The Augur + The Wanted

Tl;dr: Changelog

• Made the New Year Happy!
• Left the Hiatus.
• Added 2 new playbooks, The Augur and The Wanted
  
• Updated Moves and Character Sheet for a few minor clarifications
  • (specifically: the fact that Grease Monkey lets you learn which sentences are true before switching them, and the fact that the Background Questions are optional)
• Had a few Sobering Realizations about the thing as a whole.

Playbooks of the week

The Augur and The Wanted join the party!

The Augur serves something higher. A Higher Force. Something that dwells Above, and might be divine. A metaphysical force incarnate. There's also your go-to for playing austere wise old guys. The Wanted did time for a crime, and they escaped their jailors, and now they've got a whole slew of police forces and criminal bosses alike wanting to find them to either capture them or hire them - wilingly or not.

The Augur is cool Moves-wise but they feel a bit disjointed. Like, yeah, they've got all those cool Moves about being a ritualistic miracle worker and stuff, and they've got maaaagic! ... But that's it. They lack flavor, as the Higher Force can be generic. Maybe that's on me? Maybe I should just have them worship / serve a specific thing so they'll actually have flavor like the others? Huh. Food for thought.

The Wanted, I'm very proud of! There's really a lot of ways to go about it, since the definition of being "Wanted" is forced on them rather than something they're committed to. The choice of giving in to the underworld or trying to be righteous, and whether or not you were framed, these kind of things, they're all possible without making the playbook generic and that's a cool thing!

... aaand now it's time to talk design problems.

Playtest results

I GM'd some Dyson Spells during my New Year festivities, and a slew of things became apparent:

• Magic is underwhelming. Either you do something and don't roll, and something happens but it doesn't feel rewarding, or you do roll which means you could have your spellcasting go awry. Which is cool! But also frustrating when it's something you actually spent resources on. Maybe I should rework magic, and give up on the whole power words thing? Might make magic a more specific Extra of the corresponding playbooks.
• Character creation takes waaaay too long. Having to wrestle with not only one, but two playbooks is a lot more book-keeping than intended - plus the character sheet, and the stats, and the backgrounds, and - it's just too much.
• Choosing a Foil is way harder than I thought it would be! Paradoxically, having a list of flaws to pick was much more fun than coming up with your own. I'll tentatively get rid of them, and see what I can come up with down the line.
• Most of the GM Moves felt disappointing once in play. Might have to rethink them.
• Speaking of which, making people lose things is... well, it just doesn't work very well. The whole "Gear" thing feels a lot like I'm trying to not let go of Fellowship / Starfinder inspo, and I'm realizing that really I shouldn't be minding the gear too much. Maybe I should let Holds handle the nitty-gritty of it and stop being so specific about it. This is a PbtA game after all.
• Hacking is very much something that people want to do without having a cool, unique, magic way to do it. And the fact that there are multiple moves that could possibly involve hacking without actually being hacking, is... well. Confusing, to say the least.
  ... should I reintroduce skillsets? Something very light, like you get 1 skill among 5 at character creation and either you know it and can do it without rolling or you don't and you can't do what they're supposed to be about without rolling, chuck a few advancement options that way? It's gonna be hard to find an elegant way to deal with that. Maybe I should just add it to Grease Monkey?
• Anyway, all of that is kinda moot, until I've solved problem numero uno:

The Great divide™

The Great Divide™ between staying in the same spot to do an activism and exploring the far reaches of space is still causing tension in the design. The problem is that PbtA intrinsically lends itself to building on your own worldbuilding, which you can't do if you leave worlds behind as you go. Mh... Might have to retool the entire thing to give it a more "explore out there and come back" theme. This could work with a colony ship, but it would also invalidate the entire concept of downtime by making it a part you actually play out. Which... might not be a bad thing?

... I have some re-conceptualizing to do.

Next week!

I'm not promising anything for next week. I think I'll spend my Dyson time figuring out whether to make the colony ship thing happen, and if I do, that will mean having to rewrite a lot of what's already there. And if I don't, I still need to review everything I've written; the game has an anti-establishment streak and an exploration streak, and those are contradictory; and it's time to solve that.

See you next week, and happy new year!