All right. After nearly a complete rework, and lots of helpful advice (especially from Jackson Tegu Ben Wray and Hans Chung-Otterson) I’ve finished the latest version of my Kitsune Skin. I’ve attempted to keep the Japanese mythology, while making the Skin more of a metaphor for some aspect of teenage life, in this case, compulsive lying. There are still a few things missing (Backstory and physical appearance), but as always feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks. 🙂
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4zp6lk8u41b3w3f/The%20Kitsune%20R2.pdf
This is REALLY interesting! I want to play this, because it promises a completely new play style.
Thanks, Adam Goldberg ! It was your comments on the previous version that made me take a good hard look at the Skin and figure out what I wanted it to be. You were right; I had made a Kitsune, but not a Monsterhearts Kitsune. Glad to hear you’d play this version. 🙂
I’ll be giving the same overhaul to The Tengu soon.
I initially made Blind Trust as something of a throw away move. Most Skins have a special Condition that they hand out and then interact with, and I wanted to give the Kitsune something similar.
The more I think about it though, the more I think I’ve stumbled into pure gold here. I really like how the giving (or not) of Strings plays with the metagame.
Under normal circumstances, when the Kitsune says something to another character and doesn’t hand over a String, that character’s player thinks “Ah ha. They’re lying again.” and has the character react however they feel is appropriate. As everyone knows the Kitsune is a compulsive liar, this makes total sense. If you know someone is a compulsive liar, you”re going to doubt practically everything they tell you.
The same goes for when the Kitsune does give out a String. Everyone thinks “Holy shit. They finally told the truth for once.” and again, has their character react however they feel is appropriate. Which could still be to disbelieve the Kitsune. Being give a String in no way obligates a character to believe the Kitsune. But they can if they want to. That String could represent you noticing something about the Kitsune’s manner that leads you to believe what they say is the truth. So again, the metagame knowledge of being given a String or not kind of supports the fiction.
But when someone is smitten with the Kitsune (represented by the Condition infatuated with [the Kitsune])? Then the Kitsune chooses whether to give that person a String or not when speaking the truth. It completely screws with the metagame knowledge that normal people get.
Normal people know that when the Kitsune speaks, “no String = lie” while “String = truth”. But someone with the Condition infatuated with [the Kitsune] doesn’t get that safety net. The Kitsune could tell them the complete truth and then not give them a String anyway, making their statement look like a lie. It allows the Kitsune to really screw with someone who is infatuated with them and therefore perhaps not paying as close attention as they should be.
I really, really like what that does.
And it was complete blind luck that I stumbled onto it.
I think I’ll have to reword the move so that the Kitsune can choose to give out a String or not regardless of whether they lie or tell the truth. That way they can make the truth look like a lie and a lie look like the truth to certain people.
Backstory: If you don’t do something here with “people who know a truth about you” and “people who believe a lie about you” I will totally smack you.
The default Moves are golden. I love Nine Tails Tales.
Sincerest Flattery could maybe use a failure condition. The rest of the moves are solid (love Blind Trust in combo with the sex move).
Is Darkest Self dark enough? Since the skin is an inveterate liar anyway, this feels a bit “You act just like normal (lie a lot) but meaner.”
Just some really good work here. Fill in the blanks and let us play with her.
Thanks for the feedback Topher Gerkey. Backstories are always the hardest for me to come up with. As I don’t want to get smacked, I’ll definitely use those suggestions. 🙂
My feeling when designing moves for AW-based games is that they very rarely need specific fail clauses. Providing an effect on a 6- result limits what the MC can throw at the character. I prefer to allow creativity, as individual MCs will come up with more creative fail results than I can write. I’ll look at Sincerest Flattery again though and see if it needs something more specific.
Looking at Darkest Self again, it does read like “just act as normal, but meaner”. That one has to go back to the drawing board.
the look is missing?
Yup. The Look and Backstory options are still missing Trent Boyd. The Chosen Items may change as well, as I’d prefer there to not be any overlap with the Tanuki.