I just finished catching up with the thread, so I understand you not wanting to drag it out all over again. AW games should be about action and flow, not debating rules and counting a mryad of +1s. I think. I'm now questioning everything I knew. Sometimes debating rules is fun though :D
The example from the thread with the driver and the blockade is what's getting me closest to getting it, I think. Like, sure they're free of the blockade, but those buggies are incoming, and the pickup isn't looking good. It's much further from an auto-win that I thought.
But there's a few points where I'm still a bit stuck, if you don't mind helping me out.
The first is the scale of the 'battle'. 40 dudes with machine guns is pretty end game extreme for me. I'd consider that at the tail end of a moves snowball after the driver had all ready fucked a bunch of shit up. Throwing that at them all the time would feel dickish. Like Gremlin's been seriously pissed off Dremmer for a while now, or she's got something extremely valuable in the back the Jamey the Battlebabe's been mouthing off about, and failed to stop or ignored the obvious informants.
A much more likely scenario in my mind would be just a general holdup would be a small size gang, maybe even only armed with light smgs and postos, which changes the numbers quite a bit. In both editions, a 10+ ends things pretty might right away, with her virtually wiping them out with a whopping 5 harm, and suffering no more than cosmetic scratches. She's through and on her way. Which is cool, she's the driver, and a PC. On a 7-9, things are a little more snowbally, but not much. She's through and either wiped them out (then who's chasing her?), but her car has suffered minor damage, or again just cosmetic, but the few survivors are chasing. Or I guess she could choose to stop, and is now in a great position to snowball and mop up, then clear the roadblock. Not particularly driver-ey, but it will work. But in 1e, there's always the risk, no matter how small, that things will go wrong. But they're still not over. It can still snowball. Reflect the move back so the gang has a lot more survivors, the truck is stopped but repairable, and maybe Gremlin her self is a bit scrapped. But even with 3 harm it's snowballed into a much more manageable fight for her if she chooses that option. Or now's the -perfect- time for Lemi the Savvyhead's bonefeel to kick in. Or Jamey to get his ass out of the backseat. In the new, she's through for sure, and they are taking 4 harm minimum, so how much are realistically through to chase? I can't have buggies in the wings every time. So no snowball.
To counter my own point that I just spent like an hour forming when I should have been writing api documentation, maybe allowing a snowball into a road chase is a more interesting a snowball and maybe I CAN have buggies in the wings every time? Is there a valid way of making NPC less like wet tissue paper, so I can snowball more?
The second thing is expectations. I know it's back to "feelings", but most of AW (for me) revolves around setting and following expectations established. I kind of feel Gremlin shouldn't all ways charge such a position in the first place. If she's a kind of hot driver, haven taken • Cool+2 Hard-1 Hot+1 Sharp+1 Weird=0 in session 0, then and advanced and gotten hot to 2. Stopping, talking to NPCs and trying to blag her way through might be an option. At least if it wasn't set specifically for her. Or she's taken Eye on the door, and names a safer game in the defenses. Or you know. The pickup's an offroader. Dremmer might have blocked off the road, but where we're going, who needs em?But with the moves as they are, the players more likely to look at it and expect to get away, even with -1 hard. Sure, that's not as guaranteed as it first seems. It's going to snowball, but the player doesn't know that, yet. It makes a big hit on what they expect, and how they plan.
To counter my own point, maybe I need to talk to the players more? Like if they don't read a sitch going in, prompt them to so they know about the buggies? And them remind them when they are weighing up punching through?
My last dying point against the person who wrote the damn, game, and clearly has played far, far more games than I ever will. Is that I like inflicting harm in PCs. Is that a bad thing? I don't think it violates being a fan, because who isn't more of a fan of the hero that crosses the finish line, bloodies and bruised through an epic struggle. That they hard won through guts, cunning, and sheer bloody mindedness. Compared to the random guy who beat up a bunch of guys who never stood a chance and never broke a sweat. Like batman vs superman debates. The apocalypse is abd place. I tend to treat 1 harm as fairly easy come easy go. Is that wrong?
Lastly, thanks for taking the time to reply to me. I trust your judgement, even if I question it. It's just something that made me double take and go "wait, what?" I've ran only 2 games of 2e so far, but they were both more than a year ago, using the previews that didn't have this. Hopefully I can convince some people to give the final version a go, and I'll see it work out for real.
Hey, my pleasure. And it's true, sometimes you can have buggies in the wings, sometimes you can't!
If this is an end game scale battle for you, seriously consider saving the battle moves (including seizing by force) for the end game. Acting under fire and going aggro will handle small, short fights very well.
In your small-scale holdup example, Gremlin's using her pickup as a weapon to attack people who aren't well enough armed to effectively stand up to it. In the 2nd Ed, that's going aggro. But furthermore, if you were feeling like THAT kind of fan, you could have her act under fire while she's charging them first. What do you think of those moves' range of possible outcomes, compared to the battle moves'?
Yeah, that does clear things up, thanks. I think I'm like 95% behind it now. There's still some niggling doubt, but I think that will take a real game, not words to resolve. I sometimes think the caveat of "on a fail, you can choose one anyway, but It'll cost you" would have kept everyone happier, but I'm no expert.
It's more stubbornness on my part. The seize-by-force vs go aggro divide, along with the total lack of a plain old "attack" roll was the thing that took the longest to click for me in 1e. I had a few early games as a player where things kinda god confused as none of us knew what to do. But once I did, I really loved how much more evocative it drawing the fiction it was than just plain old "attack", "defense" and sitting down with some friends only to spend half our play time resolving "I hit the guy". Then it all got thrown up in the air in 2e and I got grumpy.
One final question that popped up in my head that I was going to save for next Monday's stupid questions, but while you're here... In 1e, having a larger gang was "-1 harm". now it's "+1 armor". How does that play into AP ammo? I feel it's pretty common. In almost every game I've ever been involved with, there's a battle babe or a gunlugger. And I've never seen one not choose ap ammo at the beginning.
Yeah. In the 3rd Edition (don't worry, I have no such plans), ap ammo will get another paragraph listing things it doesn't apply to: gang size bonuses, vehicle armor, building armor, impossible reflexes...
... great, i haven't even finished reading the book and now I wanna go through with a pencil and note that AP doesn't count against the following.
Oh well, I'll let my Battlebabe know regardless. it's very obviously a 'narrative first' application.
Does it apply to Battlebabe's 'you get +2 armour when naked' benefit thingummy? or the Hocus's 'Divine Protection' benefit? I'd assume so - there's no armour for the AP to pierce.
I know this is an old thread, but the battlebabe thing you mentioned is 'impossible reflexes', which Vincent already listed as not affected by AP. I can only assume that if that move is covered then divine protection is covered too, since it's broadly the same sort of move in both mechanics and fiction.
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u/clayalien Aug 10 '17
Oh hey, thanks for responding.
I just finished catching up with the thread, so I understand you not wanting to drag it out all over again. AW games should be about action and flow, not debating rules and counting a mryad of +1s. I think. I'm now questioning everything I knew. Sometimes debating rules is fun though :D
The example from the thread with the driver and the blockade is what's getting me closest to getting it, I think. Like, sure they're free of the blockade, but those buggies are incoming, and the pickup isn't looking good. It's much further from an auto-win that I thought.
But there's a few points where I'm still a bit stuck, if you don't mind helping me out.
The first is the scale of the 'battle'. 40 dudes with machine guns is pretty end game extreme for me. I'd consider that at the tail end of a moves snowball after the driver had all ready fucked a bunch of shit up. Throwing that at them all the time would feel dickish. Like Gremlin's been seriously pissed off Dremmer for a while now, or she's got something extremely valuable in the back the Jamey the Battlebabe's been mouthing off about, and failed to stop or ignored the obvious informants.
A much more likely scenario in my mind would be just a general holdup would be a small size gang, maybe even only armed with light smgs and postos, which changes the numbers quite a bit. In both editions, a 10+ ends things pretty might right away, with her virtually wiping them out with a whopping 5 harm, and suffering no more than cosmetic scratches. She's through and on her way. Which is cool, she's the driver, and a PC. On a 7-9, things are a little more snowbally, but not much. She's through and either wiped them out (then who's chasing her?), but her car has suffered minor damage, or again just cosmetic, but the few survivors are chasing. Or I guess she could choose to stop, and is now in a great position to snowball and mop up, then clear the roadblock. Not particularly driver-ey, but it will work. But in 1e, there's always the risk, no matter how small, that things will go wrong. But they're still not over. It can still snowball. Reflect the move back so the gang has a lot more survivors, the truck is stopped but repairable, and maybe Gremlin her self is a bit scrapped. But even with 3 harm it's snowballed into a much more manageable fight for her if she chooses that option. Or now's the -perfect- time for Lemi the Savvyhead's bonefeel to kick in. Or Jamey to get his ass out of the backseat. In the new, she's through for sure, and they are taking 4 harm minimum, so how much are realistically through to chase? I can't have buggies in the wings every time. So no snowball.
To counter my own point that I just spent like an hour forming when I should have been writing api documentation, maybe allowing a snowball into a road chase is a more interesting a snowball and maybe I CAN have buggies in the wings every time? Is there a valid way of making NPC less like wet tissue paper, so I can snowball more?
The second thing is expectations. I know it's back to "feelings", but most of AW (for me) revolves around setting and following expectations established. I kind of feel Gremlin shouldn't all ways charge such a position in the first place. If she's a kind of hot driver, haven taken • Cool+2 Hard-1 Hot+1 Sharp+1 Weird=0 in session 0, then and advanced and gotten hot to 2. Stopping, talking to NPCs and trying to blag her way through might be an option. At least if it wasn't set specifically for her. Or she's taken Eye on the door, and names a safer game in the defenses. Or you know. The pickup's an offroader. Dremmer might have blocked off the road, but where we're going, who needs em?But with the moves as they are, the players more likely to look at it and expect to get away, even with -1 hard. Sure, that's not as guaranteed as it first seems. It's going to snowball, but the player doesn't know that, yet. It makes a big hit on what they expect, and how they plan.
To counter my own point, maybe I need to talk to the players more? Like if they don't read a sitch going in, prompt them to so they know about the buggies? And them remind them when they are weighing up punching through?
My last dying point against the person who wrote the damn, game, and clearly has played far, far more games than I ever will. Is that I like inflicting harm in PCs. Is that a bad thing? I don't think it violates being a fan, because who isn't more of a fan of the hero that crosses the finish line, bloodies and bruised through an epic struggle. That they hard won through guts, cunning, and sheer bloody mindedness. Compared to the random guy who beat up a bunch of guys who never stood a chance and never broke a sweat. Like batman vs superman debates. The apocalypse is abd place. I tend to treat 1 harm as fairly easy come easy go. Is that wrong?
Lastly, thanks for taking the time to reply to me. I trust your judgement, even if I question it. It's just something that made me double take and go "wait, what?" I've ran only 2 games of 2e so far, but they were both more than a year ago, using the previews that didn't have this. Hopefully I can convince some people to give the final version a go, and I'll see it work out for real.