I was browsing through the forum yesterday and some posts in the old mediography thread gave me the idea for the Endless Tenement. I managed to jot down a small paragraph before work picked up:
“A claustrophobic apocalypse set in a seemingly never-ending, Kwaloon-like, tenement. No-one has ever been outside the twisting halls & alleyways, though in some courtyards a pinprick of sunlight can be seen above. (or is it just random light reflecting off a miles hight glass ceiling?) From time to time brave souls will set out to find the rumoured/legendary roof or street. None return.”
People grow plants in indoor hydroponic gardens. Various food courts are repurposed into dingy farmer’s markets; shopping concourses into scavenger’s flea markets. There is no law but the local. Levels/districts/neighborhoods band together against raiders, neighbors and the unknown.
Now I know I’ll probably never get to run or play in this setting seed, but it kinda struck me such that I really wanted to share it.
Maybe not so oddly, the one playbook that doesn’t seem like it fits like, at all, is the Driver. Which is figure is pretty acceptable losses. Though I’d be curious if anyone had an idea for incorporating them into such a cramped, roadless landscape.
Oh wow! I really like that idea. The Driver doesn’t seem to fit as you said, though I’m sure the inhabitants have come up with some kind of conveyance. Like rickshaws or bicycles, or even motorbikes. Something small and maneuverable that can fit through the cramped streets.
Oh yeah. No streets. Streets are a rumour and “street level” a myth.
I see there being areas that WE would recognize as car parks, they don’t empty out into any space a car could fit into.
And while bicycles could kinda work, there isn’t really any room for My Other Car Is A Tank . . . Unless you worked it out with your MC that those “cars” are more like say, power armour.
So the concept of the Driver, like the Chopper, is about declaring that a wider world beyond the local scrounge is within reach. Yeah the car is an important aspect of the driver, but it’s not it’s core, which is distance. When you think of local communities in the Endless Tenement, what do you feel exists in between those places where people congregate at their thickest? Are the inhabited or are they condemned, powerless and and the wrong kind of uninhabited? If community center A needs to reach community center B, how do people get there?
For my hack, the driver might have a vehicle, or they might not. What they do have is an unerring sense of direction in a location that is activly altering its byways. No easy paths exist, but this guy knows the way anyhow.
An if you really really don’t feel that the driver can be a driver without a car, think of something that might allow rapid movement through confined spaces Povide the skill to manage the jinks necessary to tear ass despite having to make ridiculously right turns. Maybe a monocycle, maybe a mini-cooper, maybe a motorized unicycle. As for my other car is a tank, might I suggest a Metal Slug style compact armored vehicle and allow it to careeen through the flimsy walls that make up the majority of the tenements.
I’m looking forward to where you take this as Kwaloon is a personal favorite for inspiration. One other you might take a look at is Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter, criminally underrated game. It’s set. In an underground empire and the player is tasked with getting a young girl to the mythological surface. There might be some visuals to the environments compelling.
That is a much better way of saying it that I managed Darrin Michelson. The Driver is all about getting places, navigating, and connecting groups of people. Surely there must be some similar role in a massive, mazelike walled city. 😉
Darrin Michelson Metal Slug hell, I cannot believe I didn’t immediately think of Bonaparte! But then again, I kinda wanted to do a minimum of hacking. And, at least in my mind’s eye, the Endless Tenement is cramped enough that the best “vehicles” would be skateboards, roller-skates & bicycles.
Ugh! And now I’m really digging the Driver as some kind of skater-punk derby enthusiast.
;-P
Still, I really dig the idea of someone who doesn’t get lost in the unknown in-betweens.
edit: took another look at the 2ed playbook. Yeah. That could seriously work with just minor hacking over vehicles. And I’d also prob change up the Tank move to something like, “My other board hovers!”
I really like the imagery of some sort of compact tank, barely able to round a corner, crashing through all the debris and clutter in the hallways of the tenement. Like, fills the hallway but is all sorts of intimidating when it’s rolling towards you.
I think it would be nice to see that as a possibility at least. Maybe it hovers, maybe its a tank, maybe by tank it’s a shopping cart strapped with sheet metal and a grenade launcher (trading that driver mobility for firepower).
Jonathan Semple Haha! Shopping cart tank is great! Like something out of MegaForce, Warrior of the Lost World, or Hell Comes to Frogtown.
I don’t think I’d use it, but I could not, in good conscience, poo-poo anyone else doing so.
Are you familiar with the manga “Blame!” ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blame!
Cole Robotshenanigans I AM! 😀 And its definitely an inspiration that I keep forgetting to mention. (I own the first two volumes of the manga)
Mind, I probably see the Endless Tenement as even more cramped than whatever that crazy setting was. Probably not nearly as casually sci-fi either.
A nuclear fallout shelter. A forgotten colony on mars. An abandoned experiment in social engineering. The lower levels of Coruscant that got cut off from the rest…
I’m really enjoying talking about this idea, and I’m super digging all the feedback & other people’s perspectives but . . . As an Apocalypse World pitch, should I really expand it more? I mean, I want to hack the driver into more of a skater now but beyond that, AW is all about discovery through play, right?
Oh, and speaking of cross sections:
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/full-size.jpg
Chris Stone-Bush Why thank you. I’ve had a very good teacher in my friend Kerlinsky. Took him a couple years but I finally started to see the wider implications of how the playbooks do more than simply provide a character and stats; their very existence says things about the nature of the world they’re in.
Jason Averill HaHA! Bonaparte! That takes me back. Definitely look at the playbooks and ask yourself if they fit your vision. If they dont, dont be afraid to axe them or frankenstein something more fitting from two other books. As an example my own setting focuses on figures with the power to create almost anything, I wasn’t able to find a place for the savvyhead in it. I do have a place for a Maestro’d reskin as The Union, so the establishment becomes a gathering spot for collective bargaining and most of the hot moves become focused on oratory regarding the strength of many as one. When 2.0 lands I have a good feeling that the News would work even better with a few mods.
So if you do think along those lines I would love to hear what the classes say about Endless Tenement fictionally!
Darrin Michelson “My vision.” Haha! I figured this would end up a mostly basic AW idea, but thinking about hacking the Driver into . . . The Skater? The Wheels? The Courier? And realizing that not only would I need to re-do “Cars” into “Wheels” (Quad, Blade, Board & Bike as the bases) but all the Hx questions don’t really work, which means I’d want to go through the other playbooks & make sure their Hx & gigs make sense!
Feels good!
Jason Averill Yeah its a slippery slope isn’t it. The fictional venn diagram is one way to do it, another is to think of your setting as a TV show. What stories could be told there and what the characters would be like? This solution is helpful for me because it stops me from thinking of the playbook as mechanics hung off a blank everyman who could make every choice, and forces me to think of them as outsized personalities.
TV often relies on simple characters with obvious desires and needs, and a sphere of influence where they have an easier time making sure those those needs are met. You don’t have to worry as much regarding character depth and nuance, that’s what the player brings to the playbook. In this way I end up thinking of moves as the things a character would do with those talents, as well as how those talents come at a cost, either immediate, or long term, over simple or obvious mechanical benefit.
A quick example could be say… some of the characters from Person of Interest. The redemptive ex assassin might have a move like ‘Kneecaps’ where the play can ask the MC who in a situation would be the most beneficial to shoot in the knee, and take a plus one if you take out that person. A complication might be that the person is actually a CIA deep cover operator who now sees through your cover identity.
The physically and ethically handicapped computer genius might have a move like ‘Digital Forgery’ where they can quickly assemble a short term cover identity for themselves or someone else on the fly that will pass inspection on a good roll, or raise suspicions on a poor one.
Sky’s the limit and sometimes it’s useful to have stepping stools like these to reach it.