Author: Robert Burson

I really tried to keep our new game of AW serious after reading the Road, but I couldn’t resist throwing in an old stuffed Smokey the Bear as a mascot for the local warlord. A real honest-to-life-size stuffed bear with a ranger hat and a charred patch on his but. A bit dusty and rearing on his hind legs for a strike. The warlord and his men are the soldiers of the 9th Calvary of the Republic. And then that spiraled into a “painting” in the major general’s office of their founder — a fellow in a black hat riding ol’ Smokey and holding a machine gun. A gift from the President of the Republic.

Nightmares in the new Kult is brutal. Anytime you sleep, roll to see if the MC gets to make a hard move against you. I love it!

Single player games. I’m play testing / running a fairly straight hack of the AW2 rules that is meant for a single player. Anyways, here’s some tweaks I made to the Base Moves and their Hx (one playbook example)…

Ask for help

When you are making a roll and ask someone for help, first roll+Hx. On a 10+, you take +2 to the roll you sought help on. On a 7–9, you take +1 to your roll. On a miss, be prepared for the worst.

Session end

At the end of every session, choose a character who knows you better than they used to. If there’s more than one, choose one at your whim. Add +1 to their Hx with you on your sheet. If this brings them to Hx+4, they reset to Hx+1 (and you mark experience). If they aren’t on your sheet yet, start them at Hx+1.

Hx

List the names of who you have history with. Choose names for 1 or more of:

For your brother, write Hx+2.

For your mother, write Hx+1.

For your lover, write Hx+1.

For someone who is in love with you, write Hx+1.

Sometimes I think the hardest thing about designing a hack or new World book is naming the moves. I want them to be named like moves, clear, and ideally emulate the genres or tone of the hack itself.

This picture was somewhat popular this week, and you may have already seen it. It made me think of my own apocalypse powered fairy tale game that you probably don’t know about – wherein it is possible to change from the death god book to the princess book.

So, in honor of that, here’s a magic item for Midsummer:

Death Note

wealth 3

A simple, black notebook owned by one of the legendary shinigami, that kills anyone whose name is written in it.

Write the Name

When you Write the Name of another whose name and face are known to you in the Death Note, roll the dice and add your Wisdom. On a hit, they die. On a 7-9, choose one of the following:

– the authorities discover a clue to your whereabouts

– you attract the attention of another shinigami

– you attract the attention of one of your victims’ mourners

On a miss, they have eluded you for one of the following reasons, and the Narrator will choose:

– you do not know their real name

– you do not know their real face

– someone has swapped your Death Note with a fake

So here I am looking at fairy tales for Midsummer, my Powered by the Apocalypse game, and thinking about how much genre rules have changed. See, this is because I have made sure to code the genre rules into the system because we all know system matters of course. Only I’ve got a game built on urban fantasy with fairy tale folks running around in the modern, mundane world. So I need to support both.

Let’s take Hansel and Gretel for example. That’s your basic trapped with a monster story. Goes all the way back to the minotaur. This is the same story nowadays as Saw or Jaws. If you want the classic version, it’s the Sin that gets you thrown in the labyrinth. If you want the modern version, it’s the Sin that gets you eaten.

So, by modern standards, if Hansel and Gretel eat some of that delicious candy house they aren’t going to survive the witch.