Tabletop Atelier

 Last time, I talked about the playable classes in Varsity, including the popular tropes I emulated when designing them. This week, I'm talking about downtime in the game. While the sports games themselves are obviously the crux of a sports anime game, making up the biggest climaxes and driving most of the narrative arcs in the story. Break time, however, can be just as important—exploring the characters outside of their roles in their team, giving them the space they need to breathe, introducing and interacting with outside characters like family and friends, and showing the ramifications of what happened in a match. I'll first go over the general definition of "Break Time," mechanically and in universe. Then I'll break down each of the moves that you can use during a Break! A Break is considered any time that you aren't in a sports match in-universe. In other words, any time the sports clock isn't counting down is Break time. This includes the smallest ...

  Last week I introduced Varsity , a Powered by the Apocalypse tabletop game that I'm developing that seeks to capture the feeling of the sports anime genre. I talked about the game's basic moves, which are split up between Game Moves and Break Moves, as well as the concept of "key moments" which you fight over during in-game matches. This week I'm going to talk about the 'playbooks,' the classes that you can choose from when making your own "Ace" player character. Each playbook covers a different common trope, and ties into the game mechanics in a different way. I'll go over the trope I was imitating with each playbook, and then discuss a little of how my mechanics reflect those tropes.  If you want to skip around, I'll put the names and descriptions for each playbook first so you can find and read the ones you're most interested in first.  “The Ally”: While you may not be the best player on the team, your connection to your teamma...