Wondering if any of ya’ll can help me…
For my AW zombie apocalypse hack World Gone Mad, I’m trying to design some playbooks. I have six, but I’d like seven or more. The trick is, my playbooks are supposed to represent broad strokes of lifestyle and personality; for example, “The Scondrel” playbook can be anything from a corrupt politician to an ex-con, to a teenager who likes to steal stuff.
Here are the six I have so far:
“The Leader”
“The Healer”
“The Scoundrel”
“The Thinker”
“The Worker”
“The Hunter”
Right now, the Hunter covers both skill with weapons and tools as well as athletic capacity. I’m thinking about making a second playbook, “The Athlete,” who takes all the physical-related moves from the Hunter. So if I can’t think of anything else, that’s probably what I’ll do.
But if anybody in the community can think of any other kind of walks-of-life that should be represented with a playbook, I’m all ears!
What about “The Bitch/The Cheerleader”
also probably an “Arcane Dabbler” if the Zombi Apocalypse is more magical.
The apocalypse is not magical (at least in my game), so no Arcane Dabbler.
“The Worker” is the playbook for survivors with few actual survival skills, so that’s where a Cheerleader would go. But one other thought I’ve had is breaking the Worker in half, with “useful” workers like carpenters and engineers in one playbook and “useless” workers like cheerleaders and Starbucks barristas in another.
The Kid
The Lucky Sumbitch
The Dead Weight
The Guilty
Someone from the Clergy would be a Leader/Healer i guess?
Tim Franzke Yep…the Leader covers everything from church ministers to shift managers at McDonald’s. Since there’s no magic in my apocalypse, clergy would probably not be a great choice for Healer, since that playbook implies actual medical skill. If you wanted to play a clergyman in a non-leadership role, then Worker is your best bet.
I was thinking about psychological healing.
Mischa Krilov The Kid=Worker or Scoundrel
The Lucky Sumbitch=The Scoundrel
The Dead Weight=Why would anyone want to be this? But, if they insisted, The Worker
The Guilty=The Scoundrel
A psychologist would fall under The Thinker, which covers all forms of study, from psychology to pop culture.
Though that does give me an idea for a move…a healing move for the Thinker. Hmm…now that’s something…
glad to have helped.
The infected
The caretaker.
David Rothfeder Not bad. A playbook all about dealing with the impending doom of becoming one of Them. Hmm…
Vincent Baker This isn’t bad, but I’m not sure if I could come up with enough moves to differentiate it from the Leader (who already has several moves to assist others).
I could take those help moves out of the Leader, though, put them in a separate playbook for The Caretaker, then have the Leader focus on group-focused moves. Hmm…
Infected could also be like an expended Playbook and once you have been bitten you (have/can) use it.
I guess I should also mention my plans for the Background system.
In addition to choosing a playbook, each player chooses a Background, which is essentially a mini-playbook. This is how you gain experience in my game; each Background has a move that generates XP for you. These Backgrounds are modular in nature (meaning any Background can conceivably fit any playbook) and are designed to give diversity to the generic-nature of the playbooks. So, if you’ve got two people who want to be a Worker, you could have one be “Worker with a Dark Secret,” and the other be “Worker with Mouths to Feed.”
sounds cool!
Yeah…unlike most AW-powered games, you CAN be the same playbook in my game, but two players CANNOT have the same Background.
i was just thinking about that but figured, well if two people have mouths to feed than they must be the children of them both, if 2 have a dark secret than it’s about each other…
Could work but i see the allure in banning this.
Well you could have a Background tie in with other players, but only one player can get the mechanics of that Background. For example, the Dark Secret Background gives XP whenever your character gives a hint about his/her past or something from his/her past complicates the survivor’s lives. If two or more people had that, I’m afraid the session would be full of people dropping innuendos about their secrets, which isn’t a BAD thing but not the complete focus of this game…
“The Dead Weight” would be my first choice in playbook, and even if I ended up choosing another would be my first choice of out of playbook moves. Guaran-damned-teed.
The teacher, too.
I think you could fruitfully look at the way your set of playbooks, just by name, create and express gender presumptions.
I like what you’re getting at there, Vincent Baker. A critical eye on that kind of topic is damned necessary.
The original name of the Worker was “The Everyman,” but I didn’t like the “gender presumptions” there. I suppose I could switch The Scoundrel back to its original title, “The Outcast,” if that’s more neutral.
Are there any other playbooks making assumptions that I’m not catching? The point of them is to say something about the character’s philosophy and/or lifestyle, not gender, so if there’s anything else I should rename, I’d love to hear it!
Not rename, no. You’re looking for more playbooks. My recommendation is, look for presumed-feminine skills, presumed-female work. They’re underrepresented in the playbooks you’ve got, and you can build your new playbooks out of them.
This is why I suggest the caretaker and the teacher. A caretaker isn’t just a subset of a leader, unless you disregard the presumed-female work a caretaker does. A cheerleader isn’t a worker with useless skills, unless you disregard the usefulness of presumed-feminine skills.
I feel like your playbooks are too vague and too general, makes it hard to deviate and bring in new ones.
I mean, the leader could easily be split into “The Mayor”, who leads a stable-ish community, “The Guide/teacher” who leads through knowing what’s what and “The Sherif” who’s a pre-apocalypse figure of authority and as such is naturally followed, just because it makes sense.
I also don’t really see what’s wrong with The Everyman. Nothing says the Everyman can’t be a woman. I mean, you can have a male Queen in Monsterhearts.
Vincent Baker Ah, interesting, Mr. Baker. I definitely think the teacher is a good option, I’ll see if I can brainstorm some moves for it.
As for the caretaker…I might be able to make that work, too. Like I said before, I could make the caretaker very one-on-one help oriented, leaving the Leader with more group-focused assist moves.
Alex Trépanier Well that’s the thing; they’re vague and general by design. Ideally, my game wouldn’t have playbooks at all, but I don’t see how I could do that without breaking the system (AW seems to get most of its power from its playbooks). I want the playbooks to be vague enough to encompass a wide range of characters, but specific enough to not be EVERY character. The shift manager at McDonald’s who believes in order is definitely a Leader, not a Worker. The parish of a local congregation is a Leader, too, but not in the same way. That’s where the Backgrounds come in.
“The guardian” would be good too.
You don’t need the playbooks to be super specific, but you need them to be specific enough to express the niche they’re playing on well enough. The playbook thing is a form of niche protection, as such, you should aim at getting the stereotypes of zombie fiction in there. You don’t need to have a different one for every background, and nothing is stopping you from being an office worker who’s totally a community leader, or a teenage loser who, it turns out, is naturally gifted at murder.
Essentially, I’m seeing it kind of like in Monsterhearts, where it’s possible to make a vampire from any single splat. There are just a bunch of different types of vampires. Or maybe this vampire is just a murderous nutcase while this other one is tragic and romantic.
There’s also no reason why different playbooks couldn’t imply varying levels of pre-established background. I mean, the Sherrif might HAVE to be an authority figure(there’s always a cop in zombie fiction), maybe the Mother has to have a child (and gets bonuses when defending the kid, and there’s always a character with a useless dependent.), but your Everyman could just be anyone who doesn’t have any useful anti-zombie skills.
I know I’m late, but for the infected, I think a base book is better than expanded (other than the fact that I don’t like expanded play books). The way I see it is how cool story wise would it be for the infected to change playbooks (that puts a cure into play)