Nerdarchy on Playing the Game: Zoo Mafia RPG Design Diary #6
In this 29-minute video on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted dive into the world of Zoo Mafia RPG as they discuss our playtest of this RPG. We’ve decided to do it as an actual play or live play. They discuss the experience with playing the game so far.
The conversation begins with Dave and Ted explaining the overall concept for the game and point to the first design diary in this series. When this video was filmed Nerdarchy’s Tuesday night game group had just played our fifth session, which provided a decent amount of game play to develop some insights about the design as it stands.
In the video they focus on mechanics, which are based on the Powered by the Apocalypse system they settled on for creating Zoo Mafia RPG. Dave is the design lead for this project and also has the most experience with games utilizing this core system. He shares how those experiences help him bring his own fresh ideas to the system and achieve the kind of experience he envisions.
The core of the discussion focuses on Playbooks. In PbtA games a Playbook is analogous to character classes but also incorporates elements like race and background found in something like 5E D&D. Essentially each Playbook is a complete character package including a few customizable components. For our Zoo Mafia RPG playtest Dave created four Playbooks he feel represent the most generally useful direction for characters in this style of game. They are the Safe Cracker, Lookout, Hitman and Grifter.
Both the Playbooks and the game mechanics themselves have undergone a few changes between sessions. These are based on feedback from the players and also Dave’s thoughts as Zoo Keeper for the campaign, which is the current term for the player acting as referee. At this time the Tuesday night campaign is half done, with our session 7 taking place live tomorrow, June 7. You can Go Wild and Do Crime, catching up with all the action so far with the Zoo Mafia RPG playlist here.
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