Quinn Majeski

CREATOR

5 months ago

Project Update: Behind the Scenes: The Playbooks

It’s time for another behind the scenes look at Absurdia! While “Creating Absurdity” narrowly prevailed at the polls, a deep dive on the game’s playbooks was a close second - so let’s get into it!

The Playbooks

The (Meta)Physical Edition of Absurdia will feature 12 playbooks in total, including three brand new additions (👁️). Drawing on a range of absurd archetypes from the game’s classic and contemporary touchstones, the playbooks are:

The Animated 👁️: An inhuman object or entity bestowed with spontaneous sentience. The Animated is fully at home amidst the town’s strangeness, immune to the enervating forces of entropy and equipped with an array of peculiar skills. Touchstones include the Cheshire Cat (Alice in Wonderland), BMO (Adventure Time), .GIFfany (Gravity Falls), and Specimen 34 (Wolf 359)
The Bureaumancer: A practitioner of the Bureaucracy’s byzantine arcana. The Bureaumancer excels at containing dangerous situations through careful planning, eldritch talent, and shifting responsibility. Touchstones include A Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency (Welcome to Nightvale), Probabilitor (Gravity Falls), Hermes Conrad (Futurama), and the absurd bureaucracy of Discworld.
The Curio: A collector and purveyor of powerful and peculiar eldritch objects. The Curio possesses a range of strange abilities granted by their items along with an unnatural surplus of charisma and salesmanship. Touchstones include Stan Pines (Gravity Falls), The Cat (Infinity Train), Leland Gaunt (Needful Things), and Mr. Dark (Something Wicked This Way Comes).
The Forgotten Vessel: Formerly a powerful and terrifying avatar of entropy abandoned by the entropic horror that once possessed them. The Forgotten Vessel excels at bending chaos to their will, though trust from the town’s factions will be hard-earned. Touchstones include Bill Cypher and his various vessels (Gravity Falls), John Peters [you know, the farmer?] and the Glow Cloud [all hail] (Welcome to Nightvale), Isabel Lovelace (Wolf 359), and Debbie (King Falls).
The Newcomer 👁️: A fresh face in an absurd world, The Newcomer gets by on a combination of disbelief, prey animal skittishness, and the celebrity appeal of being new to town. It's only a matter of time before the town claims them as one of its own though. Touchstones include Alice (Alice in Wonderland), Dorothy (The Wizard of Oz), and early series Carlos the Scientist (Welcome to Night Vale).
The Paradox: A mockery of continuity and linearity unmoored from the normal passage of time. The Paradox wields the past and future as their weapons, skipping across time to avoid danger and engage their opponents. Touchstones include The Traveler (Welcome to Nightvale), Billy Pilgrim (Slaughterhouse Five), The Time Anomaly Removal Crew (Gravity Falls), and John Eggbert (Homestuck).
The Rascal: A mischievous youth whose boundless imagination is capable of wreaking absolute havoc. The Rascal is great at causing and escaping trouble, though they can be fragile when it comes to combat. Touchstones include Dipper and Mabel Pines (Gravity Falls), MT (Infinity Train), and Peter Pan (Peter Pan).
The Scrapper: A resourceful, clever, and reckless tinkerer, often underestimated due to their eccentricities. The Scrapper specializes in creative problem solving and hard-hitting robotics. Touchstones include Old Man McGucket (Gravity Falls), Carlos the Scientist (Welcome to Nightvale), Tulip Olsen (Infinity Train), and Rick Sanchez (Rick & Morty).
The Suit 👁️: A sartorial incarnation of municipal justice. The Suit is the living (?) embodiment of a faceless bureaucrat, relentless in their commitment to upholding a particular section of the town’s bizarre municipal code. Touchstones include The Sheriff's Secret Police (Welcome to Night Vale), The Man in the Tan Jacket (Welcome to Night Vale), The Dark Clerks (Discworld), and The Spooks (American Gods).
The Void Archivist: A collector and curator of the memories held within the empty tomes of the Archive. The Void Archivist is an erudite scholar of entropy, able to collect and recall others’ memories. Touchstones include the Society of the Blind Eye (Gravity Falls), the Librarians (The Magicians), and Mr. Quint (The Twilight Zone).
The Vox: An intrepid community radio host determined to make sense of the bizarre happenings in town. The Vox is adept at investigating, gathering information, and drawing strength from the “ordinary” elements of the town. Touchstones include Cecil Gershwin Palmer (Welcome to Night Vale), Sammy Stevens (King Falls), and Douglas Eifel (Wolf 359).
The Zeitgeist: A collective consciousness inhabiting several human bodies, united by a common purpose. The Zeitgeist is physically and mentally durable, possessing a number of unique skills and strengths owing to their amalgamated nature. Touchstones include Troy Walsh (Welcome to Nightvale), Unity (Rick & Morty), Gestalt (Rook), and Sensates (Sense8).

Playsheet Preview & Walkthrough

Let’s take a closer look at how the playbooks operate. Below is the playsheet for one of the most iconic archetypes of absurdist media: The Vox.

The first page of the playsheet shows the “play” information - what you need readily available during a session of play. At the top, we can see the four character ratings - Cheek, Wits, Pluck, and Chaos - along with their corresponding basic moves. As with most Powered by the Apocalypse games, you add or subtract these ratings whenever you roll one of the basic moves.

Each playbook also has its own unique Essence - the specific reservoir of strength that allows that character to stand tall in the face of the town’s relentless chaos and entropy. Essence can be used to power certain playbooks moves, push yourself to roll additional dice on basic moves, or avoid catastrophic harm from the town’s myriad terrors. Running out of Essence will result in a lasting Fracture to your character - too many of which will lead to a messy or fatal retirement - but each playbook also has a unique condition allowing them to reclaim their lost Essence.

Rounding out the front side are the playbook moves, covering a wide assortment of strange, surreal, and outright absurd abilities. Characters generally start with three playbook moves, some of which are selected by default to represent integral facets of the archetype. The playbook’s starting gear is also listed on the righthand side.

The second page shows the “narrative” information of the playbook, including character background and worldbuilding. The left column offers suggestions for descriptors, playbook related background questions, and agendas that represent the playbook’s goals and ideals (and opportunities for experience). The middle column establishes your character’s key relationships to other player characters, NPCs, and factions in town - offering a built in opportunity for collaborative setting- and world-building. Finally, the right column shows options for advancement after gaining enough experience to level up.

Heading into the Home Stretch

We are just shy of one week left in the campaign! We already unlocked our first stretch goal to add additional artwork and are gaining ground on our second goal to bring some incredibly talented guest writers on board the project. If you’ve been sitting on the (upside down, non-euclidean, white picket) fence - now’s a great time to back!

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