Compendium Playbooks?
Would there be room within the BitD design space for something like Dungeon World’s compendium classes? After meeting certain in-fiction qualifications, players could choose to take advanced/alternate special abilities, items, and maybe new friends from specialized playbooks.
For instance, there could be a compendium playbook for each of the backgrounds (noble, bluecoat, merchant, etc) , heritages (especially Tycheros), being a ghost or golem, being part of various other factions such as a leviathan hunter, rail jack, gondolier, or deathlands scavenger. There could be compendium playbooks for a character who is demon-touched (after making a Faustian deal), a vampire, a ward boss, specialized scoundrel types (a wheelman, a second-story man, demolitionist, torturer), a military veteran or officer, imperial agent, journalist, agitator, etc.
What ideas would you like to see further explored?
This occurred to me while considering how to add dragonmark effects to an Eberron hack, along with Kai Tave’s great thread seeking more robust special ability options for playbooks, and finally [someone else’s] conversation about giving a character ghost abilities to use while disembodied. (I’m sorry, I forget who was mentioning this last one).
I’d definitely want to see the ghost playbook!
As for the concept in general, it seems to me that some of the hacks would have to incorporate this to some level? The totally-not-Star-Wars one for ex is promised to have “rules for aliens”.
Anyway, I like it, but I’m not the person to ask as to whether there’s room for it. Part of the reason my own game hacks usually get top-heavy and fall over is that when given the choice between elegant simplicity and more character options, I go with the latter every time 😉
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