My players bought a bar, 12 cred btw and not feeling that was enough, and they mentioned a fortune move from apocalypse world. I dont have a lot of experience with AW and would like to get some thoughts on what this base would/could provide.
Extra credit: Advice on vehicular combat and damage? Only 1 instance of this so far in our game. They have an armoured vector thrust vehicle and were engaged with a squad of soldiers with anti-air missiles. I used a soft move to show that if they stayed engaged the armor would be taken out and followed with a hard move of piecing the armor with the missile. They were undamaged and escaped but they also mentioned using AW vehicle rules. Thoughts?
About the bar: choose whatever price you want. Just consider that it could even be free. It’s just fictional positioning and not giving any advantage. In our group our fixer has a brothel (free) and each of us got several houses/refuges/hideouts (free). They aren’t giving ANY advantage to us, we use them just for narrating downtime. 12 creds for something like that seems a little too much. The sprawl is full of cheap locations. 8 cred is for a military vehicle/top notch high tech cyberware, both extremely expensive. If you are charging them 12 creds i would expect that bar has got retractable turrets and expensive high tech defenses (antijam systems, secure connections, automated defenses, etc)
B) vehicle rules: at first i was looking for them too, then i realized that you don’t need them at all.
Vehicles are just objects for fictional positioning.
When players fail an action, and/or you think the narrative demands it, you can directly damage the vehicle. I would consider just 3 levels of integrity (unharmed, damaged, incapacitated). A damaged vehicle would require repairs, which could be less or more expensive. I would leave the incapacitating damage just to the most dire situations where the loss of a vehicle would bring a narration enjoyed by the whole group.
Consider inflicting harm is only vs the players(or npc). There isn’t something like a vehicle stat sheet with an harm clock. When you inflict harm,and if it’s area damage, you would be damaging the vehicle passengers, or just one of them if a single weapon, or all of them with multiple single target weapons. Treat the vehicle like an item, like expensive cyberware, that can be temporarily damaged and require repairs as fiction demands.
Edit: when i do refer to the 3 states, I’m not implying it has an harm clock of 3, you could potentially inflict several damages to the item, possibly requiring just more expensive repairs.
Normally you should be inflicting damage to the players riding the vehicle,just benefitting from it’s armor value.
Danilo Rizzo My concern about the vehicle damage is regarding the armor value. It’s looks are “Armored” but the vehicle itself has an armor range of 2. Wouldn’t this indicate that there is some sort of mechanism to do damage to a vehicle?
Anthony Williams yeah, the same thing we were thinking at first.
That armor value is just additional protection for the occupants who have an harm clock.
Coming from other systems we were looking for vehicle stats, we wanted them. It felt like there was a hole in the rules, where they forgot to address how durable are vehicles and drones.
Then we realized they were treated like normal items.
The MC move: “Use up their resources” is exactly what i’m referring to:
“Tech can malfunction, tires go flat, drones crash [cut]. Inflicting harm is all well and good, but often its more interesting to take away something else and see what they can come up with to get out of the new situation”.
So, when you want to use an action of inflicting Harm, use it on the players who have actual harm clocks.
When you want to use up their resources, damage their vehicle/drones so they will need to repair and find alternative solutions.
Also remember about tags, a +armored vehicle could be able to withstand more heavy damage before being disabled, requiring multiple “use up their resources” actions.
Think about the +crypted tag , where it requires you to spend an action to bypass its security, and do the same thing for the strengths of a vehicle.
Edit: About the bar, i might want to remind you that Creds aren’t just money, it also represents reputation, possible favors people owe the player, and it’s not directly tied to physical richness. A player could possibly consider his character poor and indigent, which goes on just with just his reputation and various favours people do owe him.
My party’s Fixer has a bar. It’s good fictional justification for his Hustling. The two jobs he does are running a brothel upstairs and deal brokering for the local tong.
You might ask any PCs who want to see any benefit from the bar to take the Hustling move with their next advance. Add the following move option:
Live Music Tonight: You arrange entertainment at the bar.
… Profit: 1 Cred
… Disaster: Activity at your bar brings unwanted attention
The Apocalypse World Fortune move is for the Hardholder and represents a whole fortress/town/village/community. The bar owner in AW (the Maestro’D) doesn’t have a Fortune move.
You can use the Maestro’D’s Establishment move to add more fiction to the bar. Here it is: apocalypse-world.com – apocalypse-world.com/ApocalypseWorldBasicRefbook2ndEd.pdf
Scroll down to Maestro’D.
If I were you, I’d use the top part of Establishment and make the PCs provide Security or pay for it out of their own cred. If they want a gang of security goons, they’ll have to take Backup from the Fixer playbook.
If they want to make a profit, get [intel] and other fun things, they’ll have to take Hustling from the Fixer playbook.
Really the best idea is to take the 6+ advances: “make a second character” (a Fixer) or “change your character to a new playbook” (Fixer). Because basically they’re becoming a Fixer if they want to invest heavily in the bar.
As for Vehicle Combat:
I posted a similar thing. I hemmed and hawed about this. Eventually I decided to just play it fast and loose.
TL;DR version: You hurt vehicles by changing their tags. That happens on 7-9 rolls from Mix it Up and Act Under Pressure. It can also be a hard GM move “use up their resources” and you can play with tags or straight up break the thing.
And it worked well. We had two situations where vehicles were involved in combat.
First time, the Pusher’s quadcopter bike got shot by Monsagra goons when they were stealing a truckload of bees from the California Central Desert. The first time it got shot, I stripped it of two of its positive tags. One of which was “tough” because they had just done a side mission to get parts to put protective fan cages on the rotors and poly armor on the engine. If it hadn’t been “tough” it would have been busted on the first shot, thoug I’d have made it crash land slowly. Helicopters can autorotate down. The second hit, I had it go down hard. He had a wingsuit, so with a good Act Under Pressure, he was able to escape like a badass.
Second time, the Fixer put a remote control rig on an excavator as a smart use of [gear] and a quick flashback in a fight scene (in a place they had predicted they would have a fight, so it was fair in fiction that he could have set it up ahead of time). He used the excavator to push four gang members trying to come down a road in a construction site out of the fight and lock them down as an Act Under Pressure move. When he used the thing to fight them, he described what happened and rolled that move. It worked fine. He didn’t care if the thing got blown up.
Remember, these hits vs vehicles are almost always going to be results of a Mix it Up or Act Under Pressure move. Take a look at those moves.
If you try to Act Under Pressure to get away from gunfire without getting hurt and get a 7 to 9, the Worse Outcome is something gets hurt, but you do get away from the gunfire.
If you Mix It Up and get a 7 to 9, “something of value breaks” is a valid player choice. And you can tell the player “hey, before you pick from the list, in this situation, I’m going to make the something of value your car, and since it has the “tough” tag, it’ll lose some tags, but keep running.” That’ll make the player more likely to choose that option from the pick list.
You might also just hurt their vehicles on a “use up their resources” MC move on a 6- roll or just in a golden opportunity. That move can be as hard as you want. In that case, do whatever you want to their vehicles. Take tags away, add negative tags, blow them up, melt them to slag — whatever.
Base how bad things get broken on the fiction. The gang members could not really hurt an industrial excavator. The Monsagra goons with assault rifles COULD fuck up the aerobike, but it took an extra hit because of the “tough” tag.
Note: In this system, vehicle armor protects the driver and passengers, not really the vehicle, since we’re playing fast and loose.
Jon Lemich That makes sense. The fixer in our group is the one who bought the bar. He paid the previous owners debt off that he owed on the bar and personal debt. The whole group wanted it but he made it happen.
Should he get the bar as a hustle in addition to what he already does? I’ll take some time to think on this.
Thank you for the advice on vehicles. That’s how I played it for the most part. I’ll keep with that
Some part of me wants to say charge the fixer XP for Balls in the Air to get an extra Crew and extra Hustle. But 12-Cred is a LOT of Cred. 12-Cred buys Cyberware and then some, and Cyberware is equivalent to a weaker move like Balls in the Air. So I’d say let ’em have it. But require that the third hustle always be the bar.
Yeah that makes sense. Maybe went off the rails with 12 cred. But they’re good at making money so I’m not to worried
Well if it buys the Fixer a move, it’s worth it.