I’ve been playing in a Worlds in Peril game for two issues now (run by Eran Aviram). We seem to hit a point were we have multiple conditions and each roll got a -2, -3 penalty, which reduce our success rates drastically.
Of course you can burn bonds to succeed anyway, but it seems a bit excessive to me to burn several bonds in one session.
I’m always comparing the game to Dungeon World, since I published that game in Hebrew and it’s the Apocalypse World variant I’ve the most experience with.
In DW, at lower levels, you get about the same rate of failure. But each time you fail, you get XP. Beginning characters in DW can earn a level about every session, up to level 4 or 5, at which time you’ve improved your stats by 2 points already and got better modifiers to your rolls, increasing your success rate.
I don’t know what my point is, beside my personal feeling we fail too much.
Why not not just narrate a quick flash back / remembering your missing a dinner or important life changing meeting / taking a breath (which normally clears a lot of conditions) to use the action that clear conditions?
There’s always that moment where two beleaguered heroes mid battle meet behind a crumbling wall, “doesn’t look like I’ll be taking Janet to dinner after all” flash forward to the character getting home, run a scene with Janet understanding (hopefully,)
Granted it sounds like conditions have been allowed to pile a bit high at this point, time for a better part of valour
Yeah, there’s a lot of failure going on, especially at lower levels. While we often found that it works well for the just-starting-out-as-heroes vibe the book assumes, we also usually found that players really liked to hoard Bond Points, so I try to encourage them to spend more.
Also – one important thing to remember for your EIC is that failure does not always have to end in Conditions imposed. And, when that seems best, the severity of Condition imposed is also up to the EIC. It can take a bit to find a good sweet spot though I think, and you want to be true to the fiction.
Leveling up is a completely story-dependent system within the game, many of the requirements to unlock a book do not require success at all (though I can think of at least one that does), but far more actually require failure.
My drive is to create, and so far I didn’t manage to collect stuff for my workshop. One of the other player in the group did succeed in opening her Drive book this session.
Great! Those moments are the most fun for me when I run the game. I keep an index card with the books the players are working toward in front of me so I can give chances to advance them whenever possible.
Okay we’re on to something: because the character sheet states “take a -1 to everything” on the critical condition slot, we did just that; the rules for conditions on page 126 say that the first critical condition is for a single stat only. Which would have made the whole situation better.
In my own experience with WiP I can understand your concerns as we faced the same situation. We even discussed if AW system fitted properly with the superhero genre. Nevertheless we saw that the game improved by inflicting low level conditions and thus “forcing” the players to deal with them before they worsen. That way there’s tension without too much PC hindrance.
Yeah, I very rarely hand out a Critical Condition, since they’re the Condition track that leads to death. Minor Ones are usually what get handed out for most things, with Moderate ones peppered in for serious stuff going down. It’s tricky to strike a balance, and it’ll depend on what powers the players have, because you want to make sure you’re giving each of them consistent feedback in terms of Conditions. A lot of the time I’ll be handing out Minor Conditions as a natural result of the fiction, and then still making an EIC move as well.
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The leveling system is actually one thing that I don’t like. I know the aim is that it’s supposed to be “story based,” but it seems like it actually rewards having an unfocused, poorly-developed character vision. You can’t actually stick to your guns with a single drive and still get stronger (at least not to any significant degree), you have to do the 1920s Pulp Hero thing and be pulling in ten different directions.
I dunno, it seems like focusing on Bonds as a means of character growth might have been better? When heroes change the way they do things, it’s generally because someone external inspired them to, ya know?
Conjecture aside, I’m having the same issues as described, especially given the advice that pushing yourself when you have a Minor Condition can make things worsen. There seems to be a basic assumption in the mechanics that the characters get beat down a lot–and unlike every other AW game I’ve played, since you don’t (usually) get rewarded for failure, the gameplay experience doesn’t feel quite as satisfying. The only ways to pull yourself out of the just-starting-out failure rut are to either change your vision of who the character is (by working towards new Drive books), or by accepting that none of your relationships are going to turn out well (by burning Bonds a lot).
I don’t really follow, James. I guess if you mean that you’d have more options to work toward, then you’d want to have a bunch of books open, but you’re going to be far better served by picking out one and working toward it with your EIC. So a stronger vision is going to be helpful in that you have a goal to work towards, and your EIC knows it so they can drive the fiction there. If you want to be more powerful, you’ll have to work towards more Drive books too at some point, yes. A static character is a rare thing, and makes for a boring story, I think. That doesn’t mean you should have 10 different books trying to be opened at one time, though. The idea is you work towards a book, open it, then go about unlocking all the moves within, which is probably going to be at least a session each, providing an interesting arc for that leg of your character’s story. When you choose the Drive book you’re working towards, you’re probably taking into account what’s going on in the fiction, what’s happening with your Bonds, right, so there the external factors are always going to be there.
You’re going to have to spend Bonds a lot if you want to succeed, and that fits most superhero stories. Being a superhero is usually about making sacrifices and walking the edge, trying to find a balance between your private life and your public persona, taking care of those that matter to you, and taking care of everyone else. It’s literally the point of being a superhero in most stories, so Bonds are there to make sure that PCs don’t have stable relationships (by making Bond Point spending really desirable).
Yes, fights can be rough, and ignoring a Minor Condition can certainly be worse. If you’re set on fire, and decide to ignore that, there should probably be consequences for that. Since the Conditions are based on what’s going on in the fiction, the players at the table at the EIC are going to have to come up with a cohesive narrative for what’s going on. Combat can be as easy, or as hard, as the EIC makes it (or the dice), with a trend to the hard side of things for sure. A good combat should be challenging and engaging, and you should have to work for the win most of the time.
Well, it’s the requirement to change Drive books at some point (perhaps more clearly, at any point) that really bugs me. It’s nice that you get rewarded in some way for sticking to a Drive book, but as you say, at some point that stops happening. Static characters may be rare, but I think comic books are one place that actually happens more commonly; Batman pretty much always wants to protect the citizens of Gotham.
Put another way, your Drive is comparable to your alignment in other games. Would you consider it a valid requirement if, say, you had to change your alignment to go from 5th to 6th level in DnD? Sure, some of the Drive books are compatible (arguably any of them are, depending on your character, but by that logic maybe none of them are), but that doesn’t solve what I consider to be the underlying problem. I find it less-than-ideal to have forced portrayal change as the system’s character advancement method.
Like I said, I think I’d have been happier if character growth were tied to Bonds in some way. If balancing your home life and keeping everyone else safe is ‘literally the point of being a superhero,’ then why doesn’t doing that well make you a better superhero? Inversely, why can compromising your heroic ideals (e.g., unlocking Do What Others Cannot when up to now you’ve wanted to Become An Icon) actually make your relationships improve (by using that Achievement to up your Bond Threshold)?
Anyway, that’s just my two cents. I get the intent, and the execution matches it, it’s just that neither matches my preferred RP methods.
I actually don’t mind the way achievements and drive work, but I would consider adding an additional way to get achievements, such as an End of Session move.
The move will ask if you have advanced your drive, and award you an achievement point as per the rule now. Then it’ll ask the party:
Did we learn something new and important about the world?
Did we overcome a notable enemy?
(some third options about new powers or something)
I don’t see how a Drive book is like an alignment at all. I mean, there is maybe one or two that might conflict with a previous Drive book (not always a bad thing depending on what character story arc you’re trying to depict), but most characters aren’t defined by one Drive book alone regardless; changing from one Drive book to another doesn’t negate the previous. You still have those moves, you can still do those things and hold true to those concepts. In fact, I wouldn’t see the character of Batman as “complete” without at least a couple Drive books (Maybe he starts off with See Justice Done in the beginning, but at the very least: Protect, Become an Icon, Create, maybe a Figure out Who I Am in there somewhere (maybe at the beginning), arguably Die Trying for certain iterations of the character as well, Lead if he’s heading up a team like the JLA, maybe a Redeem Myself depending on the story). These story arcs are the interesting focal point of the story for me, so that’s why I wrote the game that way.
While balancing private and public life is often the point of a superhero story, it rarely makes them a better superhero. The fact that there’s no real solution to the problem, that it’s a constant struggle is a part of tension in superhero stories, not that it makes them better. You can’t spend any Achievements at all without it making sense in the story, so if you want to compromise your heroic ideals and then negative that in the fiction by spending your Achievements to up your Bond Threshold, you should reconsider. The point of the game is tell a story that makes sense for your character, and for everyone else at the table, not to try and subvert the fiction for mechanical benefits.
Hope that clears up some points – I think you’re looking at a Drive book like it’s something you can only have one of, and that when you change everything else about your character as suggested by your first Drive book is erased or undermined, which is not the case.
Aviv Icel That’s not a bad idea if you find yourselves low on Achievements, though I don’t think Achievements are all that necessary for play – the Drive books are meant to continually propel goal-driven play and keep the story moving forward. I mean, we keep advancement through Achievements in there because playtesters were adverse to there not being something there, but I like the slow rate of advancement through Achievements because big stuff, like Powers, is continually shifting and advancing in play regardless, along with relations in Bonds, and personal story arcs with Drives. If done right, the dynamic you get off of Drives, Bonds, and Powers should keep things far from static!
Kyle Simons No, I get that you can have more than one of them, and that your old Drives don’t go away when you unlock a new one (however much sense it might make if they did, depending on the character). It just bugs me that there’s mechanical reinforcement in place essentially forcing you to take more than one of them (beyond a certain point, if you want to have mechanical growth, miscellaneous other arbitrary qualifiers). As for the alignment thing: Drives are what you want to do and how you go about it, yes? Alignments are a contentious subject, but that description seems pretty on the nose to me.
As I said, your execution matches your intent; it’s not that I don’t get it, it’s that I don’t like it. We clearly have different ideas about what makes for good character portrayal and how to model that mechanically, is all. Lack of clarity isn’t an issue.
Edit: All of which is to say, agree to disagree. Which I am quite okay with!
Alright, fair enough. The Drive books as alignments thing doesn’t jive for me for various reasons, but is beside the point to everything else. Sorry you don’t like the model we use for running a superhero game.