Whatever, I don't have anything else going on. Lets keep going.
We got the six main Moves, now we move on to the ...9 Secondary moves. I'll mostly gloss over them unless something interesting comes up. No wait, I'll have to cover them later because despite being brought up now Mission Moves don't get covered until Missions! Ugh. Alright, it gives us the "Hardship Moves". First up is Resist The Shadow. If you engage in "toxic behavior", the Shadow attempts to take over! You succeed, it doesn't. You kinda succeed, you get a Weary/Jaded/Harm point (The game really likes to hand Jaded out like its a bad thing, when it really hasn't been thus far.). You fail, it takes you over. More interestingly we get a definition for "toxic behavior" that lets the Shadow take you over!
I say "more interestingly", but perhaps I have looked too long into the abyss and become a liar myself. It just says "toxic masculinity", a concept that doesn't seem to exist in the game world given that nobody seems to have a problem fielding an army without a single man in it, which doesn't really...clear up anything at all. The examples are doing things like "Macho Challenge of status" (Possibly like the characters did in the "Blow off Steam" example where they had a friendly archery contest that was portrayed positively?), "Trying to resolve problems through violence" (Maybe the reason we don't have any fighting moves is that engaging the enemy in combat immediately lets them possess you?), "Asserting Dominance through Intimidation" (One of the examples for the "Spend Friend Points to Help" thing was two people Intimidating a mob to back down). So three things we saw at least one example character doing and being portrayed in a positive light are all very bad toxic behaviors that should be avoided. It lists some "female" behavior like gossip or calling a chick fat, ugly, or easy. It lists some fairly harsh penalties for failure like "you let the enemy army into your compound", with the character example being that the PC got possessed and stabbed another PC. That is right! Act "Toxic" and demons will take over and make you kill the rest of the party. Be nice or else.
We get more rules for Weariness, or rather the rules for Surrendering to Weariness. Which are the same. We also get a repost of the "Recite a Eulogy" rules noting that you also lose weariness if you manage to pass. For some reason this is rolled for Training, I guess they teach you how to attend funerals in The Watch. It notes that you only lose weariness once even if multiple people died (sorry Munchkins).
"Start Session" looks like it will take longer than I planned. It is basically a "Go on a mission!" skill. Say what your mission is and any secondary objectives, assign them jobs (and yes, apparently job
s. Of the "three" you assign, one is "Recon and Lookout", and another is "Navigate and Strategize". ) You think we're finally describing all the violence you're doing to the enemy during this? Nope. You're supposed to describe a montage of character interaction that you had during the mission. Maybe we'll talk about what actually happens on the mission in a hundred pages or so.
"End Session" is also apparently a move, but it is just when you give out Friend Points to whoever you want. The character example mentions "angry sex". Its bolded along with a bunch of other words that probably where not meant to be.
And that is the end for moves! Now we get to move on to Characters! This game knows what is important. First Gender stuff, then rules, then characters as it should be.
Time yourself as we begin the infamous 90 minute character creation! We start off with the Character's twitter bio, including their name, pronouns, and "demeanor". You get to choose a name! And by choose, I mean pick one from a list. One listed in the playbook. Then you get to choose one of the genders. There are no incorrect choices (except for male)! It list "options" for demeanor without explain what those are or what it is, so I can only assume you get the option to pick that from a list as well. Look at all that freedom you have!
Next you get to pick your gear. It does nothing.
You can then pick your rank. If you go too high you lose the character. Power is too masculine, can't have that! The highest rank gets to pick out the missions, otherwise it doesn't really do anything.
There is a paragraph telling you that you'll make Bonds for free Frendship points. Later. Not now. We bring it up now for no particular reason. You also choose a clan. Also not now. We have to tell you what the clans are first. Also the clans have been disbanded lol.
Starting stats are pre-defenined based on your playbook. But you get to add +1 to a stat! That is having control over your character.
"Player Principals" are just cheesy lines there to fill space, and include "keep an eye on each other's emotional safety" implying that this is something you need to do out-of-character. The Playbook Agendas basically give your character's Harry Potter House, with a "Be X and X" character traits. You then get to choose 2 moves! Unless you are Spider. Then you get one. The other one is assigned to you. Right in the middle of character creation it tells the GM to make a bunch of NPCs to fill out the squad. Now the Friend Point assignment we where promised earlier can begin! Pick a line from a Playbook. Put someone's name on it. Write down your many, many totals.
Now we get the "Clan Questions", finally open ended questions and not picking something off the list. Each clan has two questions that the player is asked about for Worldbuilding, such as "What Great Hero game from this clan"? The questions vary in how broad the answer can be. There is only so many ways one can answer "What Ancient Mountain Fortress do they hold?" that can add to the world, while "Why is your clan indispensable to the others" can be answered thousands of ways.
The GM then asks players a bunch of similar questions. It says "At least one", but every bullet point has like three questions after the first. All seem to be about the clans and most seem to try to add some edginess to them. Your clan could stop the Shadow, why didn't they? Your clan got wiped out lol who do you blame and where did you bury the bodies? Again some seem like they could be valid open-ended worldbuilding, others have strict leading questions who's answer doesn't really do much for the world.
The First Session checklist suggests the first thing you should do is introduce your name and pronouns to the group. Given this is on page 67 a group going through character creation for the first time won't even read it until they're halfway done character creation. Most of it restates character creation, adding some steps that emphatically where not there. They put it at the
end of character creation, where you won't know where it is unless you've gone through the book before. It really sure have been at the beginning if you wanted to use it at all.
So now we get into Playbooks. The things that you need to make a character and should have picked out already. Each has three words describing the type of player who would like it and what they can do, half of them sound like jerks. "Likes provoking those around them", "Like putting other PCs in harm's way", "Likes being self-centered".
Up to now I've been assuming that the playbooks where...actually third party books, but no. They're printed here. You get to choose between difficult choices as having "Common Clothing, Well-Worn Clothing, Patched Clothing, or Dull Clothing"! How will you ever decide? You probably spend the first forty five of the 90 minutes making that choice alone. All the choice are "Pick 1 or 2 words from this very short list", generally pretty restricting if you just stay with the rules as written. The "Ties That Bind" mentioned earlier are all one-liners like "X did me a big favor" or "I defended X from insult". It would definitely get repetitive if you wanted to replay this game at all.
Each clan has much simpler Moves, some of which are just modifications to the Basics, and they are allowed to choose 2 at player creation. I'll just pick out some of the sillier ones:
Cooler Heads Prevail (Bear): Roll to tell someone they're acting foolishly. They get to Listen, Attack You, or Not Listen (and take a -2 penalty)! That is right, for one of your choices you can force your comrades to attack you, or put them in greater danger! If you succeed in the roll!
Build Up to It(Eagle): Brag about yourself to get a bonus to Opening Up. Makes it auto succeed and counts partials as full success.
Wrapped Around My Finger (Jaded Eagle): Auto 10+ Provoke. Can be chosen after rolling. Mark Jaded to use.
To Die For(Jaded Eagle): Mark Jaded. Someone else takes harm meant for you.
Protecting Spirits
Jaded Fox): Mark Jaded instead of Harm. Gain a form of experience point from taking damage.
On the Prowl (Lioness): Get EXP and Friendship Points for "Moments of Physical intimacy". Sleep your way to the top! It later notes you only get the benefit once per person. So you have to sleep with
everyone for limitless power.
Told Ya So(Owl): Give -2 to a comrade who ignores your advice. You later get a Friendship point (worth +1) or lose Weariness after you rub it in their face. Totally worth it?
That Looks Fun(Jaded Owl): Take Jaded and use someone else's non-jaded moves. Just put that here for the munchkins.
Divine Agent(Raven): Worship a deity from a list. You can ask the GM a questions about it and get +1 based on the answer. The deities are things like "Love and sex", "Death", "Art", so you're probably going to have to go with one like "War" if you actually want to use this. And can get past the "no violence" thing.
We Too Few(Raven): Get twice as many points when your friends die!
Final Blessing(Jaded Raven): Mark Jaded to get a boost when your friends die. Not particularly notable except it comes right before
Miracle(Jaded Raven): Mark Jaded to have a friend succeed a failed Don't Die roll. So by taking Final Blessing you're just deliberately letting your comrades die I guess. Probably for the sweet 2X EXP.
Hidden Motives(Spider): Give -2 to a comrade. On a partial you expose yourself to fire. It could possibly supposed to be used on NPCs, but NPCs don't even have stats so far.
Dark Whispers(Jaded Spider): Mark Jaded to know what your comrade's deepest fears are! Remember, being straightforward and asking is masculine.
No Bridges Burnt(Wolf): Watcher means rolling to say "I'm Sorry". If you hit, they accept and you get things! Fail and they don't and you lose things.
Unleash The Wolf(Wolf): THE ONE COMBAT MOVE! Roll to do Harm. Roll well and deal more harm or take something from them. Since gear is just pretty accessories, go with the deal more harm option. On a partial success, you take harm lol.
Learned From the Best(Wolf Jaded): Pick a jaded move from another class. You only get one.
Sniff Em Out (Wolf Jaded): Mark Jaded to...ask...someone how they're feeling. Buy the move to make casual conversation! They must answer you honestly, so no brushing you off with "I'm Fine"!
Small note on those OP Jaded moves, like I said Jaded is basically a second EXP tract. The downside is that the last Jaded move is "You die", and you have to pick it if you run out of all other options. Since there are 4 other options, it takes 25 Jaded to lose the character barring choosing one at the start. Unless you're playing a long campaign you should basically be able to take as much Jaded as you want, especially if you start managing it after you get all the good skills in the tract.
Many of these moves - including those that cause harm- are meant to be done on other players. The Wolf's combat skill has notes stating what happens to other players if used on in a way that suggests it is totally meant to be used on them. It seems weird, normally when you get "Fireball" you are supposed to use it on the bad guys. I get that they're trying to focus on character interaction but they don't really do that very well. It moves everything to dice. If the Wolf comes along and gives a genuine, heartfelt apology and they roll poorly then nope your character doesn't get to accept it screw them. I listed most of the under/overpowered ones - some just give you and your comrades penalties for very little gain while others are "Get Free stuff and become immortal". This is especially common with combo moves, a Wolf with Learned from the best Protecting Spirits becomes the closest thing you can get in this game to a combat monster able to dish out and receive arbitrary amounts of damage.
GM's corner:
The bad guy is toxic masculinity and that is why you can't play men! You can't be a man and not be toxic and masculine. Its just not possible! Triggering Shadow possession is because you're behaving badly and not being a good feminist.
Agenda: At this point I'm sure that the random bolding is a printing error. Anyway this is mostly a generic "Do things, but let the player do things."
Principals: A set of rules that the GM "Must" follow. They range from "Dumb" (Make clan politics important! Also we dissolved the clans in the very little backstory we have lol) to "Generic but fine" (Sometimes, let someone else decide) with plenty of shoe-horned "RESPECT PEOPLE'S GENDER! MIRROR THE PATRIARCHY IN THE SHADOW". The longer versions get even rantier ("What? You want your character to be suspicious of a trans-woman since the shadow affects men? TRANS WOMAN ARE REAL WOMAN SHITLORD!")
A lot of the stuff in the middle was touchy feely, but despite being the main event the Toxic Masculinity stuff didn't really show up in the mechanisms. There is only one move to resist the shadow, all the rests are mostly interacting with specifically not-male party members leaving very little room for ranting.
GM Moves: They get put on a scale of "Hardness" ranging from something might happen to something urgent is happening. Well they say that, but then never really bring up the scale again so who knows. I'm not really familiar enough with the GM side of AW to say how typical this is, but they're really just GM things that boil down to "Make things happen". There isn't any roll suggestions, no way for the characters to avoid it. That is fine for things like "Make Monsters appear", since theoretically the player's reaction will be their own Moves. Inflict Harm is just...do an arbitrary amount of harm to whoever you want. Some of the moves are just silly like "Use Words Instead of Spears", the GM move to make NPCs say mean things! The next Section is on Adversaries, suggesting Threatening factions in addition to the Shadow such as Traditions, Radicals, and Innocent Civilians! Who needs to bother with lumbering magical mind control when these Innocent Men and Children are displaying Raw Pain?
Now we finally get to talk about what the heck the Shadow is. And it is another checklist. There is very little non-multiple-choice lore here. The check list for the shadow has a list of mostly mutually exclusive choices that you're supposed to pick two of, and some that should really be a part of it even if not chosen. Is it Technological and/or Magical? Is it Terror Inducing and/or Subtle? How about reality warping? We didn't bother to write that, so you pick one! What it actually wants is also multiple choice. All are basically the same "Its Toxic Masculinity!", so go nuts with that. You could basically make it the Reapers from Mass effect if you picked the less obvious options like Technological/Subtle Perfect Order/Disunity Among Enemies, but basically all of the motivations will play out the same. Likewise What it Does is yet another checklist that will end up working the same regardless given the minimal backstory. If you didn't choose "turn men into weapons", then it isn't like this particular shadow isn't targeting and taking over men to make its armies right? I briefly thought the answer was wrong when I turned the page and looked at the "Shadow's Servants" which included mutated
Women, but as the text below it happily suggests that Men are the real enemy even if you picked the two Woman choices for its servants.
There is one page on NPCs, most of which was covered earlier. You get some more pages about "How not to trigger the special snowflakes playing this game" like fighting the fake patriarchy is too much for your players. Give trigger warnings to your players! If you suddenly reveal that the Shadow was Toxic Masculinity all along without telling people first it may give them the vapors! Don't assume your player actually read the description and knows what the game is about. What if a complicated series of missteps caused them to not know? Bet you didn't think of that.
We then get more blogposts, this time on how to be a SJW tabletop gamer! Then a bit of one-paragraph advice like "Make a shipping chart" and "Draw things on our empty map!"
Last but not least, "Missions!" how to actually play the game tucked waaaay in the back. They repost the Start of Session rules before telling us what all those positions actually mean. Watch Their Backs is a support job, you can give +1 to the people with
real jobs! If you make your roll! Yay! Navigate/Strategize makes you mark a map or make a plan. If you succeed, everything goes well! If you fail, everything still goes well! You get one complication and Weary. Weary isn't much, these complications will have to be harsh for these rolls to mean anything. Recon/Lookout provides intel on a hit, a complication or a Weary on a partial, and two complications on failure. At Take Point you just always take a Complication, take a complication and Weary or Jaded on partial, and if you fail.....well you still succeed in the mission but you take two complications! And everyone takes Weary! The stakes have never been higher people!
The complications range in how bad they are pretty greatly. You got some harsher ones like "An NPC died!" (a handy way to kill off an NPC you don't like or who gives you sweeet EXP given players get to choose who it is if they take this option), to lesser choices like "Everyone Marks Weary!" or "I mark Weary and Jaded!". The stakes arn't particularly high, even in the worst possible outcome with the most killer game master possible you'd still have some of your squad left at the end and succeed in your mission. There is no way to fail. Every player gets one roll and then chooses what Complications they want from a list. The GM gets to pick for the worse rolls. That is the sum total of combat in this game. Success would be even more dull since you have one Complication to make a story of while the rest is just saying how you went through slaughtering the bad guys.
Did you think the GM and players where supposed to come up with missions? Nope! Another list! A couple side quests than a boss battle, it is kind enough to let you choose the order to fight them in. They are technically vague enough that you can make up the details on how and where the "Defend a fort!" mission takes places, but it isn't like there is a ton of variety with that. The Shadow Levels up once you get near the end, but the Shadow traits are just fluff so it doesn't really accomplish much lol.
It mentions how characters will rake up and get more NPCs as the campaign goes on. You can refuse if you want to be a small-scale team and nothing really changes.
I lied, it looks like the Shadow gets some
actual power ups too. A free higher-tier complication can and will be used once per mission at the GM's choice. It includes things like "50% of the PCs roll to not die", though the rest are non-stated things like "A rebellion happens!". The PCs also get to make a "Change the World!" rule to change whatever they want about the world. If they get a partial, it only changes their clan. A failure also changes only the clan and makes the Shadow mad. It looks like your total levels of Jaded moves you've used as a bonus, so you'll probably succeed given how far in the campaign this is and how many Jaded moves you can make. There arn't any examples on what changes to make, which is fine since there really isn't anything telling you what society is like in the first place.
The Final Boss fight has special rules. And unlike Missions, it is an actual fight! At least you take out hit points by making Battle Moves instead of just winning, and failure doesn't fill anything in. These rules are probably more fun than the mission rules, though the consequences are still relatively low. I'd probably replace the Mission system with this battle system if I ever got possessed by the Shadow and forced to GM this game as a form of torture. You get a bunch of new moves that basically accomplish the same thing with different stats, roll to remove a Segment. Partial success removes a segment and has a consequence based on what you where trying to do. After you beat the Final Boss, roll to change society again! Hopefully it is a good one by now.
That is basically it. A page for acknowledgments and how to embarrass everyone at cons remain but don't look particularly entertaining.
In the end I'd place it a step above "Totally Unplayable". It walks a weird line between not giving you enough to work with and railroading you. It expects the GM and players to do most the heavy lifting, the lore basically ends at "Shadow and men are BAD! We had clans that did things but they're gone now!". At the same time it isn't a freeform game meant for the GM to write their own story, you're supposed to check all the boxes and follow the rails. Its like playing Mad Libs with a wordbank. It would be more fun if you either just wrote the words in and said "The Shadow is a magical thing, here are what its minions look like, here is how it acts" or went vaguer and let the GM write it themselves. As it stands the lore that is there just stands in for the very shallow premise of "All the PCs arn't men!" without really doing anything more than worldbuilding. The Shadow isn't a bad antagonist if you take out the couple of paragraphs ranting about how it was totally Toxic Masculinity, The Watch is basically trying to be a Bioware game and it has a Bioware villain to match. . All in all it felt like someone who is a fan of Bioware games but is one of those people who hates video games and plays on the easiest mode available just to do the character interaction things. It outright separates the character interaction scenes from the action, while it tells you to pick out some bonding scenes from the mission you do that afterwords rather than as you progress through it making them inherently separated. The actual gameplay is generic and faceless, it would take a talented GM to turn the missions into an interesting story and despite many of the suggestions there
isn't any real possibility of out-of-mission combat. If the Shadow really did take your wife hostage and you are trying to save her, you'll have to default to the generic Move to be able to do anything unless the GM makes it a full blown mission. Despite the huge focus on social interaction it does it
worse than other games by removing player agency. If a wizard and a fighter hang out in a bar after a big mission, they don't need a roll to socialize together and become friends. The players just decide it happens because they both want it to. Here, your two Watchwoman walking into a bar have to Roll to Become Friends, and only get one Friendship point if they succeed. Lovely. They'll fall apart and have to make up after one of them gets too Weary. Making a game system for it only served to make it more gamey. All the social justice stuff is obviously annoying, but in the end it was surface level. I forgot all about the paragraphs demanding pronouns be respected while I was looking at the Moves. There is nothing inherently womanly even about the social situations, despite my snark. The Shadow being "Toxic Masculinity" was just an excuse to make everyone not-a-man. Trying to make it fit that mold in any meaningful way stretches it, like what are you supposed to do? Have it bring all the woman to a giant kitchen and force them to make sandwiches for all eternity? Just delete a couple of paragraphs and you have a generic fantasy game. Well you have Dragon Age where someone replaced "Warden" with "Watcher".
