Author: T. Franzke

The one were i admit that i was basically wrong 

A rant against myself

You saw the post yesterday? About move mechanics? 

Yeah, that was a bunch of crap! 

Playbooks are not there to show how clever you are with mechanics. They are there to fascilitate a specific role in the game. When most of what your playbook says is “hey! look at these fun mechanics!” then you failed. Of course you can and should write move that make people exited; but they should primarily be exited to play that type of character. 

So don’t focus on being clever with moves. Be thematic with moves. Write moves that speak loud and clear to the archetype you are presenting. Players should look at your playbook and get what it is about, be able to point to characters with that playbook. 

I think i fell into the trap of thinking of gamedesign as a game. I want to be extra clever, but being extra clever is not about writing moves that push at certain boundaries. It is about writing the RIGHT move for THAT playbook. 

Think about moves not as an end in themselves, but as the paint you use to paint and colour your playbook. 

Am i correct in this? 

Some late night musing about “move mechanics”

Originally shared by T. Franzke

I start to think of mechanics for moves in PBTA games like card game designers think about card mechanics. I don’t know if that is a good thing. 

Like let’s say I have this idea about a DW class that get’s a specific kind of ressource, let’s call it Moxy or Rage that they can spend after they rolled a move to increase it’s effect in some way. 

That is a cool mechanical tool you can use right? It makes a move more complex but might give you an interesting decision after you rolled. 

Anyway; let’s say i put this mechanic into a class and create  the whole class (like i ever would finish a Dungeon World class…) and then i call it the Hellhound. It’s about a guy that escaped hell and now fights demons. Because that is what i came up with at the time.

That is a terrible use of the mechanic! That is also a terrible class!

Because you shouldn’t make a class that is only about this one thing. But we know this.  

My problem however is this: I just “made” this cool mechanic that creates interesting gameplay. Unless you want to create a demonhunter from hell, you are screwed. You don’t get to play with that mechanic at all. 

When you create a “mechanic” with a lot of designspace, don’t put it on something highly specific because it wouldn’t see play and you did all the work with nothing to show for it. 

Then, when you put the mechanic on another class you have repeated yourself and that looks bad right? Also, most of your best ideas are probably in the hellhound and now you need to stretch to find new ways to use the mechanic! 

Vincent Baker pushed the envelope when he redefined how the different result levels play out in AWDA. But there is really little talk about that, what that means and what it does to a game. 

You can also go and link different classes thematically together by using the same(ish) special move mechanic on them. For the Dungeon World Psionic classes i did; they all got to hold psi and had moves that only worked while they hold psi. But psi could also be spend for effects. So you have a little bit of tension if you want to spend all your psi or still have access to some of your moves. 

See, this is me thinking like a card designer… 

Is it worth to think about different ways to make moves work like that? 

Because there is more room to make neat things with moves and hold. With choose 3/1. With asking questions probably. 

But we shouldn’t hoard them too! Give people access to that shit if you come up with something but can’t make anything with it. 

Unless you are really determined to do something with these ideas, talk about them! I would like that. 

I actually never heard anyone using “normal” christian religion in AW. Most of the times its weird cults and misunderstood dogma. 

So what playbook makes a good “normal” christian priest. 

I came up with Touchstone, Maestro’D and Operator. 

Hocus might just be to weird for that. 

What do you think

Originally shared by Josh T Jordan

So your post-apocalyptic novel doesn’t have any Christians in it. What religion is now most popular in your state?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/06/04/the-second-largest-religion-in-each-state/

Thoughts on a Werewolf game 

So ideas about a PbtA Werewolf (inspired (not emulating) by Werewolf the Apocalypse) game come to me here and there and someday i will start working on this in earnest. Recently Johnstone Metzger helped me to get a better grip on how to pair basic moves and forms but this leads me to another dilemma. 

Transformation 

My gut feeling is that constant transforming between forms is not interesting really. You have different kinds of bodies and that is cool. But if you change them on the drop of a hat they become interchangeable and your choice of form doesn’t really matter. 

One could handle this with a 

When you transform…

type move but that is not the right thing either i think. Werewolfs failing to transform sound lame. I want to be a fan of them. 

So how would you feel about a mechanic that reads a bit like this: 

When your character enters a new scene, tell us what form you are in (Were, Wolf, or Werewolf). You may change your shape once per scene but then you are looked into that form for the rest of it.

This gives you some flexibility while still making it an important choice. Is my gut feeling wrong in this?

Further ramblings: (you can ignore it from here if you want)

On playbooks. 

WtA gives us the Auspices. In a sense those are playbooks since they give you a specific role in the social order of a Werewolf tribe. However, binding your social role to time of birth is not a great way to organise a society… But i am digressing. 

What i am actually much more intrigued by is players drafting moves that relate to specific roles and responsibilities in the tribe as well as abilities. Allowing you to not be just a leader or a shaman but be a shaman that leads through their spirit given wisdom etc. Allowing you to mix and match while still distributing interesting bits between the players. The main reason for trying to do it that way is that i am highly interested in a draft system as in Marshall Miller’s Lapins and Lairs (not sure if it is in The Warren still).

The main downside to doing that is that you loose the easy accessibility and char generation that playbook pamphlets provide. The downside is the more rigid structure in the beginning.

I guess choosing the more flexible over the rigid structure  would say a lot about the Werewolf society. So i need to figure that out… 

Thanks for listening.