Category: Apocalypse Galactica

I watched a video that has me re-thinking Apocalypse Galactica at it’s core. Pete Figtree interviewed Adam Koebel, Gregor Vuga, John Harper, Jonathan Walton, and Sage LaTorra about hacking Apocalypse World. Man, do they guys know their stuff.

The video makes me very happy I called it a reskin, rather than a hack. Here’s 78 minutes of awesome, followed by the questions I’m now asking myself about Apocalypse Galactica.

What I now want to reconsider

• Stats. Does Faith play a role in the game? Should it only apply to playbooks like the visionary? The CAG has always left me wondering if they push with Hot, Hard, or Sharp. Is that because a the stats as is should be changed more for the setting.
• Vehicles – Large (Battlestar) and small (Viper). Should they be treated as Military Units (gangs)? Do more mechanics (besides the AW basic moves) need to be developed for space combat. Should they suffer harm?
  • Should there be battle moves to cover ship to ship fights?
• Supply and Favor – Currently each a fraction of what barter is in Apocalypse World. These should be full developed to be distinct currencies, with their own meaningful moves and interactions.
• Consider a strong divide between military personnel and civilians. Do they have different moves? Different currencies? How do they interact well or poorly? When does one have leverage over the other? What are their areas of influence?
  • Rank or command. Should it be a stat or currency? Something that is spent, rolled, and/or put at risk.
• Structure of a game session
  • Should it emulate an episode of the show?
  • Starting off do we spend time making the fleet? using love letters?
• Crisis Clocks – Currently 12:00 equals destruction of humanity (starved to death, freeze to death, killed by cylons, turning against each other, etc). What about making the scope smaller? What if 12:00 indicated a Cylon attack? What if 12:00 meant a change in the paradigm. For example: accepting a Cylon into the Fleet (Athena), Changing the President (Gaius), or Cylon Occupation.
  • What about advancing the clocks based on triggered events like how corporations become more pursuant of you in The Sprawl?
• Have I given enough thought to the civilian roles? The people who put demands on the fleet? They are a vulnerability for the military unit, but what strengths do they bring in the show, and are the represented in play.
• I want more on activating weaknesses. The game usually has lots of conditions in play like “terrified” or “insubordinate”. I’d like an explicit GM move to shift those from general grumblings to a specific (and irrevocable) action.
• Re-examine the principles, agendas, and moves. I’ve always taken it for granted that those should be the same save the change in setting (i.e. Barf forth the Apocalyptica is changed to Show the Fall of humankind) but otherwise would be used in tact. Should this be? Should I be looking at my own play sessions to see what I do as GM and codify those actions as the GM’s moves?
• Basic Moves
  • Seduce or Manipulate – Ties in with command suggestion above. Should their be a military basic move “When you pull rank…”
  • Read a stich – These questions should be drawn from the show, or inspired from the show.
  • Read a person – Consider questions. “Is your character telling the truth?” should be removed. Consider questions like “Are you acting for the good of the Fleet?”
  • Leap of Faith – I’ve floundered with this move in play. It can be memories, visions, sudden inspiration, premonitions, projecting, hallucinations, etc, and yet it’s been hard for me to reconcile with the show’s explicitly refusal to concretely acknowledge the supernatural (until the very end).

After a very thorough review from SoylentWhite on the Apocalypse World forums, I’ve made a bunch of minor corrections and updates.

Downloads (Version 02.1):

• Apocalypse Galactica Introduction
• Character Playbooks and MC Playsheets
• Scenario: “Damascus Falls”
• Scenario: “33″
• Full Download (zipped files)

Here are Soylent’s comments, and the changes:

Activist special doesn’t have an appropriate option for when listener understands cause, but doesn’t care (too wrapped up in their own shit, for example).

I’m okay with that. I want the Activist to polarize people. Nobody walks away from them feeling indifferent.

Supply and favor confuse me a bit. Are some playbooks supposed to only use one, others the other, and some both? For example, the activist starts with only supply, but their mechanical gain advance is for favor. Trying to work out what the intention is here.

Yep, I was trying to tease out some distinctions between what AW lumps together as barter. It’s hard goods vs. influence. Most playbooks only work with one or the other, a few of the them (like the Businessman and the Activist) can dip into both. That’s intentional.

Businessman – Someone to do your dirty work
Says ‘one of your employees’ then suggests ‘Tarek *and* Misha’. Or, surely, since there’s be only one? Or perhaps it’s better phrased as ‘some of your employees’?

Correct, it should be “or”. Fixed.

CAG
No gear listed.

Yikes, not only is that a problem, it’s a beast to fit anything more on that playbook. I found some space though. Fixed.

Captain – When I say jump
I suggest a rephrase so it isn’t needed every time you give an order. Perhaps add ‘in a time of serious crisis’? (“Bring me a coffee.” “Down with the Tyrant Captain!”)

Good call. Fixed.

Commander – CIC
Move doesn’t allow for changing circumstances. If all you know is you’re under attack, you enter CIC, get a weak hit, you need to spend it on the DRADIS before knowing what you need to do, then you can’t do it.
1) Getting sensor readings from the DRADIS shouldn’t be an option. You always need to know what’s going on, you should just be able to get readings. If you want to keep it, I suggest adding the word ‘detailed’.
2) It shouldn’t be on entering, as that just means you have to keep exiting and entering the CIC during a crisis if you only get weak holds. It should be ‘When trying to organise the ship during a crisis’ or something, so you can use it multiple times in a scene, with the risk of a malfunction providing balance.

1) Good call. Added “detailed”
2) I don’t like the wording of “trying to organize”, that isn’t what a commander done, he or she takes control. But the point was a good one. I changed it to “When you are in the Combat Information Center and take control of a crisis”.

Doctor, Engineer
No way to mechanically get favour or supply. Deliberate?

Yep, these are potentially turtling characters, especially the engineer, that can just go off and play on his own without the other PCs. This is intentional to force them to interact and get them in play.

Engineer
Still has 2 ways of getting sharp +3

Removed the advancement and added in a “add Cylon tech to your workspace, and now you can work on Cylon technology there too.”

Marine
7-9 option in boarding party still seems too harsh. 1-harm AP AND are disoriented AND acting under fire or leave something or take something. I’ve had misses with better outcomes than that, especially since base AW says ‘take something’ can be harm.
1-harm AP OR disoriented and acting under fire OR leave something OR take something with seems fairer to me.

Yeah, that was supposed to be re-written as “or”. Fixed

Tear gas grenade still mentions ‘sharm’, which still doesn’t exist.

It was written wrong (3 s-harm), it should have just be S-harm, which is from the AW, it’s stun harm. Knocks people out.

Advances give max sharp +3, not hard.

Fixed

Partisan
2 ways of getting cool +3

Removed the +3 Cool advancement and added “lead the people: get an MU (detail) and Officer on Deck”

Protect your mark – still doesn’t say ‘as AP harm’.

Fixed

Pilot
You can actually get all of the pilot moves through advances. I suggest otherwise.

Removed one of the “get a move” advancements and added “get a Viper MU (detail) and Officer on Deck”

President
Inter-colonial relations, surely?

Yes

Fleet reconstruction – malfunctions misspelled

Fixed

Well connected – Favours are valuable enough and +1 has a low enough chance of making a difference, that I can’t see this move as being useful. +2 before rolling or +1 after rolling would be good, though. (Not saying both options for the move, but that one of them would make a good replacement.)

Agreed, I dislike retroactive explanations (they usually feel forced to me), increased to +2.

President can only get one new campaign? Given that’s their main thing, seems a bit harsh.

Added another advancement option to get a second.

7-9 result on Politicking is worse than base AW when doing more than 2 things. (Base: 1 catastrophe if working more than 1. AG: 1 success, rest catastrophes). Deliberate? Significant nerf of President if so.

I dislike the Operators 7-9 (it seems really close to the 10+), but agree my version is too harsh. Now 7-9 gives 1 success and (if more than one campaign run) 1 catastrophe.

No mentioned downside to not working obligation campaigns.

Added it at the bottom of obligation campaigns. “An unworked obligation campaign is an opportunity for the MC.”

Visionary
2 ways of getting faith +3

Removed the +3 faith advancement and added “followers grant you insight, you can find answers from them as though you were in a Workshop”

Session End
No way to give Hx -1?

Nope

Cylon Projection
What does the 7-9 result actually *do*?

Huh, good questions, it isn’t clear and I’m not sure how to make it clear. Going to think on that.

Also, where *is* the credits page in the files? I saw the playtester list on your website, but your ‘Credits given to contributors.’ mentioned above implies that you have one inside the documents, and I just can’t find it.

My worst mistake to date. I’ve added it to the introduction.

Activist
First stat line actually says -2 Hard, but means +2.

Fixed

Opportunist
I’m still very dubious over faith -2, as it’s the easiest stat to ignore, so makes a good natural dump stat.

Agreed. Changed to Faith to =0, with Sharp changed from +1 to -1.

Pilot
To get around the problem that all pilot moves can be taken:
New move: Wing and a prayer
When in a battle, or just about to enter one, you may make a Leap of Faith using +Cool instead of +Faith.

Pilot has a lot going on already. I removed the 2nd “choose a new pilot move” and gave the Pilot “get a Viper MU (detail) and Officer on Deck”

President
Probably too late, but I’m not sure about Campaigns. My thought is this:
Start with 3-juggling. When deciding what you’ve been working on, you must declare exactly what your campaigns are and what number of favours/amount of risk it is beforehand, noting that you may have multiples of one level of campaign, so long as they are different things.
Obligations:
Inter-ship relations (cooperation/tensions/-EXPLOSIVE INCIDENT) (covers Quorum mediation & inter-colonial relations)
Internal security (secure/suspicions/-MISSTEP) (covers surveillance, law enforcement, espionage and ship defence)
(Misstep basically means either something that shouldn’t have been done was or something that should have been done wasn’t)
Labour relations (productive/inefficient/-HALTED) (covers health care, labour relations, salvage & fleet reconstruction)
Campaigns:
Support a position/person (1-favour, -EMBARRASSED)
Mutual back-scratching (2-favours, -ENTANGLED)
Extreme measures (3-favours, -OFFICE THREATENED)
With this, a single ‘+1 juggling’ advancement is fair, since it means you don’t have to shirk your obligations to actually get anything out of your job.

I like how clean this is, but I’m not ready to ditch the current campaigns without more testing. I did tweak politicking, and I think it’s worth continuing to run as is.

Basic moves:
Suggest you remove ‘Is your character telling the truth’ from the list of ‘Read a Person’ options, just to make cylon-spotting a bit more than trivial.

Huh, that has never come up in a game. I mean nobody has every asked point blank “Are you a Cylon”? Not sure where I want to go with this one yet. Will ponder it along side the Cylon Projection.

You have the fleet population as being 34,560 to start. According to http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Survivor_count, the series *ends* with about 38,000 survivors. I suggest 49,317 as a better starting number. Likewise, you *may* wish to up the size of the fleet from 47 to 63. When numbers start bigger, it’s easier for the MC to destroy a few when things start going wrong.

Yeah, I initially set it smaller when making Damascus Falls for reasons I can’t even remember now. Maybe to make it more desperate, who knows. But you’re right, I’m bumping up both numbers.

The way you’ve handled Cylons is faithful to the source material, but I’ve decided if/when I run, I’m going to shape them into more my own thing (probably including serious deviations from canon, such as no resurrection!).
From a mechanical perspective, I’ve decided to just add automatically two moves to a revealed character (and no further cylon moves are available): one being Ambush the Fleet, the other being like the Engineer’s workspace but not needing a proper workspace, and only applicable for communications devices to contact the cylon fleet. The idea being that they use that move, ask the MC what they need to do to make a new comms device, spend time doing that, then when they do, they can use the ‘ambush the fleet’ move. Gives them a reason to not be constantly spamming ‘ambush the fleet’.

Let me know how it goes. I’ve long planned to make Cylon playbooks for characters that start out as Cylons. I have ideas for a 6, 4 and 1. Eventually I’d like to make playbooks for all of the models and I’d love to hear what works for you.

Edit: Also, v2 zip file is (or at least was) missing Damascus Falls love letters that were in v1.

Huh… I’ll fix with the next file build.

More than a year after I first created Apocalypse Galactica, I finally have the post-playtest-feedback incorporated version ready! Downloads available on the main Apocalypse Galactica page.

The majors changes include:

• Converting all playbooks from Legal to Letter size.
• Refining moves to make them more specific, action-oriented, and clear.
• Creating an independent Battletar and Fleet playbook.
• Copious editing.
• Reworking of common currency base moves (supply and favors).
• Focusing the language of the game on BSG over AW (more Frak, less Dremmer).
• Credits given to contributors.

A ton of work has gone into Apocalypse Galactica. I hope you enjoy.

This post contains all the previous versions of Apocalypse Galactica.

Version 01:

A lot have people have asked me about the X-O playbook, and my feeling is that you get an X-O either by playing a Commander with the rank X-O, or having the X-O as an NPC. But… that’s me being lazy. Sometimes people want to play the Adama vs. Saul conflicts, and those are done best between two PCs.

Jonathan Henry, who is running Apocalypse Galactica on Google Hangouts+ just posted this!

XO playsheet

So say we all!

Paolo Bosi has translated Apocalypse Galactica into Italian and run the game several times! Awesome. Here’s the feedback he’s given me so far:

Ok, just a few words about my games.

I’ve find really hard to keep working the trio Commander-CAG-Pilot.

It has occurred about half of the time (after 3 times i’d started removing at least one of the trio, mostly the CAG) and everytime one relationship (CAG-Pilot or Commander-Pilot cause, who knows, every pilot wants to be son of the commander) really overwelmed the others.

There was no interaction aside form the Hx+3 set up. I pushed an Activist, Engineer, President with all my MC might and nothing happened.

So as i’ve already said, i’ve started removing the CAG.

I find it a little “weak”, maybe because it’s role is not as powerful as the Commander, yet he is a pilot, someone who carry the burden of the fights and not the responability of command.

I haven’t had a chance to read the 2.0 version so maybe you already come to this, but the Leadership move was never used. Most of the time Act under Fire works fine for portraying orders.

Also i think i’d be more comfortable (or maybe less scared) as an MC if there was some words on how to push up Crysis Clocks. They are clear and fine, but in the first games i’d found myself in some truoble after half of the game with all the Clocks on their starting positions. Maybe a custom MC move like “push up a Clock and tell them what happen the next morning”  is what i’ve done in my latest games.

I hope this can be halpful.

Sincerly, Paolo.