The 'Hood: Now Open for Business

This is it: my first published book. As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been working on this Apocalypse World hack now for a couple of years, ably assisted in the last year or so by Tommy Rayburn, who has brought his considerable graphic design skills to bear on putting my words into shape and presenting the whole thing in a visually agreeable way.



The 'Hood is all about big fish in a small pond: the focus is on the handful of powerful players who lord it
over their neighbours and offer the kind of services you can't find in the Yellow Pages; but it also looks at those self-same small-time chancers as small fish in a big pond, shining a spotlight on their efforts to make it into the big leagues of crime without going to the prison or the graveyard.

Gameplay is still much like the processes in Apocalypse World, but there are a few tweaks here and there, like heat: draw too much attention to yourself and your criminal activities and you could get burned. There's a simplified model of harm too, where all characters can only be fine, down or out and you can move from one state to the next at a moment's notice, depending on how your luck is running.

If you're looking for a game of urban crime drama that doesn't pull its punches, which handles both the mundane realities of making ends meet and the tense, desperate actions of cornered rats, then let me make you an offer you can't refuse: get into The 'Hood and become one of the gang.