Author: Patrick Henry Downs

It doesn’t look like anybody has mentioned this, but just in case you hadn’t heard: Vincent has released a complete set of all the limited edition playbooks, including the Macaluso which has been unavailable in English until now.

http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/743

Poor planning: when you are in the middle of something and you need some gear that you don’t have, name the gear that you want to have brought with you (not a weapon, not armor) and roll+nothing. On a hit, you have it with you. On a 10+, no strings attached. On a 7-9, choose 1:

* you paid barter for it, deduct 1- or 2-barter (MC’s choice)

* you owe somebody a favor (MC decides who)

* it belongs to somebody else, you have to return it when you’re done with it

* you have a makeshift version or improvised thing to help you out, take -1ongoing with it

* you stole it from someone, and eventually they’re going to notice and they will want it back

On a miss, the MC picks 3.

What originally started as a hack for Traveller has started to shift into it’s own game. This is my first public version of what I’ve written, and it has already been revised a little after feedback from some friends. Without further comment, here it is:

I’m goofing around on Abulafia and I wanted to make a random character generator. Every time I finish editing the page I either get a lot of results with missing info or I get big blue dotted boxes around my text. My typing seems to be fine and I’m not missing any line commands, so can anybody tell me why this is happening and how I can fix it?

http://www.random-generator.com/index.php?title=Apocalypse_World_Character

This week I don’t have new content for you, but I have old content repackaged into a handy dandy trifold. This is the information from both the Mysteries and Walkingsuit supplementals included with the Marmot and Space Marine Mammal playbooks.

I wrote this thing for Juan Dibuja in answer to his questions about writing playbooks for Apocalypse World.

Introducing THE DOG

Everybody’s got to eat, and humans have most of the food. It’s win-win as far as you’re concerned because most people seem to like you just because of what you are, without even being able to get to know you. You do have this one unique ability, and it can help when foraging and stealing food just isn’t working for you.

Man’s best friend. If they only knew.

When I was talking with Willow Palecek about fleshing out the missing spots of her The Boy & His Dog playbook, I spent some time re-reading the novella by Harlan Ellison titled “A Boy and His Dog” and I woke up the next day from a dream where I was a dog like Blood, telepathic and in the wasteland, and I mentioned the dream to Willow saying it would be an unusual spin if the playbook were for the dog and the human companion was the NPC that you could control and guide. Her response was “You should write it!” So I did.

SOME NOTES

1) The playbook is a little bit derivative, but my original write-up for the “psychic dog” archetype was incredibly complex and by trying to simplify it I realized that some of the things I had written were simply unnecessary.

2) Ears up, nose down is my rewrite of Willow’s Somewhere over the wasteland move, which I felt the original was too harsh on the player, and Third nostril is just the Angel’s Sixth sense. Once I had given the Dog a +3 in Sharp as one of it’s main “things” I felt the move was perfect and didn’t want to rewrite something new and convoluted to do a similar thing. Besides, the Angel’s Sixth sense is identical to the Driver’s Weather eye so I also didn’t feel I was breaking a rule of playbook creation by having an identical move with a different name. Then Lassie come home is not identical to Bonefeel but I used Bonefeel as the starting point. The hold from Lassie come home is triggered by wanting to help or interfere with another PC, so it’s meant to act as a “that dog that’s been following you was just waiting for you behind the door” or “that dog that’s been following you leaps in through the window, attacking that guy” sort of move.

3) The human companion is a unique feature of the playbook, separate from the A Friend in the Wasteland starting move. They always have +tele-radar so the dog will always have at least one person they can consistently communicate with. The A Friend in the Wasteland move doesn’t give +tele-radar because another character might conceivably take that move. Think of A Friend in the Wasteland as the “I’m getting a loyal follower” move. It’s written in such a way that the character could be a confidant or ally, like Batman’s butler Alfred or Batman’s sidekick Robin, but when The Dog has a follower they get +tele-radar.

4) You’re a psychic dog! is not a move. That’s why it’s on the back of the playbook and it’s not listed as a starting move. It’s a feature of the playbook, and other characters should not be able to get it, unless your MC is running a very weird game.

Just for funzies, I printed off every trifold playbook for Apocalypse World and took a picture of them. There are technically 50 playbooks, 11 are official and come with the game, 8 are limited edition extras, and 31 are player-made. Of those 31 made by players, 5 are the Heralds of Hell, 2 are joke playbooks, 2 are just alternate covers, and 7 of them (not including the Heralds or limited edition extras) make assumptions about how weird of a game you’re going to have.

It’s been live on my blog today so I felt that I ought to announce it to the community. The “What is Apocalypse World?” brochure pdf has been uploaded and is now available. Use it to explain the game to new people, or to show off how the playbooks are put together. Everything written on the brochure is either from the main website or an explanation of the rules that my regular gaming group came up with. If you find a typo, let me know and I can change it. If you think the language needs to be edited, let me know and I’ll run it by my group because I defer to their collective wisdom.

I kind of want to call this The Dick Move

Predator advantage: when you touch a person, skin on skin, it doesn’t matter where or for how long, roll+cool to ask questions. On a 10+, ask 2. On a 7-9, ask 1.

• What is currently stressing you out the most?

• Who is most important to you?

• Where do you feel safest?

• What could I do to get you to trust me?

On a miss, your target sees the depths of your true nature and can turn a question back on you.