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What do you think about Powered by the Apocalypse games?
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<blockquote data-quote="Grendel_Khan" data-source="post: 8598072" data-attributes="member: 7028554"><p>Very accurate, and as [USER=6993955]@Fenris-77[/USER] mentioned there are hacks that do that pretty explicitly (I only know of Copperhead County, but there have to be others).</p><p></p><p>But that Heat and Crew-based approach is more flexible than that, too. In Scum and Villainy you aren't creating a true criminal organization, you're just sci-fi scoundrels pulling illegal jobs, so the mechanics help model your relationship with the authorities, as well as the various syndicates you're inevitably going to ally with, piss off, play against each other, etc. To me the biggest benefit is providing very clear stakes to the PCs, and to yourself. So instead of basically saying you're either completely off the police's radar or you're public enemy number one, it lets you show your group's movement along that spectrum.</p><p></p><p>But it also encourages really cool, genre-appropriate behaviors and pacing. If your Heat goes way up, maybe you spend downtime laying low, dropping Heat over time. That breaks up the traditional and usually kinda dumb pacing in a lot of RPGs, where you're tracking every hour of the PCs' lives, and they're barreling through a lifetime of conflicts and traumatic events in the space of two weeks. Heat slows things down (without making you play out every moment of those downtime stretches) and helps you establish the characters' lives. And it also makes it more interesting and dramatic, imo, when the players decide, to hell with it, this is worth massive amounts of Heat.</p><p></p><p>In theory, that sort of mechanic could work in a fantasy game where some faction is trying to impose law and order. It can work beautifully in a rebellion narrative (Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants might use it that way), or a cyberpunk game, etc. Players aren't necessarily the villains in most RPGs, but they're rarely the cops, and even if they are they're rarely doing much of anything by the book. Heat and all of its mechanical ramifications and story hooks meet PCs where they are, while also sort of holding the larger narrative together. </p><p></p><p>At least until the end of the campaign looms, and they go full GTA mode.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Grendel_Khan, post: 8598072, member: 7028554"] Very accurate, and as [USER=6993955]@Fenris-77[/USER] mentioned there are hacks that do that pretty explicitly (I only know of Copperhead County, but there have to be others). But that Heat and Crew-based approach is more flexible than that, too. In Scum and Villainy you aren't creating a true criminal organization, you're just sci-fi scoundrels pulling illegal jobs, so the mechanics help model your relationship with the authorities, as well as the various syndicates you're inevitably going to ally with, piss off, play against each other, etc. To me the biggest benefit is providing very clear stakes to the PCs, and to yourself. So instead of basically saying you're either completely off the police's radar or you're public enemy number one, it lets you show your group's movement along that spectrum. But it also encourages really cool, genre-appropriate behaviors and pacing. If your Heat goes way up, maybe you spend downtime laying low, dropping Heat over time. That breaks up the traditional and usually kinda dumb pacing in a lot of RPGs, where you're tracking every hour of the PCs' lives, and they're barreling through a lifetime of conflicts and traumatic events in the space of two weeks. Heat slows things down (without making you play out every moment of those downtime stretches) and helps you establish the characters' lives. And it also makes it more interesting and dramatic, imo, when the players decide, to hell with it, this is worth massive amounts of Heat. In theory, that sort of mechanic could work in a fantasy game where some faction is trying to impose law and order. It can work beautifully in a rebellion narrative (Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants might use it that way), or a cyberpunk game, etc. Players aren't necessarily the villains in most RPGs, but they're rarely the cops, and even if they are they're rarely doing much of anything by the book. Heat and all of its mechanical ramifications and story hooks meet PCs where they are, while also sort of holding the larger narrative together. At least until the end of the campaign looms, and they go full GTA mode. [/QUOTE]
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