Sorry if this is sort of off-topic, but this community is larger and more engaged than any other place I can think to ask this. Had anyone here played the AW hack The Hood? (PDF on drivethroughrpg)
I’d love to hear PBtA players’ opinion on it before I run it.
Thanks!
http://groundhoggth.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-hood-now-open-for-business.html
I haven’t played it but I was shown a mostly-complete version when I was going to playtest it. It’s a very thorough hack, on par with DW in terms of revamping all the playbooks and several mechanics. All new Basic and Peripheral moves. Everything has been renamed for theme, e.g. Hx is now Debt, meaning you can mess with people when they owe you more. Most things have also been changed mechanically, e.g. when you get more than +3 debt you can mark XP or choose from several other options like swapping your “heat” for theirs. So now you’re even because you set them up for that shooting the other day.
There are a lot of playbooks – 14 in the version I saw, and each of them quite unique. Most don’t even have an analogue in AW. Not everyone has a complicated specialized move like the Chopper’s Pack Alpha, but everyone does have several move options for plenty of different combos. Especially impressive: Each playbook has a few paragraphs explaining general strategy, which moves are important, and how any complicated stuff works – kind of like the Character’s Crap chapter put right there on the character sheet for the benefit of all.
The only “complaint” with the text I can think of is that the MC section is a little light, as most of the advice from AW still holds. However it absolutely covers all the bases, including how to use the MC moves in the Hood and advice on the new mechanics; as well as a new set of agenda and principles; and all-new setting, NPC, and Danger creation guidelines. Basically if you have run AW before you will have no problem running this. If not, you should at least read up on NPCs and Fronts.
I haven’t seen it in play, but from the text this hack looks amazing.
Thanks for that review! I basically just want to live out the plot of Breaking Bad in an RPG 🙂
I have played it and enjoyed all my sessions …. many of my players viewing it as GTA:World, which is fine by me.
I am the person who put the pdf together though, so a bit bias. Aaron Feild, I agree. I wish James had filled in more of the gaps between MC and how to, but he felt that it was un-needed as this was an extension of AW rather than an individual game by itself.
If you want to get a game together over google+, I would love to play it as a player.