Starting a new game tomorrow, our first Legacy or PbtA (I’ve played PbtA, but nobody else has).
So, I’m wondering what playbooks should be allowed. The 7 options for Ruins characters are fine, but there are only 3 Ruins families. We have 4 players.
How should we handle this?
Our Homeland is on Earth after aliens came to enslave the human race. Another alien race tried to stop the slavers, and their war altered the Earth, creating The Wasteland. The PCs are descendants of those who survived and were not taken.
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If you’re 100% committed to the Ruins mode of play, maybe check out the Eternal Masquerade? They’re a social manipulator/artistic and cultural sort of family. They’re in the Backer Playbooks PDF in the playtest folder here: dropbox.com – Legacy Playtest Files
Alternatively, let players dip into Echoes/Mirrors with the agreement that they’ll keep weirdness at a low level. I can see the Enclave, Cultivators or Uplifts working well with scavenged alien tech, or even the Stranded Starfarers – though that may be a bit far!
We’re not dedicated to Ruins; we’re mostly concerned about difficulty.
Even more than the mode chosen at the beginning of the game, the tone is set by the players as they establish facts about the world using various Moves, and to a lesser extent by you in response to other moves. Several families can run less weird than their mode implies. The main thing is to build consensus about what kind of Before, Fall, and game everyone wants to have, and keep tabs on the way they build the world in play and stay consistent with that.
I’ve been watching actual plays because I’m confused on how to implement families. Hopefully, the steps will guide us well enough.
To begin with, if they’re giving you trouble I’d suggest having strict family and character phases. When you’re doing family stuff don’t worry too much about the character moves, and vice versa. Once you’re more comfortable with the setup you can start weaving the story between the different levels.
James Iles thanks. That’ll be helpful. When to zoom in and out was a bit confusing for me
It comes pretty fast. I’ve run PbtA once or twice before, but not much. We had a session zero where we did game, family, and character creation per the book. The first session was all strictly character except for the denouement, the second was all family with a couple of appropriate character moves assisting. The most recent session I was comfortable enough to intercut what the families were starting or doing into the character action.
In Fate-y terms, the natural flow has been to zoom in when there are about three scenes to play, and zoom out properly when the immediate conflict has been resolved. So, the characters discover a faction is trying to destroy a surviving location from the World Before, and prevent that. We didn’t stay with the characters for exploring or looting the place, we zoomed out and one of the families tried to seize the site and another lent aid. (I’m sure we could have stayed zoomed in longer, but I’m pushing the families-as-primary a bit since it’s foreign to my experience.) Last session, the characters went to get samples of another threat, and when they return or phone home the data is when we’ll zoom out from that, but the search amounted to two scenes. Hope that helps at least a bit.
Kevin Nault Zooming In when there’s 3 or more scenes you’d want to play through is a good yardstick – I hadn’t thought to put it in those terms. There are a few edge cases where you’d want to Zoom In for less – say, when you’re trying to salvage victory (or at lease stalemate) from a disastrous Family move – but that’s a good rule of thumb.
Thanks for the tip!
One more question: how does homeland work? Are all the families in a safe place, where travel between them is without much drama, or does the wasteland stretch between them?
The first one – the basic assumption is that you’ll have a rough circle of Homeland containing the player’s settlements, and outside that is the dangerous (and profitable) wasteland. Your own map will look different, of course, but it’s generally best if you can get between the player’s holdings without spending screen time on it.
Gotcha.