34's album Arbent Rite was the soundtrack for this post's writing. I recommend the whole thing, but especially Chain To The Edge of The Sky, The Shatter, and Felt A Shadow.
The Metaphorical Unboxing of tremulus
Note to Sean Preston or any of the team at Reality Blurs: If at any point you consider me to be giving away too much information about the game for a publicly-accessible document, please inform me and I will trim it down. I'm not trying to give people the tools to reverse-engineer the game or anything.
Having received the digital preliminary copy of the game, I'm going to go through my experience as I read. This will be taken like the Dungeon World annotations in that I'll be moving in page order (so I may ask questions I answer myself later), but more extreme in that I haven't a damn clue what's in this book at all, unlike DW which I was already pretty familiar with.
* I set my music. This is an important step for me always (as you might be able to tell :/) For the right mood, I decided on listening to some 34. I'll have them linked right up at the top because they don't have a youtube presence, but I know the fella who did it (and now does a piece called Fevrier, also linked), and it's some pretty great stuff. I'll be starting with the album Arbent Rite. Now let's begin.
* tremulus (always lowercase) is an RPG written and produced by Sean Preston of Reality Blurs. It is "a storytelling game of lovecraftian horror". Yeah, that's why I backed it on Kickstarter! And that's why I have a copy, because Kickstarter backers got one.
* Beginning with an introduction to the general genre. What is Lovecraftian Horror, will this book be tentacles and mad gods, a brief on the Mythos, etc. In answer to that second question, there MAY be, but this book is not about the Mythos. This is of interest to me because I've never read a Lovecraft story. Nope. I'll get to it!
* And the RPG primer. I'm not so sure about the description of storytelling games saying that most require no dice or game master, because I think they do a lot of the time, but okay.
* tremulus is Apocalypse World-based with shades of FATE and Fiasco. People play individual characters, we have a GM called the Keeper, there are subsystems, and all of it combined is being called Haiku. I can see that, Haiku is pretty cool for a name.
* Playbook choosing! Unfortunately, there's no direct instruction to distribute the playbooks and go around reading their little descriptions as in Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts - I always find that a helpful thing for choosing playbooks, and it's nice to have it explicitly mentioned. But who do we have...
* The Alienist, The Antiquarian, The Author, The Devout, The Dilettante, The Doctor, The Heir, The Journalist, The Professor, The Salesman.
* Of the descriptions, The Author, Detective, and Salesman have great taglines here, especially the Author, it immediately makes me want to play him. The Heir and The Doctor make sense and are descriptive of who they are, but could stand to be more evocative. The Alienist confuses me: "You are well educated and study to treat the mind." I'm not quite sure what the Alienist does, but what the description and the name say don't line up to me. It sounds like a psychologist, while an Alienist sounds like a monster-obsessed mind. Maybe it'll be okay when I get to the playbook itself, but I'm just not so sure on what that tagline is telling me.
* Everyone starts with a Lore move. Through play, you might gain more. These are a tool to fight the darkness. I'm suspecting something that will be along the lines of Monster of the Week's Luck (not in function, but in general concept).
* Oh man, seeing The Touchstone makes me think of a person, thanks to the Apocalypse World playbook. No fault of this game, but i was confused for a moment - I really need to spend less time with my mind stuck in Apocalypse World.
* Oh, the stats! Hooray! Funny stats are my favorite. We have Reason, Passion, Might, Luck, and Affinity. Uh oh. This is very much looking like my Dungeon World stat issue. I think Move structure is genius, but it ran into problems for me when the stats more described your ability in various areas of skill rather than who you were. Cool wasn't a thing you trained like a skill like Strength is, Cool and Hot and Weird are just things you ARE, and it was thanks to that that pretty much all the moves appeared all the time, whereas things such as Parley aren't rolled that often in DW (though genre implications has a role there too). Sharp was the closest thing to the more skill-based moves. Now, this isn't doom, it just sets me on edge to watch for the issue.
* And secondary stats, we have Wealth aka barter, looks like Lore aka MotW Luck, and Trust aka Hx variant (in keeping with every game changing Hx - I'm not sure why it happens, but I love it). Though I'm curious: it said before that we all start with one Lore move, but it says we begin with 0 Lore here. Do we have the move and just can't trigger it til we get some Lore? I guess you'll answer that soon.
* A lexicon! Defines the key terms. I didn't see one of these in MH or AW, it's nice to have them all together. This would probably make a great reference sheet for players new to Apocalypse-Powered games.
* I sort of like having a definition of Charged Situation. It was nice having it as a fuzzy distinction of "well, is this scene charged? No? Then no need to make the move, I'll just tell you." but I like the implications that come with the idea that, when the players are making moves, this situation is now charged.
* Aww, Damage? No Harm or other name for it? I kinda find Damage the lazy way out. I'd be interested to hear rationale for this, as it's a curious choice in my opinion. Wait, just read a few lines down, you DO have Harm? You have the term Damage defined as, essentially, Harm and Shock? I'd DEFINITELY say pick one or the other - either use Damage as a whole, or keep Harm and Shock separate. Putting Damage in there is just wasted space to me.
* Dark Insight is sweet and I like it and want something like that in the others.
* Hmm. I hope there's a further explanation of Hold elsewhere, because that's consistently been my hardest-to-explain idea to people.
* Ooh, I DO like that, once the PCs have made a move on someone/something, it becomes Of Import. Really adds weight to the importance of the characters that even everything they interact with is Of Import.
* Oh my, Sanity Checks!
* So, are tags purely of narrative import, distinguishing things as having that trait, or do they have mechanical weight as well? I suspect I'll get an explanation later.
* The Golden Rule. Take The Action To Get Its Effect. I gotta say, it's certainly not as catchy or descriptive as "When you do it, you do it. To do it, you have to do it." or "Moves Are Indivisible." What you have here is just the "To do it, you have to do it" side - that you want to Poke Around if you want to go through dusty boxes in the attic, but not the side that, when if you just start going through those boxes, the move has to trigger. It's a hard thing to describe - it's SO important, but I feel you really need to confront the idea of the idea that moves have triggers. If you want to make a move, you need to trip that trigger, and if you trip the trigger at any point, you have to make the move. This is the first place I'd actually consider tremulus to be doing a less-than-great job of introducing the game. This is all assuming that you WANT both sides of the trigger, but I'm quite confident you do. The side you have right now is the side that tends toward roll-playing and deciding based on mechanicals rather than fiction, and as a self-described Storytelling Game, I don't think that's your intention at all.
* Basic Moves! The defining piece of the game. We have eight of them - imagine that, it's the same number as Apocalypse World! Hopefully we don't have a straight copy job.
* "Act Under Pressure." Not looking too good for the straight-copy-job thing. I'm just teasing, it makes sense to be here! I actually think Act Under Pressure is a generally easier phrasing for people to understand than Act Under Fire. Probably why Monster of the Week ALSO chose the same wording.
* Um, Sean? Uh, we have MOST of the move's part here, but we're kinda missing something. We have triggers, we have a stat to roll with, we even have examples, but we need results! I've rolled my 2d6+stat and have a 7-9, what do I do? I know it's a Partial Success which often leads to a Yes, But... situation thanks to the Lexicon, but is there no more guidance that that?
* Okay, I confess, I just looked ahead and saw the actual copies of the moves a few pages ahead with all their parts. Why include them here then? It's not any more useful as a reference I don't think. Just attach the examples to the actual move text later.
* Convince sounds like Manipulate, Help/Hinder is almsot exactly Aid/Interfere, Poke Around and Puzzle Things Out sound new, Read a Person is exactly as AW, Take Control is Seize by Force, and Threaten is Go Aggro. I'll talk more about these when I have mechanics.
* Character Creations summary! Wait, okay, there IS an exclusive playbook clause! Just went back and I did find it, but you may want to highlight it if you consider it important, because I totally missed it the first time.
* Always two playbook moves, huh? Most of the AW-variants have the number of playbook-moves determined on a playbook-by-playbook basis, so that's curious.
* You may want to add a step between Review Lore Move and Establish Trust of Introduce Characters, unless you're okay with some people forging on to Trust before that.
* Death = grab a new playbook! Carrying over Wealth and Lore is nice. Now, playbooks all default to 0 Lore, but what if your playbook has starting Wealth? Do you add it to your previous character's Wealth, or replace the starting Wealth?
* The core rules. Man, 2d6+stat, 10+/7-9/6- is still just so beautiful.
* Player-facing rules are also great. I appreciate not rolling my own dice and just responding.
* Oh, "The Power of Narrative" thing is a WAY better description of Moves Are Indivisible than The Golden Rules was.
* Hx was how well you know someone. Bonds were the past you'd shared. Strings were who you had control over. Trust is exactly what it says - how much you trust someone.
* +1s are always offset by -1s. Can you do it in reverse? Like, see that you drifted away from someone in play and give them -1, and just have the +1 be a byproduct? What if you grew closer to someone but DIDN'T drift away from someone in the fiction? Or if you drifted and didn't grow any closer to someone? I like it being a "may" thing.
* Secrets are cool. In-built character development. But if there's no XP or anything for the flip, why ever advance one past +3? It's statistically powerful, and getting that secret would actually weaken your stat power with them AND with someone else. Perhaps, when you learn a secret, you only do that - if you flip over +3, you don't have to take another -1, you've already lost your stat power with them so no need to make it worse, and same thing with flipping over -3.
* And NOW the basic moves, for real this time!
* Okay, on a layout note, the spacing between the move/trigger and its outcomes should not be the same as the spacing from one move to the next. It looks confusing when it isn't.
* Act Under Pressure is a carbon-copy of AW, which is 100% okay with this move because it's generic and versatile.
* Aaand Convince is indeed Manipulate, promises, concrete assurance, and all. Except instead of PC incentive being XP it's Lore, which is cool. Explicitly making a 6- a Trust loss makes sense but I'm always weird when it's not "Make a move, as hard as you like."
* Help/Hinder is now balancing +2/-2, instead of the +1/-2 of before. I think it's tonally appropriate though. This 6- is great though.
* Poke Around is one of the two "discovery" moves, the physical one. I don't think the cumulative -1 is necessary - AW accounted for that in the framework by removing the Null Result. Players will moderate their retries on their own because failure doesn't just mean nothing, it means bad things happen. I also don't really like using a 6- to determine nothing is there, since that's stilla determination about the scene. I would DEFINITELY go with the Hard Move always for this one. However, the ability to simply generate "Good things are here" on 10+s is cool.
* Hey look, Puzzle Things Out is the other discovery one about mental discovery. This is pretty much Read a Sitch/Discern Realities, but is not only applicable to locations but also to objects or information. I quite like this one, including the possibility to take a Lore instead of 3 questions. Not so sure about the questions being flexible, since that was how Read a Sitch was Advanced in AW. I'm not concerned about it though, I'm sure it works.
* Read a Person sounds 100% the same. I like that it uses Passion, unlike Puzzle Things Out's Reason. However, as the only Passion-using Basic Move, I wonder if Read a Person couldn't have been pulled under the branch of Affinity as well. Sure as hell not necessary, but an interesting thought.
* Take Control is seize by force, by the look of it. It even has seizing something by force as a trigger. I'm not sure about the exact comparison of the lists, but it''s fairly similar. I definitely like the increased guidance for when they're impressed / dismayed / frightened.
* Threaten is definitely Go Aggro. Like, precisely. I'm not so sure if this phrasing allows for the frequent "Go Aggro, and what I want is to blast his face off" from Apocalypse World, requiring Take Control to really hurt something. If I understand right though, this move isn't as frequent in this genre as in AW, so that's all good.
* Okay. Now, I need to clarify. It may sound like I'm harping on the game for paralleling Apocalypse World very closely. I'm not. This game is admittedly and explicitly based on AW, and this basic move set is a big part of retaining what Apocalypse World does. The small changes are enough to shift the use of the moves, don't take this as criticism. Monster of the Week does about as much variation, and I really like that one too. Making the parallels is simply for my comprehension.
* Of course, I'm still craving a parallel to Open Your Brain To The Psychic Maelstrom. DW has Spout Lore, and MH has Gaze Into The Abyss - hell, Gaze could probably work even transported wholesale into here. I may just do that, simply because I'm absolutely smitten with Gazing into the Abyss. My last two sessions of AW my players have done several Open Your Brains and it's made me so excited to stretch my MC muscles doing that.
* Coming back after doing something else for a bit, I'm seeing the motivation for Hold 1 for MC Hard Moves. I think the idea is that this is a suspense-builder. Since all rolls are player-facing, all players know when they fail a roll. In most Apocalypse-Powered games, you know that you will be immediately hit with some sort of consequence. However, if the Keeper hold 1, he has the ability to wait. The PCs know that there's going to be a consequence in the future that could come down at any time, but are in the dark as to what it could be, or when. They just know they've failed and that the badness is coming. This sure isn't the most amazing suspense-building tool (an honor held, for me, by Dread), but it seems to make sense. I hope to see how this works in play.
* Damage, death, insanity!
* I'm not so sure that's the best way to handle fist combat, but I suppose it's a very intentional genre choice here.
* Okay, here's a contradiction: "Harm inflicted is based on the weapon. Unless you have a special move, Your Character's Fists Do 0 Harm." and on the next page, Punching Someone Hard With Your Fists is 1 Harm.
* "A really big explosion. No, even bigger than that." is frickin' hilarious.
* Is getting hit by a car really AP? I would think that would still take any armor into account. That's just my general curiosity though, not a game balance thing or anything.
* I like what they tell us about Shock. I giggle at the idea of recovering Shock and becoming less disturbed when you find that asshole's corpse, though of course that doesn't actually happen.
* 6 segments is fine by me. Seeing them on tracks is less cool than a shape like the Countdown Clock, but it makes sense to not be one, so no worries. Trying to think of a cool shape (since, with set numbers of hits rather than scaling HP, shapes and stuff are okay), but don't have one yet.
* Aww, still got a Roll+Damage Suffered move? Damn, I actually am not a giant fan of these, but that said, I don't see anything problematic here.
* Healing seems a bit more formalized than in AW, but that's okay. Alcohol to cure shock is cool.
* AND HERE'S HOW ANGEL KITS WORK
* The more I see it, the more I DO like having special names for each of the harm stages, but I'm going to have to make a separate print-out/card to keep track of those for me.
* Maybe it's because debilities have yet to be taken in my AW game, it doesn't seem to be that much less dangerous with them. Of course, I suppose it's 5 saves from death, but still.
* Amnesia is a cool mental disorder, definitely seems to be evocative of amnesia. I kinda wish this would reverse so 10+ is remembering something helpful, 7-9 is nothing, 6- is problematic. Maybe switching to the greater form would use the written results, as just a roll penalty is kinda weak.
* And that follows through several of them. Roll penalties, while significant in the math of the game, are just kinda weak.
* Night Terrors shouldn't hurt you as well with a success - it's a success! Penalties, even mitigated ones, don't really belong in the 10+ category.
* Aaand a lot more roll penalties. Come on, there were cooler things to do with mental disorders than this.
* Rituals are cool, except the example says that its ritual is Power 7, which I can only imagine is average for a somewhat difficult ritual. If you fail that, if the damage turns physical, you just DIED. You take significantly less damage if you were hit by a BUS. I get that rituals are big and scary, but when I take less damage from a train, I think the scale may be a touch off. Maybe it's intentional though and Rituals are supposed to be ultra-lethal. I DO understand that you can distribute the damage between physical and shock, but it still seems extreme.
* Hey, tags! Okay, in general, I'm already familiar with these.
* Nothing seems particularly noteworthy except for Unreliable. This is the only one other than an N-variant item with a hard-coded time it makes something happen. Rolling a natural 2 to break it is the equivalent of a natural 1 roll in d20 systems (though it's even less probable, which is nice), but it makes me conflicted. There's something nice about the vagueness of Activating Stuff's Downside just being something an MC does as a hard move, while this explicitly makes it something that ALWAYS happens on a -2, even if a different hard move would be cooler. On that note: Does the natural 2 breaking it SUPPLEMENT or REPLACE the hard move caused by failing the roll? I would imagine balance would say it replaces it, but I don't like it deciding my hard move for me.
* Definitely like it describing the range tags specifically, I don't remember a guideline like that in AW and it would help. I mean, Bones has a pair of magnums, but I don't actually know how accurate he is with them.
* "In general, a weapon should cost harm+1 Wealth..." does that apply to AW as well? Is that how it kinda evens out? Because that's also helpful, I never know how much to cost some things.
* Wait, Haggling is for trading stuff for stuff? Damn. It's a nice-looking piece even for buying stuff with Wealth, though it would require a teensy bit of rewording (10+ buy it for -2, 7-9 buy it for -1. I'd actually probably go with 10+ buy for -1, 7-9 buy for -1 with strings). I think, thanks to the promise part of Convince/AW's Manipulate, it makes certain talk-y skills like haggling difficult.
* Advancement. Now, everything is pretty standard, but I definitely like being able to eliminate a mental disorder. Here's a question about difference from Apocalypse World: Is there a bounded number of advancements? Most characters in Apocalypse World can only survive about a dozen advancements before either selecting change playbook or retire to safety. Now, you unlock alternate-playbook moves from six on, but can you select new move every time (despite the AW-typical limit of two or three more moves from your playbook)?
* Okay, I just noticed the other big distinctiont here: there's no XP system, it's just when the Keeper says to advance. This is a really important decision. The various ways to get XP all have really distinct effects upon how the players act. Having none at all is also an effect - mostly that players will do what they feel like, rather than trying to twist into whatever shape they need to get XP. That also removes a tone-building piece from the game though, as convincing players to act in certain ways to get their XP can reinforce a genre. I think this is an important choice here, with a pair of good choices. Including an XP mechanic can try to build the genre, but comes with all the dangers of an XP system (see my previous essay post on the topic of XP!), but while I haven't seen it in here, most Apocalypse-Powered games come with the same First Rule: Portray your character as if they're real. Since that sort of nullifies the idea of pushing your character in an XP direction, yanking XP entirely can be pretty good. It DOES put a ton of power in the hands of the Keeper though, and XP mechanisms are often good because they give players a concrete method to get better - you hear some criticism of Fate Points in FATE games because they're really important but are arbitrarily doled out by the GM, and XP is no different in a case like this. It's definitely something to keep a careful eye on while I play...
* Oh man, I'm at the Playbooks! Also, this is a ton of text here for only being 50 pages in so far out of 246 :/ I'm never gonna get this posted at this rate. Hopefully playbooks, thanks to a parallel structure, will go quicker.
* The Alienist. Well, it definitely seems like The Alienist is a psychologist type, which I suspected from other references in the text. I gotta know though - why Alienist? The name evokes something way different to me than it is. Is this a Lovecraft-ism? A now-unused term? Just a cool thing? I can accept it and understand Alienist in the context, but when I heard Alienist at first I definitely didn't think of this.
* Is Androgynous a really appropriate piece for this guy? Not a judgment, it just seems odd to me. But then, these guys seems like he's supposed to be odd. Otherwise the looks are cool.
* What the hell's a valise? To Google, I guess...
* A motorcycle! Sweet. Also, Diary of a Madman is a sweet item, as is a sword cane. Not sure why a Clipping Service is relevant, but overall this is a cool gear list.
* Well, the therapy move is really obvious, of course. I haven't looked at the printable playbook document, but if it isn't there either you ought to reproduce the actual roll for healing on the playbook page. Save on pageflipping, y'know.
EDIT: Just checked the classic playbook set. Definitely not there. Totally needs to be there. Flipping, even with the page reference, is kinda annoying. I know if anyone plays one in my game, I'll probably have them write it out in the empty space under the class name.
* Oh, what's the time frame on Therapy? A couple of dedicated hours? Several days worth of sessions? I'd just say a couple-hour long session.
* Not so fond of all of the use stat X instead of stat Y for move Z. Even less fond of straight bonus to basic moves. Quid Pro Quo is great though.
* Basically I just really like when moves are actually new or unique moves, not just number-shifts on rolls. I'm sure there can be good ways to play though the moves, and it's less dangerous to the XP system to be able to roll one stat all the time (moving two more basic moves to the Alienist's specialty?) when there IS no XP system.
* The Lore move, on the other hand, is freakin' awesome. It's really giving me a sudden appreciation for the Lore system, it's definitely growing on me.
* The Antiquarian's name, on the other hand, is cool and evocative. It helps that item-users are kind of a weak point with me. Also, this art more than most of them makes the Despeckle filter used on it pretty obvious. That's the filter's name in GIMP at least, maybe it's something else in Photoshop, but either way I'm familiar enough with the effects on that one that I can identify it. Despeckle takes a little less work than the process I use for AW-itizing art, but doesn't have the perfect lines of my take. Note that this is analysis, not judgment - it looks good, regardless of what your exact process was.
* And the names continue to be intensely strange ad I love it.
* The stat layouts are of interest on this one; many, many playbooks with attribute-sets give you a +2 in something and then a variety around that, clearly denoting the important stat. Battlebabes are Cool, Gunluggers are Hard, Skinners are Hot, Alienists are Passionate (you can see what I mean about the naming of the attributes here - the ones here and in D&D/DW are descriptions about things, more akin to skills, while AW/MH stats are descriptions of what you ARE), but here, the Antiquarian has a much more varied set of potential stat layouts. This means that you can play him in a lot of ways, but you have less guidance for what the classes moves are actually built to aim toward using. Admission: I just looked ahead and this more varied layout is actually standard here! Very cool. I like that, kind of a medium between AW's always-good-at-stat-X characters and Dungeon World's complete flexibility.
* Knick-knacks are 100% better than wealth. Essentially this is oddments, which I love, and while I recognize why they aren't the standard unit of wealth, that's something I happen to love about the post-apoc setting of AW. Either way, having them is great.
* A pile of gear with actual statistical effects? Sign me up. I've always been fond of that particular Eyeglasses mechanic - I swear I've seen it before, but don't remember it from AW, but it's great, despite being a stat-mod it's valuable to the player as a helper device and helpful to the Keeper as Hard-Move bait. Scooby-Doo's Keeper loved knocking off Velma's glasses with his hard moves - absolutely LOVED it.
* Yup, this pile of moves is great. Several actual modifications or new moves in addition to some more stat-y ones. The only one I'm not too big on is Shrewd Dealer, and mostly because I think there were better ideas for how to do it. Surprised at the difficulty the playbook has with Affinity, I thought that would be a decent area.
* Actually, I'm not super-thrilled on Fortunate either, mostly because there isn't anything about it that seems to make it an Antiquarian move rather than another playbook's. It's a stat boost, but its reasoning is generic, and that latter bit is the real issue.
* Not as brilliant a Lore move as the Alienist's, but still pretty good.
* The Author was one of the ones whose early description really got me into it. This description is keeping it up.
* These are some fun items. Also, the Author is filthy rich between 1d6, 2d6 Royalties, and 2d6 Author-in-Residence. The pet is awesome, as is the Writer's Circle. It was on the Antiquarian as well, but why include the +1 Lore? Is it just for Lore-lovers and to round out the list? The Alienist didn't have it, and most of the others don't either. Perhaps a vestige of a previous draft, or a new idea that didn't go all the way?
* Author-in-Residence is made of gold, Bookish seems cool but rather limited in scope, Creative Thinker is pretty nice, Hard To Rattle is odd-yet-appropriate for an Author, and Strangely Intense is evocative yet uninteresting rules-wise. I wish there was another new roll move here to finish out the list.
* Novel Experience, however, is pure gold.
* The Devout is a very strong archetype in the genre for me.
* Personally, I like people-person religious characters, so I'd probably go with the +2 Affinity stat set. Lots of variety though.
* "A relic (weird) handed down to you by your old mentor." There are only four choices and you get two. If you DON'T pick that one, you should probably play a different playbook, because that is freaking awesome.
* Sanctify seems a little complex for being not the most intricate effect, but I like it. In fact, I like pretty much all of them (even Easy To Talk To - I like people-person priests!), though Grace gives me pause. Can you use Grace whenever being lucky is a factor (even if it's not the rolled stat), or only when you actually Roll+Luck?
* Hmm. Not my favorite Lore move, but decent.
* So far, of all the characters, I think if I were to play the game right now I'd be a Devout.
* Detective time!
* Look at those names. Those really are cop names, yes they are.
* What exactly constitutes a medium sidearm? I mean, a .9mm would be a small, a .45 would probably be large, what's in-between? A .357? I don't know anything about guns. I would understand if it was a medium gun or a large sidearm, but is there really that much range in the game rules from small, medium, and large SIDEARMS?
* That list of gears is amazingly hard to choose from, I want every last thing from it. Note that most stat twinks will take the hat and the client or the hat and a big gun.
* Rough and Tumble + Tough As Nails, the shotgun and car, and the +2 Might attribute set is me. Yeah, I kinda play tanks.
* The Lore is, oddly enough, not that interesting to me, although it seems okay. I'm just not feelin' it.
* Now the DILETTANTE is filthy rich.
* Surprised to only see one name with roman numerals after it.
* Fur Coat as armor is excellent, as is the pet. I like the specification of Alive, especially since the Author's didn't. Does the Author have the option of Pet Rock in that case? Anyway, trunk full of books is getting hacked to be exactly as the Bag of Books in Dungeon World.
* OH MY GOD all the new roll moves! Beautiful. This is my preference. I'm iffy on having very explicit definitions of what happens on a 6- as I like to have it open for Hard Moves, but still, this is how I want it. All of them are great.
* Even the Lore move is great, especially with the safety clause about unmodified successes not spending the Lore.
* The Doctor also makes the Despeckle filter really obvious.
* The Doctor's gear, unfortunately, is not quite as interesting as some of the others, though I like the Reference Library.
* Again, you may want to reproduce the Physical Wellness Healing roll on the Playbook sheet to save on page flipping.
* Field Medic is pretty cool, and Forensic Expert is great because it's usable in multiple situations. Emergency Triage is just as brilliant as Shock Therapy, mostly because it's the same damn thing with physical, and Luck instead of Reason.
* Someone got wordy with The Heir's description. I love it though, it's a great little story.
* "Benjamin Blackwood." Benjamin. Fucking. Blackwood. None of the names matter after reading that one, I know who I am.
* Lots of good gear choices.
* I like how, no matter what, you're somewhat Reasonable, but not REALLY Reasonable. You knew enough to stay out of the family til now, but not enough to reject that side completely.
* Ancestral Home, Certainty, Frantic, How Bad Is It? and Sensitive are all fucking golden.
* Lucky is also golden.
* This character is golden. I'm going to be playing Benjamin Blackwood now. Or maybe not - I'd never be able to pick which moves to take with that amazing list.
* The Journalist is ALSO a wordy description. Also, obvious Despeckle.
* Ehh, the Gear choices are kinda weak.
* After the first two moves, the rest are amazing. Snappy Comeback's name isn't all that great, but the rules are way fun. Undaunted is VERY strong.
* The Lore move is also really great, a simple, unobtrusive, but intuitive use of Lore.
* I wish I had a professor named December Green.
* Not the MOST amazing gear list, but sure as hell not the worst.
* The Professor's moves aren't too interesting though. Sage Advice is interesting in that it is pretty much purely for working together.
* Learned is nice, but not amazing. Kind of a theme with this one.
* "A cracked, wooden baseball bat you’ve had to use once or twice (unreliable)." HELL YEAH I like the Salesman already. The pickup with Camper, the useless bric-a-brac, a weird old book I like it.
* The Salesman moves are fun too, all of them.
* Just The Thing is exactly the way I want Lore moves to function.
* Wait, the Actual Play examples are of a solo game and of an online game? That's a very cool idea, giving Examples of Play that show off more unconventional ways of play, especially the solo game since that's so often a difficult setup to work. However, I think it would benefit from another AP of straight all-around-the-table game to highlight the differences of the game in those play styles. There ARE differences, and you don't want the readers getting the wrong idea of how their game will go if they are unfamiliar with the trappings of those other styles.
* And here we are at the Keeper's Section!
* "Like the players, you have certain rules by which you must abide, specifically designed to help you work with the players to create an entertaining and suspenseful storytelling experience for all involved." Holy shit man, this is really good. So many games have an all-powerful GM, and fall into a lot of Fiat territory. This whole section is why you should trust the designer of a game to present the game experience they want. We don't hack our video games to be more like other video games we like, and RPGs are no different, they're designed with a purpose, and if the GM doesn't fully grasp this purpose they should just play the game by the rules they're given. The Maxims here are not hard.
* The Agendas are entirely and completely predictable, having read AW. Mostly because those agendas pretty much sum up all games. I find it curious that you specify making the world real as a Keeper agenda, but have yet to mention AW's central rule (Play your characters as if they're real people) in a player-facing section. Not bad, but curious. Paired with your version of The Golden Rule, it seems like you expect and encourage some out-of-game and mechanical thought, which I'm not so sure about.
* And Always Say is also predictable, but especially important is What Honesty Demands in this game, because a mystery game is definitely a place where GMs may try to hide things or play Gotcha or string players along, and saying the truth breaks down those habits. And it really does - I genuinely feel that after playing AW I'd be a far better Dogs in the Vineyard GM for that purpose.
* The principles are sensible and...wait, what? Where the hell's the descriptions of what these mean? The first one is the Barf Forth Apocalyptica variant (not quite as snappy, but I have yet to see one that IS as snappy - Blanket the World in Darkness from MH is close, but not quite). 2, 3, and 4 are transplants. So are 6, 7, 9, 10, and sort of 11. It's those remaining two, 5 and 8, that bother me.
* "Look Through A Cracked Lens Of Madness." From the language, this is meant to be the Look Through Crosshairs variant, but doesn't actually mean that. What this one more implies is something a lot more like the 1st principle, to view everything as a portal to the strange and mad, not the Don't Treat Your NPCs With Kid Gloves that the original is about. It may need a complete rewording, or it may just need an explanation, but it isn't working for me as is.
* "Successes should be bittersweet at best, with rewards few and far between." Is this a translation of an AW one? I only single it out because I don't recognize it. The wording is descriptive enough that I get the idea even without an explanation though. It says something about the tone that this would be an added one.
* Regardless of my own ability to identify what these mean, if you wish for the game to be able to function completely without buying AW as well, explain these.
* And I just flipped ahead to see if you DID explain them later, and nope. Do it.
* Keeper moves are probably the heart of the Keeper's duties.
* Huh. You pulled out the "as established" moves as Situational ones.
* Hmm, you reworded Announce Future Badness (quite well, I'll add), as well as the off-screen one. Also, if I'm not wrong, calling for a Luck roll is definitely new, as is Present Items and Clues and Reveal Knowledge. Those last two are very odd - they're rewards, but as hard moves can be chosen as punishments.
* Good examples.
* On a personal note, the more AW I play, the better I'm getting at What Do You Do?-ing.
* Sanity Check? Well, I'm not sure I would use this unless it's extraordinarily startling/terrifying, it's quite a punishment. The way I would probably wield it myself is to use the trigger "When You See Something That Simply Cannot Be..."
* Oh hey look, the Shock scale. Didn't the physical one show up way way back? Why is this one elsewhere?
* I was reading the game Wonderland the other day, and I'm a big fan of the concepts of Don't Rest Your Head, but the rules of the both of them bug me. They would both match up amazingly to this though. Just kinda coming to that realization thanks to the text about Fine-tuning Fear and Terror Is In The Eye Of The Beholder. A DRYH AW hack would be pretty awesome.
* Oh, it's hazards. Elders, Townies, Landscape, Weird, and Doom. Somewhat curious about the non-mention of a Front equivalent, I glanced ahead and see that they're called Frameworks. Maybe mention here that created Hazards will generally be sorted into these groups of related Hazards, called Threads.
* Anyway, these hazard types translate into Important People, Mobs, Places, Monsters, Events. Sounds like a pretty complete set. AW also had Afflictions, but that always seemed the weirdest to make into its own category.
* And each has subtypes, with impulses, and moves. Sounds like Threats exactly. Even most of these subtypes and impulses come right out of AW. That's fine, as AW's lists are excellent.
* Examples of each subtype, and a piece of advice on how to use them. Sweet.
* What bothers me is that none of the wordings of anything other than the general Hazard Types (not the subtypes, not the impulses, not the moves) particularly evoke Lovecraftian flavor. This is a great place to inject flavor and evocative phrasing into the Keeper's side of things, and I think the chance is being kinda passed over in lieu of the more familiar AW pieces. The Breeding Pit especially makes me think way more of post-apoc than Lovecraftian.
* Oh my god, examples of every single move of their's. Holy cow. If you had room for this, you really REALLY need to take the space to define the Principles. Note that this isn't a complaint about this - I like having these. Oh, btw, "Claim territory: move into it, blockade it, or assault."'s examples aren't italicized like the rest. Just fyi.
* I really like the idea of formalizing the Linchpin of Threads. All three of my AW Fronts have a clear one (all three times it happens to be the "Elder" equivalent, but oh well - considering a shift to that though), so it's cool to formalize it. It'd be especially if there was another small group of moves that Linchpins got about controlling or wielding their group, either explicitly or in the abstract.
* Textures are also good. AW had Scarcities to fill this role I think, but I actually prefer this way.
* What's the purpose of the little The Cat's Cradle bit? "Interweaving frameworks together creates a miasma of possibilities, allow for more complex stories to be told." That's probably not necessary to tell people that, it's pretty obvious, but okay. I just don't see why.
* On frameworks, The Tragic End (Dark Future), The Unknown (Stakes Questions), Lurking Evil (Description/Cast), Darkness Grows (A Countdown Clock!), Theme (Expresses:..). Very familiar.
* Yeah, Frameworks are very familiar, but a good expansion/variation on the Front situation. AW is very specific to NOT make one for the first session - do you wait to make one in tremulus? Or should you start with one since play looks to lend itself to being a touch more episodic?
* ASHES, huh? I like it, despite being a little tacky. It's simple and memorable, and appropriate to boot. A good rule of thumb for the ASH score as well.
* Tags! Tas everywhere! I freakin' love it. Stuff like this is what I read Monster Rulebooks for.
* And Special. Oh, it's their custom move! I invent these all over the place for my own Fronts, it's always my favorite part. Brain Suck is a great example idea.
* And some example creatures! The Lovecraftian creations are all pretty cool, with sweet ideas and great Custom Moves. The Creatures of the Wood, on the other hand, are pretty much boring as sin. I kinda feel the same about using them in games though - I don't like the mundane in these games. Just me, but still, those are really boring stat blocks.
* Odds and Ends. XP advice (desperately needed), don't just keep picking Inflict Harm over and over, Rituals are crazy strong and should never be taken lightly.
* How to give away clues, items (good or minor), Lore, Rituals, Secret things. I like the info, very in-depth.
* I'm not so sure about that way of handling Acts Under Pressure. But then, this is a very hard topic, though one of the most rewarding in the game when done right (I did one last game where Life could have: Not made it to safety / Take a bullet but make it to safety with friendly NPC Vincent / You make it unscathed but Vincent dies. He chose to take the bullet. You could tell he was really struggling with the decision, and it made me happy.).
* Everything under Conveying Horror and Building Dramatic Tension is awesome advice, and the real core of this book so far I think.
* Oh hey, Make Maps/Leave Blanks is here.
* Okay, I'm at Using Playsets. Everything from where I last was and here is still gold. But I want to cut it here for the minute. Playsets look really cool, but are divorced enough from the text that I want to discuss Ebon Eaves in its own post, and this one is, frankly, long enough already.
If it looks like I'm shitting on the game for any reason, I'm not. I think it could have done a bit more to try to distance itself from Apocalypse World, but it will still do an astounding job of playing a Lovecraftian style mystery/horror game. I'm excited to play it (though not quite as excited as I am to get back to our current AW game, which I still need to write TWO Actual Plays for). With that, I bid you adieu, and leave you with a final request:
Spread The Madness.
Ennd Recorrrrding-ing-ing,
Egoqowutfu...///
Interesting post. I have been wondering
ReplyDeleteabout this issue,so thanks for posting.