Last one for this week.
What advice would you give a player who wants to play a HOCUS? How can the player get the most out of their cult/family/worshippers? How has a Hocus made your game awesome?
Last one for this week.
Last one for this week.
7 thoughts on “Last one for this week.”
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Work out what your character’s goals are (make ’em big) and then work out how your followers fit into that. Are they your unquestioning servants? Your unruly family that you try to keep in line? Your suppliers of resources? Once you know your relationship with them, and make it really clear in play (and setup), your MC will know how to use that lever to tell some really interesting stories with you.
One particular thing I like to do is pick the option that means I only have a small group of followers – and then name them all at the start and learn their names off-by-heart. Learn any new ones as they join, too. I find it gives a much more personal relationship with your followers if you know each of them separately from the very start.
Have fun and realize that no matter what (at least in my opinion) there isn’t a too far. I’ve had two characters with Fortunes and Followers (my favorite Move by far) and my second foray into AW was a Hocus.
The way I went about my Hocus’ character was to take some normal things and ramp them past 11 to something horrifying (my Hocus started as a transvestite ex-synergy workshop leader). Have chants or catchphrases (my Hocus would have things like “Walk together in the darkness rather than alone in the light,” and “Beat the mug.”) and little rituals. Don’t be afraid to mimic small things at the table or bring props (hand sanitizer to mimic washing with limited water, candy you hand out whenever someone rolls to help you, a stuffed animal to whisper to like one of your minions). These things have meaning to bind your followers; you wash your hands so the evil spirits fall off, you chant about darkness because your followers are albinos, you hold together what was even if through cracked mirrors. Basically sound like a psychotic game show host or eccentric sales person.
Nick Golding: Having goals as a player is definitely something any character should have. Not just the Hocus. I need to start working on those with my players during session 0. Thanks for that mate.
NihilisticWhim: You sound like you’d be a lot of fun at the table 🙂 I like the idea of bringing your character out of the game and into the table. I like the idea of little rituals.
If I may wax nerdy: Maudmillionaire Chestbucks was my second character and in a Southern Bible Belt apocalypse was liberated to be a Dolly Parson impersonator he was on the weekends while using his acting chops and workshop skills to attract the dregs of surviving society. His catchphrases were “Wordy or dirty? (negotiation or flesh trade)” along with his battlecry “Crack the mug!(in drag queen slang ‘mug’ is face)”
He was betrayed by his second in command, Hissy Fitzsimmons, and in penitence he had her dress for her own funeral and, before the crowd and table, told her “Your makeup is terrible but I love you anyway” and drove an ice pick into her head. I think my best time, out of character, was getting someone to help me on my roll just because I had brought cadbury eggs from the after easter sale as my reward bait.
What would be some good Hocus specific goals for a player to try to achieve? An example being “Try to get the entire holding to join your cult, or better yet the other players”
Yeah, that’s a great one. My last was: “See the holding safely through the day of judgement (of which the recent apocalypse was just a foreshadowing) – hastening and welcoming that day where possible”.
… So, more generally, I guess I’d say find a belief structure – mine there being that the end times were nigh – and take your goals from that. You’re a priest, maybe a prophet, a person with some vision beyond most others – and that gives you responsibility to guide those others. Where are you guiding them?
Of course, that’s if you want to play pretty devoutly. You could also play a con artist who just wants to accumulate power through their cult, in which case your goals would be focussed more mundanely. Or somewhere between the two. Or something else entirely!