This is for Lauri’s game and I haven’t asked him about this, but I’m just putting this out here for later comparison and as part of the transparency of the project.

I don’t know the exact form Lauri’s playbooks will take in the end, but this is my proposal or prototype for one. We did preliminary characters the other day and this is what I came up with: A small-time televangelist, who has been part of an exorcism where something unexpected by the quite secular character didn’t expect. So, now I just have to make this more generalized so that others might be able to play this some day.

The subheaders in bold, the text in italics and my comments in normal text. The template is from tremulus.

Who Are You?

Despite humble beginnings, you have been able to grow rich by abusing your congregation’s beliefs for years. Whether you actually believe or not, you are able to inspire belief in others. With shallow wisdom and simple brainwashing techniques you are able to hold those looking for meaning in their lives in your hands. But something happened and your world was broken. Suddenly you were in over your head, but you are going to survive, as you always have.

Name

I can’t stop thinking about Oral Roberts, so that would lead me to have good, strong American last names and strange first names from Western side characters. Than again, people like Billy Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have very basic, likable names, with shortened first names.

Jimmy Smith, Bob Gordon, Norm Baker, Clint Jones, Howie Lee, Benny Carson

Look

Gender: Man or Woman

I thought about only having men, because this is a male-dominated profession, but there have been famous female televangelists, such as Tammy Faye Bakker, so no reason to limit this one.

Clother: expensive tailored suit, fine suit, worn suit, rural casual, or puritan robes

Expensive tailored suit is the one we’d most likely see in most fiction, because its just so stereotypical, but I don’t think all these people are making that much money. Some are simple bible salesmen, or they need to attract simpler rural people by appearing more like them or what they would expect.

Face: condensending, aristocratic, serious, or somber

I’m not sure about this. I guess this is fine for now.

Eyes: sharp, peaceful, or accusing

Body: Slim, athletic, full, lithe, or angular

Moves

Okay, so Lauri had a bit different view on how these will work. Instead of the usual way AW hacks work, we’ll have access to more powerful moves in the future, so I’m keeping these moves less powerful than the usual moves playbooks would have. These are largely based on moves from playbooks from tremulus, but with influence from both Apocalypse World and MonsterHearts, although the latter has so many moves related to strings, it doesn’t come up much here.

Lauri asked us for two, but I’ll make some more just for more options. Future players might not want to use the same path I do. I’ll rework these if they are too

Inspire a Crowd: You may use INFLUENCE on crowds of people with time and give them abtract promises in return. On a failure, the crowd may become hostile, or may draw their own conclusions on what to do.

Pretty basic evangelist stuff, riling up crowds with semi-intelligible speeches about the will of god and the bible.

Confessor: Gain +1ongoing after successfully reading or influencing a person to read or influence the same person.

Some stuff for a more classical version of a priest. People often want to trust their religious leaders. After they’ve accepted this character as their link to their god, they will continue to associate with him.

Cold Reading: You may ask an additional question when using INSTINCT on a person. +1forward if using INFLUENCE on the same person.

Having worked with a lot of people, the evangelist has learned to find the angles they can use.

Congregation: If you are surrounded by your flock, they will protect you.

Don’t know what this means at this point. Maybe they are an AW-like gang, maybe not. Maybe they are just some requirement to get hold of the character physically.

The Faithful: When usimg experience to reroll INFLUENCE rolls with people of roughly the same faith, gain +2forward.

Hard to balance this. Is +2forward too much? Probably not, since many moves simply give +1 to a trait and this is quite situational.

Faith Healing

I don’t know what this should do at this point. This isn’t real healing, but maybe you can remove someones minuses for a while or something by making them think they’ve been healed. I think this will get removed later, but just put it in here, since it has so much resonance in how these people are seen in the public. Maybe some other “magic trick” like snake handling could be a move too.

Gear

A worn or expensively decorated Bible, a cross

Don’t know much more about the gear at this point.