So, the Flying Circus/Chariots of Steel game(s?), campaign(s?) the girls are having at the Asphodel fields have gotten quite me (read unnecessarily convoluted); it was all supposed to be casual stuff and not become just like everything else, work.

But here we are.

But before we go into that, let's enjoy a newsreel about what has been happening.

So, we have been going back and forth between two twin anarchist Circuses: the Berrones, whose tanks and motorcycles roll under the banner of a screaming sow; the Milares, whose roundels of many eyes keep watch over the skies of Hanriot. They used to be part of the Chinghiales, a massive circus of Macchi expats led by Virgilia Lacrimosa, the Iron Witch; they were left behind when they figured out that Virgilia has a project for a Nation-State and has secured "peace" in Hanriot by inviting Goth forces as mediators between the coalition and the (other) fascist invaders.

The thing with having two circuses is that is a fuckload of NPCs. Which allows a lot of interactions. On top of that, Hanriot is full of different factions; spanish highlands by way of transalpine gaul, efforts to resist robot and fascist incursions require the collaboration of different waves of colonizers, indigenous cultures, people that have sought refuge in its sunny shores, etc.

We have been representing that with the Job Board. There are always* listings for any given town, if not local, from representatives of another faction. Similarly with other Circuses. So the Berrones always have at least three jobs available that require ground forces, and the Milares always have at least three jobs available that require planes. So far, so good. This has been the latest layout, that was, until the Berrones cleared the last one.

And then I was thinking... what is happening across Hariot while the players do their jobs? What could be a nice way to generate cool material for Routine in town? Before I start homebrewing, I looked into the way Flying Circus already generates a lot of these interactions organically; it does not need much ajusted, so there is the real danger of over-design. So I borrowed from the Company system of Reign 2e. What it adds and what Flying Circus already does will give a lot of insight of what can be some neat additions.

Everytime the players do a job, another Circus takes one of the other jobs at random. Rather than make new Companies, I adapt Circuses that had been already created through play.

We have a flying circus, the Unlucky. Remnants of a larger army, they are avenging expert aces down on their luck. The Milares (our flying circus) may have cucked, dueled and stolen jobs from them. May.

The Hélianthes are a rolling circus that was almost wiped out trying to accomplish the same job the Berrones did; their intel was crucial to avoid artillery and air support. An alliance of academics and witches, they are idealistic locals that wish to heal scars of the Great War.

After a few rolls, we decide the Hélicanthes are taking the giant job. The Hélicanthes venture into the Wild to face the awakened giant. This is something that require intelligence, knowledge and creativity. It is gonna be Influence + Treasure. They have +2 Treasure (It is Spring), they call on the contacts among the local witches for +3 Influence. That is 5d10s.

Unfortunately, they do not roll a single set.

They have +2 Treasure (It is Spring), they call on the contacts among the local witches for +3 Influence. That is 5d10s.

Unfortunately, they do not roll a single set.

They suffer an attack that they need to defend, to see how they are affected by their mysthical conflict against the giant. They manage to not suffer themselves, but they fucked up the job. The Wild stirs, and its activity escalates as it becomes hostile to any human endeavors.

The jobs the Berrones and the Hélicanthes took are removed from the jobs. So we rolled some random prompts are laid out new jobs.

When the Berrantes wake up from their weed based paranoia and un-heart attacks, they gonna find new job postings. One is from our poor Hélianthes. They defaulted on their loans and one of the local families have seized their stuff.

They are... desperate.

Fascists are not the only threat in Hanriot: clockwork bands have claimed most of it northern territories and while locals were pushing the fash to the sea, destroyed a northern town. The desperate survivors need someone to pin the enemy down as they retreat.

Which job do you think the Berrones will take next?

So, what's the state-of-play?

Our sweet sweet Berrones picked to do the thing.

Sweet! So off they went. It was not an easy journey, as they dealt with the consequences of the job taken and failed by the other ground circus: an empowered and awakened Titanic Being of the Wild chased them during their journey to Sacalegre and it took some inventive witching and story-craft to escape it (and blood magic).

The battle against the clockwerk army was intense; they were coordinating with Henrietta Gomez, a teen volunteer from Sacalegre that hired them on behalf of her Arraial warband to provide a distraction/clear the way as refugees escaped. The battle was intense, but by taking out many of the enemy fliers before they could get airborn, flattening trenches with earth magic, the circus managed to reduce the advantage of overwhelming numbers and merciless machines.

Even giant enemy crab tank-robot is powerless against a triple tag of artillery shelling, a field cannon from below and an anti-tank rifle shot right into the weak spot.

An extreme successful job... but what will they have waiting for them as they go back to the town of Talleres?

Rolled at random, and another Circus took the following job:

Does not seem like a job the Unluckies would take. So time to make another Flying Circus! This will be good, because this means there will be more people to smooch/fight/fight-smooch when they get to Talleres!

House Borel is an odd Circus. A few cousins from an ancient noble family branch that colonized Hanriot with little skill but damn good planes, and a small army of servants and workers; they operate pretty much like a company, flying in, spending all time drinking and doing air races while the peasantry gets the stuff done and earns the pay. This is exactly the kind of job House Borel loves to "do".

We try Improve the Culture as the closest to building infrastructure. That is a Territory + Treasure check, difficulty 1 but lowered by Mass Appeal. So, 1+1, then -1 from being Spring, +2 from Payout.

9,4,3 not a single set! It seems they were not able to do it! Something went wrong on the job.

Well, it failed. Turns out the reason why the job was to be done at night? It was a scab job and this was to hide it from the striking workers! House Borel finds itself in trouble as their own employees join the strike!

So let's make two new jobs, one for the Flying and other for Groundlings:

This is a simple escort job, just to show passage of time and expand the world of our Hanriot.

Now this is getting interesting. House Borel has fucked up and lost most of its works to the striking locals... but the company exploring the mines will not give up, will they? The workers believe they are in danger and would like some tanks to scare bosses off. Boss hate tanks; don't believe me, bring one the next time you want to renegotiate a contract.

Anyway, nothing will happen, right? Right?

Well, anyway, first it is time to get some girls and hit on some drinks. We have House Borel pilots lashing at each other in town and a strike happening in the aerodrome. This will be fun.

I have been all circling off in the periphery, seeing where I can probe and test things, where there could be things added that make Flying Circus a tool adapted to different art I may want to do. Many may wonder why I am so hesitant and careful. Here's a situation that may be well representative of the challenges of doing secondary and/or tertiary design to complex systems.

A well designed complex system is made of the simplest functional parts, easy to interact with, with complexity coming from relationships and interactions.

This combination of working simplicity and defining relationships make designing for them - much less within them! - a careful balancing act.

But this is PbtA, right? It is made to be easy to hack and design for, right? I mean, people add playbooks to existing games all the time, and you are expected to drop custom moves on the fly even. Yes... And no.

Games are made of systems, that become so connecting engines and frameworks. Systems, engines and frameworks. Most PbtA is just frameworks, and thus receptive to be hooked up to something. It works with any system you make because... There is only the system one makes.

This is why Flying Circus, as a complex system of multiple intelligences, has all these relationships and conversations. PbtA or not is irrelevant. A Playbook is not just something you slap on top, and can easily undermine the balance the game; even a playbooks less Flying Circus is much more difficult to make than one may think because while they serve a different function than usual playbooks, they do serve an important function in the fractal reproduction of the engines and frameworks of Himmilgard.

So anyway, I tried to change a move. Simple, right? Only a move.

Well, a move is a simple piece of writing, a design fragment. Could not be simpler. Except, again, complex system. It hooks to many things.

The very reason why I was compelled to change the move is result of that interconnectivity. Each playbook is connected with engine and framework, and for most people, changing frameworks is easier to visualize than engine pistons. Flying Circus is permissive in the space that it creates, inviting you to see yourself there. So, in our campaign, we took this invitation, using the engine parts of playbooks to puts ourselves in.

This is when this Soldier move started to fit weirdly as we changed our framework of our campaign.

When one of us uses Gifts of the Deep Ones to represent their transness and associated feelings of loss, what it means to use this for it? When someone picked Will of Iron as a symbol of a toxic relationship with a fascistic mentor and struggling to reject it, what it means to take it as yours? When a combination of Worker and Believer moves are used to tell a story about Liberal Judaism struggling among gentiles, what it means to take it through force?

In terms of connecting to the system through engines, there is no issue. There are the same pieces that they were before. However, interconnected with the framework that changed when hooking us in as part of the system, the framework of this move reproduces across the system something undesirable. This made what is supposed to be a consistently used, fun move, very awkward to see play.

Because of the difficulty designing within complexes systems, first instinct was to remove the move. After all, Anthropology is a move that gets into similar territory and is expected to be removed; however, that is designed to go there and designed to be removed. To remove Style Study, it affects many pieces in the soldier playbook and other systems that look to it. Let's look at the most obvious one: Stiff Upper Lip.

Get Real is something that Soldiers just cannot do, which opens to a lot of fun dynamics of the game: Confidants, Move Exchanges and a various series of fabulous disasters. Style Study allows some of that fun (Move Exchange) and some other fabulous disasters (the miss result) for Soldiers. Because while there is a way to get rid of Stiff Upper Lip, Flying Circus is still a PbtA: this means 4-12 sessions will be what it is played, and you are unlike to Burn Out twice and still get time to indulge in a lot of Get Real without working diligently towards it.

Changing Stiff Upper Lip also causes issues with the beats the Soldier is supposed to meet: it is a way for the Soldier to be the kind of young people that sought meaning and guidance through the discipline of the military, before being weaponized for queer necropolitics before being used and discarded in the machinery of death and violence; the Stiff Upper Lip is the shadows of that upbringing.

And Style Study is a way to sidestep it sooner rather than later.

No, as much as I did not want to, I have to try to change the move. How can it be something that we actually are comfortable to use within the framework of our campaign, while serving its purpose?

The move was supposed to be teaching and learning, which the mention of winners and losers comes off strange; maybe it is the Anglosphere obsession with pinning zero-sum dualism and guilty parties. That did not seem to work with the mindset of most of us, so maybe rewrite to remove that part. And while at it, since there is teach and learning, maybe put a but more dynamic choices on who is teaching and who is more interested in learning.

A lot of this involves who is the active and who is the passive party in the use of the hold. So I decided to split the role: when you spend hold, you ask your partner in sparring what did you learn from them during training. As an extra touch, it requires Trust.

And what the hell, because I am not limited to print space, I also add some stuff about using this to train with your squad mates, because why not? It gonna make this move more likely to happen for our specific crew, which is what we want. Welp, I get to fuck around and do something just because I find it funny.

I have not been saying much about this, because unlike the extreme example of last share (homebrewing core elements of a game), we have been mostly... Playing the game as it is.

But I figure, that is also important to talk about, mas and there is no nice stuff that I got to be creative with at the end, so, this is mostly me talking about what is like to play Flying Circus "by the book".

The tank circus of the Berrones took the following job:

They had become friendly with the striking workers and negotiated extra money and coverage of expenses for ten days of force projection across the picket line. Staving off boredom and keeping discipline would be as important as actually winning fights. The labor organizer that got their job also happens to be a cuties, which is a bonus.

Things immediately went bad as the circus got lost traversing the Wilds. They got captured by a strange fog and forced to camp in the Wilds or travel the Wild at night - two terrible awful options. Pressing on, they ended up visited by strange massive mimicking moths with powers of illusion that created a mirror circus; they were clever enough to maneuver without sight and avoid fighting each other. But things kept getting worse as they encountered a pilgrimage of Shades - the unliving dead, trapped in loops of the former life as the very cycle of death and rebirth was damaged by the curses unleashed by the Great War. Leading this entourage was a creature of legend, a terrifying psychopomp struggling with how difficult their job is: a vampyr.

A vampire.

The tankers demonstrated the power of a firm and polite NOPE and turned slightly to the side and advanced, not drawing a reaction from the gigantic owl-raptor with multifaceted eyes and antenna-stalks as well as blood-draining moth swarms. Turning back as the sun rose, they caught a glimpse of a woman in opera mask and old fashioned gala garb surveying them with dead green eyes.

What followed during the mission and actual patrol was a test to how much proper scouting, extremely good investment in communication - technological and magical, - and defending a familiarized home turf pay off. With the great intel provided by a walker on higher ground and an airborne witch, the Berrones circus was able to keep an eye on everything the Bell company exploring the mines was doing and planning to do way before they were aware of their presence - including keeping to the last second the knowledge that the striking workers had hired a tanker circus.

So, the Berrones managed to clear a path to the old hydroelectric power plant that used to power the bauxite mines without having to rely on the sky cable train. They discover a few trucks with around sixty scabs, patiently waiting for backup. Kick shock and awe and they terrify the scabs into leaving the dam. Further investigation leads them to discovering two managers of the Bell company, who have a nice bike and contracts with a fey lord to maneuver easily: a quick and brutal ambush and they take them prisoner.

Interrogating the Bell managers, they find out that they were on their way to meet with hired muscle and steel to clear the striking workers away. It seems that after House Borel fucked up the job, they tried to get a pirate queen that claimed the cavern system underneath these mountains as domain to do their dirty work - and she shot they away. So, who they got that would be not only willing but eager to break a strike through bullets?

Fucking Fascists

They had contacted fascist militias inserted in the nearby towns, getting them to apply their training with the Gotha armies to class cooperation - aka, suppressing workers on behalf of good old capital. The group decides to turn the tables and turn the meeting into an ambush: the infantry went disguised as the Bell managers and the tankers laid down minefields over all exits from the cavern complex through which they would come - except from where they would ram towards the cowardly little fasce dipshits.

And this is where I just let the system do its thing and it was beautiful. The first, was how "morale" type things work in Flying Circus. So, because morale is checked at the "baton pass" moments of the narrative between GM and player characters AND every time a morale shaking situation is triggered it must be checked AND when multiple triggers happen together the modifiers are cumulative... let's say that when fascist brigades are being rammed from the flanks by two tanks shooting in their general direction as you are bombarded with stalactites from above, you can quickly win a battle against superior enemy numbers before hitting a single asshole.

So by just letting the game run as intended, on the setup and in the implementation of the plan, the game rewarded players for their ingenuity and tactical domination - an outstanding performance from its engine.

That is how things went great for them by me just letting the game run unsteered. The other thing was a lesson on how shaped charges, infantry at close range, and how deadly incendiary weapons are. So, the thing with taking tanks anywhere is that these things cannot maneuver like shit. One of the tanks engine has been struggling the whole mission, and it failed at maneuvering the falling stalactites, getting stuck, immobilized and with their soft undercarriage with little armor right towards the scared fascist catboys.

A few of them managed to overcome the fear of suppression fire; the other tank fired their machine gun at them trying to stop them. It did not work.

The charges exploded from underneath the gunner's feet. Now, damage to the crew when a tank gets an ouchie has changed recently; it was very easy for a whole crew to get banged up, maybe a few crew members fall unconscious, which impaired the function of a tank over the course of a battle but usually made it way safer than infantry which could just get reduced to mist by shelling.

An experience that tankers can now share in the latest rule update for Flying Circus: one poor bastard takes an amount of injuries that scales with all damage dealt by the attack to the tank. Then, they can get even more hurt.

So, that happened: one poor fisher's day was immediately ruined, then the charge went inside and... the tank was mostly fine.

No wait, incendiary weapon. It was on fire.

And it melted into slag.

So we ended up with a terrified tank crew desperately trying to escape and keeping their right gunner alive, as fascists were penned. Good thing a few additional morale triggers led to them surrendering immediately. They still had an extra group and two tanks waiting, but that's the thing, they were waiting. If they did not get the job, why would they come out rolling? So the rest of the mission was handling the stress and boredom of expecting the other fascists would come out and attack them under-strength.

There was another powerful moment from just standing back and letting the engine run full throttle when they came back to tow; but looking at the length of this and how it requires a bit extra creativity on its outcomes on my part, we will talk another day about it.