Author: Jeb E

So I’ve been thinking a bit about custom moves for some good, light PvP scenarios. This came up because two PCs got into an argument that it was clear neither was going to budge on; they did a great job of roleplaying it out but it was clear they were at an impasse so I decided to incentivize making things come to some sort of a dramatic conclusion. With that in mind, I came up with a custom move on the spot based on some of the mechanics in Apocalypse World and Monster of the Week, and today I wrote it up and revised it a little bit. I’d love for your feedback, particularly on whether a.) you even think PvP mechanics should be a thing, and b.) whether the incentives being offered are sufficient and make sense. So far we haven’t had any fist fights break out so I’m hoping this is all we really need, but any ideas for handling PvP stuff that gets physical would also be of interest to me. How do y’all handle this stuff if and when it comes up in your games?

The mechanics for negotiating (or manipulating, I suppose) NPCs haven’t changed so I’m only including the new PC rules:

Negotiate or Manipulate

When you want something from someone that they don’t want to give up, make your case and roll…

…+STR to intimidate them

… +CHA to convince or charm them

For PCs: on a 10+, both; on a 7-9, choose 1:

– If they do it, they mark XP and take +1 forward

– If they refuse, they suffer 1 point of ability score damage to an ability of your choosing, as long as it makes sense

On a 6-, mark the ability used, and they decide how badly you offended them and choose 1:

– If they refuse to do it, they mark XP

– They’ll do it, but they’re going to hold it against you; erase any bonds you have with the PC

As promised, here’s the marketplace. I ended up putting our house ruled loads in parentheses after the RAW loads in case you want to use them. The changes aren’t terribly dramatic, I don’t think. So far it all seems to be working for us. The only other change is that I’ve added in Halfling Pipeleaf, since that was a fave from DW. Players can use it to add +1 to Negotiate or Keep Company by expending 2 uses. I think those are the only changes.

Note that there’s a blank page left in just so I could easily print it out in booklet form. Feel free to, y’know, do whatever you want with that.

I’ve been making some handouts for my players and myself and thought others might find them useful. The first one I’ll share is the Judge Reference guide. It contains the Judge Moves as well as an adapted set of agendas and principles (inspired by the Principia Apocrypha), some recommendations on GM moves from a PDF I found called Worse Outcomes, Hard Choices, and finally a list of tags and terms and some page references for The Perilous Wilds. I don’t know if anyone would find this useful or not, but in case you might, I’m glad to share it.

I’m also finishing up a marketplace booklet my players can keep on hand (with some slight updates based on the discussion the other day about horses and loads).

My party has acquired a horse, and of course immediately started piling on all their goodies so that they don’t have to worry about encumberment. Now, while they don’t seem to recognize how easily this might allow me to Use Up Their Resources (“sorry guys, but you come out of the dungeon and the horse is gone!”) but the more pressing concern is that I have no idea what the horse’s capacity should be, lest it become a horse of holding …

Any thoughts?

Could someone explain (or point me to an explanation or discussion) how durations work in practice? my most recent session was the first time it really came up (before that I planned to just figure them out on the fly) and I guess I just had a hard time wrapping my mind around how they actually work in play. Do durations only pass when a move is triggered that ends a duration? My cleric invoked his god in order to be granted temporary healing that would last one duration. I ended up having that duration and when it felt narratively appropriate but I wasn’t sure if that was the right way to actually approach things. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Been running my Freebooters 2e campaign for a couple months now and we just had our first player character death that stuck. It wasn’t epic, he didn’t sacrifice himself, it wasn’t particularly climactic, but it was still powerful. The other PCs took a (very) brief moment to grieve, looted his corpse, and moved on. The player immediately started rolling up a new character. I really appreciate that the char gen process itself is so engaging, because the player was able to work on that in the background while the others carried on, and he didn’t feel like he missed out at all. He was still having fun.

On Saturday I’m running the second session of my new Freebooters 2E game. We rolled for everything and built the world collaboratively, leaving plenty of blanks. Over the last few days, I’ve been working to convert our hand-drawn and very messy map into something more presentable. I made this using the amazing Hex Kit program, and I’m pretty excited about it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hdgRUviXDyYzFR5tiz1eNbfYxiTQgVzB/view?usp=sharing

So, knowing that this isn’t exactly within the spirit of the game, has anyone created additional playbooks or have tips for adapting DW playbooks to Freebooters?