Sunday, August 18, 2019

New Campaign: The Veil

So, since my Numenera campaigns (Caerwent Down and Caerwent Ascending) are now over, I wanted to talk a little bit about what I've got coming up next.

I knew that I wanted to take a break from Numenera/Cypher System for a while, having been so focused on it for so long.

My Initial Idea: World Jumping Modern Fantasy

I had gotten an idea a while back for a modern fantasy game focused on jumping between different worlds, but I had very specific ideas on what I wanted for it. I couldn't find a system that could do what I wanted the way I wanted to do it, and I haven't yet had time to sit down and create my own system for it.

Powered By the Apocalypse

So I looked to other things. And my journey brought me to Powered by the Apocalypse (PBTA) games. These are games that use the game engine developed by Apocalypse World, but cast into different settings and genres.

One of the biggest things that drew me to PBTA games was actually one of the things that had driven me away from them when I'd looked in the past: playbooks. Rather than having "character classes," most PBTA games have "playbooks." These documents are usually one page front and back and have everything a player will ever need to play their character. Games I've looked at usually have between 8 and 18 different playbooks for players to choose from, with each playbook representing a different archtype of that genre/setting. The playbooks have choices for the player in character creation, as well as all their options for advancement throughout a campaign.

Now, this can be...pretty limited, which was why I was hesitant about it to begin with. However, most of the times the playbooks are unique enough and interesting enough that I don't think this limitation necessarily matters.

The reason it stood out to me is because of the problem I've noticed with some of my other campaigns: I have some players who just don't want to work on things outside of the game. So, having playbooks is nice. It makes character creation as well as advancement quick things that can be done at the table without really taking away from the game. It means players don't have to look through book after book to figure out what their best options are. It puts everything right in front of the players, and that is...exactly what I needed for this game.

Genre: Cyberpunk

It wasn't initially my intention to go with a cyberpunk game. What I had really been thinking I wanted was a game focused on pulling heists, with the intention of running something like Leverage. I realized that cyberpunk was probably one of the better genres I could come up with for running a game like this, so I tried to look into what PBTA options there were for cyberpunk.

I found two of them: The Sprawl and The Veil.

The Sprawl was exactly what I had been looking for. It was a game entirely focused on heists/jobs and did so in a dynamic and interesting way.

But The Veil fascinated me as I read about it. Each of the playbooks represented a dynamic aspect of cyberpunk, with characters being defined more by who or what they were than by what they could do. Instead of having generic stats, characters have emotional states that affect their rolls, forcing players to think about how their character is feeling at any given time. It was wonderful. It wasn't heist-focused, although it would support a heist game if that is what my players end up deciding they want to focus on. It's just...PBTA games, in general, are more narrative than mechanical in their focus. The Veil seems even more so, and within that focus it is just so poetic.

So, I decided to go with The Veil.

Our campaign starts at the end of the month, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Ruins & Robots: Available Now

If you've missed the announcement, my Ruins & Robots series of books has started now. Ruins & Robots is a robot-bases space faring post apocalyptic series with cyberpunk themes and gamelit elements.

The story follows MAI, a robot whose role is to raise up projections of human personalities as she and her team search the ruins of humanity in search of anything valuable that our race left behind.

You can grab the first short story for free here:

The first full book of the series, which follows where the short story leaves off, can be found here:

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like PBTA has a cool mechanic with the playbooks to keep the game focused on story rather than the minutia that can go into character planning. Sounds really interesting how The Veil has a unique approach to using emotions rather than mechanics! Hope you really enjoy the new campaign. :)

    Looking forward to reading Ruins and Robots with Brandon- hopefully soon!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks! I'm looking forward to it!

      I hope you and Brandon enjoy R&R when you do read it!

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