Category: Powered by the Apocalypse: Discussion

So, first session of my #TechnoirWorld  game, #Technoir  using #ApocalypseWorld  and using it pretty straight up. So I haven’t tweaked much, a new move here and there and one new playbook, the Drone Master, heavily inspired by the Beast Master, the Juggernaut and the heritage moves from the Planarch Codex.

And the game was mad good. I think I’m finally understanding the point of Fronts; converting into Fronts an established web of factions and NPCs, built up over six sessions playing Technoir, is actually pretty straightforward and I’m finding it liberating to get a lot of that stuff out of my head. Man, it really builds up in there and you don’t know how cluttered things are until you get it all down on paper.

Genre-wise, cyberpunk has fit neat with many of the apocalypse tropes, as I expected. Augury is mad powerful awesome way to respect the hacking skills of the best hacker in the Twin Cities, a savvyhead who carries his workspace in his head: a nethead I guess.

For example, Wraith cleared a whole city block by inserting info in to the Interface, the all pervasive internet-cum-maelstrom, so everyone thought the collapse of the gun smugglers den and the ensuing munition explosions, was some preliminary stages of an industrial gas leak. Or when Wraith isolated and protected another PC, Grey, from the Interface, making him effectively invisible to all digital-channel perceptions. Grey did disappear from the cyborg syndicate assassins but he also disappeared from Wraith’s view, given Wraith cyber eyes. And the effect bled too, so more and more people on the Skyrail station started disappearing from augmented sight, reminiscent of the Laughing Man I guess.

I’m just waiting to see what happens when Wraith botches his augury, though. Afterall, his augury instruments are in his head, so when they take the brunt of it, it ain’t going to be pretty.

The Drone Master worked well. The Auto-pilot move, giving Mack hold to just make his surveillance drone Bessy to stuff, was smooth and felt about right, though I still might tweak the moves he has to pick from. The impulse hold I held as MC because of some poor rolls was sweet too. For instance, after a pretty tight standoff with January Jade, an NPC, Mack exits carrying a badly injured Wraith. When January collapses the firestairs Mack’s descending, sending him and Wraith hurtling to the bitumen, Mack commands Bessy to shoot January with the submachine guns mounted on her chassis. That’s when I use my 1 hold to activate Bessy’s impulse to butcher, turning on the smgs autofire tag and hitting the whole area with bullets. The end result is the whole shanty construction collapses on another PC, Phase. Who, a day or so later,  eventually crawls out of the rubblewith a broken arm and severe frost and majorly pissed for being left for dead. Phase died  a few sessions back and was barely resuscitated so she’s taking the building collapse and being left for dead rather badly.

I’m also using Paul_T’s alternate Harm system, which I’m liking so far. It’s quite similar to Technoir’s adjective-based hurt, so it’s been a pretty smooth transition. It certainly seem to keep the focus on the fiction. The players certainly engaged with their injuries in a different way compared with other AW sessions that used the standard countdown-style harm. I may still fiddle with the pain and serious shit list, but I’ll play a bit more with it before making any tweaks. Otherwise, very cool. For example, on his harm roll from the fire escape fall, Wraith got +2 armour from a Mack being a cushion. That went surprisingly well for him.

I’m keen to find out what happens next. Keen as mustard.