I’ve been pondering long about this issue in my #NahualRPG : How I handle the playbooks and the nahual animals.
Because in Mexican culture a Nahual is most commonly a brujo or shaman that can transform into an animal.
So far, I have defined the playbooks as common character archetypes: the tough character, the stealthy character, the smart character, the sexy character, etc. And then I would have the animals as a second layer.
The thing is, for a while now, I’ve been thinking that my archetype playbooks lack originality (after all, can an archetype be original?), they are too universal, and by that I mean that you can apply them to any game, theme or genre. They are cool, sure, but are lacking on theme and flavor. Specially in a Mexican game about brujos nahuales.
Then I saw mister Jason Morningstar in a conference in Finland (on youtube of course, I don’t have the pleasure of visiting Finland yet) about hacking AW. And as I listened to him talking about early stages of Night Witches and how they had these other playbooks, but in the end they were only noise, so they removed them, I realize that this may be my case too.
I’ve been trying hard to keep my early choice of playbooks for one main reason (I think), I feel that getting rid of them will be a huge setback and that may discourage the people that is supporting me in Patreon. I’ve already took too long in writing this game, and even with the late revisions some people had been already stepping out. And I don’t blame them, I feel really bad about that because the fault is mine alone. I feel I’ve disappointed them!
But then, at the same time, I feel an obligation to my patrons, and to myself, to do a good job. I know my game won’t be perfect, I’m a novice designer and of course there will be a lot of things I won’t be doing right, but I’m sure about one thing, I don’t want to be left with a feeling that I didn’t give my best, and that’s what matters to me the most.
So, I have this strong feeling that my first choice of playbooks is lacking theme, and that it will be better to base those playbooks on specific animals with a strong Mexican folkloric feel. I guess I have to go that route and start my playbooks from scratch, even if that means ending up with only a few patrons. I apologize to those who may feel disappointed by my decision and thank them for the support so far.
As for everything else, it will stay pretty much as is, the stats, the basic moves, etc.
All that said, from now on the old playbooks (the Hard, the Shield, the Opportunist, the Sneaky, the Nerd, the Seducer, the Leader and the Tumbler) will change to:
-The Jaguar
-The Serpent
-The Dog
-The Eagle
-The Armadillo
-The Bat
-The Deer
-The Monkey
-The Tlacuache
-The Axolotl
Thanks for reading this far.
Fin del comunicado.