Hey MotW Roadhouse,
First, thank you for being such a great resource for folks trying to run and play MotW. Like many others, I’m sure, I got interested after listening to the short arc on TAZ. I was pretty much in love with the system once I realized combat didn’t devolve into two hours of dice rolling.
I ran my first session of MotW this past Saturday, and came away with rave reviews from everyone involved. I have some great players, and we found we were able to work through the rules pretty intuitively. Only one thing came up that left me at a bit of a loss. The group had a cop friend (NPC) that was present for a mid-mystery battle. He ended up taking a few shots at the bad guys, and since I was a little unclear on rules for when an NPC helps the PCs in combat, I ended up assuming he had +0 on all his stats, and just rolling for him. I’m aware this goes against the rule of the keeper never rolling dice.
To sum up, are there appropriate rules/moves I should be flexing when an NPC is helping the PCs during a fight?
And, naturally, I just found the answer to my own question while looking through the AW sub-forum for MotW.
apocalypse-world.com – What do Allies do?
Considering I read the section on allies, I probably should have known how to handle in game. Ah well, c’est la vie!
Yep, and for those who don’t want to follow the link:
1. Don’t roll hunter basic moves for allies
2. Just use your regular Keeper moves for them, as appropriate for their ally type.
2a. In a fight, that means they might inflict or suffer damage, but resolve that as you would for bystanders (with the caveat that allies are a bit more reliable).
For the Luddites: What is TAZ? The Adventure Zone?
I typically use them as extensions of the Hunter….in my campaign the Professional had a psychic second in command he used to justify his Telepath move….so if she wasn’t around he couldn’t do telepathy….and if one of his team was with another player I allowed him to roll Help or other moves.
I also statted a “team attack” weapon for when he and his combat-ready team members (3 of them were scientists rather than fighters) cut loose with coordinated automatic weapons fire.
Mark Tygart Yes! The adventure zone. They just announced that season two is going to be monster of the week, carrying on the 5 episode short arc they did between seasons. The short arc was called “Amnesty” if you want to give it a listen.
Andrew Prain I will do so, thanks.