Translation Matrix

I’m fortunate to be running three campaigns of Planet of the Week. Including a one-shot I ran on the PbtA Discord, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to find out what’s working well and what needs refined. Most of the edits I’ve made in the past six weeks are fairly minor.

Here’s a recap of the changes:

• New advice “On Moves,” setting expectations about what players need to know
• Clearer instructions on character creation, with better-worded questions to create connections between PCs.
• New section summarizing “Other Stats.”
• Core Move:
  • Changed “Difficulty” (5=Easy, 1=Critical) to “DIFCON” (Difficulty Condition), a play on DEFCON, where 5 is also best and 1 is worst.
  • Replace Energized/Well-rested die with an Extra Effort die (costs 1 Health) and replaced Well-equipped die with an Extra Time die (cues Jump Cut).
• Skills: Clarified Xenophysiology.
• New moves:
  • Basic Move—Translation Matrix (DPL)
  • Episode Move—That’s a Wrap!
• Renamed moves:
  • Combat Move—Hand-to-Hand (formerly Arena, a bit too clever a name).
  • Episode Move—Closing Credits (formerly Cliffhanger,  because sometimes the session wraps up a mission and doesn’t end on a cliffhanger).
• Deleted moves:
  • Tactical Response (TAC), handled better by Combat moves and Security moves.
• Rewritten moves: 
  • Dark Place That Knows Things (OPS)
  • Jump Cut
• Lightly edited moves:
  • Augmentation
  • Design Parameters
  • Environmental Challenge
  • Esper Reading
  • Flow Like a River
  • Frontier Medicine
  • Gem
  • Level Up
  • Love at First Contact
  • Negotiation
  • Next Week On
  • Opening Credits
  • Party Line
  • Previously On
• Equipment 
  • Removed the “Neural Scanner” as it was confused with the other types of scanners and its function can be handled by the medical scanner.
  • I added the tag #flashlight to every scanner except for the security scanner. I added it to the environmental suit and changed "Personal Light" to "Lamp (illuminates area)".
  • Added Shuttlepod Specs.

Illustration Credit: Science Fiction Quarterly, August 1956, public domain.