Jake Luceno – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Back again this time a question about The Denotation.

When I see they have an implement such as a pencil, or in my players case a paintbrush, often times my player will use their implement to create constructs within the overlay of the Veil in the hybrid space. Things like painting doorknobs on locked panels, or painting blindfolds over the sensors of a gun drone.

I’m enjoying this as a creative way for the player to produce solutions to obstacles, but upon reading the recommendations and examples of the playbook from Cascade, I don’t really see any examples of the moves being used this way (since most of them deal with the manipulation of data rather than the production of digital constructs which affect the veil).

For the most part, I’ve been having my player roll subvert when they wish to add something to the digital overlay of the hybrid space.

My question is, lacking examples of this sort of productive capacity of the implement in the book, is this something that is intended to be within the scope of the playbook? Is the Denotation intended to be able to produce new objects with their implement rather than just alter the intended meaning of existing iconography?

Thanks!

Let me start by saying I’ve really been enjoying this game. I’m a big PbtA fan in general, and the combination of tech/cyberpunk and emotional philosophical aesthetics makes this game very interesting to me.

That said I have a couple of mechanical questions.

For the empath, I’ve noticed it is entirely possible to have a character who at the end of character creation has no way to spend flow. Is this intentional? It seems that by default flow does nothing for the empath until they take either charge object or search your feelings.

Second, for the executive, im having trouble understanding how the contracts are created. The playbook has contracts divided into two segments: payed, and mandatory, but the move Quarterlies only suggests to pull from “mandatory” and says to the board gives the exec the funds up front, but the mandatory contracts have no listed cost. In addition, assigning 3 contacts each session seems that there will inevitably be a lengthy backlog of contracts, or contracts will frequently go unfinished, meaning either the game as a whole will focus on the executive fulfilling contracts at the exclusion of screen time for other characters, or the executive will be forced to roll TPS and frequently have the board PO’d, leaving the executive to feel incompetent at their chosen profession. How would you recommend balancing screen time in a game with an executive, where characters other than the executive get their share of narrative control?