Category: Games

Bubble The Bay

Podcaster, fellow AW-hacker, Big Bad Con founder, gaming cheerleader, and all-round great guy Sean Nittner played The Sprawl at Go Play Northwest. Here’s what he had to say about it: The Sprawl at GPNW.

“Your cyberpunks are no match for my crew”

Notes from yesterday’s playtest by @AdamUltraberg of AdamUltraberg.com: Today I went to a special playtest-gameday a few towns over, and it was a wonderful, completely worth-it trip. I helped playtest H Cameron’s Sprawl (An Apocolypse World hack). It started with world creation (everyone named a corporation and what it did), character creation, then “heist creation.” …

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Advancement: Directives and Personal Directives

As is often the case in AW hacks, straight stat highlighting often doesn’t work when you fiddle with the stats and the moves. I’ve found that to be the case in The Sprawl. Accordingly, I’ve been talking about changing the advancement system for a while; several months ago I had the idea to use the …

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The Reporter

I collated my notes, tried to channel Transmetropolitan and Max Headroom, and thought of some moves. The result is below, the first draft of the reporter. Anything you think I’ve missed? Anything that doesn’t look fun? Do you want to play this guy? [First revision: Expanded Nose for a Story to add an overarching story …

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The Tech

Since I released the alpha draft of The Sprawl a number of people have been kind enough to read, play and comment on the document. This week, I’ve started a fresh writing and editing pass to fix and add a number of things. One thing I worked on tonight was standarising the gear list, including …

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Better Action Through Currency

One area of play that I am conscious of streamlining or avoiding in The Sprawl is the planning paralysis phase that often seizes groups, particularly in Modern/Near Future/Sci-Fi settings. Another important Apocalypse World hack currently under development is The Regiment by Paul Riddle and John Harper (check it out, it’s awesome!). In considering how to …

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Crew-laborative Fiction

One of the aspects of our Conquering Corsairs Kickstarter project that I’m most excited about is presence of collaborative fiction authoring. At the Explorer ($15), Ship’s Mage ($55) and Crew Chief ($70) backer levels, or by adding $5 to the Sailor ($25) or Buccaneer ($45) levels, you get to contribute to the colour and backstory …

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Kickstarter is Go!

After many late nights and long weekends of crunching rules, juggling numbers, and playing for me, Rob and a host of playtesters and collaborators (especially David Gallo and Becky Sanderson), our creation is preparing to enter the world. I’ve designed, tweaked and hacked a lot of games for my own use over the years, but …

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