Is there Design Space for a Playbook that two persons share? Something like Captain Marvel/Billy Batson maybe but more playable.
The things i am thinking right now are
Psychic Link – doable
Guy and his monster – maybe?
Lovers/Twins – not strong enough thematicly
Captain Marvel/Hulk – means one person can’t play half the time.
Any other ideas?
The Lovers is out there. Kinda like the couple from the novel The Scar.
What about a playbook that tears in half (like a BFF pendant). There are moves on each side, and some that are right on the tear line. You can advance one half or the other and then take the other half as a second character (gaining access to the torn moves) or another player can take the other half (you can only use the moves when you work together).
Just as interesting, what about one playbook that is played by two people. Someone with two souls or a split personality or the puppet of a higher force or an infested or a possessed. Maybe you can split up, like the Fiji Mermaid…
Let me think about that for a bit Marshall Miller
After a bit of thinking i got a few move ideas.
Moves you use together are rolled with +Bond
Your bond starts at +2 and you can advance it later.
Another main mechanic would be Synchronity that you can spend if the two of you work together for cool effect. There would be a move to get Synchronity but you would also get it by sleeping togeher. You could make other people a Bro (name idea) too if the two of you have sex with them (could be problematic) and there would be interesting possibilties if the one sleeps with other people.
Maybe you could treat some basic moves as advanced when you work together?
Maybe like the children of Baron von Strucker you can fire energy blasts when you are connected…
I think you could run into some problems at the game table if two people share a charakter… I am mostly talking about Screentime and OOC disagreement here.
It’d be like a werewolf, one player for the day, one for the night. Maybe two people advance into sharing the playbook as a secondary character but they have to take turns using it. Doesn’t it suck when you wake up in a room full of dead people and there’s a note in your hand writing telling you that you need to get out of there…
At the start of the session roll +Wolf
Maybe there are key-like moves that tell you when to switch players based on the fiction. Maybe players collect holds that they use to bid for control.
I know there was a “boy and his dog” one. I don’t know if it has this element, but it seems natural. I’d especially like to see who plays who change back and forth.
The biggest problem I see with having two players share one character is that it would get really hard (impossible?) to coherently “address the character not the player”.
Suddenly, no one knows who I’m talking to!
Tangentially, this makes me think of combo moves. Roll +Bond when both characters are present and doing the thing. These may be keyed to particular pairs or Playbooks.
Personally I don’t like the idea of a fully shared playbook. It seems like it would create a lot of meta problems like screen/control time, disagreements about character development and split attendance. I also don’t see that big of a benefit. I think if we’re talking about a Jekyll and Hyde situation, it’d be far more interesting and consistent if played by the same player as you do want some behavioral cross overs. If two players want to play characters that are extremely close or codependent, I’d say just play it. You don’t need a playbook to get that feel. I do really like Marshall Miller ‘s idea of a tear down the middle play book. That would have the flavor of 2 distinct characters that are fundamentally connected. There can be moves that specifically reference the other playbook, which sounds cool, but does not prevent the two characters from operating independently.
Tangentially related, there is an Ettin playbook in DW’s Number Appearing supplement. The racial move is great. It’s for one player, though.
I’m totally stealing Marshall Miller’s tear-apart playbook idea for a possible Wraith hack. That’s brilliant.
Shaun Hayworth, I like the idea of forcing choice of Shadows with core Playbook choices as opposed to mix and matching. It would also imply that the Playbooks focused on emotion or the like (the Vengeful, the Regretful, etc.). Anyway, I will have to muse on it.
Yeah. Now that I think of it, it would e cool to have Shadows that were orthogonal to the wraith, so the Sorrowful might have a Shadow based around Spite, or some such. But I don’t want to derail the thread too far.