Pavel Berlin pointed out a typo on a sheet today that got me thinking.

Pavel Berlin pointed out a typo on a sheet today that got me thinking.

Pavel Berlin pointed out a typo on a sheet today that got me thinking.

The advancement option I gave to each playbook (minus The King of course) indicates that you join a group of some sort, which is essentially membership into, or possibly even leadership of a group of people who have resources you can gain access to.

What do you think of this advancement option? Does it excite you as a player for your protagonist to be able to enlist in a group like this?

Here are the group names I have so far sorted by Archetype.

Aware – Resistance Group

Dragon – Tribe of Wyrms

Expert – Guild

Fae – Faeire Court

Hallowed – Group of Believers

Hunter – Hunting Party

Immortal – Ancient Order

Oracle – Seer’s Circle

Specter – Body of Ghosts

Tainted – Cult

Vamp – Vampire Clan

WIzard – Council of Magi

Wolf – Wolf Pack  

The ones I’m luke-warm on are Guild, Cult, and Group of Believers. Got any suggestions? Also, do you like that they have names and an implied direction/membership or would you prefer something open-ended, like “You join a group of ___“?

13 thoughts on “Pavel Berlin pointed out a typo on a sheet today that got me thinking.”

  1. Group of believers could be changed into something Christian-based or something. The Hallowed always struck me as heavily Christian.

    The Guild is actually very good. Basically it goes back in time to when you are actually part of a body of individuals with your profession. This includes the apprenticeship programs (which still last to today) and the idea of being a Journeyman. Plus the idea of the Workspace is perfect under this concept.

    The cult… this could work for even the Hallowed or whatnot. But in the end it’s your call how you want to go with this.

    Basically, I prefer the actual group names than simply saying “you join a group of…” It seems more interesting to me that way.

  2. Some good point John. I know sometimes the Hallowed seems very western christian focused but I tried to allow the moves to be as generic as possible. In fact,I’ve seen two  Hallowed played so far, one was a buddhist monk and the other was a wiccan practicioner. I am very happy to see that!

  3. Yeah. I’ve always been a bit interested in one day trying an Agnostic Hallowed or something, but I have to wait for the right game before he takes the field.

  4. See that’s great stuff John. Reminds me of Sanya from the Dresden Files, who is a character I love.

    Whereas I would love to try the Hallowed as the archetypical Irish Catholic Priest. That is fun to me. I love how each Archetype can be re-invented though.

  5. Gosh, sorry Tommy. Really messed up checking your posts. The mistake was in the Dragon Archetype. Had their group improvement still as the Aware’s “You join a resistance group” when it should have read “You join a Tribe of Wyrms”

  6. I’m not sure that “joining” a group, as in plain membership, is really an exciting advance. I think it’s quite probably the kind of thing that happens “descriptively”, that is, through normal play. Gaining Leadership, on the other hand, does sound like a very interesting opportunity, specially since the advances are for existing characters.

    That being said, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the concept of Compendium Classes from Dungeon World. These are basically mini-playbooks that can be used by any other playbook, provided you meet the in-fiction requirement. Then the next time you gain an advance, you can choose one of the moves from that “mini-playbook”

    You can check somo of these here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3269630/dwdotcom/Backer-Classes-CC-1up.pdf

    I think this might be a cool approach to groups and organizations because then you could have your Dragon join the Council of Magi or things like that.

  7. It may well. I could argue that not everyone wants to lead a group but may just want to be in that team, but if that’s what they want they don’t have to lead, just use the advance to join. So yeah, that seems like a good move.

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