Tag: Brian Peters

Are there other, better places to talk about or ask questions about Monsterhearts aside from the apocalypse-world.com forums?

I’m cross-posting this with the Barf Forth Apocalyptica forums, in case the g+ group gets more traffic…

Changes to XP and Helping/Interfering?

I’m hoping to MC another game of AW pretty soon, for the first time in a few years.  I’m pretty excited!  But I’m thinking about making changes to a couple basic rules and was hoping to get some feedback from more experienced MCs.

1) The roll-based experience gain rules.  I don’t really have a problem with the stat highlighting system, but sometimes it gets a bit weird if someone takes a lot of stat substitution moves, and more to the point, I really like the idea, at least on paper, of Dungeon World’s approach of “mark experience whenever you fail a roll.”  I like the idea of this because it mitigates some of the pain of failing a roll, and might encourage players to diversify their tactics.  If they make moves with strong stats they have a good chance of getting what they want in the fiction, if they make moves with weak stats they have a good chance of marking xp.  So I’m considering trying this in Apocalypse World.  Are there any big problems with this that I’m missing?  I know there’s a move the Solace has access to that wouldn’t work, or would need to be changed, but I don’t think there’s any other moves that reference stat highlights are there?  Does anyone think it would have a big impact on the rate of xp gain?

2) I kind of want to change how the help and interfere move works.  In the game I MC’d in the past, it almost never got used.  This might be more to do with my friends, but even just thinking about the move in the theoretical way, I can see how it’s unappealing.  Making any move carries a fairly significant risk as a fail likely results in the MC making a move against you, and even the 7-9 result on help/interfere is probably just as bad.  Add to this the fact that the results of a hit are pretty minor, and it’s not very appealing.  If the rules required players to make the help/interfere roll before the other roll, I don’t think it would ever get used… but if they can make it after they know what the other player got, well… helping only matters if they got exactly 6 or 9.  It seems like most people aren’t likely to take the risk of a failed roll to bump a partial to a full hit, so that means they’re ONLY going to try to help on a 6.

Anyway, I’d like to make the help/interfere move more appealing to use, either by cutting down the risks or improving it’s effect, but I don’t want to make it over powered.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  Would simply increasing the effect by 1 point (i.e. +2 for helping, -3 for interfering) work without going too far, do you think? Or maybe an extra point if they get a full hit, normal effect on a partial, but no risk from a partial?

eta: I was thinking about it more and have some further ideas for tweaking help/interfere.  How about this: 10+ gives +1 to help, -2 to interfere.  You may choose to increase the effect by 1 point by exposing yourself to fire, danger, retribution, or cost. 7-9 you maybe give +1 to help or -2 to interfere but you expose yourself to fire, danger, retribution, or cost.  Or you may chicken out and choose not to help/interfere to stay safe.

This would allow players trying to play it safe to go for it and give the normal bump if they hit a 10+ and avoid risk unless they completely miss, and players willing to take on risk to help/interfere could go for it and have a greater effect if they get a full hit.

Semi-hypothetical question: I want to give a PbtA game to someone with limited RPG experience (some modern–4th & 5th ed–D&D, not much else). Which published game is best? Dungeon World is the obvious answer, but is it the correct one?

Something in the thread about the Space Marine Mammal made me wonder: do there exist versions of the official AW playbooks formatted for reading on a computer screen? I’ve gotten used to reading the tri-fold files on the screen, but i hope to soon play a game of AW with some people who have no experience with the game via Skype so playbook files with the text in normal reading order would be really useful.

So who’s read over the Space Marine Mammal so far?  I looked at it the other day, and there’s a few things about it that are throwing me, that make me feel almost like I’m missing a not-insubstantial block of rules.

Specifically: 1) there don’t seem to be any particular uses for the walking suit’s stats.  No moves call for them, that I can see.  and

2) There’s no explanation or rules for the walking suit-specific moves, which is very unusual (unique?) for PC moves.

and less significantly: the second section in the Special Move section… that means the SMM is always susceptible to psi-harm when leaving the walking suit, correct?  That’s the way I understand it after reading the whole playbook, but on first read, I took it to be a consequence of having sex, since, as far as I know, it’s the first thing to show up in a “special move block” that’s not related to sex.

Sooo… who else has read the Solace playbook for AW?  I just did today, and I think it’s pretty awesome and I’m very excited to make it available for players in the next game I MC, but I do find some of the stuff under the Threshold section a bit confusing.  Can anyone help me out?