NAME: THE LAWMAKER LAWMAKER MOVES

PRONOUNS: There is no law in the ashes of the world. Any warlord  The law: when someone breaks your law, roll+Cool. On a
can pronounce decrees, and enforce them with violence 10+, choose:
and fear, but they’re not law, not when the warlord can • You let them off with a warning, reduced penalty, or reprieve.
1st IMPRESSION sweep them aside again, unanswered, at will. • You make an exception for them and they have no blame.
• They must face the full penalty.
There is no law here but yours.
On a 7-9, they must face the full penalty. On a miss, or if you
IMPROVEMENT are unable to enact judgment for any reason, responsibility
falls to you, and you must pay the penalty yourself. You may
Mark 4 Experience >>  >> Improve: choose to pay it in full, in reduced form, or only symbolically.
 Get +1Cool (max Cool+3).
 Ears in the walls: At the beginning of the session,
 Get +1Hard (max Hard+2).
roll+Sharp. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7–9, hold 2. During the
STATS MOVES EFFECTS  Get +1Sharp (max Sharp+2). session, spend your hold 1 for 1 to name a person who’s
 Get +1Weird (max Weird+2). living in or visiting your stronghold, and ask what they’re up
Confront someone to right now. The MC has to answer frankly. On a miss, hold
 Get a new Lawmaker move.
1 anyway.
 Get a new Lawmaker move.
AGGRO  Experience
WEAPON  Add an option to your stronghold.
 Forbidding presence: When you enter into a situation,
roll+Cool. On a 10+, both. On a 7–9, choose 1:
 Add an option to your stronghold. • If anyone here has broken any of your laws, but hasn’t faced the
Act under fire  Get a move from an unused playbook. penalty, they can’t meet your eyes. Ask the MC who can’t.
Charm or deceive someone  Get a move from an unused playbook. • If anyone here intends to break any of your laws, they move
involuntarily away from you. Ask the MC who does.
COOL 
Experience
ARMOR  Get +1 to any stat (max stat+3).
On a miss, if you have any enemies here, they immediately
 Get +1 to any stat (max stat+3). move against you.
Do battle
 Unlock a game changer.
 Right hand: You have a lieutenant who is, as the saying goes,
 Create an additional character to play. reliable. Detail them now with the MC.
HARD  Experience
Ψ  Retire your character to safety.
 Taskmaster: When you give orders to a non-gang body of
people who answer to you (eg your stronghold’s population,
Read someone
Read a situation
SCAVENGE your followers, your assistants or crew) use Leadership,
even though they’re not a gang.
Choose 1:
SHARP  Experience
BARTER  You don’t hold yourself above your stronghold’s
population, but live like them, subject to the same OTHER MOVES
tides of plenty and want. You have Barter+1.  Leadership
Open your brain to the
world’s psychic maelstrom  No matter what changing fortunes bring to your  Wealth
stronghold and its people, you live above and you
always take your share first. You have Barter+3.
WEIRD  Experience
ENVIRON
Hx Help someone
HARM
Countdown  Experience
Interrupt someone
12 When life becomes untenable:
 Return to play with -1Hard.
9 3  Return to play with +1Weird.
 Return to play with a new
6 playbook.
  Experience  Stabilized  Die.
* This is a highly interruptible move.
STRONGHOLD
You have a stronghold, a secure compound where a population
numbering about 100 lives and works, defended by a gang of
about 20 (gang: medium harm+2 armor-1). You get wealth for
the stronghold and leadership for the gang.
For your population’s surplus, circle 3:
Art, development projects, exploration, feasting, food storage,
growth in numbers, healing, intrigue, luxe goods, music, parties,
performance, pit fights, profit, pure water, relaxation, trade,
transport, visiting strangers, worship.
For its wants, circle 2:
Abandonment, disease, extremism, hoarding, hunger, outcasts,
power struggles, ruthlessness, vendettas, violence.
For your laws, choose 3–5 and the penalties for breaking them:
 Do no violence and no intentional harm. • Exile
 Everyone eats, no one goes hungry. • Execution
 Everyone works. Pull your weight. • Forced labor
 Everything belongs to everyone. Share. • Humiliation
 Honor my hospitality. • Imprisonment
 Honor the gods / the ghosts / life. • Punitive violence
 If it isn’t yours, don’t touch it. • Restitution
 Keep your bargains and your word. • Shunning
 Offer sacrifices of labor or goods. • 2 enter, 1 leaves
 Settle your grievances privately. • • Aggro+1, Cool+2, Hard-1, Sharp=0, Weird+1
 A slave who crosses the threshold is free.
 Surrender your weapons.
 When you choose your gear, list your armor.
NO-NONSENSE WEAPONS
 Big knife (harm+2, hand)
 Handmade pistol (harm+2, close, loud, reload)
 Hatchet (harm+3, hand)
 Machete (harm+3, hand, brutal)
 Sawed off (harm+3, close, messy, reload)
THE LAWMAKER
To create your Lawmaker, choose name & pronouns, 1st
impression, stats, effects, moves, gear, and Hx.
Hx
Everyone introduces their characters by name, look and
outlook. Take your turn.
NAME List the other characters’ names.
Nbeke, Allison, Kobe, Kreider, Tranh, Marco, Sadiq, Vega,
Lang, Lin, or Jackson. Go around again for Hx. On your turn, ask 1, 2 or all 3:
• Which of you has been with me the longest, since before?
Madame, Barbecue, Grandma, Uncle, Parson, Barnum,
For that character, write Hx+2.
Colonel, or Mother Superior.
• Have any of you ever betrayed or stolen from me?
Choose your pronouns.
For those characters, write Hx+3.
• Which of you is my favorite?
1st IMPRESSION For that character, write Hx+2.
Choose 1 or more, and add your own:
For everyone else, or if no one volunteers at all, write
Busy, calculating, dangerous, domineering, generous, Hx+1. You’re wary, watchful, and conscientious.
gorgeous, gracious, hardnosed, hardworking, hospitable,
indolent, kind, regal, ruthless. On the others’ turns, volunteer if you like.
STATS IMPROVEMENT
Choose a set: When you roll a stat, roll Hx, or suffer harm, mark
• Aggro+1, Cool+2, Hard-1, Sharp+1, Weird=0 Experience. When you’ve marked 4 Experience, erase
those marks and mark 1 toward Improvement.
• Aggro=0, Cool+2, Hard+1, Sharp+1, Weird-1
• Aggro-1, Cool+2, Hard+1, Sharp+1, Weird=0 Then, when you’ve marked 5 Improvement, erase those
marks and choose an option for your character. Check it
off; you can’t choose that option again.
EFFECTS
You have Ψ+0.
You have Barter per your Scavenge.
You have Environ+0.
MOVES
You get all the basic moves. You get the law, and choose 1
more Lawmaker move.

CLOTHING, LIVING SPACE & INCIDENTALS GEAR

You get:
• A stronghold.
• 2 no-nonsense weapons.
• Clothing you detail, including at your option a piece
worth armor-1.
• Living space and incidentals you detail, suitable to your
stronghold, your Scavenge, and your moves.
 THREATS
CLANS
A clan is an identifiable group of people.
• Cult (seeks to victimize & incorporate people)
• Enforcers (seeks to victimize anyone who stands out)
• Family (seeks to close ranks, protect their own)
• Hunting pack (seeks to victimize anyone vulnerable)
• Mob (seeks to riot, burn, kill scapegoats)
• Sybarites (seeks to consume someone’s resources)
Threat moves for clans:
• Push reading a person, reading a situation, and
confronting someone.
• Burst out in uncoordinated, undirected violence.
• Make a coordinated attack with a coherent objective.
• Tell stories (truth, lies, allegories, homilies).
• Demand consideration or indulgence.
• Rigidly follow or defy authority.
• Cling to or defy reason.
• Make a show of solidarity and power.
• Ask for help or for someone’s participation.
DISEASES
A disease is a physical, psychological, or psychic problem that
affects people in a population.
• Addiction (leaves people impoverished, weak, lost)
• Corruption (spawns other diseases if untreated)
• Delusion (tries to dominate people’s choices and actions)
• Frailty (exposes sufferers to danger)
• Plague (tries to saturate a population)
• Prejudice (promotes and justifies exploitation and violence)
Threat moves for diseases:
• Push reading a situation.
• Someone neglects their duties, responsibilities, obligations.
• Someone flies into a rage.
• Someone takes self-destructive, fruitless, or hopeless action.
• Someone approaches, seeking help.
• Someone approaches, seeking comfort.
• Someone withdraws and seeks isolation.
• Someone proclaims the disease to be a just punishment.
• Someone proclaims the disease to be, in fact, a blessing.
• Someone refuses or fails to adapt to new circumstances.
• Someone brings friends or loved ones along.
INFILTRATORS LANDSCAPES
An infiltrator is an individual person within a population. A landscape is a large-scale place, a region, horizon to
horizon.
• Betrayer (seeks trust and confidence to exploit)
• Disease vector (seeks sympathy and contact with others) • Breeding pit (generates and spews badness)
• Parasite (seeks easy prey and access to resources) • Fortress (seeks to deny people access)
• Quarry (seeks sanctuary and protection from the hunt) • Furnace (consumes things)
• Revenant (seeks to expose, reveal, and bring to justice) • Maze (seeks to trap people, to frustrate their passage)
• Saboteur (seeks failure, disaster, and ruin) • Mirage (seeks to entice and betray people)
• Prison (seeks to contain people, to deny them egress)
Threat moves for infiltrators:
• Push reading a person and confronting someone. Threat moves for landscapes:
• Put them in someone’s path, part of someone’s day or life. • Push terrain.
• Display the nature of the world they inhabit. • Reveal something to someone.
• Display the contents of their heart. • Display something for all to see.
• Attack someone from behind or otherwise by stealth. • Hide something.
• Insult, affront, offend, threaten, rob, or provoke someone. • Bar the way.
• Offer something to someone, or do something for someone, • Open the way.
with strings attached. • Provide another way.
• Shift, move, rearrange.
INSTITUTIONS • Offer a guide or a guardian.
• Disgorge something.
An institution is a system that constrains people’s behavior,
including any number of these institutional components.
• Take something away: lost, used up, fled, destroyed.
•
•
Hierarchy (promotes and justifies exploitation)
Judgment (promote and justify violence) PINPOINTS
• Leverage (seeks power over people) A pinpoint is an object with some form of agency, influence,
• Observances (seek to alienate, isolate and radicalize people) power, or commanding value.
• Offices (seek to preserve the institution past individual • A cradle (brings the new to fruition)
people’s efforts or lifetimes) • A doorway (offers a way into another world or another way of
• Orthodoxy (seeks proclamation and repetition) thinking)
• A hammer (drives nails, splits fractures, smashes the weak)
Threat moves for institutions:
• A mirror (reflects back what it sees)
• Push reading a person, reading a situation, and
confronting someone. • A searchlight (finds and reveals the truth)
• Present a representative clan, infiltrator or warlord. • A sickle (harvests the ripe or carves away the dead)
• Turn people against each other. Threat moves for pinpoints:
• Unite people despite their hostilities and conflicting needs. • Push reading a situation.
• Give people an outlet, expression of their secrets. • Someone wants to own and control it.
• Grind someone down, crush them in the wheels. • Someone wants to serve it.
• Have someone act to gain or hold office. • Someone wants to isolate or destroy it.
• Launch an attack on a rival institution or power base. • Someone acts as its agent, under its direction.
• Display the institution’s vision, aim, or unifying quality. • Demonstrate its power.
• Display the institution’s fruitlessness or mindlessness. • Demonstrate its potential.
• Have it falter, fail, or withhold its power.
• Have it demand fuel, resources, attention, or worship.
 THREATS
RELIABLES VEHICLES CREATING A THREAT
A reliable is a person genuinely loyal to a PC. Vehicles can seem to have their own personalities and agency. To create a threat:
• Friend (will back you up) • Bold — (tries to dominate the road) • Choose its kind, name it, and copy over its impulse. Describe it
• Lover (will give you shelter and comfort) • Cagey — (tries to protect what it carries) and list its cast.
• Right hand (will follow through on your intentions) • Relentless — (tries to keep moving) • Place it on the threat map. If it’s in motion, mark its direction
• Representative (will pursue your interests in your absence) • Skittish — (tries to outrun or to escape) with an arrow.
• Guardian (will defend you and intercept danger) • Vicious — (tries to kill and destroy) • List its stakes question(s).
• Confidante (will give you advice, perspective, or absolution) • Wild — (tries to defy danger) • If it’s connected to other threats, list them.
Beast, brute, creature, devil, machine, ride. • If it calls for a custom move or a countdown, create it.
Threat moves for reliables:
• Push reading a person. Threat moves for vehicles:
• Bring news, a warning, an opportunity, a fear, a dream. • Push acting under fire. ESSENTIAL THREATS
• Attack someone suddenly, directly, and very hard. • Leap off the road. Create these threats during and after the first session, at
• Attack someone cautiously, holding reserves. • Swerve across the road. minimum.
• Make a show of force, a show of discipline, a show of faith, or a • Smash into an obstacle. • Where the PCs are, create it as a landscape, including terrain.
show of loyalty. • Smash through an obstacle. • For any PCs’ gangs, blood, or populations, create them as clans.
• Offer safety, rest, diversion, fun, camaraderie. • Veer stupidly into danger. Consider including infiltrators and/or wannabe warlords.
• Insist upon someone’s attention. • Tear past. • For PCs’ individual NPCs, create them as clan members,
• Offer honest alternatives. • Turn too early or too late. infiltrators, or small-scale warlords. Don’t save warlords only
• Shoulder another vehicle aggressively. for literal warlords.
TERRAIN • Ram another vehicle from behind.
• T-bone another vehicle.
• Create an NPC as reliable only when the playbook tells you to.
• For any PCs’ vehicles, create them as vehicles.
Terrain are the physical features within a landscape.
• Brake abruptly. • In any local populations, create diseases and/or institutions.
• Broken ground (risk: being broken in the crossing) • Find something to create as a pinpoint, if possible.
•
•
An exposed place (risk: being exposed to danger)
A precipice (risk: going over) WARLORDS During the second session and subsequent, revise them freely
and create more at need.
• Shifting ground (risk: losing your balance or bearings) A warlord is a person in power, be it over people, a place, a
• A torrent (risk: being swept or driven along) project, or a domain of expertise.
• A wall (risk: being brought up short) • Alpha wolf (seeks to hunt and dominate)
• Collector (seeks to own)
Threat moves for terrain:
• Dictator (seeks to control)
• Push acting under fire.
• Hive queen (seeks to consume and swarm)
• Inflict harm (as established: 1- or 2-harm, d-harm, or v-harm).
• Prophet (seeks to denounce and overthrow)
• Stall someone.
• Slaver (seeks to own and sell people)
• Isolate someone.
• Bring someone somewhere. Threat moves for warlords:
• Hide evidence. • Push reading a situation and confronting someone.
• Give someone a vantage point. • Outflank someone, corner someone, encircle someone.
• Give someone a secure position. • Attack someone suddenly, directly, and very hard.
• Give someone an escape. • Attack someone cautiously, holding reserves.
• Seize someone or something, for leverage or information.
• Make a show of force or a show of discipline.
• Offer to negotiate. Demand concession or obedience.
• Claim territory: move into it, blockade it, assault it.