As the turning of ages brings 2016 to a close and takes us into a whole new year, I’m pondering what direction to take Legacy in.
The game is something I’m very proud of, but people consistently seem to have issues with the character /family divide. Particularly, how you shift from the character level to the family level and back again, and how to arrange things so you don’t have endless scenes of character X in their own talking to their family. As I’m starting work on writing the revised edition, I thought I’d present some possible solutions to the community and hear your thoughts!
First up, keep things basically the same as they are now, but better explain the desired flow of the game and add a lot more examples of play.
Second option is to add in strict Family and Character phases, and rewrite moves where needed so that all Family moves have roughly the same scope and timescale, as do Character moves.
Third, focus much more on one side of the game. Maybe remove character playbooks and have each family give some simple character templates to choose from, or maybe simplify family playbooks down to just the effect they have on your character.
Finally, you probably have your own ideas. Let me know what they are!
I’d like to see it slanted more towards troupe style play. That is, you choose your family, and then quickly spin off a new character at various points. The characters are throwaway cast members that become NPCs.
To make this possible, I think characters would need to be more lightweight. I don’t know how to accomplish that, though.
I think the main problem is that the position of the character within the family isn’t clear. Can I simply order a family move? If not, what do I have to do? How is strife within the family handeled? Can I fall out of favor? Can I topple the leadership?
In other games there is usually one of two modes for organizations.
A) The absentee benefactors. Get bonuses because you are member. Get jobs, that is plot hooks.
B) You are the bosses. You may delegate stuff to your organization, start a war with other organizations etc.
Legacy aims for something else: You are representatives of DIFFERENT organizations and the organization can act.
There is no known template for that.
In case A the organizations can be different, but they do not act.
In case B, the PCs are the leadership of a single organization.
I think it’s a good thing there is no know template for that! And I believe that all we need to do is clarify the Character role, and set some clearer Phases for Family and Character actions.
Aaron Griffin
troupe style play… everyone would be part of the same Family but with different Characters? Why do they need to be lighter Characters?
Douglas Santana i think everyone could have different families without much struggle.
What I mean by lighter characters is that it shouldn’t take long to create a new character. Most details should be at the family level, with other details discoverable in play. Here’s a scenario:
We’ve played a few sessions, say there’s an Enclave and Synthetic Hive. In session 3, the Enclave player decides he wants to turn the camera on another member of their family – a Sentinal who just returns to town. The Hive player says “oh neat idea, what if I snag a Borg for my Hive that arrives with you?”. And off they go. The GM gets their previous characters to play as NPCs (obviously, with table agreement on anything major – you can still say “Hey Player, what would the elder want from the borg?”)
You can totally do this now. Just make new characters from session to session. The only let down is that there’s not a lot of carry over of your investment as a player. There’s nothing mechanical to encourage you to do something like this. Is there a limit to characters you can play in an age? What happens to them all when the age turns? Is XP shared for the player’s sake? What about death moves?
I don’t have anything concrete. It’s just a playstyle I’d like to see more of in Legacy. It might simply need a chapter or so describing it.
Aaron Griffin I definitely have a few ideas in that vein! I’m currently considering targeting character playbooks at about the size of an index card, with characters inheriting a lot of their moving parts from their family. These character playbooks would be a bit broader than the current setup – like, Leader, Outsider, Agent, Warrior, etc. Me and Douglas Santana have been tossing ideas back and forth over the past few days and I think there’s some real potential there.
The goal is to make characters:
– super-rapid to build, so you can make characters as the fiction demands
– adapt to fit the family, so they don’t grow stale.
– a bit less complex than in 1st edition
– come loaded with prompts to build the character’s place in the family and starting situation
Sound good?
Yes, that sounds exactly like what I’d be looking for. It might actually be cool to set a hard character limit on an age (or suggest it?) – when you’ve played 3 characters, the Age Turns. Maybe as a suggestion for pacing.
The only question I’d have is how the carry over of characters and moves would work from age to age.
With us changing how the game is framed we’d have to revisit what triggers a change of Age, for sure.
For carry-over, one idea I’m considering is that a lot of what characters start out with is determined by your Surpluses – if you have Surplus: Weaponry you can get cool gear, Surplus: Intel gets you something interesting about another faction, etc. I don’t think I want characters to have advancement in the ‘get new moves or boosted stats’ sense, but as the age progresses I think you’ll build up a family inventory of resources to draw on with all your characters.
Oh I like that a lot.
See, I like it the way it is now, I just want loads of examples of how things could work in actual play. Hands down the greatest thing about the original apocalypse world book IMO are the quantity and quality of examples in context. My two cents.
C.S. luvfitz no matter what I decide here, lots and lots of examples of play are a priority!