Hacking an RPG: After the Fire

Hacking TTRPGs is one of the things I want to focus on in this blog. I am currently working on a hack of Apocalypse World, and I’ll be posting on the process as I go. Right now my expectation is that I will be interspersing posts about this hack with other, more general posts on hacking and GM advice.

The idea for this hack started out as an Apocalypse World campaign. I had some pretty specific ideas about how I wanted to run this campaign, which I titled After the Fire. As I started to get things down, I kept having ideas for the campaign that were more and more divergent from the spirit of Apocalypse World, to the point that I decided that some big mechanical changes were in order. When I think of Apocalypse World, it always has a very Mad Max feel to me, and After the Fire will be intended to evoke more of a Frostpunk vibe. In light of this, I realized that the game I wanted to run would work best as a substantial hack of AW.

I already decided on a number of major changes early in the process. I really like the idea in John Harper’s Blades in the Dark that the crew has its own playbook. I’ve incorporated player organizations and shared assets into campaigns before through mechanical hacks, but BitD has a far more elegant execution of the concept than anything I’ve come up with before encountering it. For After the Fire, I decided that rather than have a Hardholder playbook and have the stats of the hardhold tied primarily to that character, I want the hardhold itself to be a playbook. By the same token, I felt that the different focus of After the Fire warrants a different set of playbooks from those in Apocalypse World. In the conceptual stage, I envision these playbooks as mostly hacks of existing AW playbooks, with mechanical and flavor changes to bring them more into line with the flavor and spirit of AtF.

So why do a hack, and do all this extra work to redesign existing mechanics for my game? The reason I’m doing it in this instance is because several core ideas I have about After the Fire are different from core concepts of Apocalypse World. AW is a great game and I’ve run numerous campaigns. AW has a heavy focus on sex and power dynamics. The dynamic focus of AtF is different; AtF will have a greater focus on community, survival, and loss. Some of the power dynamics stuff that I love from AW will be present, but I’ll be approaching it differently. Thus, for example, I’m changing the trigger for the Special Move that each playbook has from “when you have sex with another character” to “when you break bread with another character.” Rather than sharing physical intimacy, the Special Move becomes focused on sharing a meal, an act of community building.

Of course, not everything needs to change. I’m using Apocalypse World as the basis of this hack for a reason - I love AW as a game, and I think it provides the core framework I want to use in running After the Fire. Thus, instead of reinventing the wheel and writing a new PBTA game from scratch (it’s never really from scratch of course, we’re always building on the work that has been done before), I’m going to redesign mechanics that I feel will better serve AtF and keep the elements of AW that I don’t see a need to change.

As I continue building After the Fire, I will post about more specific changes I’m making. In the meantime, I hope you find something new to add to one of your own favorite games!