Don’t judge me but has anybody ever made AW playbooks with all mention of sex removed?
Don’t judge me but has anybody ever made AW playbooks with all mention of sex removed?
Don’t judge me but has anybody ever made AW playbooks with all mention of sex removed?
We just ignore them.
I’m sure someone’s made them. You could always black them out with a Sharpie marker. That’d look pretty punk.
You’ll just have to trust me on this one but in my situation it would be very important that they’re gone. Without a trace! Also, is it possible to reword them into something else and still have them work?
Other games use the term “intimacy move”, that is not necessary sex. Just when you trust someone for real counts as intimacy and allows the move to activate.
Anyway, not all these moves are positive for the players, unlike other games, so getting rid of them usually works better than adapting them.
I don’t know of any playbooks that have the Sex Moves completely gone as if they never existed. Maybe someone has made them though.
A number of other PbtA games don’t have sex moves. Is playing one of them not an option? I’m not saying you shouldn’t take out sex moves mind you. I’m just curious.
I know there are groups that never engage with them, which is fine. Can I ask why you would need all mention of sex gone without a Trace? That sounds to me like the group or space you would be playing with has some pretty clear and strong prohibitions, and I wonder if a different game, or at least a different PbtA game, might be a better fit.
Or, you could simply rephrase them, with something like “When you share intimacy with…”.
You can have very powerful, intense, intimacy scenes, with no sex involved.
Your character can speak to another one, deeply, opening up, something like a confession. Or, they could spend time together, tending their wounds, fixing their minds.
Agreed with Meguey: DW or MotW may be more appropriate for the table.
“Friendship moves”? 😛
Gonna come back to this: no one is going to come police how you play at the table (that’s on you and your players to do) but why do you need all mention of sex removed? If it’s an age thing, there is a TON of other content that’s probably not ideal for kids. If it’s an asexual visibility thing, then great, a sharpie is your answer and rock on. If it’s a phobia or a trauma, also a sharpie (but why for all playbooks??) and be damn sure the other players and the MC know and are on board.
From a design note (and I know this isn’t what you asked for), sexuality is part of the world, even if you don’t engage with it. Assumptive cis-het-sexual is the dominant stance on advertising and movies and etc etc etc. We try to push against that in AW by explicitly including different gender options and relationships in actual play and etc, and by talking about things like player and character consent. It matters very much to me as a designer that sex moves are included in the game text, but I’m not going to be judgey if you don’t want to deal with it in your game if you need a break from it.
Some of AW’s sex moves work fine as “intimacy moves,” but some of them really don’t. If you’re considering going that route, I’d recommend creating a whole new set of moves, to reflect what you think intimacy between people might mean, not just scratching out “sex.”
Michael Prescott Heck yes! “When you and another character make friends…” would make for a fantastic set of moves.
If I had to stab at the dark, it could be for religious reasons. Some religions are pretty strict on that.
Let’s assume for a second that Thomas had a valid reason (for example, that he’s going to play with young teenagers, and their parents would not take it well that their teenager offspring would “play” sex with an adult… or a religious issue… or perhaps a personal problem in bringing this at the table, or at that specific table…) and that he’s not keen in sharing this publicly…
At the same time, the post-apocalypse world and fiction might be perfectly acceptable at the table, especially if played in a quite conventional way and without barfing too much apocalypse onto the players 🙂
I guess if the sex moves have to be gone without a trace (as mentioned above), then:
– Use Indesign or some other PDF editing tool, blank out that section
– If the section cannot be left blank, replace it with the AW logo
– Or maybe replace it on each playbook with the small portrait of each playbook
– Replace it with a friendship move, or maybe instead of mentioning intimacy, replace it with “sharing a secret”… to trigger the move, the player must share a secret of their character
– If Indesign is not an option, I guess even cutting a small piece of blank paper (or a printed AW logo) and doing a photocopy of the playbook with the small logo covering the sex move would work…
What is interesting for me is that sex is taboo at that table (there might be perfectly valid and personal reasons for that) but violence is not.
I don’t know… When I’ve read this I thought that probably Thomas is going to play with other people’s kids… and that probably those parents are fine with violence being a topic for the game, but not sex (which is what happens in a lot of movies, books, videogames…). Which is something to think about…
I once had a game where a player’s character reprogrammed another one (she was a Terminator-like being and it was consensual, even a bit touching and sweet). We all looked at each other and we just knew that we were going to roll the “special move”: it was, in context, a moment of defenselessness, of trust, of intimacy and personal intrusion.
Anyway, if your PCs are not having sex, those move will stay unused.
If you’re character never gets shot, then you won’t apply the moves for wounds, healing, and such, right?
I would suggest NOT to remove the moves, they’re here to remind the players what WOULD happen if they were to have sex.
Then again, if you want to write a game set in a sexless world, or where sex has no consequences whatsoever, go ahead. Hack the game, write variants, etc!
Man, I really want to know why you need these sex moves removed.
I’m figuring Jools Thomas has a good reason for asking, and it’s not really our business, so there’s that. I would like to help, and if “try a different game” or “get a sharpie” won’t work, I got nothing. Jools, did you find what you needed in this thread?
I love that we can have this discussion, and not “It’s not AW without sex moves!”
Masks, Monster of the Week, The Fellowship, and City of Mist all lack discussion of sex on the playbooks.
I’ve had to remove curse words from player-facing rules texts before because I often play with kids. Here’s the easiest way to do it: download GIMP 2.0 (I presume you can use Photoshop if you’ve got it), load the playbook PDF into GIMP, delete the stuff you need to delete, and export the image as a new PDF. It’ll take some time and the formatting won’t be perfect, but it’ll do the job. Make sure you do it one page at a time instead of trying to edit the whole file. Unless you know your way around GIMP better than I do you’ll probably run into problems otherwise.
GIMP’s Text Editing isn’t great, but you’d also be able to add different moves if you wanted to do a Specials involving “Friendship” and so on.
Scott Udall: I think there’s room in this world for a PBtA where you trigger Moves based on what your characters show about their feelings. It can be a nice design challenge/idea!
Mattia Bulgarelli Masks has that…two moves each playbook…when you share a moment of triumph or when you share a moment of vulnerability
I’ll try Masks next week! : ) Thanks!
(incidentally, I also wrote a game that triggered certain counters when “you or your character feel [this or that]”, but that’s not available in English and it’s not a PBtA)