quakefultales

doctor computational theater snek

indie game dev, AI and narrative design researcher, playwright


profile and header by HexedBoy


trans nb lesbian ace pilot



FreyjaKatra
@FreyjaKatra

If you've been following me on the discords (including my private server which you can join via sending me a kofi or joining my patreon), you'll know that there is a planned expansion book to the setting which will include three new player Occupations. Today, I'm going to talk about my personal favorite:

The Enforcer.

What makes this particular one so special? Well, consider the following; it's about using violence as your first resort. About being a lethal weapon. About being a mafioso, a gangster, an assassin, John Fucking Wick or The Joker doing their magic tricks with pencils. When you do use social means, you use them only to threaten and intimidate people. You specifically aim to kill using your arsenal of guns.

And if you know about Hard Wired Island, you know this breaks the setting's rules on multiple levels. Guns are rarer than in American media; we refer to them as "Hong Kong rules." You're not mitigating conflict, protecting others or facilitating exchange. You aren't interacting with communities so much as gangs of criminals.

In other words, the Enforcer is what happens when I break all my self-imposed rules of writing my setting. When I kill all my darlings in a shower of gore. It is, ironically, the exact kind of violence-man that HWI otherwise avoids; the combat monster designed to kill people. When you read the combat chapter of the core book that talks about how violence means death and should be treated with gravitas, the Enforcer stares back with a thousand dead men in his eyes.

The people have spoken back: It's John Wick. It's the lethal half of Eliot Spencer. It's Akiba Maid War. It's Roberta from Black Lagoon. The very presence of an Enforcer in a HWI campaign will pull the game towards a more violent, darker tone. But consider also that if Enforcers are such relative rarities, it makes them even more terrifying in-setting than "just another street samurai."

One of the Talents gives your allies a +1 bonus if they use you as leverage to threaten other people. Another one gives you advantage on your next roll against anyone who tries to stop you from doing what you want. A third lets you inflict casual violence on someone to make them stop talking to you in order to get a bonus to your social roll. It is still, in every way, quintessentially something that could only exist in Hard Wired Island. It just breaks every other rule of the game while doing so.

I love it so freaking much. It's so good, y'all. I've never been happier to shoot my darlings dead.


You must log in to comment.