25. playbooks and highlighted stats

25. This is our final post about the playbooks. It will also be my final post for a week or two as a big work project needs to be faced head on. When I come back, we’ll pick up with the chapter on Character Creation.

But for now, the last area of the playbooks to discuss is Improvement. The text for Improvement is the same on all the playbooks:

Whenever you roll a highlighted stat, and whenever you reset your Hx with someone, mark an experience circle. When you mark the 5th, improve and erase.

Each time you improve, choose one of the options. Check it off; you can’t choose it again.

Every improvement you might make to the character is listed right there on the front page of the sheet. You can improve stats, gain character moves, choose moves from another playbook, get new Crap (holding, gang, followers, vehicle, etc.), or expand and improve the Crap you already have. Once you improve five times, you can start choosing from the second list if you want to and think about the end or evolution of your character.

The thing that I want to focus on here is not the particulars of a character’s improvement but the fact that all those improvements are listed on the playbook from the moment you create the character. The entire range of potential futures is always there to meet the player when she looks down at the playbook. The Gunlugger knows that she can have a holding of her own if she wants one. The Battlebabe can have an ally or a gang. The Skinner knows she can open an establishment of her own if so inclined. All the unmarked character moves tell us what kinds of dramatic scenes we might be able to introduce into the fiction as our characters grow.

Putting all the improvements on and in the playbooks accomplishes two things. First, as we’ve noted before, everything the players need to play the game from the first session to the last, are in the playbook and the printed reference sheets, so the cognitive load on the players is kept to a minimum. Second, the players are constantly reminded that their characters are personally heading somewhere in the story that is unfolding. It allows the player to keep one eye on the present and another eye on the future so that the Fiction is always pushed forward. Does my Savvyhead seem like she’s going in the direction of adding a life support bay to her workspace? Which NPC might become my Battlebabe’s ally? I’m excited for the moment my Hocus can put her followers in a frenzy! Goddamn I need to move my gang from being a bunch of savage hyenas to a well-disciplined bunch of hyenas! All future improvements are laid out for the player to aim for when pushing the fiction in one direction or another. Since the course of the fiction is determined first and foremost by the players and their characters’ decisions, the game provides these flags and goalposts to aim for when driving the story.

And with that, we’ll consider the first two chapters and the first 67 pages covered. If there’s something I’ve overlooked, let me know. I’ll see you all with another post sometime late next week.