So I’m going to be running UW for my Saturday group. We’re switching from FATE and we played about 8 sessions before we decided to take a break.
Question: Should I write some custom moves for my players since we are coming from a background of established characters?
My thoughts: I feel like this may be a good way to capture what their old characters had established as gimmicks and specialties.
What sorts of gimmicks and specialties? I’m tempted to say no to converting stunts over; to say focus on picking the careers that best fit the characters, and maybe give everybody one or two Advances to start to reflect “pre-leveled” characters. But, ya know, that depends on what kind of gimmicks we’re talking about — stuff beyond the purview of why the careers and origins offer?
Would it be possible to wrap their gimmicks up under your GM Principles, and just treat them as things you let them get away with, because your job is to make them look cool?
I’m just unsure about starting a game by writing X number of new moves that may or may not gel in unforeseen ways with how they rebuild their PCs. 🙂
While you may feel backed into a corner on this one, I really think it’s worth trying to run new games RAW, at least once. I think of it as something that I “owe” the creator of the game for all the work they did trying to craft a particular play experience. If I hack it before ever playing it RAW, then I may miss out on subtleties that could enrich the entire experience.
Not saying don’t do it ever, just that when you start a new system, it’s great to fully embrace it if you can.
That’s a fair appraisal. My ex-soldier probably doesn’t need any special moves created for him.
My (absolutely batshit crazy) pilot/mechanic needs a move to perform absolutely ludicrous jury rigging though. This is the move I drafted since there wasn’t anything comparable in the careers, backgrounds, or basic moves:
When you jury rig together a piece of equipment with materials that shouldn’t work, Roll+Expertise. On a 10+ choose 3. On a 7-9 choose 1. On a 6-, the MC will tell you what happens instead.
• The results will work as you intended.
• There is not an unexpected or unpleasant side effect.
• It’ll probably hold together for longer than a single use… probably.
• You can fix it without needing to replace it completely again after this use.
Admittedly, this is probably not the final version of the move. However, this move is not intended to replace Patch Up (since it doesn’t remove debilities or damage) but rather is a more advanced version of Tinker.
Mike Schmitz The reason why I’m considering the custom move (which I’ve never thought of as hacking PbtA games anyway) is because the player is not starting with a beginner character. Also, part of the fun of the previous go we had at this setting was (as Alfred Rudzki suspected) a stunt that let her Jury Rig basically anything. Now, some of that can be covered by flavor and Patch Up. But the only move that is kinda like Jury Rigging is Tinker and it doesn’t go far enough to really grab the feeling that we had before.
I’ll ask the player what they want to do before I set anything in stone. If they’re cool dropping some of what they had before to make the transition, then that’s awesome. If they feel like they’re getting short changed, I’ll have a custom move in the wing.
Colin Matter Sure that makes sense, and I agree that adding custom moves isn’t really “hacking” in a PbtA game. I just meant that if you’re going to give this new system a fair shot, I personally would try to build characters using the default careers and their moves before trying to add/extend things with custom moves. This way you experience the constraints and abilities as designed, and possibly find undetected nuggets of gold in them during actual play.
Mike Schmitz Hmm… This is wisdom.  Alright.  Call me convinced.  I’ll table the custom move for now.
Thanks for the advice guys!
I joke that UW resembles Traveller on the front-end (2d6+a characteristic bonus or skill), with an analysis of what the character’s intention is to shoe-horn it into a Move. But it resembles Fate on the hind-end since the GM must assess the 7-9 rolls as “success with a cost”, keep track of untended situations which are getting worse, and do some Soft and Hard Moves like foreshadowing, but not roll dice themselves.
Your players will experience more changes than you will. It is taking them completely out of Fate, but you will still experience a lot of Fate-like decisions.
Colin Matter hah, I got called wise on the internet! Quick, check your windows: pigs may be flying!
In all seriousness, you should definitely balance all this advice against your player’s desire to maintain what might be (in their view) a critical component of their character. I would never argue that you should piss off a player just to play a game RAW.
Colin Matter If I may make an observation/critique about that Jury Rig custom Move? (just my 2 cents here)
PbtA custom Moves are tricky beasts. I feel the options presented here aren’t truly options, because of the “it works” choice. When a player is presented with that list, “it works as intended” is going to be picked, because if it isn’t then the rest of the options are invalidated.
This is an unfortunate effect of using negatives as choices in a PbtA-style Move. Isolate each of these, and consider whether they are really a Move if chosen alone:
• The results will work as you intended: That’s basically a success. It would be automatic if this was a simple Face Adversity using Expertise. On a 7-9, it works, but it has a side effect, will fall apart after one use, and will need to be replaced not repaired. That just sounds like a 7-9 result of a Face Adversity (a particularly harsh one, at that).
• There is not an unexpected or unpleasant side effect: So if they don’t choose this there is not not a side effect.
• It’ll probably hold together for longer than a single use… probably.: If this is not chosen, then it’ll fall apart after a single use. But if you choose this, then it’ll last a few uses… but it won’t actually do anything (because it will not work as intended) and it’ll have bad side effects, and it’ll need to be replaced after. Not much of a choice.
• “You can fix it without needing to replace it completely again after this use”: If this one is picked on a 7-9, it doesn’t work as intended, has a side-effect, will fall apart after a single use, but at least you won’t need to replace it. Again, not much of a choice.
If you really want a custom Move, I would suggest you make the choices positive (as in “this will happen”)
—-
Custom Jury Rig (+ Expertise)
When you jury rig together a piece of equipment with materials that shouldn’t work, Roll+Expertise.
On a 10+, it works, but choose one flaw.
On a 7-9, it works, but it has all these flaws.
• There is an unexpected side effect.
• It’ll fall apart the next time it’s used.
• After this, it’s basically scrap and needs to be replaced.
——
That said! I feel the character can do just as much with the Upgrade skill (page 85: temporarily alter/boost a system, the boost will fail/fall apart after being used), the Jury Rig rules for Patch Up (page 69) and a standard Face Adversity using Expertise for truly odd/unique feats of engineering.
Meanwhile, I’m wondering about the legitimacy of using the Reckless move for truly spectacular (read: terribly ill-advised) feats of engineering/engine-whispering.
Oh yes absolutely! Recklessness is made to combine with everything (as long as it’s risky and foolish)
Sean Gomes *nods* I see there is still much I have to learn before running this game (as the combination of moves here would in fact get me pretty much what I was wanting out of the custom move).
Also, the suggestion for the custom move you’ve presented is much more elegant than the one I made. Â If I need it (for ease of use since the other option will sound very complicated to the players in question) I’ll likely go with that version of the move.
Thanks for the advice, Sean!
Hey no sweat Colin Matter, I’ve been attacking these kinds of Moves for a couple years writing the dang book in the first place, hehe. Don’t sweat the whole “learn before running” thing. Just run and learn by doing. Get a feel for things. You’ve already got a good foundation in general PbtA-style play, so it’ll flow naturally.
Truth be told, I had a very similar version of Jury Rig as an Industrial career skill, but ultimately I felt it didn’t do enough unique stuff to be worth it. In fact, compared to a well-described Patch Up attempt, it was often a disadvantage. I broke the cool stuff it could do into two skills (Upgrade and Tinker), and removed the need to roll.
That said, Alfred Rudzki hits on a great point about Recklessness! Anyone can attempt a normal, boring old Patch Up to Jury Rig a piece of machinery. But it takes someone truly insane to Recklessly flip a coin between amazing results and catastrophic explosions.
So, Colin Matter , did you get a chance to give UW a whirl? How did it go?
Not yet, sadly. Â The situation in brief: My current GM for Saturday has some (pretty serious) medical stuff going on. Â He’s trying to keep GMing through the treatment (no further questions about that, please). Â So I’m prepping to take over the responsibility with UW to make sure that we have something we can fall back on if/when he’s not feeling up to GMing anymore (but potentially still wants to play). Â
I’ll definitely post to let you know how the session goes and if any further questions arise. Â