The first real playtest of ACTION MOVIE WORLD: FIRST BLOOD
went extremely well. It certainly exceeded my expectations. A non-zero portion
of that is that I was running it for guys that I have gamed with off and on
(more off than on after my move to Raleigh) for well over twenty years, but
it’s equally true that a non-zero portion of it is just that rough spots I was
concerned with weren’t that big a deal.
This is pretty long (about 3500 words) but I want to make
sure the first actual play report touches everything important in a little more
detail than maybe I otherwise would. Even then, there are still spots which
could use MORE detail, so ask questions about rules and where things are going.
The players were John, Peter, and Scott. It was decided at
the outset that Peter would get to be the Lead in whatever movie was chosen as
it was his birthday shindig that this was all taking place at. Right now, it’s
pretty nebulous how Lead is determined; that’s something to firm up, for sure,
but it was easy enough for the first test.
Peter opted to play The Yeller, a Reb Brown, screams all the
time, beefy sort of actor. John went with The Pugilist and decided to go a little slapsticky with his martial
artist a la Jackie Chan. Scott went with The Gunfighter, a Chow Yun-Fat gun-fu
type.
The actor names were as follows:
Peter: Chet Bradford (Yeller)
John: Jack Sprat (Pugilist)
Scott: Chip Kaiser (Gunfighter)
Once the playbooks and actor names were picked, the group
chose their moves. Chet picked “Just Yell”, which allowed him to roll +Muscles
instead of +Drama for certain scenes, and “Move, Move, Move”, a move which
allows him to egg his companions on when speed is needed. Jack decided on “Go
for the gut. He’s soft there”, a straight +1 Agility, and “Sting Like a Bee”,
letting him roll +Agility instead of +Muscles in close combat. Finally, Chip
decided to go for “Gun Ballet”, granting –area to any ranged weapon he uses,
and “This Is My Gun”, giving him a +1 to all Stunt rolls while a ranged weapon
is in his hand.
These are the actors. You can think of the actors as brands
and these moves as calling cards of each particular actor. Using Chet as an
example, we see an actor who delivers heavy emotional scenes by screaming his
lines and who tends to rely on screaming at his costars to hurry up. So, quite a
bit like Reb Brown, actually.
With the actor playbooks chosen, it was time to pick a genre
of movie and see what we could come up with. Right now, I only have the Cop
Movie and Barbarian Movie Scripts (movie playbooks) ready. I’ve got plenty in the
pipeline, but if I set a bar of “all the Scripts are done” as a minimum for
testing, then this thing is never going to get tested because, ho boy, it’s
practically limitless.
The guys decided to go with the Cop Movie. I was pretty
happy with this, since I’d done a one on one with the Barbarian Movie once
before.
The first thing you do is sort out what sorts of
relationships the characters have with one another. Starting with the Lead and
going to his or her left, you roll on or pick from a chart (or make something
up entirely) to see what the relationship is. It’s deliberately reminiscent of
Fiasco; one of my favorite bits of Fiasco is the way that it forces you to
think about what the relationships between the characters mean.
We determined that Chet’s character and Jack’s character had
a cop-informant relationship. We knew that Chet was going to be the Lead in
this film, so it was pretty easy to sort out which was which: Chet was the cop,
Jack was the informant. Jack was next to roll and he ended up with a
relationship of precinct buddies with Chip. Problem: we already established
that Jack was going to be playing an informant in this film. Easy solution:
Jack was an ex-cop, disgraced but still of use to the force as an informant
from his new vantage point from the docks. Finally, Chip rolled to see his
relationship with Chet and got a 12. They had both seen something terrible.
We paused here. We had a slowly coming into view picture of
what the movie looked like. We knew it was a cop movie (duh), that Chet and
Chip were cops who had witnessed something terrible, and that Dusty was an
ex-cop (and ex-partner) of Chip’s who had fallen on hard times. Nice. Time to
drill down more.
Before we went any further, I wanted names of the film
characters the actors were playing. This isn’t the same as the actor’s names;
actor’s names won’t change, while film character names will change each movie
(yo, this is meta: you are a real person playing an actor playing a character).
Chet decided to play Sgt. Lance Anger. Chip, his current partner, played Rob
Collier. And Jack played poor Dusty, a man who left his last name and badge
behind him.
With names done, we returned to the setting. What was this
terrible thing that Lance and Rob had seen? After some discussion, it was decided
that they saw a terribly mangled body with its fingers snipped neatly off at
the site of a diamond heist. Some sort of message, but what did it mean? Going
further, the precinct (it was also decided that it was set in Los Angeles) was
in a tizzy about the ghastly crime. Dusty, our informant, was a drunk fisherman
with his ear to the ground in the dockyards. He’d been implicated in a prior,
years ago jewel heist, so some suspicion was coming his way.
Next up were the Script moves. Each player picks a move from
the chosen Script, exactly the same as with their Actor playbooks. Script moves
only last for the duration of the current movie, however; they’re tightly tied
to the genre being portrayed, while Actor moves tend to be more general,
pan-genre action moves (experience expenditures can make Script moves
permanent, though). Lance went with “Supercop” (+1 all stunts), Dusty with
“Corrupt Is As Corrupt Does” (can spend holds to get access to illicit goods),
and Rob with “High Speed Chase” (a demon behind the wheel).
The characters picked
their gear (Lance Anger loved his nightstick, Dusty still had a stash of
teargas grenades, and Rob Collier had his assault rifle) and then it was time
for the final step: picking a villain. In this stage, the Director (me) gets to
pick, though the players have veto power. Each Script comes with a list which
you can pick from. The entries all have associated impulses, familiar to anyone
who’s made a Front for Apocalypse World. I’d heard Dusty talking about drugs
with his Script move, so I floated a drug kingpin; the group wasn’t too keen on
that and floated the police chief being the big bad guy. I thought that sounded
cool, so I named him (Brent McGillicutty) and off we went.
We opened in the precinct office. Chief McGillicutty had a
hot tip that Dusty had some information regarding the diamond heist and
mutilation; he asked Lance and Rob to head down there, since Rob had a
relationship with Dusty dating back a decade. Lance had to go, too; he was
Rob’s partner and the best cop on the force. (Peter really played the yelling
aspect of things to the hilt; he would yell borderline incoherently at random
times and kept it up for around three hours) The partners grabbed their squad
car and headed down to the docks.
There was an obvious break in the action so it was time to
jump cut over to Dusty. He had an old fishing boat which he lived on now. His
cousin, Nick, was fixing the motor for him and was wrapping the job up as we
cut over. Nick and Dusty exchanged some pleasantries, with Nick expressing
concern for his well-being, when Lance and Rob pulled up. Nick and Dusty
greeted the two cops and Nick excused himself, stating that he had his kids for
the weekend.
The scene shifted to a bit of heavy pathos, with Rob
assuring Dusty that he was a good cop caught in a bad situation, while Dusty,
reticent to help, insisted he wasn’t. Lance decided he wasn’t interested in
this and decided to convince Dusty to help by making an emotional connection.
This is a +Drama roll and varies from the more direct manipulation roll in
approach. The emotional connection move is about delivering a stirring speech
of some sort and trying to elicit an emotion or memory.
Lance rolled and ended up with a 12; obviously a rousing
success. At this point, we ran into a small rules snag. Lance was going to
punch Dusty in the stomach to snap him out of it before delivering a speech
about how he was still a cop at heart; Dusty decided that he wasn’t going to go
along with that and wanted to resist. Lance’s narration was totally valid only as long as the target didn’t resist.
He could’ve narrated it differently, with maybe just a speech and no physical
contact. The second physical contact was initiated, Dusty had the option to
resist and cause a fight to break out. This isn’t currently adjudicated in the
rules and was just a judgment call on my part; I’m inclined to keep it that
way, as this particular situation strikes me as somewhat rare.
I gave Lance a chance to change the move. He definitely
wanted to, as his in-character intention was to snap Dusty out of it, not start
a fight. Rob jumped in here and suggested that he stop the punch from behind
before it was thrown; Lance thought that was a really good idea and agreed. So
Rob stopped the punch, shouting that this wasn’t the way. Lance huffed and
relented.
“You’re still on the force to me, Dusty! You’re still on the
right team!”
Dusty relented and agreed to help. I asked Dusty what he
knew, putting the decision in player hands. Dusty knew that the Pier One Gang
(yes, that Pier One) was rumored to be involved in some heavy stuff. He used
his “Corrupt Is As Corrupt Does” move from the Cop Movie Script to do this. It
wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was something. Before the group could pull off,
though, a cop car pulled up and out stepped officers Jane Lillard and Bob
Thomas with a search warrant for the boat. Stand up cops and acquaintances of
all three of the heroes. They presented the search warrant and said that Lance
and Rob could certainly contribute.
Things took a weird turn here. For whatever reason, Lance
and Rob decided to knock out the two searching cops. Dusty, for his part,
wisely stayed out of it. We turned to some combat rolls, with punches thrown
and pistol whippings galore. Dusty opted for a stunt move to get the hell out
of there, tumbling over the side and into the water. Bob took a tumble down
into the ship’s cabin, while Jane landed in the water. Dusty ended up dragging
the unconscious Officer Lillard onto the deck; Rob searched her and found a
crumpled note with the address for the Pier One scribbled on it. Lance, for his
part, went to go question Bob down below. Bob was coming to when, out of the
corner of his eye, Lance caught sight of an open briefcase of crisp, unmarked
bills sitting on a table.
A series of accusations broke out between Lance, Rob, Dusty,
and the still groggy Bob. A couple of read a person moves established that Bob
wasn’t behind planting the money there. Only one person made sense: Dusty’s
cousin, Nick the mechanic. Lance and Rob tried to talk Bob down from radioing
in what, from their perspective, was a massive misunderstanding. That was
obviously the persuade move and it was flubbed, badly. No dice: Bob was getting
the still comatose Jane and radioing in backup. With no choice, the two beaten
up cops were gently left on dock and the boat roared to life, course set for Pier
One.
Rob decided to roll High Speed Chase, netting an 8; he opted
to take a shortcut, but either he or the vehicle would take some damage. He
narrated ducking between tugboats and eking every bit of speed out of the old
boat, while I described the fishing gear getting knocked loose during a clip
with one of the tugs. Not particularly crunchy, but it made for a cool
narrative moment and was actually one of the most visually striking scenes when
placed in my mind’s eye.
The heroes (I use the term loosely after the search warrant
fiasco, but it’s also not entirely outside the source material) killed the
motor as night fell and headed up to the Pier One warehouse. There’s no real
stealth move, or acting under fire, so sneaking around unseen defaulted to a +Agility
based stunt move. This brought up an interesting flow of play question: do I
want AMW to be the sort of game in which a roll is needed by everyone to make
what amounts to a group move or do I just defer to the most competent one? It
felt more in keeping with the conversational tone to just ask for the one roll;
that may be something I revisit, but it felt right last night.
Everyone climbed up to the top of the warehouse unseen, to a
glass skylight. Peering down, they saw members of the Pier One gang unloading
military grade weaponry from crates which had just arrived. Assault rifles,
rocket launchers, grenades, land mines… the whole nine. And who did they see
with Teeth (leader of the Pier One gang)? If you guessed Cousin Nick, you were
right.
The climax was coming. Dusty decided this would be a good
time to go for a Camaraderie move, a sort of abstracted move meant to revel in
the friendship that most action movies have as a theme. You actually have a
communal Camaraderie score, which goes up and down throughout the course of a
movie. Before he did this, though, he decided to go for a killer one-liner
move; one of the outcomes of a successful one-liner is a +1 to your Camaraderie
score.
Dusty stated that it was “time to get a drop on these guys”
as he prepped to toss out hi-fives before diving through the glass to kick some
ass. Unfortunately, he missed his one-liner move. In this case, a miss taps
into the meta, just a movie portion of AMW. The line elicited laughs mixed with
groans at the table. In the movie, Dusty’s buddies were into it. But a miss on
a one-liner meant the imaginary audience wasn’t into it; it fell flat. It was
lame. It gave Dusty a -1 to his next move which was, of course, a Camaraderie
move.
Dusty gave his hi-fives and everyone prepared to go in. He
rolled the groups +Camaraderie (which was a 0; that’s where it starts in every
film and it hadn’t been bumped up or down) with his -1 from the lame one-liner
and missed. The consequences for a failed Camaraderie roll can be pretty dire. In
this case, Dusty chose to have the Director make an immediate and very hard
move against one of his compatriots (not him; important note).
Teeth glanced up and saw Rob at the edge of the skylight.
The gangster whipped a grenade launcher out of his trench coat (the movie was
set in 1992 so of course it was a trench coat) and took a blast at Rob. Rob’s
body was shattered, near death. He coughed up blood as Lance grabbed him,
swearing to return for him, asking him to hang on.
Lance and Dusty, tears in their eyes, jumped through the
skylight. Dusty chucked tear gas down into the crowd via a successful stunt
roll, opting to give the +1 forward the success granted to Lance. Lance put it
to good use, diving right onto Teeth while Dusty handled Nick; Dusty nailed a
combat move and opted to hit a whole ton of people in addition to disabling
Nick.
The heroes handcuffed their quarry to the boat’s railing
before running to the roof to check on Rob. Rob was definitely dying. When a
supporting cast member dies, the actor gets two experience, while the surviving
PCs gain the option to demand Vengeance; Vengeance is a hold which can be spent
to gain a 10+ automatically on a move.
The death scene was great. Rob asked Lance to make sure his
family was okay before reaching into his pocket with his last breath; he handed
Lance adoption papers for a puppy he was going to get for his wife for their
anniversary, along with a photo of said puppy. Then he was gone. Lance and
Dusty swore vengeance before returning to the boat.
Once back on the boat, a few more emotional connection and
manipulation moves had Teeth admitting that Chief McGillicutty had been behind
the operation and that most of the police force was corrupt, while Nick
repented and, for family ties, agreed to help out where he could. Sirens were
heard.
One of the current holes is what to do with players of dead
characters. I opted to try my current first option, which is to assign control
of an NPC (starting with the main villain) to such players. Scott (Rob’s
player) took over for Chief McGillicutty. I still set the scene as I would for
most other NPC centered situations, but I granted Scott a lot of leeway in
terms of how McGillicutty acted and spoke.
While McGillicutty and the cops were on their way for a
final showdown, we cooked up a quick montage of the heroes and Nick setting a
trap. Nick, being a mechanic, wired what was basically a gigantic powder with
explosives (action movie logic, don’t ask). Dusty hid in his boat with a rocket
launcher. Lance hid out at the door of the warehouse.
I loosely set the scene for Scott so he knew, generally, how
to proceed with Chief McGillicutty. I narrated an army of cops pulling up, with
him at the lead. He rolled with it, describing the chief getting out of the car
with his bullhorn and doing a classic “give yourselves up” line. Lance shouted
that he wanted to talk to McGillicutty, one on one, inside the warehouse.
McGillicutty shouted back that he agreed, but remained by his car, motioning
for the police to surround the warehouse.
Dusty figured this was his chance and he shot his shiny new
rocket launcher at the now separated McGillicutty. An intersection of two rules
occurred with this. One, the main villain has plot immunity from everyone but
the Lead; only the Lead can kill him. Two, Dusty failed the roll. Badly. I sort
of cheated here and shouldn’t have (though this did lead to an interesting
potential rules change). McGillicutty caught a glimpse of Dusty in the boat and
pulled his pistol, shooting poor Dusty between the eyes.
Lance lost it at this point and invoked his Vengeance move.
The warehouse blew as Lance jumped out of the blast radius, propelled forward
in a mega-tackle of McGillicutty (10+ on his stunt move from Vengeance). Lance bellowed
that he was taking the chief in legally. It was time to fist fight.
McGillicutty squirmed free after clocking Lance with an elbow to the temple. I
gave Scott the option of how to react; McGillicutty ran like hell. Lance took
this opportunity to hop in a squad car and run the erstwhile smuggling
mastermind down.
The movie closed with credits rolling and wailing guitars.
Lance was on the boat, heading out to sea. “I’ve seen enough of the city. It
gets to you,” he said. “Time to try my luck out there. On the bay.” The sun was
setting and a red sheen on the water paved the way for Lance Anger’s next
adventures.
