So I have been thinking of Tags a bit and what they have been used for in AW and in its hacks and I had a thought I…

9 thoughts on “So I have been thinking of Tags a bit and what they have been used for in AW and in its hacks and I had a thought I…”

1. You could classify a condition like that, but I don’t think that’s the intention. If your Driver’s car has broken down then it has a broken condition until you fix it, in that sense it is like a tag. But after the car’s been fixed it no longer is broken and in that sense it isn’t a tag.

2. Fair point, but I can argue that there a many many implied tags and only the ones that have fictional weight make it to the table.

   May I add to the list of Tags: Mechanical (cue); its a machine and can be Broken and needs repaired to use again. Contrast Alive.

   Also, I can see some tags that can be lost, such as Valuable or +nArmor. I mean if I break it or peel off that armor plating from something, that Tag is removed.

   Not being snarky,  just trying to work through a thought for a hack I am working on that focuses a lot on uniqueness (a haecceity Vs. quiddity kind of thought).

3. I have a hard time with the valuable tag myself, I just think of it as “this is worth +1barter”

   Having an armor tag sounds better than having an armor condition.

   I guess the only thing I can think of is that a condition seems to inherently be a negative quality, a move is always beneficial to the character who has it (if they roll well), and a tag is somewhere inbetween, most times good but sometimes bad.

4. Ok that’s a great point.

   So far all Conditions have been negative, but I am not sure there is a good reason for there not to be Conditions that you could turn to your own advantage and get a +1 until the Condition is no longer relevant … and if its a permanent thing, well, then it’s equivalent to a Move…

5. I take tags as MC moves myself. Works well. Take a tag, reveal it, misdirect, never speak its name, ask what they do.

6. Grégory Pogorzelski Can you give a more concrete example of using a Tag as an MC move?

   I am assuming that you mean that you invoke the need for something like a Reload as an MC move.

7. Sure! It’s just “activate their stuff’s weakness”, really. Firearms and stuff are obvious so I’ll pick some other things.

   Your driver’s on the road and try to read the situation and fail. I pick one of her car’s tag — say “guzzler” — and I describe how the the engine coughs and the car hiccups and it seems there’s something wrong with the fuel gauge because it says the tank’s full but clearly it isn’t, and the car’s slowing down, what do you?

   Or your hocus is trying to manipulate someone to get him into some secret meeting, and he blows his roll, and his followers have “growth” so one of those followers stumble in while he’s talking — Balls, say, always trying to be a good follower but awkward as fuck — and try to heavyhandedly convert the person the hocus’s talking to, but Balls’ all clumsy of course, and the guy rolls his eyes and leaves while muttering ‘fucking nutjobs…’ — so, what do you do?

   Or the skinner’s wandering the town looking for something to do and her player turns to you with those eyes, and wait for you to say something, so you pick her pet raccoon — “alive” — and say it suddenly jumps down her shoulder and storms in some rumble-covered tunnel entrance and you hear it make those noises raccoons do but it’s farther and farther away, what do you do?

   Pick a tag, reveal it, misdirect, never say its name. Sure, characters have those moves that trigger this or that tag, but it’s not like it’s all those tags do.

   Helpful?

8. Grégory Pogorzelski It absolutely helps!

   Part of my line of thought here is rooted in a need to classify / organize. Currently I am looking at Conditions and saying to myself; hey these can be things that you can create on your self as a mechanical way to represent temporary advantages or just reward clever players for turning a disadvantage around.

    

   The next thing is with the moves that are just +1 to stat and saying, hey these are now Traits and they add uniqueness to your character (which is more important to the Hack than anything groundbreaking), but really they are more permanent forms of Conditions.

   And above all else, these things are just Tags, because I can see using fuckery to make the world more real. Plus, I can set up some core Conditions with a format more like Tags.

9. For conditions-as-tags, you might want to have a look at Monsterhearts. Its conditions are more freeform and context-dependent.

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