Are there any Playbooks out there for playing old timers, who lived through the Apocalypse?
I was thinking about it while driving home from my folks’ today, and I thought ‘The Ancient’ would make a neat Playbook if only because their stat choices would imply a lot about what was needed to survive the Apocalypse and that they’d be a primary source for the experience of the Apocalypse. It also made me think about the fact that some Playbooks don’t really make sense as second ones picked.
I think there’s one kicking around somewhere called the Coot, who remembers folks that lived through it, like we remember our grandparents that lived through the Depression in the 1930s.
Here is said playbook
http://www.scribd.com/doc/86209740/Playbook-The-Coot
The Coot is interesting (just found it online just as Seth Harris posted). It illustrates nicely what I mean about what such a Playbook does. The Coot says that surviving the Apocalypse is about being Sharp, and it focuses on knowing. The only explicit move about before is about identifying objects via Sharp.
My first rough idea for the Ancient is that it would have a floating +2 (no +2 Weird version), and that choice had a lot more weight than other stat choices. An Apocalypse that demands you be Hard to survive is different than one that demands you be Cool. For me, the appeal of playing someone like the Ancient is a hand in designing before and the Apocalypse.
Though it occurs to me that there is room for the Coot and the Ancient. The Coot is a savvy old person. The Ancient should have lived well past a normal life span, and would have choices that aren’t moves. Things like how unnaturally long have you lived and so on. You can make them just a bit over the normal lifespan and be some weird transition from before to now, or you can make them already unnaturally ancient at the time of the Apocalypse—a hint of weirdness before the world went totally off.
The only move that stuck really stuck in my head from the drive is as follows:
There Were Giants in the Earth in Those Days You are well over the average height of those born after the apocalypse. You tower above them and they cannot help but be awed by you as a result. NPCs will either flee, freeze, or fold when you make demands of them. PCs may do one of these and mark experience, or do as they wish. Barter requirements for clothing, food, and so forth are increased by one for you in cases where you are made to pay.
Taking a move like that (or potentially it would be from a set of a non-move options) instantly says that the world is diminished—poorer nutrition and the other consequences of the Apocalypse have stunted people. Presumably a lot of scrounge wear is way too large and needs to be altered or simply recycled into appropriately sized garb.
The Coot could have gotten by on his Sharp, The Ancient survived on his Weird
That was another option that occurred to me as I reread what I wrote.
Having a set of Playbooks for those who lived through the apocalypse could
be very neat. The Coot was Sharp enough to make it through. The Ancient was
Weird enough. The Survivor was Hard enough. I think Cool is well
represented in old Battle Babes or Operators, and Hot is one that I’m
mulling over—I feel like there is room for a Hot Playbook like The Power
Behind the Throne, someone who attaches themselves to others and uses their
strength, and that sort would be able to survive but like with Cool I don’t
feel it really needs the ‘I made it through’ stuff hardcoded in it the way
that The Coot, The Ancient, and the Survivor do.
Battlegranny, make it happen
The Vizier; who survives by being the indespensible advisor and power behind a throne–part toady, part Grima Wormtongue, part Eleanor Roosevelt.
I love the interaction the Quarantine has with the history of the Apocalypse. Doing this with a survivor sounds like a fantastic idea! Like you said, the nature of the survivor says so much about the nature of the new world order.
I feel like another direction to take it is a sort of universal Playbook supplement, which is about being old enough to have survived the Apocalypse. You take it with a character’s first Playbook or not. In that way you can easily make a Battlegranny and the like without having to make totally new Playbooks.
That said, I have queued up the Ancient for development once I get done with the Bridge.
Here’s another idea: the Ancient (or whatever) has survived for so long because s/he is utterly impervious to the psychic maelstrom. She doesn’t get a weird score at all. This means either that only people born after the Apocalypse can interact with it, or that most people were overwhelmed by it and died, but that a very rare few (or maybe only one?) somehow managed to shut their brains… permanently.
While driving I did consider making them do what a Quarantine does to determine Weird—after all they weren’t born to the Maelstrom.
There was some talk of playbooks that involve two characters elsewhere. I could see a playbook that pairs a really old person with a really young person. You are wise and witty but old in a way people don’t even understand anymore. You’ll just stay round here, they can be your eyes and ears and hands (some detective series have this dynamic, e.g. Nero Wolf).
If you take the playbook later, you are the young’n and all of the sudden you have this older than dirt oracle on your hands. They know things and can figure anyone out but you must appease and respect them (think about the end of Earth Abides).
If you wanted to get really wonky, divide +2, +2, +1, +1, +1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 between the two characters so that you really had to use the right one for the right job or both in conjunction to optimally function.
I like the idea of Playbooks that are different if you take them as a second vs. a first, and having a Playbook imply an NPC. Together they work pretty well (as which is the NPC and which is the PC can change based on when it is taken), but both are also neat pieces to contemplate for design.
You could use any of the playbooks to do this.