Has anyone made a hack where the modifier to your basic move rolls is primarily based on fictional inputs rather…

Has anyone made a hack where the modifier to your basic move rolls is primarily based on fictional inputs rather…

Has anyone made a hack where the modifier to your basic move rolls is primarily based on fictional inputs rather than stats?  For example:

When you engage in battle, roll 2d6. Add +1 for each of the following that are true:

 – You are better armed than they are

 – You have effective armor from their attack

 – Your position is superior

 – You’ve caught them by surprise

On a 10+…

I know I’ve seen individual moves like this, but I’m wondering if anyone’s done a whole set of basic moves along these lines.

14 thoughts on “Has anyone made a hack where the modifier to your basic move rolls is primarily based on fictional inputs rather…”

  2. We’ve seen some tag-based modifiers. The short-lived, unofficial Rat Queens AW hack used the “your character has these three traits; add +1 for each trait that applies to what you are doing” method of calculating modifiers.

    Our forthcoming Souls of Steel uses a hybrid approach. Vehicle and weapon tags add situational modifiers to rolls; for example if your vehicle has +agile you would get +1 to any roll in which you were performing a maneuver that required agility; likewise if your vehicle were +antique then you might get -1 to a roll associated with finding parts to repair it.  This approach let us create some really interesting unique attributes without having to conjure up specific mechanical rules for each one.

  3. I did something similar in the first draft of Black Seas of Infinity (in the Eschaton section of the barf forth forums), where you get a +1 bonus for having a fictional advantage, but it was limited to three categories: circumstantial, personal, and technological. You could also get penalties in those categories.

    But there’s no separate list of fictional stuff for each move or anything.

  4. This is a fruitful design area. My experiments here ended up leading me away from the core AW framework to address some issues, but that wasn’t out of pure necessity. I can see this approach working well for certain design goals.

  5. There was one hack that basically used Fate aspects. I think it was a superhero game or something, but I can’t remember the name and I can’t find it in my archives. Sorry. Anyway, I’ve told people they should mash-up Fate and AW before, so I think you should try it too.

  8. Also see Cortex+ / Marvel Heroic Roleplaying where you add dice to a pool for each trait that applies. Note that this may slow things down substantially.

    You could just let players spam as many beneficial traits or situational modifiers as possible, but it may be more interesting to modify the AW 2d6 curve to there are decreasing returns.

  9. There is a lot of potential overlap between Fate and *W; even more so now that Accelerated and Core are out (since they explicitly took inspiration from AW).

  11. Wouldn’t Conditions (since they are pretty much just like an Aspect) be able to fill this role? I am better armed is a Condition and in that way I could have prep moves that give concrete heft to the fiction (if needed/desired)

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