Change Playbooks

Pick a new playbook that no other player is currently using, and switch your character over to it. This is a huge change for your PC—they’re now confronted with totally diﬀerent issues, and their situation and life will change to match. This is the alien Outsider settling into life on Earth and becoming a Janus, concerned more about leading a double life than their alien home. Or the noble Legacy being doused in strange chemicals and changing into a weird monster, the Transformed, now contending with their grotesque body.

You get whatever moves the playbook tells you to take, as if you were building a new character with that playbook. You also get whatever extras the playbook describes. Don’t worry about the “When our team came together for the first time…” section, or the Inﬂuence or Relationships—those things are already set for your character. Keep your Labels exactly the same as they were before you switched playbooks, keep any conditions you had marked, keep any potential you have currently marked, and keep any Inﬂuence you hold over other characters. Use the advancement track on your new playbook, but transfer any marks you’ve made below the line—those advances don’t “refresh” when you change playbooks. Whether you keep the abilities, moves, and extras of your first playbook depends on the exact circumstances of your switch.

Generally speaking, you keep anything internal to your character—like your emotions or knowledge— and you lose anything external that doesn’t ft with the new playbook or would’ve been lost in the change. If you’re the Doomed and you change to a new playbook, you almost certainly give up your doom track and doomsigns—you’re not the Doomed anymore, and it’s likely those pieces don’t make sense to carry over to your new playbook. If you’re the Protégé and you change to a new playbook, you probably give up your mentor—your story’s not about your close relationship with them anymore. If you’re the Janus, though, you might not actually give up your secret identity or your social obligations to become the Beacon.

It’s easy to imagine exceptions—a Protégé keeping their mentor, but becoming part of a larger tradition as they become a Legacy, for example. A Janus who abandons their prior life—and their prior powers—as they’re forever altered and become the Transformed. Talk these pieces over with your GM to decide which you keep and which you lose, if any. The key is to be true to the fiction—what would the character actually keep, and what would they lose?