#glowinthedark
I’ve gotten a first round of actions hacked together for my Mad Gamma Max Fallout World hack, Glow in the Dark. You might notice I’ve got 5 actions for Resolve – I’m not sure about hardly any of the ones I’ve got so far. Is Barter too close to Sway? Like, can’t you just Sway someone to take the deal you’re offering? So I’m not sure Barter needs to be there, although I like the nod to Thunderdome.
Channel is just a lazy Attune rename, and implies that there’s some sort of weirdness in the setting, and that a character has the ability to influence that weirdness. I’m not sure that I want all those things.
By the same token, is Build really needed if you can express the same concepts through other actions and long-term projects?
What’s core to post-apocalyptic things when it comes to Resolve?
Insight
Hack old technology or jury-rig contraptions; modify, disable, or repair devices; painfully and messily patch wounds.
Hunt a target; gather information about its location and movements; attack with precision shooting from a distance
Read a person’s intentions or situation; recon a location; actually use reading to uncover lost knowledge.
Scrounge up items or information; find sustenance in the wasteland; spot useful things.
Prowess
Finesse explosives into or out of pockets; employ subtle misdirection or sleight of hand; race in a vehicle; sew up wounds and perform surgery with the right knowledge.
Prowl about unseen and traverse obstacles; climb, swim, run, and jump; ambush with close violence.
Raid a location; fight in open battle; perform a drive-by.
Wreck a place, vehicle, item, or obstacle with savage force; unleash chaos; breach defenses.
Resolve
Barter with people for resources, info, or access.
Boss people around using threats, charisma, or presence; lead a cohort.
Build lasting constructs; earn trust; battle entropy and decay.
Channel your connection with the pervasive poisoned miasma of the world; call upon psychic powers or use mutant abilities; connect to and control nanite swarms and sentient microorganisms.
Sway someone with charm, logic, deception, disguise, or bluff; manipulate and seduce.
You had my interest at “Fallout”. I will be keeping an eye on this.
One suggestion? Perhaps instead of “Hack” one could “Kit-bash”? It seems more in line with the actions. Of course, “hacking” wounds has a certain ring to it…
I love “Raid” and “Boss”. They feel so in-genre.
Thanks! I feel “Hack” is one of the stronger reskins, however. I hack that Ancient warbot’s computer core. I hacked this speargun together from a fire extinguisher and that lawnmower. I hacked your arm off to save your life but replaced it with this sweet chainsaw.
Nice! I second your thoughts that Build seems unecessary. The definition seems more intangible too which makes it harder to use, and Hack is sort of the same thing, just less pretty. But what if you’re really good at Hacking? Could you conceivably put together a sweet garden or trusting tribal center with time and great Hack skills?
Barter does seem a lot like Sway, though maybe more administrative and strategic than charming/deceptive. If you changed Sway to Manipulate, Lie, Fudge, or something more inherently deceptive, then maybe Barter could be the more straight-up alternative, though then it seems more like Negotiate. Could Barter be expanded to things like Manage/Adjudicate or administer resources/systems/factions/organizations/tribes (those that don’t run on Bossing)?
I see where you’re going with it and it works. I love the possibilities of, “What happened…where am I? Wha…where’s my ARM?!”
“That? Oh, I saved you by Hacking it off. You’re welcome!”
Priceless! 🙂
I’d say keep Barter over Sway.
Adam Minnie my counter-argument is that Bossing people around might also cover being a boss, that is to say, leading and managing. It’s predicated purely on word choice, however.
If I dumped Sway for Barter, well, does it say something about the setting? It says I can Boss you around to get my way, or I can cut a deal somehow, do you a favor and you do me a favor. One could assume that if you already trusted that person, you wouldn’t have to resort to the dice, right? And you can Barter your way out of a bad deal or foist the same onto someone else. It also kind of reinforces the “fetch quest overload” you see in the Fallout games. “I have this stuff you need, and you can have it – right after you undertake this Level Appropriate Side Quest that ostensibly fulfills one of my needs.” It’s also very Mad Max – those movies are driven by deals strangers make to bolster just enough mutual advantage to survive the moment.
The downside is if I drop Sway AND Build, I still need a fourth. 🙂
I like keeping Barter over Sway. Even for seduction, using Barter implies that you’re giving something up and being transactional about it which has an interesting flavor to it.
I was trying to think of another Resolve alternative and thought something like survive wasn’t active enough. Actually that also falls more under Hunt and Scrounge, which makes me wonder about the similarity of those two. I was also trying to think of something that could be used for holding out when playing chicken, or being good at highnoon-type duels without cracking first. Maybe something like Gamble your resources, life and limb, or reputation. Another word for what you seem to mean by Build could be Invest, which could also carry some of the gamble ideas like going all in on slim odds in hopes of some good outcome. Invest in a community, in a relationship, in an agenda, in a duel or a draining cross-wastes journey? Almost like Endure + Gamble.
I like the word Build, but it also covers some of the same ground as Hack, and using it to also ‘build’ trust might be stretching the action too far. That aspect of it might belong better in Boss.
I think Sway is very important in this kind of world. Remember how, in Fallout 1, you could beat the game with a series of Speech checks? There’s gotta be some kind of manipulative move.
I don’t know if you necessarily need Channel, unless you’re going in more of an Apocalypse World direction. With a more strictly Fallout/Mad Max feel, you could drop it.
Jason Eley Gamma World is part of my mental “sliders” for this hack, so Channel wouldn’t be wasted when it came to potentially having mutant eyebeams or psychic plant powers, although part of me thinks that’s the easy way out and I should really have what the power is and what you roll for it separated. Use your mutant lightning powers to Wreck that door, for example, or Finesse the generator so you can power the lights down here in the basement. I hear you about Sway, too. I don’t want to narrow down “talking” to a single action. Even fighting people in default BitD can be Wreck, Skirmish, Finesse, or Hunt, depending on the situation.
Adam Minnie I’ll keep Hunt (as TrackSnipeFindperson) and Scrounge (as ConsortLoot) separate for now; I think they are different enough. 🙂 Gamble (and its related words, like Invest, Bet, Risk) as a sort of antithesis of Barter is piquing my interest.
Thank you guys for the input. I’m going to let it percolate a bit and see.
When it rains, it pours. Three actions lists in quick succession.
You’re doing some interesting things up there in Insight, and I guess that’s part of the setting. Read has become sort of a catch all investigation and perception, except you removed the parts about ‘finding the good shit’ and put that into Scrounge. It says a lot about the setting in a small amount of space that finding useful items amongst the wreckage is it’s own kind of perception.
I like the hack and finesse versions of healing, though it’s kind of weird that all good drivers are also good at surgeons. In Mad Max all the war boys were good at driving, but only one guy could perform surgery. Using Hack and Finesse to heal feels like something that should be found in a playbook advancement to me (like the Leech with tinker).
Raid is sort of weird, because you already have hunt for shooting, and finesse for driving, but then raid gets to be used for shooting while driving? Chalk it up to the setting I guess.
I’d ditch build. Barter, Boss and Sway are like Consort, Command and Sway which is a nice mix.
Mark Griffin Your actions list post actually inspired me to post mine!
Jason Eley Moar hacks!
Thinking about it more, I think messy healing with Hack is fine as part of the standard action, but finesse to heal should be part of a playbook. I imagine a mad max style game will see most PCs putting a point in Finesse so everyone can drive, but then you’ve always got 3-4 amateur surgeons hanging out in the post apocalypse together.
Mark Griffin you’re absolutely right about Finesse-as-healing. I wrote in “with the right knowledge”, but really if I said “with the right special ability” it would’ve been clearer. 🙂 Everyone can use Hack to try to best-guess treatment (peoples is mostly hydraulics, right!?), but if you have the right playbook, you can do it with Finesse and your patient will probably get to keep all their bits.
Raid is mostly a Skirmish replacement. Whatever gonzo sliders I end up with, cars are going to be part of it, and I’ve played too many things where vehicles just come down to “roll Drive a lot”.
You can Raid in a vehicle, you can use your vehicle to Wreck some bikers, you can use Finesse to do precision driving or hold it steady while a teammate climbs onto a big rig. I suppose Raid is primarily offensive and about battle, whether that’s vehicle-based or on foot, and as with most BitD actions it’s highly situational. Probably it’ll be like John’s newer actions pdf where he has all the “but ___ would work better” clauses. You could attack another vehicle with Raid (but Wreck might fit better), for example.
Even a bad driver can probably Wreck shit in a big car.
I’ll buy Raid as the catch all for most of the crazy shit that went down in Fury Road.
You have to keep “Barter”. “Who runs Swaytown?” just doesn’t sound as cool. ;)
plant instead of build? Like planting roots, settling in an area or setting up shop, planting seeds of trust or deceit, literally planting seeds and raising a crop, tending it. I like that build captured some longer, larger scale feel but the word is a bit funny, like Hack is better, more active.
And definitely Barter, not Sway. You can Barter anything, everything can be traded for something
I really like what you’ve done so far with this. You’ve taken it from concept to action pretty quick. The only thing is it is weird having five actions in Resolve. The only thing I could think of would be to use Greg Barnsdale idea about just Barter. It’s add a certain great flavor to the world where there is a price for everything and you have a difficult time merely persuading anyone just to do something. Great job though!!
To be fair, I was just underlining what others put forth
Logan Shoup thanks – I posted this knowing I needed to pare down the Resolve list, and you guys have helped me a lot. I’m feeling a lot of love for Barter here, and maybe there’s room for Sway too, especially if Build is getting the stinkeye.
With this hack, I want to make sure certain areas of the source material get touched on (the sources basically being Fallout, Mad Max, and spiced up with Gamma World). I’ve got “cars” covered so far. “crafting junky weird crap” is where Scrounge and Hack come in – Scrounge to find it, Hack to build it. The final leg is “dealing with and overcoming scarcity”, which I plan to make more of an issue at the gang level, but there might still be room for it in the Actions list.
Adam Schwaninger I guess the debate between build, sway, and barter comes down to how much you want things from NPCs to have a price and is there potential for positive interaction and community building in this world? If you’re debating between Sway and Build it is almost all a matter of the tone for your setting.