I’m looking for a way to make AW harder, so here goes…
Apocalypse Harder Hack
• success is measured on 8-11, and 12+
• every instance of max+2/max+3 should be read as max+3/max+4 instead
• both “advance basic moves” improvements changed to “erase basic improvement marks”
…thoughts?
Moving the 7s to failure result means doubling the chance of a failure… Any -1 penality on standard ranges is balanced only by a +3 bonus
Federico Totti how does it double it? by my math it increases chances of failure by 17%
starting stats become a lot more important because a -1 is very risky (i.e. harder)
It increases it by 41% or by 17 percentage points. Definitely not double.
Patrick, I did it once for testing a hack I was working on… It lead to many more failures than I expected (there might have been a biased perception at the table, but indeed it felt like many more failures than usual). It was not bad, but it’s definitely something to consider.
The hack I had in my hands, though, often had moves that gave players still something on a 7- … it wasn’t a mitigation of failure but still something to do/ask etc. before the GM hard move.
I also had Stats ranges similar to yours.
Of course the hack was quite grim and dark, not Fairies & Unicorns 🙂
All in all, the numbers were fine but sometimes it was leading to some confusion with the results. If the math is not so much different, I’d evaluate lower Stats but keeping the 6-, 7-9 and 10+ results for simplicity of play.
(what do you mean by ‘erase basic improvement marks’?)
I’d say leave the success/falure ranges alone and just change the stats modifiers. Even +0 gives us 50% chance of failure. Make it +1, +0, +0 , -1, -1(or even -2 if you are so EVIL). That should make it very hard indeed.
I wouldn’t change the dice.
I would rewrite the moves to reflect the darker theme and make the choices harder. That would allow for finer control.
There have been a couple of Dungeon World hacks that may be similar, notably Grim World and Souls World.
Davide Pignedoli Like, the upper box of improvements are “basic” improvements. One you get 5 of those you unlock the “advanced” improvements. I don’t think the language makes that distinction in the rulebook but that’s always the way I’ve thought of them.
So, when you get a basic improvement you mark it and can’t get it again. Erasing the marks would allow you to do just that, erase the marks and get the basic improvements again. (this is impossible with some improvements but this is just a rough idea)
thanks Tim Jensen , I have Grim World but hadn’t heard of Souls World, I’ll check it out!
Pavel Berlin yeah, even taking just 1 point off of the starting stats changes alot… and, I am that evil!
Why would you want to make the game harder? Wouldn’t that go against the basic principle of ‘be a fan of your PC’s’? Surely the answer is to throw more hard moves at the character to make their decisions have more impact. Combining that with consistently darker descriptors would make the game seem harder whilst still allowing the characters to be awesome.
Daniel Steadman that’s why it’s called a “hack” 😉
In general I’m a huge fan of my PCs, but rolling dice has nothing to do with being a fan of the PCs. I don’t want the game to seem harder, I want it to actually be harder – that way, when the PCs win they cheer rather than get bored at their continual success
https://twitter.com/nerdwerds/status/720204800588148736
Patrick, thanks for the clarification (about the Advanced…), now it’s clear. Not sure if that’s where you want to go, since you make this harder, I’d say keep it harder and don’t let players boost their scores more than usual…
is it going to be pure AW? or DW? which kind of a setting? (just curious)
Davide Pignedoli the final hack will be a fantasy world, but not DW at all, much closer to AW … taking some inspiration from the Dark Ages playtest, I’ve been calling it Apocalyptic Fantasy with my friends but maybe will change the name later. I’ve posted the first playbook to my blog, but that is a rough draft teaser. I’ve got four other rough playbooks, and I want to finish up three more before I start playtesting.
Grillo Parlante to what are you referring? the read a situation move?
Grillo Parlante I think I’m going to follow the advice of my peers above and keep the 7-9/10+ but simply lower the starting stats, but otherwise, sure, I’ll post playtest reports once I start 😉
Could their be a 4th teir? 6-8 = mostly failed
You fail with a tad of success.
Tommy Rayburn that might require such an extensive rewrite that I’m not willing to commit to
Grillo Parlante It is because situations are never the same twice that modifiers are not needed. Pretend that every time players roll 10+ they had a +3 situational modifier and every time they roll 6- they had a -3 situational modifier. What changes? Nothing.
Could just use the difficulty rule that they have in the game? Adding in penalties for difficulty as appropriate?
I prefer this method to lower attributes personally as lowering attributes doesn’t feel like it is making the world tougher, it feels like it is making the players weaker. However, with the shifting difficulty mod, you can let the player characters be awesome for most things, but shift the difficulty when appropriate. Scaring some thugs in town is one thing, scaring Lord Humongous in front of his warband is another. It also feels very appropriate for a fantasy setting, where there is typically a feel of ‘level’.
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Try changing the dice from 2d6 to 2d10 with partial success at 11-16 and full success at 17+. Then a +3 modifier is less consequential.
Patrick Henry Dollah Have you seen the Fallen Empires stuff from the 2E Kickstarter? That sounds the closest to what you’re aiming for, and might be the best starting point.
Tim Jensen Fallen Empires is literally just a reskin of Apocalypse World and it plays virtually the same. The only dramatic difference I’ve noticed is that the names of the playbooks are changed.
The new edition of Kult that was on Kickstarter seems like it’s using a variant of the 2d10 idea, so we should have a fully fleshed out example of that soon.