Thursday, July 27, 2017

A week or so ago, I asked:

A week or so ago, I asked:
What is necessary and appropriate to hack apocalypse world into a game wherein the characters are friends, and go on adventures together?

Vincent Baker was the first to respond, with his usual minimal style:
1. Shared xp.
2. Collaboration moves, not seduce & manipulate and help or interfere.
3. GM prep that doesn't create pc-npc-pc triangles.

Jason D'Angelo took this and ran with it. Which was useful to me, as I'd not had the brainjuice to really understand what Vincent was saying. I've had a weird week, and Jason is doing this really fantastic read-through of Apocalypse World. I highly recommend it.

Yesterday, I started writing and thinking. These are notes, but here's what I'm thinking.

1. Shared xp
-- Dungeon World does something really similar to this with the end-of-session questions. I think I'll incorporate that, and change Hx to not revolve -- so more like bonds. Possibly also spendable like Debts from US or Camaraderie from The Watch, but then I need a mechanic to gain more. I'll table that for a second.

2. Collaboration moves, not seduce & manipulate and help or interfere.
Here's a move:
When you escalate a problem to the Captain that's within her domain, roll +Hx. She knows just how to solve it, and on a 10+, you choose 3. On a 7-9, Cap chooses 2. On a 6-, Cap chooses 1:
-- Your Hx + 1 with the Captain.
-- Cap Hx + 1 with you.
-- The Cap gets personally involved.
-- You learn about the underlying issues the Cap solves. Mark xp.

This also builds into the system a couple of notions: 1. There's a status quo of whose in charge, 2. Whoever is in charge can actually solve problem, 3. When you bring a problem to that PC, you risk losing some degree of being the protagonist in your own story.

End of session questions will absolutely include XP if you switched who is the Cap.

3. GM prep that doesn't create pc-npc-pc triangles.
Instead, NPCs if left alone will have a deteriorating situation (possibly personally, possibly they'll do something horrible), that exists due to a fundamental scarcity. If the PCs solve that fundamental scarcity for the NPC, they are no longer a threat. They may even be an ally, but are for sure not a threat.

GM prep then creates tense situations that, if the PCs do nothing, will deteriorate.

I've got more -- like linking modified versions of the playbooks to fundamental scarcities -- but that's enough for now. I'd love to hear comments and thoughts and criticism before moving on too far.

3 comments:

  1. For collaboration moves, you don't have to escalate the problem to the captain. If it's an engineering problem, escalate to the engineer; a medical problem, escalate to the doc; etc. The captain can escalate (or downscalate?) problems, too.

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  2. Absolutely right. Should really be when you bring a problem to someone and phrase it in a way they can solve ...

    That is, if you tell the engineer that, say, you need better food O'Brien'll be like "I'll work on the replicator", but if you tell Quark? He'll make better food.

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