like a hooker wraps her legs around their best customer. Skin and bones is what they call the boy that lives at the end of the road, but he's a floundering pig compared to how wiry my limbs are.

Of course, you might not ever notice that because I got this perspiration problem. You see my body likes to sweat, but it sweats out oil that stings the nostrils and makes the back of your throat itch. That oil is thick too, it builds up in the folds of my joints and in the crevices of skin between my bones and it turns black. It doesn't really harden, but it's thick enough that it looks like I got a layer of dark syrup all over my body.

Nobody is ever really sure what to make of this stuff. It's oily, it falls off of me sometimes, and it stinks like moldy cheese. I tried drying some of it out once and it just disappeared into the air after a few days. Even though it gets chunky and heavy when it's building up on my body, I think it's just sweat and so that's what I call it, when I'm not putting others at ease by calling it something else like strawberry fluff, Aztec gold, or my portable waterbed simulator. Needless to say, I keep my distance from others since I never know how grossed out they're going to be. This pickle juice leaves stains and I'm always nervous that some psycho is going to channel their disgust into bullets.

And if you're planning on calling me names I'll just tell you right now: I've heard them all. Turdjacket. Shitstain. Shithead. Shitpile. Shitwalker. Walking corpse. Crapboy. Wasteface. Slimer. Satan's Jizz Monkey. And my personal favorite, Poopskin. When people get to know me the names usually stop. I'm not a bad guy, I'm just a disgusting freak.

You're probably wondering about my cock now. You don't have to be embarrassed, I've gotten the look before. I'm pretty familiar with that trying-to-mask-our-curiosity not-casual-enough glance downward that says somebody is surveying my groin trying to determine if I even have a cock down there under all that pudding. Well I don't. I'm not even sure if I'm a man or a woman. I remember being a kid and my mother calling me Tully and telling me how special I was, but I got mutated early on and I don't even remember having other kids as friends. Ever. I was on my own for a long time, and most people just call me "he" and "him" and it works for me. All I know is there's a little cluster of bumps on my skin down there and I can rub them and it feels mighty fine after a little while.

I wouldn't know what regular sex is like. I'm sure I could clean myself off and make some kind of effort, but then there's my eyes. They're not normal eyes. The centers are sort of gray and surrounding them where it should be white it's actually green. Also, I don't blink. I didn't really think about my lack of eyelids until somebody pointed it out to me once. It was Merv over in the Cellar Town cafe actually. We were sharing a smoke and he said "You know, I think anybody could get used to your ugly ass, but it's fuckin' spooky that you're always lookin' at people and you never blink your eyes. It's just unsettling." I suppose it's the main reason why people tear their gaze away from me, because I'm always gaping at them down the barrel of my own happy gaze, shooting their stares right back at them.

ahem

Woman's Voice: Tell me some more about these, uh... psychic abilities of yours.

Well, what do you want to know about it?

Woman's Voice: What is it? Do you know where it comes from?

It's hard to describe. I know that don't help, but I've heard of other people with weird stuff going on with them. You know? A guy who talks to a flag. Buildings that don't have exits once you get inside of them. I heard about this one lady running around who could put thoughts into people's brains, make them go crazy. Some guy who just exploded for no reason. Trees that move when nobody is looking. Strange poop is always happening somewhere.
I don't really know how to explain the weird psychic crayola, I can only really tell you what it's like for me. (coughs) When I cozy up for some sleeptime, ever since I was a kid, I would do this thing where I imagine myself in one of the old food stores of legend. My mom taught it to me, though I think she didn't want me to think about anything, I don't know why you'd want to think of nothing but, you know, it put her to sleep. Instead it would keep me awake. I would be thinking about rows and rows of canned food in every variety. Cans of soup, cans of corn, cans of beer, cans of bread. I remember the first time I had this little before-sleep dream and something was different about it.
It was the same day my first friend got killed. I was pretty broken up, so at the time I thought this was just how I was handling that shit. You know? I was holding one of these cans, and I could see the guy who killed Whiting on the can.

Woman's Voice: Whiting was your friend's name?

Yeah, Whiting. Man! I haven't thought about him in years. Anyway, this can, it had one of those old labels, you know? It looked brand new, all clean and slick. It said spa-ghetto's on the top, clear to me as you are, and I don't know where my brain thought of that. But I'm looking at the label, and I can see this guy, and the murder, clear as the word Spaghetti-O's on the label, and it's like I'm writing the memory of what happened onto the can and explaining how this guy killed Whiting. And then I took the can and put it on a shelf real careful like. Next week we hear some righteous angels had found this guy and strung him up, calling him a murderer, but that was two towns over where nobody had even heard of Whiting.

Woman's Voice: Are you saying you got these men to find the man who murdered your friend?

Yeah. Well, no. Not really. Something like that though. You know? What I'm saying is that when I'm being all psychic, I'm taking something I've seen or some feeling I had and I put it onto the label of one of these cans and then I put it on a shelf. Somehow, other people just find that stuff out. It's like I can share what's going on in my head with other people, but I never know who is going to walk down that aisle in the food store.

Woman's Voice: So your psychic abilities allow you to interact with others in an old grocery store?

I don't ever see anybody else in these before-sleep dreams! Lady, aint you been listening to me? A food store is what I see! Not a gross sorry.

Woman's Voice: Grocery.

Whatever! (sound of shuffling, something wet splatters on the ground) What I see aint the same as other people. I heard of one lady who sees smoke all around like everything's on fire. Then there's that guy Blind Blue, I bet he don't even see shit, I bet he just feels everything out and knows what's there, probably better than seeing with that weirdo. But me, I see an old food store, and when I want people to know something I put a can of thought up on a shelf.

announcing future badness

For lack of better terminology, I think every role-playing game can be broken up into two categories: physics engines and narrative engines. Some games bridge the gap between the two better than others, but overall a game is either a physics engine or a narrative engine. Sometimes a narrative engine will have a physics component but conflict resolution still falls into a declared narrative, and sometimes a physics engine will have a narrative component but conflict resolution still falls to a declared ability.

Physics engines are concerned with determining standards for the physical reality the characters inhabit. Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, Shadowrun, and Battletech are all good examples of physics engines because the characters will have stats like Strength or Agility or Intelligence which give in-game mechanics for the limitations of those abilities. A character with 14 Strength can simply lift more than a character with 9 Strength in D&D, and much of the gameplay resolves around how much damage that stat applies to your weapons. Characters with high Strengths have to take the front lines of combat, characters with high Reaction should become Riggers in Shadowrun, and characters with high IQ should pick up lots of mental skills in GURPS.

Narrative engines use abilities to push the story forward, or give the players authority to dictate a new direction for the action to take. How much damage a character does when they punch somebody is usually an after thought.

GURPS is a pure physics engine. You can trip an opponent, but you'll have penalties unless you were trained in a Martial Art that allows that combat maneuver because then the penalties are lessened, and if you purchased that specific combat maneuver then you get no penalties, and if you're specialized with that maneuver then you'll get a bonus too. After you've checked for all of these factors on your character sheet, then your opponent might have abilities that penalize your trip maneuver. You roll for you maneuver and then your opponent might be able to Dodge, and if they do the blow fails to connect.

Dungeons & Dragons is a physics engine. You can't trip an opponent unless a DM specifically gives you that opportunity (1st and 2nd edition), or you have a feat which allows you to make the attempt (4th edition) usually at a penalty unless you've taken a second feat to improve your ability to trip people (3rd edition). If your opponent has a feat that allows them to avoid the trip then they might roll against your roll, or against a flat target number.

Aberrant is a healthy mix of physics and narrative engine. Anyone can attempt to trip somebody using abilities that all characters start with.

Apocalypse World is a narrative engine. You can declare you're trying to trip somebody and depending on the result of your roll you might cause them to trip, make a compromise within the scene to cause the trip or abandon it without penalty, or fail egregiously and suffer somehow.

Amber is a pure narrative engine. You can create a world with Pattern where you can trip anybody pretty easily unless somebody with a stronger Pattern goes seeking you out and stops you from tripping them, if you even end up fighting them.

In a couple of weeks I'll be attending PAX East, and I made plans with my friends there in Boston that I would GM a one-shot of Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) for them. At the time the plans were made I was a few weeks into running my DCC game and I was pretty excited at the prospect of playing an OSR game. DCC is also a physics engine. Over the last few months I've been playing a couple of role-playing games (mainly Apocalypse World) that give players a stronger narrative control over the action that appears in a game. It's difficult for me to actually get my brain to go back into an older physics engine style of game without feeling compelled to hack it into something I want to play. My appreciation for old school renaissance (OSR) games is still strong, but I think my main difficulty is with the old pass/fail binary mechanic. I really like the idea of a partial success too much and I want to incorporate it into all future games I might GM.

I know my friends are eager to try DCC as well and I've been thinking about this a lot. I could run the game in one of two ways:

1) Physics: straight by the book
in most situations they would have a target number and rolling a d20 they would add an attribute bonus, the result is a binary pass/fail outcome, and I would roll dice for my monsters, traps, etc.

2) Narrative: variable difficulty resolution where I don't roll dice, except for damage
the normal d20 rolls would be replaced with a set difficulty of 12 and 18
an 18+ is an unequivocal success where they would always have a choice as to the results of their success
a result that falls between 12 and 17 is a partial success where I offer a choice between two options: accepting a good failure, a bad success, or a tough choice
a failed result of 11 or less means something bad happens or an opponent sees some form of success

The adventure I plan on running is pretty straight forward with few monsters, though the monsters are real killers, so I'm thinking of applying the narrative rolls to non-combat resolution and then doing combat by the book. Or maybe I'll just give people the option from the beginning of the game to use narrative rolls instead of physics rolls.

In any case, the concept that I learned from Apocalypse World of "announcing future badness" sticks with me, and as a result I don't think I can ever use Perception checks ever again. It's the most versatile ability that a GM has and I think should just be used as a principle of GMing, being able to say that a thing is about to happen unless the player takes action without explicitly stating "Hey! This fucker is about to brain you if you don't prepare to defend yourself."

Calling for a Perception check in D&D was always a simple way of saying "Hey! There's something here." to the players, but a good role-player who failed their roll would continue on into the danger or simply not find the clue, neither of which is interesting. Now I've come to regard Perception checks as useless. Why call for a Perception check at all when it's too ambiguous as to what the check could be for? Either there's something dangerous and you give the players an opportunity to discover what it is and react to it, or there's something hidden to be found and they find it.

new Apocalypse World playbooks

I can make my own pdfs now, which means that I've turned my response to the Solace into a trifold pdf: the Wolf

I also made a Basic Moves playbook that includes the descriptions for the advanced versions of the basic moves, I called the file Advanced Moves

Another member of the AW community is really active and always posting his ideas to the google+ forum, and I took his concept of character with a pack of animals into a pdf: the Wrangler

The MC of my Sunday game wrote up notes for a Boy And His Dog playbook, but when she posted her ideas to the Barf Forth Apocalypica forums it seems the conversation derailed away from her ideas and another user supplanted a lot of his own ideas, then somebody else turned that into a playbook. I asked Willow for her notes and I put what she had into a new version of the playbook: the Boy & His Dog

I asked Johnstone Metzger if I could get a copy of the Heralds of Hell playbooks, mainly because I was curious about seeing them and in many forums they were described as print-only, but it turns out he had them in a pdf and he sent them to me. When I asked him if I could turn them into trifolds and distribute them he said "do whatever you want with them" and so I started turning them into playbooks: the Damned, the Haunted, and the Sorcerer

Finally, the author of the Wrangler and I worked together to make a different kind of playbook: the Beast Master

All of which have been quietly added to my omnibus page of playbooks.

It's actually incredibly easy for me to make trifolds. I have a generic playbook file set up and all I have to do is copy-paste text into the boxes. Empty space is the hardest part because it needs to be filled with info boxes for gear and barter, and these usually need to be custom-made for the spaces that the text fills up. But the longest this takes is two hours. Making the portrait that accompanies the playbook can take another one or two hours, depending on the complexity of the image. I'm slowly going through the potential playbooks that are talked about in the forums and turning them into trifolds, but in the meantime I've also made custom character trifolds for my gaming group.

Adventure World: notes

When you play Adventure World, your GM is called the Oracle.

Why the Oracle? Because an oracle is a predictor and counselor, divining for knowledge from the unknown. An oracle is a guide, not a dictator.

two 6-sided dice

Just like Apocalypse World, the Adventure World hack uses 2d6. But the success threshold is 8-11 for partial successes, and 12+ for total success. The maximum a single ability can be raised to is +5. This means there is greater difficulty to achieve complete success in areas a character is not specialized in, but the specialized areas where a character is maxed to +5 have less chances of failure.
A +3 still misses on a roll of 2 or 3, a +5 only misses on a roll of 2.

Race separate from class.

race playbooks
NAMES Name suggestions come from race, not class
STATS always balances to zero: one stat at +1 and another at -1
MOVES get one automatically; extra racial moves become improvements
GEAR sometimes, not always; gear primarily comes from class
HX only describes "on other players' turns" effect
SPECIAL sex move comes from race

class playbooks
STATS always balances to +1: two stats at +1 and another at -1
MOVES get one automatically; extra class moves become improvements
GEAR gear primarily comes from class
HX only describes "on your turn" effect
SPECIAL death move comes from class

Basic Moves

These are only slightly changed from the original rules. I'm still toying with the idea of expanding some of the choices by separating the descriptions. I'll probably keep this the way it is though.

When you face danger, attempt to sneak, or act defensively, roll +Valor.
When you embark upon a journey, roll +Valor.
When you threaten someone, roll +Power.
When you inflict violence against someone, roll +Power.
When you seduce, charm or manipulate someone, tell them what you want and roll +Moxie.
When you read a person or examine your environment, roll +Alert.
When you attempt to discern the unnatural from an object you can touch, roll +Magic. (this is essentially a limited form of Detect Magic / Legend Lore, but the key aspect is that everybody has access to it)
When you attempt to commune with the shadows, roll +Magic.

Language Wheels

One of the things I wanted to add to my Adventure World hack was languages. Old school fantasy RPGs always relied upon languages for communicating properly and some character classes even had abilities for deciphering ancient languages. I wanted to convey the process of learning a language or attempting to translate something into a relatively easy to understand mechanic. It was suggested that I use the countdown clock and I thought this was a capital idea, so I turned what I had written into the Language Wheel.

When you try to understand speech, roll+moxie. On a 12+, choose 2. On a 8-11, choose 1:
• you make yourself understood
• you understand more-or-less what they're saying
• you don't come off looking like a fool

When you try to translate script, roll+alert. On a 12+, choose 2. On a 8-11, choose 1:
• you understand the basic message of the script
• you translate the script quickly
• you learn another facet of the language, mark 1 segment of your language wheel

LANGUAGE WHEELS
Every time you roll to understand a language you will mark 1 segment of the Language Wheel. Having at least 1 segment in the wheel means that the PCs can communicate simple ideas like "where is food?" or "can I sleep here?" or "do you have flint and steel?" but complex ideas like "can you help me scout this mountain?" or “let me show you how we should ambush those bastards in the valley!” or "don't kill him, he's the only one who knows how to get out of here!" need a roll until the Wheel is completely filled in. Once the Language Wheel is full and one more failed roll occurs the character understands the language and doesn't need to roll anymore, they've learned the Language.

Health

Attempting to make a realistic system leads to headaches (see GURPS, see Deadlands). Hit Points are fine.
Everybody starts with 10. You can get more, but since there is no leveling up, you have to sacrifice potential skill for more health. Armor is still going to work like AW. If you have 4-armor then it prevents 4 points of damage, etc.

Death Moves

One of the things I've been toying with is the concept of PC death affecting the other characters. This kind of move would either give a permanent bonus to those who don't die, or a temporary shift of power that lasts for the rest of the session.
Examples:
When Obi-Wan Kenobi died: When you die your body disappears and everybody witnessing this gets +1 Valor for the rest of the session.
When Gandalf died: After you die, you may return at the start of the next session as an angelic version of yourself. You may not take Improvements anymore.
When Buffy died: When you die everybody else improves examine an environment.
When Charlie (on LOST) died: When you die tell the MC to reveal a secret, or a secret threat.

You can kind of see how this works. For actual death moves, the move would be something beneficial but keyed into the character type that is dying. A fighter or barbarian who dies gives everybody else a dot of experience. A thief who dies causes a distraction or reveals a secret as they fall. Stuff like that.

Extras

I've tried to come up with a list of "regular" extras that characters might pick up through the course of play. While these are not complete, this is a listing of ones I have already written. I suspect I might end up writing a few that are custom to races.

Laboratory: Choose which of the following your laboratory includes. Choose 3: a stable, a tower, a well-stocked pantry, a cellar, a private garden, skilled labor (apprentices), a mine of raw materials, a forge, a fortified carriage, carpentry tools, alchemical equipment, gemstones and crystals, a target range, a relic of the ancient past, booby traps.
When you go into your laboratory and dedicate yourself to making a thing, or to getting to the bottom of some mess, decide what and tell the Oracle. The Oracle will tell you “sure, no problem, but…” and then 1 to 4 of the following:
• it’s going to take hours/days/weeks/months of work;
• first you’ll have to get/build/fix/figure out ___;
• you’re going to need ___ to help you with it;
• it’s going to cost you a ton of gold;
• the best you’ll be able to do is a crap version, weak and unreliable;
• it’s going to mean exposing yourself (plus colleagues) to serious danger;
• you’re going to have to add ___ to your laboratory first;
• it’s going to take several/dozens/hundreds of tries;
• you’re going to have to take ___ apart to do it.
The Oracle might connect them all with “and,” or might throw in a merciful “or.”
Once you’ve accomplished the necessaries, you can go ahead and accomplish the thing itself. The Oracle will stat it up, or spill the beans, or whatever it calls for.

Hideout: By default, your hideout is in a secluded location, with food and lodgings for a half-dozen people for a week (more at a stretch). Then, choose 2:
• Your hideout is large (lodgings for several dozen)
• Your hideout is well-stocked (food for a month)
• Your hideout is hidden and guarded by traps
• Your hideout is guarded by five loyal retainers (3-damage small band)
• Your hideout is defensible (3-armor for a band defending it)
And choose one:
• Your hideout’s location is well-known (+famous)
• Your hideout is difficult and dangerous to reach (+hazard)
• Your hideout is filthy and ill-kept (+disease)
• You share your hideout with someone you don’t command (+rivalry)

Musicians: you have two to five musicians that follow you around, write songs about you, and play instruments. At the beginning of the session, roll+music. On a 10+, your band have surplus. On a 7–9, they have surplus, but choose 1 want. On a miss, they have no surplus and are in complete want. If their surplus lists gold, that’s your personal share. These are loyal to you but not fanatical, and they have their own lives apart from you (surplus: 1-gold, music +1, want: desertion). Name them. Characterize them.
Choose 2:
• the musicians are dedicated to you. Surplus: +1gold, and replace want: desertion with want: idle.
• the musicians are educated and worldly. Surplus: +insight.
• the musicians are dedicated to their craft. +1music.
• the musicians are joyous and celebratory. Surplus: +party.
• the musicians are shrewd and frugal. Surplus: +1gold.
• the musicians are hard-working, no-nonsense. Surplus: +1gold.
• you travel with a full compliment. Add four more musicians. Surplus: +2gold, Add want: hunger.
Choose 2:
• the musicians aren’t really yours, more like you’re theirs. Want: +judgment.
• the musicians rely entirely on you for their lives and needs. Surplus: -1gold.
• the musicians are sloppy and simple. -1music.
• the musicians disdain fashion, luxury and convention. Want: +disease.
• the musicians disdain law, peace, reason and society. Surplus: +violence.
• the musicians are decadent and perverse. Want: +savagery.

Workshop: you have tools and the space to make some kind of craft. Choose 1:
• leatherworks (projects: clothing, armor; cost: 1 gold; wants: skins, coal)
• carpentry (projects: furniture, shelter; cost: 2 gold; wants: wood, skins)
• smithy (projects: armor, weapons; cost: 2 gold; wants: metal, coal)
• jeweler (projects: rings, necklace; cost: 3 gold; wants: metal, gems)
During downtime, you may attempt a project provided you have the materials needed by paying the cost. Roll+alert. On a 12+, you make the project in the time allotted and have items worth twice the cost. On a 8-11, you’re lacking in materials and need to fulfill one of your wants before you can finish. Your final project will be worth as much as the cost to build it. On a miss, the project is a disaster and you lose all the materials associated with the project.
You can take Smithing multiple times, specifying a new craft each time you take it.
needs work

Warband: By default, your warband consists of 5 violent bastards with low quality weapons and armor (3-damage band small 2-armor). They are not fanatical or mindless, but they are impressed by you and pretty much do what you say. Then, choose 2:
• your warband consists of 15 more violent bastards. Size: medium instead of small.
• your warband’s well-armed. +1damage.
• your warband’s well-armored. +1armor.
• your warband will not betray you. +loyal.
• your warband is well-educated. +insight.
• your warband will fight to the death. +brave.
• your warband’s self-sufficient, able to provide for itself by raiding and scavenging. It gets +rich.
And choose 1:
• your warband’s weapons are makeshift and crude. It gets -1damage.
• your warband disdains armor (why?). It gets -2armor.
• your warband is a pack of undisciplined hyenas. It gets +savage.
• your warband’s loose-knit, with members coming and going as they choose. Vulnerable: desertion.
• your warband is in significant debt to someone powerful. Vulnerable: obligation.
• your warband is filthy and unkempt. Vulnerable: disease.
• your warband is lax about security and likes to drink and brag. Vulnerable: reprisals.
• your warband depends entirely upon you for their needs. Vulnerable: poor.

Any kind of followers who die will not be gradually replaced, but new followers can be acquired by visiting towns and impressing the locals. If mistreated they might leave, but in time you might be able to recruit replacements. Consult your Oracle for details.

ideas for improvements

XP buys improvements

gold

1 gold will cover a month's living expenses, if your tastes aren't extravagent
100 silver can be converted to 1 gold

"You are a failure!"

Nobody likes to dwell on their past mistakes, so I'm going to give you the opportunity to revel in some of mine. I've fucked up plenty of times as a GM, whether I was having a bad day, or railroading a plotline, or not effectively communicating with the players, there have been plenty of times where I've done something at the gaming table and looked back on it thinking "Why did I do that? What is wrong with me?"

The empty crypt!
I ran a fantasy game for a long time where the PCs had set themselves up as pseudo-permanent guests in a castle far off the common trade routes. I had established that before the castle was a farming outpost it had been initially constructed as a prison, and the lower cells had been sealed up. In one particular session there was a big, bad magical field that sprang up out of the castle's ground, however it was invisible and only the resident wizard could see it. (In my notes I had written that this was a pathway to another realm and weird ghostly entities were now squeezing through it.)
The players decided they needed to know where this thing was coming from and wanted to stop it. Since it wasn't really coming from anywhere I didn't have any information to give them, but fumbling about led them to the blocked off prison cells and in my notes I had an elf ghost laying dormant down there. They spent at least an hour at the table and a couple of days in game time trying unblock the prison pathways and all of my efforts to make the attempts fruitless went unheeded and ignored. Eventually I just gave up at trying to make it hard and said "Look guys, there's nothing down there. Your solution is elsewhere."
What I should have done: Is run with it. I should have chucked my notes aside and just let them find something causing the rift. It didn't need to be movable, and it didn't need to be indestructible either, but it would have been something to discover that would have made their time worthwhile and it would have given them a new focus.

The mini-nuke
I ran a GURPS sci-fi game for about a year where one player had min-maxed his stats starting out so he had tons of money and equipment. He asked if he could purchase a mini-nuke from the Ultra-Tech sourcebook and at first I balked then I re-considered and said "Sure! Why not?" all the while thinking "It doesn't have to be a working mini-nuke." The player would always refer to his mini-nuke as a last ditch weapon that he could use, but at the same time his character kept it secret from all of the other characters. Eventually I got tired of him bringing up it's existence and a psionic entity probed his mind, discovered where it was, and stole it from him. He wasn't pleased.
What I should have done: Give him a reason to use it. I had already established in-game that a well-funded group of criminal scientists were hiring assassins to take them down. This was a planet-hopping science fiction campaign, so I could have easily put them in a situation where they were outgunned by other starships chasing them and he could have finally had an excuse to use his mini-nuke and save the day while destroying all of the enforcers this group was sending after them.

The poisoned patient
I ran another sci-fi game, a much shorter one, where the PCs had just given refuge to a dissident from a cult. Before they could leave, another cultist had poisoned the defector and after they left the planet the poison began to take hold. His condition became noticeable when he began to suffer from mania which eventually turned violent. The PCs sedated him and put him in sick bay hoping to rid him of the toxins coursing through his system. He was an unimportant character and I narrated that he was dead, but one of the characters was a medic and wanted the opportunity to save him. I allowed a dice roll and success after success kept the patient going. I think we rolled the dice six times and he just wouldn't die, until I made a Luck check for bringing him out of stasis and he finally bit the dust. In that moment I forgot about serving the needs of the players and was focusing on trying to get the game back to where I wanted it to go.
What I should have done: Just let the bastard live. He wasn't important in the grand scheme of things and could have easily just disembarked the ship at the next port, but I was being short sighted, because the character could have also become a reliable NPC contact for the group later on.

Nothing happened today
I ran a Deadlands game once where I planned out all of the events surrounding the players and I would write then print off the front page of the local paper to show them all what was happening in their town. Except I never had anything interacting with the players, and I relied upon them to interact with the town and create drama. I realized a little too late how boring that could be.
What I should have done: Let the players be the stars, not the spectators. This was an early attempt at GMing and at that time I believed I had to create elaborate stories and backstories for all of my NPCs and the events around them. Instead of letting it fall out of the playing organically, I had written a script which the players could interact with but really couldn't change anything. In that sense, I was merely showing off.

Roll to climb a rock
One of my very first experiences as a GM, I had people rolling dice for everything. There was a chase in a tunnel and the PCs had to climb over a rock to keep going. I made them roll dice, and when somebody failed their pursuers caught up to them and I suddenly didn't know what to do because they were being chased by violent guys who could easily kill them. The whole session lost steam halfway through because I broke out the dice for, literally, everything.
What I should have done: Not be so nervous. I really wanted to impress everybody at the table and I could tell I was making the game exciting, but the excitement of the players fed into my nervousness and my brain just started to shut down. If I called for a dice roll then that meant I didn't have to think, until I was faced with the ultimate worst possible result of one of those dice rolls.

After I first started GMing, I ran a D&D game for several years, but for the life of me I can't think of anything specific I did that was bad. But from what I can remember, I can't imagine it was a very fun game and I don't understand why any of those guys played with me for as long as they did. At least in high school when I ran a game there was seemingly nobody else to play with.

The 5 Rules for GMing

I apologize that these have a strong fantasy flavor to them. I initially wrote all of this in a series of emails as advice to fellow GMs who run D&D or OSR games. I've rewritten it, tried to polish it up, and put it into a concrete list of rules that I can quote later primarily for my own edification and use. I've been GMing wrong for a long time, and I think I'm finally beginning to understand how a good GM operates.

#1: The rules, and the dice, are to be ignored whenever it is necessary.
When Joseph Goodman wrote "Let the rules bend to you not the other way around" he encapsulated a key philosophy in playing a tabletop RPG without actually giving it lip service. We're all here to have fun. If the rules get in the way of that fun, then they deserve to be ignored. Rolling for everything is bad too, because sometimes a character should just succeed. Every time somebody wants to do something, ask yourself "Would failure here be fun for them?" and if the answer is "No." then skip the roll. Climbing a tree to get a better view of the forest? Navigating the southern coastline? Studying to find a vital clue? Or even, examining the mountain range to find the best place to camp for the night and avoid an ambush? Ignore the dice and just get on with the game.

#2: No adventure survives contact with the players.
An oldie but a goodie. Don't construct an elaborate meta-plot meant to be uncovered over the course of a campaign, just chuck it all out the window. You might start with an initial plotline or story or threat, but if the players are smart enough to come up with something that seems like a reasonable (or better) explanation for everything you've already established then just change things up mid-game and use a twisted version of what they think up. No heavy lifting necessary, and the players will think they're brilliant for guessing something that turned out to be more or less "correct." Don't ever expect the players to follow your path or go for your bait either. Their ingenuity in the face of conflict should drive the story, not a list of bullet points you wrote five weeks before they all made characters.

#3: No lying, motherfucker!
You can have deceitful contacts, betraying employers, and allies with their own greater self interests. But the players deserve honesty. You can have secrets, but you can't have tricks. You can have traps, but their spider-sense should be tingling. You can have double-crosses, but they should know they couldn't trust that back-stabbing bastard! Always drop plenty of clues about the real intentions of your characters, you don't need to tell players outright what you're planning, but they should have plenty of opportunities to notice that something smells fishy.

#4: Don't make hard decisions when the players or the dice could do it for you.
You really want that noble to survive this assassination attempt. You don't want the players to fell your boss monster quite so quickly. You don't want the players following those gypsies to the west because what you have planned lies in the east. We've all felt these moments as GMs where what we have planned, or what we expect, is not happening the way we would like. Our story is being twisted, our awesome NPC is about to be killed, or our plot points are being ignored. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, now abandon those feelings. They're wrong. We're not sitting at this table to hear your story, or reach the foregone conclusion that you've decided between sessions, we're here to create a story together. In those moments you need to sit back and let the players' actions dictate the course of the story. Your prized NPC may die, but they have family that might seek revenge, don't they? Your dragon has just been killed and his treasure plundered, but nothing paints a target on somebody's back like spending a lot of money, right? If you abandon the story too much the action will begin to falter, and if the players aren't decisively plotting a course for themselves then you'll need to break out the dice and start cracking some skulls.

#5: Be a fan of the players' characters.
This comes from D. Vincent Baker word for word. Your job as a GM is not to be adversarial, your job is to make things fun and interesting. You can do this more effectively by giving them difficult decisions and adding consequences to their actions than you can by simply challenging them with dice rolls or taking away their stuff. Let the characters bask in glory and never deny them the success they've earned. When they've changed the landscape through their actions let those changes radiate out into the world. You're not playing from an "official campaign guide" so you can let your world adapt to the PCs in positive ways when they succeed and in worse ways when they fail, and even if you were using some "official campaign guide" that thing is just a guide not a bible. Put the fucking thing down once in a while! When the PCs do something important then every threat should be seeing them with fresh eyes, either appraising their new strengths and giving themselves pause or finding respect in their accomplishments and forgiving past grievances. Your world should be a dangerous place, but they don't need you constantly headhunting them too.

This is a personal preference more than a rule, and doesn't really need to be heeded
#6: Magic is unpredictably strange and deadly, let it be both without being crippling.
This is pretty self-explanatory, even if it is a longer rule, and a little confusing. Magic is the ultimate hammer for any nail, but it's a hammer that can only ever be swung wildly. If a player uses magic, they should get what they expect out of it, sometimes more than they want or expect. Fireballs should incinerate things, and set nearby objects aflame, and little contrails of sparks should shoot off of metal objects. IT'S A FUCKING FIREBALL! EXPLODE SOME SHIT WITH IT! Detect Magic should detect magic but maybe it's also detecting cheese around here, or detecting the last time somebody bathed. Invisibility seems to work but any nearby dogs end up curiously following them around. WARNING: If you're playing some version of D&D, magic is a scientific formula that players will rely upon with the precision of a calculator. Just tell them they're in a wild magic zone where weird things happen or some bullshit explanation like that. You might end up running an entire adventure where the PCs just try to find out where all of the wild magic zones begin and end, and man, if that happens, you should look at that as an opportunity to constantly fuck with them!

Superworld! (notes)

I had this idea last weekend of a superhero hack for Apocalypse World. Something that included the classic archtype characters as playbooks, and as my brain percolated I started getting elaborate in some of the details. Now, here is my attempt to get some of them down.

no changing types: you pick the Psi then you are stuck playing a Psi
more than one type, but no more than three: the first Psi is as written, the second Psi has reduced abilities, the third Psi has bad abilities
choices of powers, but few new powers: starting out you get one power, then choose one or two powers, then take a disadvantage, only one improvement gives a new power
no sex moves: instead these would be replaced with tag team powers
roll 3d10: roll three and keep one, 10s explode, 6-9 is a partial success, 10+ is a success, 16+ is a power surge

TYPES
the Brick: the hulk/tick type, super strong, invulnerable, stupid/socially incompetent or prone to anger
the Psi: the professor X type, telepathy or cosmic awareness, crippled or secret criminal
the Quirk: the spider-man/daredevil/robin type, multiple choice transport (swinging, wall-crawling, acrobatics, leaping), paralysis, evasion, combat abilities, damage resistant, danger sense, teenager or social outcast
the Speedster: the flash/quicksilver type, super-speed, fighter or scientist, rapid aging or family secrets
the Paragon: the superman/captain marvel type, gets flight, invulnerability or energy manipulation, extreme vulnerability, oath or alien
the Mystic: magic-user, summons allies or warps perceptions, performs rituals, teleportation, often vulnerable or has a family
the Suit: the iron man/steel type, suit of armor, flight, weapons, public figure or stolen tech

Secret Santicore 2012

I participated in the Secret Santicore of 2012.

The article I requested, "something involving time travel. Nothing fancy, but think creepy and strange ala Twilight Zone, not smarmy and cute like Doctor Who," can be seen by CLICKING HERE.

The article I wrote, "a d100 table of off-the wall transformations which might take place when drinking a polymorph potion which has spoiled or been made incorrectly," can be seen by CLICKING HERE.

my first MCing session

I ran my first one-shot of Apocalypse World this weekend for a group that normally plays D&D 3rd edition (almost religiously). I sent them the playbooks I was willing to use and asked them to decide what they wanted to be before I got there, and then wrote generic love letters for each chosen playbook.

When I first sat down to make characters with them, the biggest thing was that they didn't understand Hx. In trying to explain it one player in particular kept trying to push for ways of maximizing their Hx, and seemed really confused that you could choose to give somebody's Hx a -1. Going around the table for Hx was also a sticky point because everybody thought it worked differently. I eventually walked them through it step by step and I think it clicked for them.

Another player was confused as to why he could choose to have armor or not.
"Why wouldn't I wear armor?"
"Because you wouldn't like it, maybe? Or it gets in the way? It's not your style?"
"That seems stupid to not wear armor."
*shrug "That's cool."
(It didn't occur to me to say "Well, an Angel who wears armor might not be trusted by everybody he meets." but then he also failed every healing roll he made, so he was more like an angel of death.)

They all asked about the countdown clocks, and after I explained how they work they all seemed a bit upset that they only had 6 hit points effectively. I told them "It's really hard to die. In the game I'm playing we had a building fall on a character at the end of a gunfight and he's still alive." This seemed to mollify them temporarily, and by the time we started playing they had forgotten it completely.

We ended up with:
a Skinner named Dusk who specialized in being a con artist and tricking people out of their money and food, everybody else thinks she's a stripper though nobody can ever remember seeing her strip
an Angel named Doc (not his real name) who really liked to drink booze and received his Angel Kit from his mother
a Maestro'd named Francois who ran a restaurant and brothel, the Mouton Noir, out of an old,huge dilapidated bookstore
a Grotesque named Blakesly who ran around town with a musician, performing dances with her drones alongside the music
and a Savvyhead named Oliver, who had been set up in the hold of Lynnback for five years now and was an often relied upon member of the community

I went around the table and found out who these people were.
Oliver was hit on by an enforcer named Foster but she turned him down cold.
Foster found Doc examining a break-in and was about to arrest him, but Doc's lack of tools slowed him up.
Blakesly shared some of her food with an old crone and some kid started a fight with her about it.
Dusk defused the situation, and she and Francois spent some time distracting enforcers who were insistent on searching the Mouton Noir.
Almost everybody fell in love or lust with Dusk.

Then I took a little break, treating it like the end of a session. The Skinner was the most active with everybody else and she had set up two of her Hx at +3, which means when everybody said she knew them better she got two experience. When I came back from my break, I handed out the love letters and instructed them to re-highlight stats as if this were a new session.

It turns out Francois the Maestro'd had the highest Hx with everybody and he got a little overwhelmed. Most everybody highlighted the best stat they had, so I tried to push for Doc and Dusk to fight a little with Hard, and everybody else I either marked Sharp or Cool.

Doc had been invited to have dinner with the leader of their hold. I went around the table asking the players "What's his name?" "What does he look like?" "Does he have a family?" "Why does he keep so many enforcers around his mansion?" and got some great answers. Rosebottom is a slovenly and overweight guy with a bald head and a scarred face, he doesn't have a family because everybody thinks they got killed when he set this place up, or maybe he killed them, but he's paranoid and protective of his house, he keeps the guards running around 24-7 because he doesn't like unexpected visitors.

Dusk was invited to this dinner as the entertainment and she fumbled around trying to keep the focus off of her because she didn't want to have to dance for Rosebottom or any of his enforcers. Doc was keeping an eye out for Foster since they had bad blood but he wasn't around. Odd that. At the end of the festivities Rosebottom told Doc there was a patient he needed seeing to and they took Doc downstairs into the basement, where the entrance to an underground mine was hidden. In the mine, Rosebottom had slaves digging up some sort of coal that electrified the air around it. One of the slaves had these weird white lines along his skin, almost like they were scars but growing out from the inside of his body. Doc sat down to work on the patient.

Dusk meanwhile was rousing Francois because she knew Doc was being held prisoner. While Dusk was trying to convince Francois that they needed to go up and save Doc, a fight was brewing at the entrance to the Mouton Noir. When I asked Francois "What do you do?" he said "Nothing. This is why I hired Rum to be the doorman, he can handle it."
"Cool. You hear a gunshot and when you look up Rum is flat out on the floor, looks like his face is gone."

Blakesly's musician friend, Krin, was fighting with Rum about their unborn baby and didn't shine to his dismissive attitude towards her, and Rum had just split her face open. (None of the players ever learned this because they never took the time to properly interrogate her.) She was now losing blood and it looked like her lips and nose were permanently fucked. Dusk and Francois disarmed Krin, and Blakesly insisted on taking her to Doc, at this point also learning that Dusk thought he was being held prisoner. They took Krin to Oliver, because they knew she had an infirmary in her workspace, and after patching up a now-unconscious Krin they headed back to Rosebottom's mansion. (There was some confusion about Krin because I had named another NPC Crine, something I'll have to keep better track of in the future.)

Dusk had hypnotized one of the guards earlier and was now calling favors. They were let into the mansion and found most of the guards sleeping off the party from earlier. In the basement, they found Doc being guarded by an enforcer who was also in love with Dusk (she had been busy). They managed to get him out of the building just as a rival gang was rolling into town and shooting the place up. I ended with the Savvyhead acting under fire and trying to escape, she rolled an 8. Because nobody got hurt throughout the whole game, I asked "You can either take a bullet in the back as you're fleeing, or you'll have to kill one of Rosebottom's guards with your crowbar in order to sneak away." She chose to kill the enforcer.

If we could have kept going with these characters I was left with a lot of great leads.
Foster is hurt really bad in the fighting and Doc is called upon to heal him.
It's pretty obvious that Oliver killed one of Rosebottom's guards and they would be pissed about that.
Dusk has left a trail of broken hearts and compromised enforcers, who are all going to be scratching their heads about why they suddenly don't feel so loyal (read as: hypnotized) anymore.
Blakesly managed to keep her head down, but she was seen along with the rest of them wen they were all over Rosebottom's place, so that makes her an accomplice in the enforcers' eyes.
Francois's entourage were basically escorting them all to go get Doc and Rosebottom saw them all. Like I said, he's going to be pissed.

All in all, everybody had a great time. And it's always a little scary to play with new people but refreshing to play with people who are eager to play.