#158: El Jefe and the Hardholder!
Trusting the players and helping GMs
I. Dear Reader,
I’ve been thinking about the design of two games, Apocalypse World and Pasion de la Pasiones. I’ve been playing both - we just wrapped up a 5-6 session run of AW and we are 2 sessions into a series of Pasion. And I’m noticing an interesting relationship between two playbooks - AW’s Hardholder and Pasion’s El Jefe.
Now, the Hardholder in Apocalypse World is the boss, the chief, the big kahuna. She owns, runs, controls the settlement. She’s basically Immortan Joe from Mad Max: Fury Road but maybe less messed up. The Hardholder has access to explicitly more resources and power than the other playbooks. She probably has 40-60 violent bastards in her employ after all. That’s a lot of bastards. This asymmetry in power has always been fascinating to me because it is something that most other games simply would not do. (I mean, my mother told me not to trust a game without balance and I see none here! None at all! I kid, of course, the game is very finely-tuned.)
Basically, here’s the idea: In another game, the Hardholder would’ve been an NPC, maybe the villain, maybe a questgiver, maybe both.
Now, talking about villains, let’s get to the El Jefe. The El Jefe is a boss, a patriarch, a gangster with a pack of thugs. Unlike any of the other playbooks, they start with power. It might not be systemic power but it’s power nonetheless. When you mark three conditions (the equivalent of going down to zero HP in some sense), you get the ability to just wreck the person offending you. Mechanically, this is the “bad” outcome, remember! El Jefe is jealous, angry - but in a sexy way. They too can be - they don’t have to be but they can be the villain of the story. (At least, that’s how I’m playing them.)
I love this kind of design: it simultaneously trusts the players to create fun situations for themselves and it eases the load on the GM. To use a phrase I deployed in my Trophy Gold review, Pasion de la Pasiones is a GM’s game in many ways. And that’s a rare compliment.
Yours in constructive villainy,
Thomas
II. Media of the Week
Ben L of Mazirian’s Garden has a new podcast devoted to megadungeons. Seems like it’ll be short format with a new guest coming on every episode to explore a different facet.
On the queeRPG podcast, jay dragon talks about telling different kinds of stories with RPGs: “violence is the loudest person in the room”
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III. Links of the Week
Two reviews of Daggerheart, the D&D-alternative being developed by Critical Role - from Polygon and also Comicbook.com
On It Came From The Bookshelf, a nice look at the semi-utopian, sci-fi game, Eclipse Phase
On tumblr, Brandon Leon-Gambetta, designer of Pasion de la Pasiones, talks about how “moves make a promise” in PbtA games. Really fun design about move design.
On the Jar of Eyes newsletter, a nice post about how the designer thought through all the complex decisions and myriad advice about crowdfunding a game.
On the mindstorm blog, a simple reputation system for games where you want characters to be recognized by their famous deeds.
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" trust the players to create fun situations" is spot on. thanks for sharing!