Hey, all. I’m struggling to apply the Savvyhead’s workspace option “it’s going to take several/dozen/hundreds of tries” into gameplay and narrative. Can anyone give a real world example of this working?
(For example, do you literally have the savvyhead do 12 tries in the fiction? Or do you fade to black and have them list the 12 things they’ve done that failed?)
When it’s so many tries, I make the act of trying have consequences. It doesn’t matter the number, but doing that many will cause problems. Like if a savyhead wants to attach a robotic arm to someone. It’ll take 10 dozens of tries each time injuring someone who is part of the experiment. Or, if they are trying to build a radio, it’ll take dozens of tries and is going to take either a lot of jingle for the tries, or they will have to steal all the electronic parts to get enough for all the tries. Hope this helps.
The one case I encountered it, it involved breaking someone’s mind each time, stealing a fragment of who they were. “Luckily” there were a lot of slaves handy.
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Further to Keenan’s comment, I always interpreted this as a way to introduce a cost. If the character really wants to accomplish the task they are going to have to burn resources. That could be jingle, barter, or friends, depending on the circumstances. I’ve always played it “zoomed out” rather than making the player describe each of the individual tries, but it could work either way.
For context, in our jungle world, the Savvyhead is trying to find an alternative fuel source with the idea that she is looking for plants (or maybe animals) that could be converted into fuel. Right now I have interpreted this as a dozen expeditions into the jungle, but considering Apocalypse World’s constantly changing circumstances, a dozen tries might just as well mean a dozen sessions from now.
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It could be a dozen expeditions into the jungle, but instead of roleplaying each, make it a cost as mentioned for going into the jungle. Maybe each time they do the chance of disease in the colony is much higher, or each time they go will piss off a rival faction so they risk war, or each time they go they risk disease themselves, make them have to take a risk that could lead to one good role play scene or bad consequences for going.
ok, this is all awesome. thanks. rethinking it from a dozen tries to a dozen consequences really helps.
You could ask them what they break/lose/sacrifice/fuck up the first few tries, and if they aren’t barfing forth enough, then think of something worse for the next few. 😉
I have always had trouble with this. Thanks, everyone.
Have you ever tried to master a new skill? Like a yoyo trick , or a tricky musical passage, or a boss fight in Skyrim? And it takes lots of tires and sometimes you wind up wasting whole days and sometimes your arms ache and etc etc etc? Yeah, that.
So, in the AW fiction, when I say “You can do it, but it’s going to take hundreds of tries”, what I mean is “this is not going to be easy, and if you really want it, it’s going to consume your life and resources for a while.” Then I cut to the other PCs and do stuff with them for a bit, and when it gets back to the Savvyhead, I ask “So, how much time/treasure/talent did you have to spend to get results? Do you owe anyone new now? Which attempt went most terribly wrong? Cool….Ok, so you’ve got the thing and it works. Now what?”
I had a savvyhead trying to revive a corpse (he had the advance to work on people already). Each try was going to need a corpse, so he had to go begging the hardholder to collect the dead from his battles to practice being Victor Frankenstein.
Considering the thing the Savvyhead is making is very much tied to your on-going conflicts (like if fuel is a scarcity) you can also tie it in with other mechanics:
I imagine the jungle is a landscape threat in your world, so why not make a custom move like “When you venture out into the jungle to gather or hunt resources roll+hard…”
And when the Savvyhead goes to get resources for their experimental new fuel, have a countdown clock for progress and complications each. A hit they can use for their progress, you can use a miss for the complications.
You can either disclaim decision making on what complications may occur or if you have ideas of fuckery and rewards, mark them on the clocks (i.e.: 12:00-needs human organs to be a viable alternative fuel). Be sure to give a good sense of progress when it is made (09:00-first form of usable but highly inefficient fuel).
Again, this probably only makes sense if the subject is central to what’s going on within your game. Also consider that those clocks can then also be advanced by other characters’ actions/moves.
If it’s more incidental or only a concern to the Savvyhead, zooming out and asking what sacrifice a several/dozens/hundreds of tries means for this character is probably more suitable.
Oooh, kind of building on what Meguey Baker said, you can let the Savvyhead pace things if you want to apply time instead of a consequence/problem.
MC: “How long/how hard/what do you do to do all these tries?”
Player: “Oh I work on it over the next year.”
MC: looking at the rest of the table “Ok, a year goes by unless any of you want to do something in the meanwhile.”
In which case, writing love-letters which all start out “It’s a year later…” would also be a way to handle it.
And then the MC just grins gleefully and describes a few extra threat advances and asks ‘so what do you do NOW?!’