<img src="http://ufopress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Artboard-1@4x.png">
Welcome to the expanded rules for <a href="http://ufopress.co.uk/our-games/what-ho-world/" target="_blank">What Ho, World!</a> If you have any questions not covered by this guide, or have suggestions for other things to add, get in touch at <a href="mailto:ufopressrpg@gmail.com?Subject=WHW%20twine%20rules">ufopressrpg@gmail.com.</a>
Here's how to get started:
1. Read through the [[Key Rules|Basic Rules]]
2. Pick a [[character deck|Who you can play]].
3. Pick [[deck options]].
4. Gain two [[Assets and Goals]].
5. Go around the table [[framing|Scene Framing]] and [[playing through|Playing Scenes]] scenes.
6. When you've made enough progress on a Goal, try to [[complete it|Accomplishing a Goal]].
7. When someone completes two goals, [[the game winds up|Ending the Game]].
If you'd like to get a sense for how the game is played, check out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIo_N9fhHGI" target="_blank">this video</a>!
What Ho, World! offers five different character types to play as:
**The Gadabout**
A social butterfly very much at home in the galas and clubs of high society but utterly naive about anything else, the Gadabout is constantly in motion – getting engaged and breaking it off, showing impeccable etiquette and then flouting conventions, they can cope with pretty much anything so long as nobody pins them down and pens them in.
**The Servant**
Where the Gadabout is mercurial the Servant is solid and dependable, always ready to offer sage advice, a bracing drink, or surprising skills from their time in the forces. Even when they’re unavailable to assist their master, it’s only because a more urgent or important errand has taken up their attention.
**The Aged Relative**
Their years have given the Aged Relative a healthy disregard for society’s mores, as well as the status needed to get away with it. Whether they’re foisting an inconvenient duty onto their nephew, throwing a grand gala to embarrass their social rivals, or demonstrating stealth and blackjacking skills that rival the best footpad, they’re an indomitable juggernaut of a force.
**The Highbrow**
Whether they’re an artist, a priest or a scholar, the Highbrow has been given a license by society to ignore social conventions, think strange thoughts and create shocking works – so long as they don’t go too far. Their moves play into this duality, whether it’s through being so oblivious you’re impervious to social influence and knowing the most obscure, strangely useful facts, or cannily putting together work whose ideas are just shocking enough to spread through the chattering classes like wildfire.
**The Pillar of Society**
The Pillar of Society is a key figure of the establishment – a judge, a major, a minor royal or the chair of the local Women’s Institute. Their word carries weight, and their judgement is feared by all, but their doctrinal mindset leaves them open to crafty plots and fast talk. Further, the organisation that is the source of their power can demand the Pillar’s attention at inconvenient times.
What Ho World is a storytelling game inspired by the genteel comedies set in the 1920s and 1930s - P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves books, E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia books, Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger’s musicals, and so on.
What Ho World is set in an England that never really was, floating hazily sometime between the 1920s and 1930s. The end of the Great War has brought newfound social mobility and allowed previously unthinkable behaviours to become almost commonplace. Respectable ladies from well-to-do families hike their dresses up and go dancing in jazz clubs with cab driver’s sons, servants return from war with unlikely skills and a new skepticism towards their young charges, immigrants make their way from the fringes of the empire to its heart in search of their fortune. The spectre of fascism hangs only lightly over proceedings, only entertained by blowhards looking to make up for their own inadequacies.
In tone, games should be light and breezy - the worst that should happen is that someone behaves like a cad, that someone loses their inheritance, that somebody gets a bloody nose. Characters are caught up in their own obsessions and social worries, and disputes between them only rarely reach the stage of criminal activity. While they may be realistic for the time period, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of discrimination aren’t appropriate to the game. It’s meant to be fun and airy, and the comfort of the players at the table is much more important than accuracy to a way of life that was largely fictional even when Wodehouse was writing his first Jeeves stories.
What Ho World doesn’t use dice, or any other random element. Instead, it works like a conversation. You’ll describe your actions, other players will describe what their character does in response, and the conversation continues onward. Like any conversation you take turns to speak, but it's not like taking turns in chess - you can add on to someone else's suggestions, come up with ideas of your own, interject if things are going down a path you don't like and so on.
When someone’s interacting with the environment or with characters that aren’t owned by any particular player, someone needs to decide what happens. Normally that'll be someone not currently participating in the scene, or the group as a whole can decide.
Occasionally, the actions you describe your character taking will have particular importance to the story, and you’ll use a [[move card|How Moves Work]] to resolve it. These move cards are there to mediate the conversation, and give the story some structure - like pruning a topiary to get the most pleasing shape!
When you use a move card, start and end with the fiction:
* Start by saying what your character's doing that activates the move.
* After its mechanics have been resolved, interpret its results to make sense in the current situation and flow back into the conversation.
Moves are your special abilities - your ability to declare that something happens or place extra rules on what other players can say or do.
With a few exceptions each move card holds the following:
**A trigger**
The circumstances when the move comes into play, often including [[token|Tokens]] costs. Once you've met activated one of your move cards, you must carry on and resolve the rest of it.
**An effect**
Something that happens when it’s activated. This may have options for the triggering player or others to choose from, but its effects are guaranteed to happen unless some other move interferes.
**Extras**
Many moves will have some optional extra effect you can produce by spending [[Tokens]]. These can alter the move's effects, add extra bonuses, or add extra limitations to other character's behaviour.
Here's an example move from the Gadabout:
**Flout Convention**
(link-reveal: "When you do something clearly against social mores... ")[[ **The Trigger**]<c1|]
(link-reveal: "...people will mutter and grouse but will take no direct action to stop you.")[[ **The Effect**]<c2|]
(link-reveal: "♥ Your actions are regarded as trendsetting instead of taboo.
♠ You turn the judgement of society on someone else as the true transgressor.")[
[**Optional Extras**]<c3|]
Tokens are the key force in What Ho World! They come in five flavours:
♥ **Grace:** your ability to be inspiring, dignified and polite.
♣ **Knowhow:** your knowledge of trivia and gossip.
♠ **Skulduggery:** your ability to be underhanded and sneaky.
♦ **Wits:** your ability to understand situations and act quickly.
These four basic token types are found on the back of character move cards. Each card has two different suits on its back, meaning that the card can be spent as either of those token types. For details about card spending, see here.
Finally, there are ✦ **Excellence** tokens, found on the back of Asset/Goal cards. These can be spent as any of the other types. You start with none of these, but each character deck has a particular **Trouble Move** [[they can activate|Gaining New Moves]] to gain one.
Each character has a **Trouble Move**. These introduce or further a subplot specific to your character that piles adversity on them until everything somehow works out.
**Trouble Moves** don't just complicate your character's life; they're also the only way of gaining new abilities. When you activate your **Trouble Move** you replace one of your token cards with a [[✦ token|Tokens]], flipping that character card faceup and placing it with your other character moves. Do this whenever you get a new ✦ token. From then on you can use that move along with your other ones.
Each character will have two things they’re hoping to achieve, and two unique assets to use to try and bring it about.
As part of game setup, you'll draft two Asset/Goal cards. The remainder of the Asset/Goal cards should be flipped over to be used as [[✦ tokens|Tokens]]. These aren’t meant to be a limited resource - use beads, coins some other kind of marker to track them if you run out!
As you play and your character works towards your Goals, you'll [[bank|Token Mechanics]] ✦ tokens on them. When Assets help you with this, an extra token is banked.
When you think you've made enough progress, you cash in those ✦ tokens [[in an all-or-nothing bid to complete the Goal|Accomplishing a Goal]].
To achieve a Goal, [[frame your scene|Scene Framing]] with the explicit aim of finishing it. Each other player suggests an impediment to achieving the Goal. For this scene, you may use the ✦ tokens banked on the Goal.
At the end of the scene agree as a group whether the goal’s been achieved. If so, flip over the Goal and gain it as a ✦ token and [[follow the normal rules for getting a new move|Gaining New Moves]]. If not, discard it - you've missed your shot.
Either way, discard all ✦ tokens banked on the goal.
If both of your Goals have been accomplished or failed, the game [[enters its epilogue|Ending the Game]].
[Play Example]<c1|
(click-replace: ?c1)[Alice has 3 tokens banked on her goal to reclaim an embarrassing photo left in a book donated to charity. As she frames a scene she decides it's time to try and retrieve it.
The table confers: Bernard suggests an antiquarian has his sights set on the book, and Cecily decides a charity is having an event in the bookshop filling it with dignitaries.
The scene begins, and Alice has 3 extra ✦ tokens to help her get the document.
At the end of the scene she’s got the photo safely back. She flips over the Goal to its ✦ side and flips over a facedown character card, gaining an extra move to use.]
If both of a player's Goals have been either completed or discarded, the game enters its final stage. It's time to wind up the story.
Go clockwise around the table. Each player narrates an epilogue for their character, wrapping up their Trouble Move sub-plot and Goals.
Include a rise in status, good fortune or happy outcome for each met goal, and a public embarrassment, stroke of bad luck or fall from grace for each unmet or failed goal.
Don't make things too final - there's always room for another tale!
<hr>**Rules Topics**
[[Who you can play]]
[[Setting and Tone]]
[[Key Rules|Basic Rules]]
[[How Moves Work]]
[[Tokens]]
[[Token Mechanics]]
[[Gaining New Moves]]
[[Assets and Goals]]
[[Accomplishing a Goal]]
[[Scene Framing]]
[[Playing Scenes]]
[[Locations]]
[[Ending the Game]]
(set: $image to 0)Your personal play area has three important sections: your hand of token cards, your faceup move cards, and your discarded cards.
{(live: 0.5s)[(if: $image is 0)[<img src="http://ufopress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Artboard-1@2x.png" alt="Token Mechanics 0" height="251" width="792">](if: $image is 1)[<img src="http://ufopress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Artboard-2@2x.png" alt="Token Mechanics 1" height="251" width="792">](if: $image is 2)[<img src="http://ufopress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Artboard-3@2x.png" alt="Token Mechanics 2" height="251" width="792">](if: $image is 3)[<img src="http://ufopress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Artboard-4@2x.png" alt="Token Mechanics 3" height="251" width="792">](if: $image is 4)[<img src="http://ufopress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Artboard-5@2x.png" alt="Token Mechanics 4" height="251" width="792">]]}
When you [spend]<t1| a token place it in your discard pile.
When a move tells you to [bank]<t2| a token, put it under the move card.
Banked cards are *committed* and are only [spent]<t3| in specific ways.
When you frame a scene you [refresh]<t4| your *discarded* cards, placing them back with your hand of *free* token cards.
[Refresh this page.]<t5|(click: ?t1)[(set: $image to 1)](click: ?t2)[(set: $image to 2)](click: ?t3)[(set: $image to 3)](click: ?t4)[(set: $image to 4)](click: ?t5)[(goto: Token Mechanics)]
In *What Ho, World!* you take it in turns to be the focus of a scene in the story you're telling. For that scene, they're the main character, and we care more about their story than about other character's. The game begins with focus on the Gadabout, or on the youngest player if they’re not in play.
Each story starts in one of two [[Locations]]: the London Townhouse or the Country Manor. Put those location cards down in the centre of the table. The starting focus then frames the first scene.
If you have no free ✦ tokens you may decide to [[use your Trouble Move|Gaining New Moves]]. If not:
1. Decide an **aim** for your character. This should be doable within a single scene and fit with the game’s tone.
2. [[Refresh|Token Mechanics]] all tokens in your discard pile.
3. Pick an established or new [[Location|Locations]] to set the scene in.
4. Add extra details: scenery, player characters that are present, minor characters here for the scene and who’s playing them, and any other details of interest.
5. [[Start the scene|Playing Scenes]]!
6. After the scene's come to a close, pass scene framing on to the player clockwise from you.
In your first few scenes, remember to activate your [[Trouble Move|Gaining New Moves]]. Using it gets you useful tokens, more abilities, and extra prompts for your story!
Each story starts in one of two places - the London Townhouse or the Country Manor. Put those location cards down in the centre of the table.
As part of [[Scene Framing]] you’ll add more locations to the mix - keep track of them using the included cards or writing them down.
Once play begins, everyone has a voice in triggering and resolving moves.
**If you’re the focus**, pursue your aim while looking for chances to use your moves.
**If you’re playing your character**, ask:
* What do I have that the focus needs?
* What do I want from them?
* How can I link their aim and my goals?
**If you’re playing a minor character**, ask:
* What stock character traits would make this character entertaining?
* Can I give the focus a challenge, or a chance to shine?
* Is the scene dragging? Can I hurry it up?
**The scene ends when** the active player achieves their aim or their aim becomes impossible.
* If you’ve made progress towards a Goal, bank a ✦ token under it.
* If one of your Assets helped you out in doing this, bank two ✦ tokens under it instead.
Scene ownership then passes clockwise, and [[a new scene is framed|Scene Framing]].
Here's how to make a character:
1. Choose a [[character deck|Who you can play]].
2. Choose two of your deck's [[move cards|How Moves Work]] to start play with. Place them face-up in front of you.
3. Flip the other move cards facedown to use as your starting [[Tokens]].
4. Take a basic move card. These abilities are always available to all characters.
5. You have a particular relationship with two characters: see your deck’s relationship cards. Choose a player for each and tell them what it entails.
6. Decide on a style, personality and name for your character, using the suggestions in your deck if you like, and introduce them to the table.