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.

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