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Playbook for the well adapted kid.

Yesterday I thought about Naruto with Masks. Now, most characters have a rather obvious playbook.

Naruto – Bull

Sasuke – Delinquent

Sakura – Beacon

In the next Generation:

Boruto – Star

Mitsuki – Reformed

Sarada – …

I first put her as a Protegé, but of whom? Not her mother. In a way she’s more grown-up than Mama Sakura. Not her father, who is always absent. She looks up to Naruto, but he doesn’t have a strong role in her live and they certainly do not have conflicts.

For the same reason, she probably is not The Legacy. There are no strong family dynamics there.

What Sarada struggles with are her own expectations. She tries to help old ladies, tries to succeed at school, is trustworthy. She is quite sucessful at all those things too, but not as succesful as she feels she has to be.

What’s her playbook?

Designing “stat backgrounds”.

Several PbtA games including AW itself feature stat arrays with names. Or backgrounds with associated stat arrays.

Have you used this technique for your hacks? How were you going about it?

Wenn you adress the crowd roll + Savior. On a 7-9, choose one. On 10+, choose two:

Wenn you adress the crowd roll + Savior. On a 7-9, choose one. On 10+, choose two:

– They provide low-level support.

– They do not stand in the way.

– There won’t be grievances against you.

So about Runaways… What playbook for Gertrude?

After some playteststs, I have reworked my Star Trek hack. Editing is still rough.

What’s in there:

– Completely redone basic moves

– Playbooks are more about your origin and now include: Agent, Politician, Maverick, Boomer, Alien, Soldier, Sensitive, Superior, Former Enemy, Researcher

– Every character in addition gets a specialty in a basic move.

So Kirk is a Maverick with an exploration specialty.

Crusher is a Reasearcher with medical specialty.

Paris is a Maverick with specialty in flight control.

– I have included a mechanic for moral. I’m especially interested what you think about that one.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yHJhAJ31l10zkofTY5tqn9Gojnd184YZjnvKtbg67-A/edit?usp=sharing

Things I learned hacking the Apocalypse:

– Basic moves should do all the work. Do not use enablers, like you need Improved X to make it work as expected.

– Jobs on the team roster are rarely a good basis for playbooks. Better ask: who are you? What do you want? Why are you here?

– Invent a mechanic showcasing the interactions between the PCs. This is area where PbtA games differ the most. Note that showcasing is not the same as resolving. A good question to start: What kind of group is this?

What do you think? Have you come to similar conclusions or albeit different ones?

Having played Mask yesterday with T.

Having played Mask yesterday with T. Franzke and others, I realized that I didn’t use my playbook moves once. That was a remarkable compared to the campaign I’ve joined as a player: In MotW using playbook moves is pretty much all I do.

Have you made similar observations? How do other PbtA games compare? Whatdo you think are the reasons for these differences? How does this affect gameplay?

Anyone else here a fan of ‘Worm’ by wildbow?

Dark-ish supers story, starring a girl named Taylor who is bullied at school. The world building is better than most stories, and I frequently borrow power descriptions, which are very detailed, and characters for my Masks.

Read: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

Listen: http://audioworm.rein-online.org/

Wiki: http://worm.wikia.com (SPOILERS!!)

https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

Looking at Young Justice, it’s easy to see where the Masks come from.

Miss Martian ~ Outsider

Robin ~ Protege

Super Boy ~ Bull

Kid Flash ~ Legacy

So, Aqualad? – He does have Mentor of course, but his relationship to Orrin is not the one implied by the Protege playbook. He never struggles with growing into an image of Orrin or not. Their different powers and the fact that Aqualad will never become King of Atlantis notwithstanding, their values and outlook pretty much align already.

Other than that, Aqualad does come Somewhere Else, but if he ever had problems adjusting to the Surface World, that was before the series started. Legacy doesn’t work either. There is no dynasty of Aqua-People yet. (Tula might react in that way.)

But let’s look at the issue in terms of what actually applies. I think, the most pertinant question to Mask playbooks is their defining relationships. The Doomed relates to their Doom, the Bull to Love & Rival, the Protege to their Mentor, the Transformed to their new body.

So what is the difficult relationship that Aqualad struggles with? – His career choice. That’s what the Heroing thing is to him. A job. A worthwile one, sure, but not the only worthwile one in the world.

Unlike the others, he wasn’t pushed into this life, like Megan. He didn’t stumble into it, like Wally. It was not his way to salvation, as for Dick. Sure, being a prime student at the Academia, he was offered the position of Aqualad, but he could have said no.

The playbook, I have not considered here, is Beacon. Is Aqualad a Beacon? Not quite. Beacons also choose the life, but they do so for novelty and adventure. But that is not why Aqualad is here.

And having found that pattern, there are some other characters in other franchises who act similarly: Yang in RWBY, Sakura in Naruto. They all do the hero / hunter / ninja thing, because, where they come from, it is a valid way of life.

How would you do an “Avenger” playbook?

How would you do an “Avenger” playbook? A playbook about the ones who train themselves to exact revenge on a particular foe?

I think in western super-hero comics that topic is mainly found in grown-up heroes, but it is quite common in Anime (Sasuke, Kurapica), maybe also Blake from RWBY.