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Yesterday I joined the online convention of the German 3W6 community ( discord invite link ) to play “Transhumanist Ruins” a game written by ChatGPT and prompted by our then GM anlumo. Anlumo had assembled the AI’s replies into a kickass online sheet, before play.
The game was fun, and especially one of the players really did a good show and helped us overcome that system, asking questions like “Wouldn’t be good if that happened..”, “Couldn’t we rather do this…”, “We could treat that result as..”.
The plot was rather simple. One player played a slighty deranged and physically sick posthuman Elijah (Exile playbook), the next his doctor called Tornado and I played the child of some nomad clan called John. We were following Elijah’s beeping thing that he insisted was a treasure finder (in fact a Geiger counter) to some lone hut in the wilderness and found stuff therein. Elijah interfaced with a computer system, learning about the “Red Queen” who was apparently in stasis in some broken arcology not too far why and wanted to be rescued.
Leaving the shack, we encountered another scavenger who claimed ownership (summoned by a 7-9) and was quickly overcome by Tornado. We rode some mutant buffloes, enticed by Elijah towards the arcology tower, John giving directions, but were stopped hard by a canyon that John had not heard about. Elijah managed to build us a paraglider from some dead animal (playbook move) to carry us over that canyon. On the other side John let the group toward another friendly nomad group, where Tornado managed to acquire some motor bikes for to continue our journey. The roll also meant there would be rival appearing, we all agreed it would be more dramatic if they came up after we found our target.
Arriving at the tower, we were send away by the group that currently claimed it, but we managed to sneak past them through Elijah’s other playbook move. In the tower we split to surge it, Elijah and Tornado both got electrocuted a little bit hanging wiring, while John found a computer archive, but couldn’t do much with it.
We ended the session there, because we were all tired. It was a fun experiment, I really enjoyed playing with those guys and trying to make things work.
I will now poke and prod at those moves and playbooks the AI made, and it won’t even be sad when I say bad things about it. If you haven’t read through those amazing laid-out character sheets, do it now.
Basic Moves
So let’s look at those basic moves. The first thing to notice is that all the basic move are very similar in their internal structure. 10+ is always “you successfully ${do whatever} and avoid the drawbacks”. The drawbacks on 7-9 have some similarities as well. There is always the “unwanted attention” clause, often the “suffering” clause, sometimes the “sacrifice” clause. So basically ChatGPT seems to have Simple World down. The way they are nnow, those moves could have been boiled down to a single one like Simple World or World of Dungeons do. The AI just rephrased it over and over.
We might call a move design like that a move with creatively complicating drawbacks. Options like that make your plot sprawl sideways (and then a rival appears, and then a monster appears, and then you suffer this and then you lose that) and they require creativity and judicious application to use repeatedly in a satisfactory manner. This can be problematic in obligatory high-frequency moves.
If you want to use a move with drawbacks, you can mix those creatively complicating drawbacks with mechanical drawbacks. That requires some resource that we can’t count down or up. To give an example, this a high-frequency move from my game.
When you approach a problem with magic you have not mastered, roll +Learning.
On a hit, you might do it and gain Training. On a 10+, choose 2. On a 7-9, choose 3.
– You’ll need extra preparation.
– You’ll have to break the rules. Raise Scrutiny or suffer.
– There will be side-effects.
– Seems simple enough. Do not gain Training.
Special: If you have Training with this trick, take +1.
This move notably hits you with some drawbacks always. Even on a 10+. That’s alright. A 10+ doesn’t have to mean that your result will be perfect. It just means that this is the best result, you may expect for this thing given the emulated (sub-)genre.
This move also always hits you with at least two things, instead of ChatGPT’s one, but you never have to take the creatively complicating option: side-effects. You can rely on the mechanical drawbacks, no training plus scrutiny or suffering (= marking a condition).
The remaining option of extra preparation is not complicating, it is creatively slowing. It begs the question: What preparation do you need? It makes us take a step beg and allow us to make something up about this piece of magic. It doesn’t necessarily make things more complicated. A simple “help me set up those candles” might suffice. It is an opportunity to add some color and world-building.
Another great example of a creatively slowing drawback is Hit the Streets from Urban Shadows.
When you hit the streets to get what you need, name who
you’re going to and roll with their Circle. On a hit, they’re
available and have the stuff. On a 7-9, choose 1:
- whoever you’re going to is juggling their own problems
- whatever you need is more costly than anticipated
Again we may learn a little bit about that NPC. It might forward us to a subquest, but maybe they just need a bit emotional support. But even with a subquest, we are still on track to get our original problem solved. It doesn’t suddenly summon a new problem for us to cope with right now, we just added one or more scenes to our projected story flow.
The main take away is: Don’t force players to pick a creatively complicating drawback on an obligatory high-frequency move.
Playbooks
ChatGPT made the same mistake here that I see often with PbtA hacks and did the first time I tried as well: Playbooks should not be skill packages. The typical question when making a class for an RPG might be: What are they good at? We are trained to think that way through several decades of RPGs. So an AI should forgiven in mimicking us there.
The problem is that if some capability is required in the game’s typical situations and that class is not in play, what are you going to do? Otherwise known as “someone play a cleric, please”. The obvious solution is to not gate any required capability behind a class choice.
To avoid this outright, do not name your playbooks after jobs. “Doctor” or “Diplomat” are therefore suspicious by title alone. “Scavenger” could work maybe, but probably doesn’t for this particular game because everyone is supposed to scavenge. See the basic move. It’s like having an Adventurer class in D&D or a Hunter creed in Hunter: The Reckoning.
Instead, when making up a playbook, do not ask “What can you do?”, but kindly refer to Bablyon 5 and ask “Who are you?”, “What do you want?”, “Why are you here?”. Any of those will do. So Nomad, Exile, Hacktivist and Renegade are actually fine playbook titles for the game.
How do we make playbook moves then? If we cannot make something necessary exclusive to a playbook, we can make playbook better at it, right? That’s what ChatGPT here tried. And yes, that works, but it’s overall rather boring, if a playbook is just that and nothing else.
You can look at peripheral things that come with the playbook’s concept. Like “When you meet other people of the Wasteland…” for the Nomad, a “What you brought with you…” for the Exile, some “Cause” for the Hacktivist (actually ChatGPT tried for that one), possibly military tactics or provisioning for the Renegade.
You can also try to look at the some theme through the lens of various playbooks. You can do so explicitely like the Sex Moves in Apocalypse World. Every playbook has one, the move has always the same trigger, but then different things happen. Same with the team moves in Masks.
You can also do so more covertly, with varying triggers and mechanics. Since this is hard to find in a finished product, I will cite my own game again. These are playbook moves, concerning friendship and helping others. Not all of my playbooks have one for that theme, but here are the ones:
- Presents. When you give someone a personal present, you take +1 on encouraging them and you can do so while absent, as long as they have the present with them.
- Soulbound: Pick another student. You are bound to them on a fundamental level. You each have a general impression of one another’s wellbeing. You may also suffer in their place. Take +1 forward when you do.
- Fashion Sense: You know the hottest trends, stars, and fashions. Take +1 when appropriate. You may dress up others for the same bonus.
- Power of the Heart: When you try magic you have not mastered to help a friend, roll +Heart (instead of +Learning). On a miss, you both suffer whatever consequences.
- Honor: When you trust someone and they trust you, they take +2 (instead of +1) when you help them successfully.
Another thing you can do is, again, mechanical, that is adding private tracks and resources to the playbook and things to do with them. Going into that would explode the post so I close it here.