AW 2e: some initial thoughts.
Disclosure: I'm on the Patreon and Kickstarter, so I can be classified as a fan. I've written a couple pbta hacks, so maybe some sort of mega fan.
Things I dig in 2e:
Start of session lifestyle moves for everybody! When we played with 2e sheets (slightly out of date) on Thursday, I was the Quarantine. I couldn't pay lifestyle, as Q has no scratch! That's delightfully harsh. Who pays for Q to live?
Start of Session is part of dividing up what was best about the operator -- basically being a freelancer -- and giving it among everybody as gigs. I think this is fantastic, though it does remove one of the natural nodes of organization of the players. Replaced with the Maestro D, which should work. With both the Maestro D and the HH, the game has more of a location focus than the original.
On weapons: The book has artillery buried deep in it. This actually came up last week, when I shot the HH with artillery doing 8 harm. I also really like that most of the weapon are "SMG" or whatever, while Q has "assault rifle". The name is important, as AR sounds fancier and better. And, well, from the golden age of legend.
I like the battle moves, especially the vehicle moves. I adore that anyone can start with a vehicle, and a prosthetic. Fury Road has impacted AW in some great ways.
Anyway.
Some things I'd do differently:
I'm not a huge fan of clocks. I might want every gun to do the same harm, namely to fuck you up. Instead of different quantities of harm (1, 2, 3), double down on different types (stun, psychic, etc). I've rarely seen the Harm move in play, and might want it to be something like "When you take a hit that should kill you, roll ... ", so that it is exceptional.
But, that's me. I also think there may be too many moves, but time will tell.
This is preliminary, of course.
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I like the beginning of session lifestyle move, but I find myself forgetting it a ton. My Hocus took the Hardholder moves, so now each session opens with Highlights, Wealth, Fortunes, and lifestyle. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteI still want gang harm better clarified. It's nearly the same as it was in 1e and it gets muddled when battle moves are involved.
Example:
Using Fallen Empires rules, when you're mounted, you get the same +1 harm/armor as outnumbering gives you. So you effectively fight as a gang one size larger. The Wolfshead (Chopper) also took the +1 harm and +1 armor and has a medium sized gang - 3-harm, 2-armor, and mounted. They hit an equal sized gang for 4-harm. A typical gang of the same size will be doing 2-harm, possibly 3 if well armed. Mounted guys can soak even the most well armed assault from an unmounted gang.
So mounted gang takes terrible harm, hits for 5-harm, and takes 0, which nearly demolishes the other gang (say, 2-armor on them). If this was Single Combat, then the MC could choose "terrible harm" on a miss, but if they're using battle moves, there's no way to cause harm to the mounted guys, who just steamroll the others.
Aaron Griffin That's a complicated character now!
ReplyDeleteFor the gang stuff: Yeah. This is part of why I'm a fan of simpler damage systems than we see in AW proper. Some of the pbta games have simplified it in a way I really like.