Author: Patrick Henry Downs

PAX East: they haven’t released a schedule yet, but I’ll be there all three days. If anybody reading this is attending I would love the opportunity to sit down at a table and play a one-shot of Apocalypse World. Any takers?

Idea for a playbook suggested by Tim Franzke 

THE SAMARITAN

After the world collapsed, they rebuilt it. They studied the remains, they scoured the cities, they probed the maelstrom, and the resurrected the memories of the fallen. They plotted and programmed and prepared and eventually found a way, they figured out how to fix it. One event, somebody could go back in time and prevent this one thing from happening. One mistake, the domino effect of causality would erase the horrors of the apocalypse and replace it with something new. One shot, they sent you back, but they missed their mark. You’re too late.

NAME

Hero, Miss/Mister, Number [#], Professor, Wannabe

Or maybe everyone calls you Samaritan.

STATS

• Cool+1, Hard+1, Hot=0, Sharp+2, Weird-1

• Cool+1, Hard=0, Hot-1, Sharp+2, Weird+1

• Cool=0, Hard-1, Hot+1, Sharp+2, Weird+1

• Cool+1, Hard=0, Hot=0, Sharp+2, Weird=0

HX

Everyone introduces their characters by name, look and outlook. Take your turn.

List the other characters’ names.

Go around again for Hx. On your turn:

• Who was the first person you met on emerging from the future? Tell that player Hx+2.

• Tell everyone else Hx=0.

On the others’ turns:

• Whatever number everyone tells you, give it +1 and write it next to their character’s name. You know how all of this ends.

LOOK

Man, woman, or concealed.

Pressure suit, scrounge wear, or military fatigues.

Ancient face, friendly face, stony face, weathered face, or young face.

Cold eyes, shadowed eyes, clear eyes, steady eyes, lost eyes, or eager eyes.

Athletic body, stocky body, thin body, muscular body, or old body.

GEAR

In addition to your computer, you get:

• a 9mm sidearm (2-harm close loud)

• pressurized body armor (2-armor valuable hi-tech)

• your clothing, but no barter

SPECIAL

MOVES

You get all the basic moves. You get “I Know the Answer” and one more samaritan move.

I KNOW THE ANSWER: when you consult your computer, roll+sharp. On a 10+, you find the answer you’re looking for and you don’t spend battery. On a 7-9, you can either spend a battery and find the answer or not spend a battery and get an impression. On a miss, you will spend a battery and you only get an impression.

COMPUTER

You carry a computer that is loaded with data from the future. You can seek answers from it and it will spill the beans on any sort of secret or knowledge you care to know, unless it’s not in there.

When you find the answer you’re looking for, the MC will tell you exactly what you need to do to solve a particular problem (Ex: talk to Dremmer about being passed up for promotion, cut the rowboats loose from the dock and make sure nobody salvages them downstream, pop all of the tires on Face’s car, get the local Savvyhead to make a remote camera drone and follow Poptart with that). If you follow the MC’s instructions you, and anyone who assists you, will take +1forward on any rolls you make in an attempt to follow the instructions. Deviating from the instructions in even the slightest causes the bonus to go away for good.

When you find an impression of the solution you’re looking for the MC will give you an idea of what you need to do (Ex: somebody in the barracks might have info, make sure nobody can get across the river, stop Face from leaving town, you’ll need to follow Poptart without him knowing) but no bonus will apply.

When you successfully follow the instructions on the computer you hasten the future, taking +1forward on your next use of “I Know the Answer.”

When you deliberately don’t follow or ignore the instructions on the computer you’re changing the future, taking -1forward on your next use of “I Know the Answer” but marking experience.

Your computer starts with 12 battery (two countdown clocks). Once the battery is gone the computer is useless, unless you could find some way to keep powering it up…

Mechanical question: is +3 always the maximum?

Put another way, let’s say you’ve got Hard+3 and you get a +1ongoing from some game effect but then you also get a +1forward, when you next roll+hard do you get a +5 to the roll, or is it still just +3?

Tonight our group of characters attempted to exorcise a Faceless’es mask off, and when he refused we killed him. When we lit the pyre to burn his body afterward, the MC declared that the entity in the mask was dead but then offered the player a choice: he could allow his character to die with the mask or he could be swept into the psychic maelstrom and become an entity that lives within it. He chose the second option.

Rather than spam the community over and over again, I just wanted to let people know that the Haunted and the Sorcerer playbooks are finished and available for download (http://nerdwerds.blogspot.com/2012/12/all-of-playbooks.html).

It’s actually incredibly easy for me to make trifolds now. I have a generic playbook file set up and all I have to do is copy-paste text into the boxes. Empty space is the hardest part because it needs to be filled with info boxes for gear and barter, and these usually need to be custom-made for the spaces that the text fills up. But the longest I’ve taken on a single playbook is three hours, total. When Tim Franzke and I worked on the Wrangler and Beast Master playbooks, making the portrait on the front page took the longest.

Because my job affords me a lot of free time, my next project is to go through the potential playbooks that are talked about in the forums and turn them into trifolds, I’ve already turned my MC’s playbook idea into a trifold (the Boy & His Dog) and in the meantime I’ve also been making custom character trifolds for my gaming group.

I’ve made all of these in a little over two weeks, which makes me really surprised that nobody else in the last two years has done anything like this.

Don’t you wish the Moves playbooks included the advanced moves? Well, here you go. I tried to make these look exactly like the originals, except each of the basic moves includes a description for the Advanced version of the move underneath it. Cheers!

Tim Franzke and I spent the last week making this playbook together. He thinks it has more of my writing in it than his, and I think it has more of his ideas in it than of mine. Regardless, we both hope you download it, use it, and enjoy it. Cheers!

Working on a new playbook and need advice on a move. Does this sound too unbalanced? Or powerful?

Silver–tongued devil: when you are clearly unarmed and unarmored and you make your surrender clear, you cannot be killed.

The talented and insightful Johnstone Metzger was kind enough to give me a copy of the Heralds of Hell playbooks, and he’s given me permission to turn them into trifolds and make them available on my playbook page. This is my first effort to create the remaining three into playbooks: the Damned. Enjoy!

Introducing the WOLF

I finally got my hands on a program that allows me to make pdfs. I spent a few days twiddling with it to get my first playbook just right. It’s not 100% perfect, but I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

If you notice any typos, or if you think one of the moves on here needs editing, let me know. I should probably also point out: this playbook hasn’t been playtested yet.