Family Rules

Families are the backbone of Legacy: they’re the collective of survivors your Characters hail from, and they’re a constant presence across the broad sweep of history. Families change slowly, getting new moves, stat increases and other benefits over generations.

Each Family has three stats:

Reach represents your Family’s influence in the wider world. You roll +Reach to Conduct Diplomacy with your allies.
Grasp represents your Family’s ability to project force and maintain control of its assets. You roll +Grasp to Claim by Force new resources.
Sleight represents your Family’s ability to hide their actions and misdirect others. You roll +Sleight to perform Subterfuge, spreading false information and hiding your actions.

Each Family has three resource tracks:

Mood represents your Family’s overall well-being. It’s equal to your total Surpluses minus your total Needs, with special effects if it goes above +3 or below -3. You roll +Mood to Hold Together despite adversity and see how your family changes over long periods of time.
Tech represents your Family’s hoard of advanced technology and scavenged lore. Families can use this to boost any of their moves with the Power Up move, while characters can take specific tech items from the Family reserves to use their strange powers in the field.
Data is your knowledge about the world. Gain it by sending your agents out to learn about the world. Spend it to add something to the map, or give your character a boost.

Making a Family

To make a Family, you start by choosing a playbook. Each playbook represents a particular way of adapting to the new world, with options to flesh them out and make them yours:

Stats. Choices for Reach, Grasp and Sleight. Each option says something about the Before, the Fall or how you’ve adapted to the wasteland.
Your Traditions. Ideas for your family’s culture – what they look like, how they’re organised, how they tend to get new members and so on.
Landmarks. Locations, settlements or hazards to put on your map of the group’s homeland and the surrounding wasteland.
Recent History. Your starting relationships (and Treaties) with other Families.
Your Doctrine. Your family’s general stance in life, and associated skills.
Your Lifestyle. How your family lives: established in a settlement, dispersed across many towns, or travelling as nomads between communities.
Resources. The things you have a Surplus of, and the things you really Need. Anything not listed here, you’re assumed to have just enough of.
Assets. Pick 3 options for the possessions your family members start with across the 4 lists. If you think up an option that fits your concept better than the standard lists, describe it to the group and write it down – gear with 2 tags, or companions with 1 Quality and a specialisation.
Two Playbook Moves. Your special abilities – one may be mandatory.

Basic Family Moves

While it’s easy to imagine what a character can do to trigger their moves, the actions families take can be more amorphous and vague. These moves are here to set out how, exactly, families use their resources to act in the world.

If you’re having difficulty imagining what family moves being used look like in-story or at your table, the key is that they abstract out multiple smaller efforts:

Someone decides something needs to happen.
They convince other family members to help do it.
Various agents of the family work on the problem according to their own skills.
Agents return to the family and report on how the effort went.

Your character’s often the initiator in step 1, step 2’s what triggers a move, step 3 resolves the move, and step 4 ties things back to the fiction.

Hold Together

When your Family must resist hardship, temptation or infighting, roll +Mood. On a hit you mostly remain OK; pick 1.

You lose people to harm and/or desertion. Get Need: recruits.
Another Family or Faction came through to help you out. Give them 1 Treaty on you.
The danger hasn’t passed so much as shifted into a different, more manageable problem. Say what it is.

On a 10+ you are brought close together by the trial; gain Surplus: Morale in addition to the above results.

This is a general-purpose response to your family encountering adversity. The more resources you have to draw on, the better you do; the more needs sapping your strength, the worse it goes. This is where you’ll most clearly see the effects of your surpluses and needs, and you’re encouraged to highlight specific ones when describing how you succeed or fail.

Conduct Diplomacy

When you call on your Family’s allies, say what you want from them:

A meeting with one of their VIPs.
Access to a tightly-guarded location or item.
Information on an opportunity or threat.

Roll +Reach. On a hit, you get what you wanted and 1 Data. On a 7-9, your agents had to get help from a third party. Say which of your allies helped them seal the deal, and give them 1-Treaty on you.

This is your main tool for getting information about the world. If you’re curious about what’s happening in the weird marsh on the far side of the homeland, if you really want to know why the Amber Skulls have been hassling your couriers, if you want to see the reactor powering your neighbouring settlement, this is the move for you.

Be wary of the costs; if you get a 7-9 you owe a debt to your allies for getting the deal you needed, and any hit has the extra cost that the people who gave you the information or access know that you were looking for it. If the Amber Skull’s leader mysteriously dies or that reactor shuts down at the worst possible time, fingers will point at you.

Also note that the first two options are great chances to jump to the character level. Once your family agents are meeting someone important or investigating an item, you can zoom in and play the scene out in detail.

Claim By Force

When you direct your Family to seize or maintain control of a resource, roll +Grasp. On a hit it’s theirs, but not without cost.

On a 7-9 choose two of these; on a 10+, choose one:

You need to commit more assets to securing it. Tie one of your surpluses to the resource – if you lose the resource, you lose the surplus and vice versa.
There is a cost to your victory. Your family gets a need of the GM’s choice.
You hurt someone; the GM will say who, and they get 2-Treaty on you.

This doesn’t need to be through physical means; you can trigger it by hacking into someone’s network and taking their data for yourself. The important thing is that once you’ve acted it’s clear that you are the ones in control of the resource.

Subterfuge

When your Family infiltrates other factions, say what they try to do:

They make a resource appear more or less desirable.
They cause a scandal within a Family’s/Faction’s organisation.
They hide your own involvement in an action; you may frame someone else in their place if you wish.
They sabotage a particular asset, making it fail at a moment of your choosing.

Roll +Sleight. On a hit, they do it. On a 7-9 the GM names a clue you leave behind, or a family or faction that sees through the deception.

Subterfuge is a great force multiplier for your other moves. Use the first option to get people to assist your Claim by Force, or use it after a Claim by Force to stop people taking your new asset back. Use the second to distract your rivals or create an opening for leadership change in your opponents. Use the third option to hide your own actions and let someone else take the fall for them, and use the fourth to sap your enemy’s strength maybe something concrete like weaponry or armour, or something intangible like morale or critical thinking.

Surplus and Need

Legacy is a system that doesn’t worry about keeping track of the precise details of your family’s wealth, health and happiness. You’re generally assumed to have just enough of any given commodity to get by.

Sometimes this assumption is broken. If you have a surfeit of a resource – easily twice or more what you need to get by you write it down as a Surplus. Surpluses can be spent to activate particular moves, and as long as you have one it boosts the quality of gear your characters can access.

Similarly, sometimes you don’t have enough of something and you’re suffering from the lack. You write these down as a Need. For as long as you have the Need, your family will be less able to handle adversity and the GM can use the Need to justify more severe consequences from your actions.

If a Need could be met by a Surplus, erase both.

If you gain a Surplus or Need you already have, gain a different one that everyone agrees is appropriate given the current circumstances.

If you roll 6- on a family move and have a relevant Need, the GM can make as severe a reaction as they like.

Finding a Surplus

When your family claims or creates a significant resource in the fiction, add it as a surplus.

Right Tool for the Job

When your family uses their resources to confront a crisis, erase an appropriate surplus and mitigate or resolve the problem.

Mood

Your Mood measures your Family’s overall health, calculated as total number of Surpluses minus total number of Needs.

Adjust Mood whenever your number of Surpluses or Needs changes. This will trigger special effects if this takes you above +3 or below -3:

Flush with Resources

When Mood would go over +3, erase a Surplus and pick one:

Sell off the excess resources for 1 Tech.
Gift the excess to your allies. Gain advantage with Reach until the end of this Age.
Make a show of power with a great celebration. Gain advantage with Grasp until the end of this Age.
Finance a network of informants. Gain advantage with Sleight until the end of this Age.
You invest in better equipment. Gain 1 more gear option.

You can only pick each option once per age.

Fall Into Crisis

When Mood would go below -3, erase a Need and pick one:

Someone takes advantage of your weakness. Lose an important alliance or territory.
Your family falls into infighting. Get disadvantage with Grasp until the dispute is resolved.
Your family retreats into solitude. Get disadvantage with Reach until they are convinced out of isolation.
Your family loses discipline and your contacts smell weakness. Get disadvantage with Sleight until you make a display of might and drive.
Your old tools fail you. Lose one gear option.

You can only pick each option once per age.

Treaties

Your Family is an organisation with a key role in a homeland-spanning network of social influence based on respect, fear, and debts owed. This is measured in your Treaty score with other Families and organisations.

Treaties represent soft power one family holds over another. The more treaties you have on someone, the more people will expect that faction to go along with your wishes. Treaty gains can be equitable or one-sided, but once a point of Treaty has been spent that obligation you hold over the other faction is gone for good.

Treaties encompass everything that a faction can draw on in negotiations: military sabre-rattling, shared cultural values, previous services one side provided to the other, or diplomatic clout with the other factions of the Homeland. When two Families meet at a negotiating table their treaties with each other give context to the discussion, and abstract their obligations to each other.

To seal a deal you can choose to give Treaty to another Family, but once it’s given to them they can call on that obligation any time they wish. Each family also has an Alliance Move – a way to get Treaty on other groups when the move is triggered.

There are two things you can do with Treaty: help others and call in debts.

Lend Aid

When your Family throws its weight behind another, roll +Treaty with them. On a hit you give that Family’s next action advantage. On a 7-9 your Family is exposed to any danger, retribution or unforeseen consequences of their move.

Call in a Debt

When you call on an obligation another Family has to you, spend 1 Treaty and choose one:

Gain +2 on a move that targets them.
Take a Surplus from them.
Get them to back you up, fall into indecision, or protect something important.

Player families can resist by spending 1-Treaty on you, or Holding Together if they have none.

Expendable Resources

As your family takes action in the world, you’ll pick up two resources that are simpler in use: Tech and Data.

Tech represents lingering fragments of the old world, or strange anomalies created by the apocalypse. Their power is strange and unpredictable, but can create effects far more potent than your own creations.

Data represents your knowledge of the secret truths of the world. It might come from your agent’s reports, scientific research, inherited lore or some other source. You spend it to reveal new features on the map, or unexpected strengths your characters can draw on.

As with Surpluses, you can freely give these to other players as part of trade agreements or as gifts. You don’t need to play out the transfer, so long as enough time is passing that could feasibly have happened.

Power Up

When you use the marvels of the World Before or aberrant creations of the Fall to augment your family’s actions, spend a point of Tech to give a roll advantage.

Simple advantage on the roll is less dramatic than the strange effects Characters can get from Tech, but that’s a function of scale. Make sure that when you use Tech you colour your description of your Family’s actions to respect the weird powers you’re calling on.

Uncover Secrets

When you gather your family’s specialists in council, roll +Data spent. On a hit ask 1:

“How do I get Surplus: __”,
“How do I remove Need: __”,
“What’s the truth behind __”
“How can we best make use of __”.

For each answer, add an appropriate detail to the map.

On a 10+, ask a second question or add to the map one of:

A powder keg ready to explode.
A place to shelter from harm.
A barrier that impedes travel.

With this move you’re either discovering something new, or giving an established part of the fiction a new role as you reveal how it’s secretly changed.

Example Resources

This is the list of resources we used when designing Legacy, though you should feel free to make up your own to fit the situation – not all the ones listed here will be appropriate for every game. Read on to see what having each resource as a surplus or a need might look like.

Artisans

Surplus: Skilled crafters, artists and performers fill your family’s holdings with well-made, beautiful things. For each part of your gear, you can name who crafted it and their particular stylistic quirks.

Need: The ability to craft useful things or appreciate aesthetics is lost to your family. Everything you own is crude and utilitarian, and you have little ability to customise equipment to fit your needs.

Barter Goods

Surplus: You have a wealth of valuable items. Bags of grain, salvaged jewellery, warm cloaks, useful scrap, and so on. Trading some here and there has raised the family’s quality of life significantly.

Need: When you need to trade for something, it costs you severely every time. Anything your family doesn’t produce themselves must be carefully rationed and budgeted for.

Crops

Surplus: You have an independent food source that keeps you well-fed and healthy. Whether they’re golden fields of corn, towering protein cultivators, or a storehouse of preserves, you have enough to feed your family many times over.

Need: You’re starving. Maybe you’re just isolated from any food source, or maybe nutritional deficiencies from your regular food source has led to brittle bones, jaundice and ill health.

Defences

Surplus: Your family has measures in place to protect them from harm. This might be high walls around a settlement, guard patrols, scrap metal welded on their wagons, or rugged armour.

Need: Your family’s holdings are unprotected. Saboteurs and raiders could take your stuff without much effort, your vehicles are constantly being worn down by the elements, and so on.

Energy

Surplus: Your family has easy access to power. Your homes are at a comfortable temperature, you can power lights and electronics, and energy-guzzling projects are a possibility.

Need: You have few sources of fuel, and must jealously hoard those you have. Heating/air conditioning is a luxury far outside your means, and your holdings are almost entirely dark after sunset.

Engineering

Surplus: You have skilled architects and engineers able to put advanced plans together, and the skills and tools needed to construct them.

Need: Everything you build is in constant need of repairs and patch jobs at best, and that’s if you’re able to work out how to fix it. Making something long-lasting is close to impossible.

Fresh Water

Surplus: You have a source of pure, clean water – a rarity in the wasteland. It holds an almost magical sway over those used to brackish, gritty, barely-potable sources, and you can get rich trading the water for salvage, gear and luxuries.

Need: You must carefully ration your water supply and recycle as much as you can, lest you be forced to risk illness with every drink and lose all semblance of hygiene.

Justice

Surplus: Everyone who’s done you wrong has been brought to task, and your family is at peace. Others now seek you out to advocate for them.

Need: There’s a longstanding crime that demands reparations. The group that hurt you hasn’t suffered at all, while you have to deal with the harm they dealt every day.

Land

Surplus: You control a vast swath of the homeland, and you’re able to keep it safe and useable. Your living areas are spacious and roomy, and you have room to expand.

Need: You’re penned in. None of your family members feel comfortable, and there’s nowhere to house new recruits, hide valuables, or build new facilities.

Leadership

Surplus: However your family is governed, it’s working well. They may have a charismatic leader who commands loyalty, a smooth and efficient bureaucracy, or a culture of respect and understanding.

Need: It’s unclear how your family is meant to operate. There’s no clear voice managing discussions, and few have a clear idea of what they’re meant to be doing at any one time.

Luxury

Surplus: Your family lives at the height of opulence – or as close to that as the wasteland allows. Their holdings are soft, beautiful, comfortable and desirable.

Need: Life is harsh and uncomfortable. Tempers are frayed, stress is high, and it’s difficult to imagine that tomorrow will be any better than yesterday.

Medicine

Surplus: You have at hand – or can manufacture – a cure for most ailments and maladies. Even dire injuries can be dealt with, given time.

Need: You’re very weak to illness. Maybe there’s a particular plague spreading through your camp, maybe you have weak immune systems, maybe your lifestyle leads to regular injury.

Morale

Surplus: Your family has a clear sense of shared purpose, camaraderie and fellowship. They believe in each other, and think that the family can work together to do great things.

Need: Your family has descended into back-biting, factionalism and despair. Any attempt to organise them into a group action is likely to run into complaints, sabotage or apathy.

Prestige

Surplus: Your family are at the forefront of Homeland society. They’re respected, feared or beloved, and other groups are likely to welcome their presence and seek their approval.

Need: Your family are pariahs, disdained, or beneath other’s notice. Your citizens get more done when they hide their affiliation, and though others will respect bargains and obligations they’ll do so grudgingly.

Progress

Surplus: Your family understands more of the workings of the world than most, and have used that to improve their quality of life. They’re better able to maintain the marvels of the world before, and they have an idea of how to use grand projects to reshape the world.

Need: Your family has little knowledge of how to exploit the laws of physics, chemistry or biology. Strange machinery of the Before is best used as shelter from the elements, and a sturdy spear serves you better than a mysterious bleeping pistol.

Rare Materials

Surplus: Whatever exotic resource your family needs, you have some of it in stock. A nugget of uranium, memorystoring crystals, unbreakable adamantium, whatever.

Need: Your family is feeling the lack of something hard to find – nutrients for their algae tanks, components of an engine or computer, chemicals to fix dyes and leathers.

Recruits

Surplus: Your family is bustling with people. They may not be particularly skilled or handy, but in terms of raw manpower no-one comes close. At game start, a family with this has about 40-50 able-bodied adults.

Need: Maybe you have a lot of sick or wounded, maybe you’re just only a few people. Either way, you don’t have the manpower to accomplish any sort of large-scale action with finesse. At game start, a family with this has about 5-10 able-bodied adults.

Safety

Surplus: You luxuriate in hard-earned peace and stability. The struggles of survival are beginning to fade from memory, and you’re beginning to get a sense of what life was like before the Fall.

Need: It feels like every time you blink a new crisis assaults your family. Between health, safety, shelter and innumerable other concerns there’s too many fires to put them all out, and there’s no way you can keep this up without something going very wrong.

Scavengers

Surplus: Your family are experts at picking through the ruins and alien biomes of the wasteland, and you find new uses for most everything you use up.

Need: If you ever have to live off the land you’ll be lost. Maybe you’ve grown used to the safety of the homeland, or maybe your family is naturally wasteful and careless.

Scouts

Surplus: Your guards, patrols, or mapmakers ensure you’re well-informed about the surrounding area. Reports regularly come in on the geography and inhabitants of the land around you.

Need: There’s something in your local area that mystifies you and poses a grave threat to your family: monsters glimpsed in the undergrowth, strange stirrings underground, or maybe a tall tower filled with strange lights radiating awful sounds.

Spies

Surplus: Your agents across the homeland send you details on the movements of factions and the dangers of the wasteland. You know more about your foes (and friends) than they can imagine.

Need: You have little idea what motivates your rivals, or what they might be up to. You’re often surprised, scooped or outmanoeuvred by those you compete with.

Trade

Surplus: You’re the focal point of a web of caravans and merchants that spans the homeland. You have your finger on the pulse of commerce, and collect a healthy skimming off the top.

Need: You’re isolated or ostracised. Maybe traders are too scared to visit you, don’t want to risk associating with you, or they just know that you wouldn’t be able to pay.

Transport

Surplus: You have a well-maintained garage or stable, and when your family travels they can do so swiftly and easily.

Need: Getting your family anywhere in a hurry is a nightmare. If they even have vehicles or mounts, they’re ill-tempered and in constant need of maintenance.

Weaponry

Surplus: You’re bristling with implements of war. Maybe you have a cache of weapons from the Before, an arsenal of dangerous objects looted from your defeated enemies, or a signature weapon presented to each family member as they come of age.

Need: The weapons you do have are jealously hoarded and patched up with countless repairs. Few of you can go armed without the rest of the family being rendered defenceless.

Example Family Playbook: The Enclave of Bygone Lore

The wonders of the World Before were glorious, and even as their Fall continues to ravage the world we will hold onto them. As the old sun sets and a new sun rises, we will remember them.

Creating Your Enclave

Stats

Choose one:

If the wonders from Before were widely distributed and everyone can benefit from your advice: Reach 1 Grasp 0 Sleight 0.
If the wonders from Before were hoarded by researchers, the military, the wealthy, and now you: Reach -1 Grasp 2 Sleight 0.
If the Fall unleashed previously unknown technology and knowledge which you now seek out: Reach 1 Grasp -1 Sleight 1.

Traditions

Choose one of each, or create something else:

Populace: Close-knit families passing secrets to their children, Demagogues and those who seek their knowledge, Vatgrown duplicates.
Style: Bulky and concealing environment suits, utilitarian clothes studded with implants, monastic robes embroidered with circuitry.
Governance: Meritocratic academic bureaucracy, Anarchic rule of the loudest and most interesting, Hidebound council of elders.

Landmarks

Draw a sign of one from each on the map, or create something else:

Before

A secret research centre full of untamed wonders.
A dangerous and unstable power plant.
A site of connection to the stars beyond.

The Fall

A spot where the laws of physics were unravelled.
A redoubt where the miraculous science from Before almost averted the Fall.
The research centre that first understood the Fall’s root cause.

A Threat

A crude tribe of raiders using advanced tech.
A valley where lights appear in the sky.
A ruin where creations of science now rule.

History

Ask the other families:

Which one of you is civilisation’s best chance to regrow? Give them 2-treaty on you.
Which of you has seen the true power of our technology? Take 2-Treaty on each other.
Which one of you holds the brightest mind of the Homeland? Give them 1-Treaty on you.

Doctrine

Choose one:

Holding Back Another Fall. When a piece of dangerous technology is brought back to the Family, they can break it down into 2 Tech.
Uplifting Mankind’s Remnants. So long as others heed your Family’s advice on a grand project, they take advantage on their rolls building it.
Better Living Through Technology. You can spend 1 point of Tech to get an extra choice when you Tool Up, or 5 Tech to mark off a Wonder Requirement.

Lifestyle

Choose one:

Nomadic. You keep your technology shrouded, and it looks mundane to the casual observer.
Dispersed. When you write to Family in other settlements for insights, get fleeting advantage when you act on their advice.
Settled. When you encounter a fragment of pre-Fall culture, you know its cultural significance.

Resources

Pick two as Surpluses and take the rest as Needs:

Defences
Engineering
Progress
Leadership
Morale

Assets

Your characters can always have battered and half-understood journals from the Before. In addition, pick 3:

How do you fight?

Morphing pistols (ranged, hidden).
High-powered rifles from a distance (far, finesse).
Weird grenades (area, aberrant).

How are you defended?

Bulky hazmat suits (utility, sealed).
Gleaming power armour (powered, tough).
Blood-borne nanomachines (implanted, mantle).

What special vehicles do you have?

Flying vehicles (air, canopy).
Rugged APCs (land, transport).
Mobile ICU (land, medbay).

What useful expertise can you draw on?

Scholars (1 Quality, Researching).
Special Forces (1 Quality, Assault).
Scavengers (1 Quality, Picking through junk).

Enclave Moves

Choose two:

Sufficiently Advanced

Your Family has retained access to some of the wonders of the World Before. Choose one:

Medical treatments able to cure any ailment.
A ward that shields a wide area from harm.
A weapon that could slay any foe.
A vehicle that can swiftly transport a dozen people from horizon to horizon.

It comes with 3-Power. When you activate it, roll +Power spent (minimum 1). On a 10+ it works perfectly, exactly as desired. On a 7-9 it does what you wanted, but it’s either out of action for the near future or there are weird anomalies (you choose). On a miss, it erupts with chaotic power and bizarre side effects.

Choose how Power is regained:

Renewable Energy: 1 Power every few months, climate permitting.
Precious Fuels: 1 Power per material Surplus erased.
Mystic Sacrifice: 1 Power per named Family member or Player Character sacrificed.

Deep Knowledge

Your Family has a well-curated and extensive store of records on certain fields. Choose one:

Grand Architecture, from Surface to Stars.
Magic and Artifice of the Glorious Past
The Horrors Birthed by the Fall
The Fragmented Lands and their Hidden Depths
Persons and Proceedings of Historical Significance

When your Character encounters a creature, item or situation covered by this field, tell everyone a fact about it and gain fleeting advantage acting on that information. The GM will also tell you something you can do to gain 1 Tech from the subject.

You can erase a Surplus of knowledge (e.g. Progress, Scouts, Lore, etc) to pick an additional field of knowledge.

An Eye For Details

Your Family sees hidden relevance in stories that others overlook. When they use Diplomacy you can ask a follow-up question, and when you Uncover Secrets you always get to ask a second question.

Weird Science

When your Family puts together a device powerful enough to shape the local area for generations, say what they want it to do. The GM will give one to three of the following conditions:

It’ll take weeks/months/years to build.
You’ll need to erase a certain Surplus.
It’ll only work for a limited length of time before needing to recharge.
You’ll need to hook it up to a certain power source.
You’ll have to sacrifice 1/2/3 Tech.

Future Shock

When you use Power Up, you can spend extra points of Tech. For each point past the first, roll an extra die. You still take the two highest.

Note: spending more than 2 Tech (and thus rolling more than 4 dice) will only marginally boost your chances of success. This move is an exception to the normal rule that advantage doesn’t stack.

Alliance Move

When you spend time and effort showing another group how to use their technology better, gain 1-Treaty on them.

Inheritance

Enclave Characters get +1 to Lore or Steel.

Quick Characters can pick an Inheritance Move:

Radio Rig. You can sense when Tech is within a mile, and track it down to within 100 metres.
Pain Box. You have a machine that causes intense pain in anyone within a few dozen metres (melee, non-lethal, area, aberrant).
Survey drone. So long as your trail is visible from the air, you can roll +Lore on Wasteland Survival.
Hot Rod. You have an exceptionally fast vehicle – it has the swift tag, and you can change one of its tags with 15 minutes of tinkering.
Educated. The first time you advise someone based on your knowledge of the Before, they gain fleeting advantage acting on your words.

Playing Your Enclave

The central conflict of the Enclave is whether they will hoard and protect their gathered tech or use it to improve the world. Enclaves that are Holding Back Another Fall or pursuing Better Living Through Technology tend to focus more on the first option, and can use that tech to dominate the region with Weird Science and Future Shock.

The second, more philanthropic option can make the Enclave a social powerhouse – they can provide incentives to follow their advice with Uplifting Mankind’s Remnants, gain treaty on others by helping them with their technology, and use Deep Knowledge and An Eye For Details to be the most informed group around on a range of topics. Also, remember that unless an Enclave is Nomadic, their technology is obviously advanced to all who see them. When you’re exploring life in an Enclave, then, you should go into how that differs from other families and whether they keep their greatest advances hidden away or flaunt them.

Characters from an Enclave don’t start with many inherent advantages, although extra intelligence can be an ace in the hole and the Enclave’s moves can provide a safe and secure home base to retreat to. In addition, Deep Knowledge gives their Characters a narrow ability to declare truths about the world, and exploit that for Tech and better chances of success.

Characters that are good at finding and employing Tech such as the Seeker and the Scavenger work very well with the Enclave’s abilities, while the Remnant is a natural fit as a living vestige of the Before with memories and abilities the Enclave will want to exploit.