So I’m working on a new Skin.
It’s not finished yet. There’s plenty more that needs to be written up and tweaked and figured out, but I thought I’d post the work in progress here in hopes of getting feedback and critique to help hone it on its way to being something fun and playable.
You know how when you’re a teen, and it feels like you’re invincible? Like you’ll never die? Like nothing but the now exists?
Do you remember when you first realized you would die? When the realization of your own mortality drained a bit of the color from your dreams? Do you remember the sinking dread of thinking everything you’d accomplished would be for naught, or worse, that you wouldn’t live to accomplish everything you were going to set out to do?
The Returned does. They got a second chance, and now they’re going to seize live by the horns.
Even if it keeps killing them over and over again.
I’ll read this as soon as I’m not mobile!
Okay, finally got a chance to look this one over. I like the basic concept a lot!
~ There is a LOT of stuff going on in the Backstory section. I try not to do more than three directives. And the “unquiet dead” one is going to be a guaranteed session slowdown as everyone wrangles over whether their skin counts or not. My advice here is to trim the section down and simplify it.
~ I like This Mortal Coil a bunch. I think it could use a bit of editing for flow, though. The one bit that I would drop is the explicit reference to specific Moves from other skins – it just feels really untidy to me, like frayed thread ends sticking out from a sweater.
~ For Memento Mori I think I would make replace gaze into the abyss with shut someone down. That would make both options something that YOU do to someone else. I dunno, for some reason forcing someone to gaze feels weird to me (in a way that forcing them to hold steady doesn’t, for example).
~ I’d go with your edit and choose two for Last Rites.
~ I like the idea behind YOLO but I think “unexpected consequences” is both very vague and very likely, which will make marking experience really common. I’d either change the experience for some other benefit or change the “unexpected consequences” bit to something more concrete and/or rare. Like maybe “if your impulsive action leads to you taking Harm…”
~ One Last Dance I like your edit. Maybe on the 10 up you choose, but on 7-9 the MC chooses.
The whole “unquiet dead” thing is really wiffly. I see what you want to do here and I like the idea, I just feel like it needs some harder edges than “anyone who has a move that mentions death”.
Overall, I think if you tighten this up a bit it could be really cool!
I haven’t read Topher Gerkey’s feedback, so I might be echoing what he says.
My first thought was “Cool. This is a teenage Geist (from new World of Darkness).” Someone who has died and for some reason, come back to life. I really like the theme of invincibility, because what teenager doesn’t think they’re invincible and that they’ll live forever. You’ve got a solid thematic space here that has a lot of overlap between “supernatural” and “teenager”. Those spaces aren’t easy to find.
Backgrounds.
I think these usually total up to 4 Strings given away or taken in most Skins. I would suggest reducing the String exchange for the first entry to 2, and only keep the first three entries.
The Mortal Coil.
I am unclear how you avoid death for this move. You’ve italicized “avoid death” meaning its some kind of mechanical or fictional trigger, but I don’t know what that trigger or condition is. This needs to be clarified.
Also, if you write down three Aspirations every time you come back from the dead because your time has NOT yet come, but your time is only up AFTER you’ve crossed out all your Aspirations, I see a problem. I’ll just get myself killed with one Aspiration left, and then come back next scene and write three more Aspirations, for a total of four. I’ll just keep repeating this process, milling XP and cheating death for the entire game. That’s a giant loophole that needs to be closed up somehow.
Beacon of Life.
I think this needs to interact with some kind of Condition. Otherwise there’s going to be a lot of discussion about what and who qualifies as unquiet dead.
Memento Mori.
NPCs don’t roll to make moves, so I’m not sure how they would Gaze Into the Abyss. Additionally, giving someone a Condition and forcing them to make a move (risking a 6-) is really powerful. The Returned giving out a Condition and making a Turn Someone On move is balanced because the Returned is risking a failure. The Returned giving out a Condition and making the target make a Gaze Into the Abyss move is not balanced because the Returned is risking nothing and gets this effect for free.
Last Rites.
There are a lot of moves that let The Returned mark XP. Too many in my opinion. This move is all benefit with no risk for The Returned.
Necromancer.
While there’s nothing really wrong with this move, there’s not enough fiction here for my tastes. What qualifies for the “with regards to the unquiet dead” is too broad.
Yolo.
This is another “no risk” move. Why would The Returned not constantly act on their reckless impulses? They get a +1 when doing so, and mark XP when they cause trouble. It’s win/win. This is similar to The Ghouls The Hunger move, but the Ghoul’s Hunger is always negative (eating flesh, dominating or scaring people). This needs to be made more costly.
One Last Dance.
Love it.
Sex Move.
I’m not really sure what this move is trying to do. If your partner didn’t enjoy their experience, they count as unquiet dead, meaning some The Returned moves have an added effect. But that doesn’t make fictional sense, as they aren’t dead. I think you need to find another way to do this.
Darkest Self.
Similar to feedback I just got, the Darkest Self seems to be “act as you normally do, just more extreme”. This needs to be “dialed up” in my opinion. Possibly to the point where The Returned will seriously injure other people at seemingly random times, just to show them that they should live life to the fullest because any minute could be their last.
Thank you for your feedback. Time to try to work some stuff out!
I’m definitely trimming at least two Backstory options. I basically just wrote down everything that came to mind, and now it’s time to figure out what works best.
With regards to This Mortal Coil, you don’t write down three Aspirations each time you come back from the dead; you write them down at character creation (or sometime during the first session, when the opportunity presents itself). I should probably make that clear in the move. I’ll also get rid of the references to the Ghoul and Heir moves and just put in a more universal line about other moves that bring you back from the dead.
The Sex Move does feel unsatisfying to me. In my head, the way the fiction works is that because the Returned’s partner didn’t enjoy the experience, they’re not enjoying life at all, and so the Returned sees them as one of the unquiet dead. I might add something about deathly residues rubbing off on them. Or I’ll probably chop off a large part of the move and rework it. Maybe I’ll just keep the part about having sex with the unquiet dead.
As for a lot of the moves having all benefit and no risk: That definitely bothers me too. Yolo’s definitely going to be rewritten. Maybe take out the carry forward part and just something about marking XP.
Maybe for Last Rites I could change one of the options to “something bad doesn’t happen” akin to the Vampire’s feeding move. Hmm.
I think I had something in my head when writing Memento Mori about NPCs, but I think you’re also right that at the table it’s just going to cause a big headache. Maybe I’ll change that option to “Give them the Condition depressed, then you gaze into the abyss about their death.” Or something.
The unquiet dead thing. This is quite tricky. I figured a quick talk during character creation should clear things up, since I wanted to make it at least somewhat open-ended. But, like has been said, it is a bit wiffly. I might give the Returned a second automatic move called One Foot in the Grave: “You can see ghosts and things. They know you can see them.” Hmmm. HMMMMM.
Oh, and the avoid death thing is referring to when you lose all your Strings or become your Darkest Self at four Harm.
OK. This Mortal Coil needs to be rewritten then. “When you die before your time” is not a clear trigger for what you intend it to be, if it can only be used once at character creation.
The clause about avoiding death needs to be clarified as well. In the book’s section on Harm & Death, it says death can be mitigated (without italics). If you intend the clause to trigger on this effect, you need to use the same wording as the book does. May I suggest the following: “When you mitigate death (either by becoming your Darkest Self or by losing all your Strings on other people ), blah blah blah.”
If the move is only intended to trigger once, I still think we have a slight problem. Other Skins can mitigate death, at the cost of losing all their Strings or by becoming their Darkest Selves. But it’s a temporary setback. Eventually you’ll leave your Darkest Self, or build up those Strings again. But if The Returned dies, they get slapped with a -1 forward penalty that other Skins don’t get.
I guess that balances with the +1 forward they get if they mitigate death before their time. If it’s before my time, I’ll gladly throw myself headlong into a dangerous situation. But after my time is up? Things get worse for me than they do for other Skins. I might even want to change my Skin just to shake that mechanical penalty.
I guess I need to clarify the wording on This Mortal Coil then. What I’m trying to do here is:
During character creation/the first session, you write down three Aspirations for your character, three accomplishable goals. Until all three of these are crossed out (either from attaining them or from their becoming impossible), your time has not come. Until your time has not come, whenever you would die, you come back to life the next scene.
For example: Zoe the Returned has three things burning in her mind she wants to accomplish: 1) Sleep with Lars, 2) discover the dark secret her deceased father was keeping from her, 3) make Cassidy pay for what she did. During a session, Bertrand the Vampire, in his Darkest Self, accosts her and drains her of all her blood. The next scene, she gets back up, woozy, but otherwise alright. Later in the session, she’s exploring a cave behind a waterfall the ghost of her father led her to, and she slips on some slippery, loose rocks, falls, and breaks her neck. The next scene she gets up, sore, probably with a nasty bruise, but alive. She gets to the deepest parts of the cave where she finds a stele engraved with a contract between her father and the spirits of death, signed in blood. She’s discovered the dark secret he was keeping from her, so she cross out that Aspiration and marks experience.
Later, she finally finds the perfect opportunity to get her revenge on that horrid bitch Cassidy. At the homecoming dance, she lures Cassidy to a dark corner and triggers a device she rigged up in the gym earlier, causing a bucket of pig’s blood to be dumped on the other girl, terrifying and humiliating her. It’s not Zoe’s proudest moment, but she feels the swell of accomplishment as she marks experience and crosses out another Aspiration.
After the homecoming dance, she sees Lars leaving by himself, and she runs over to him to talk. But he saw what she did to Cassidy and that’s way over the line. He yells at her, calls her a fucking psychopath, and tells her never to talk to him again, before getting in his car and driving away. Her Aspiration to sleep with Lars is now impossible to accomplish, so she crosses it out and becomes her Darkest Self, as suddenly everything seems pointless since she can’t do what she thought she could. After freebasing some coke she picked up from Tim, Zoe’s speeding down the interstate, trying to feel something other than doom and gloom, but she gets into a car crash at 120 mph without a seat belt, and since she’s got nothing more to live for, that means no more Zoe.
I could have sworn mitigating death was called avoiding death. I see “mitigate” is the word McDaldno uses in the book. Jackson Tegu uses “avoiding death” (italicized) on The Heir, which is probably where I picked that up from. I think I’m going to take off that part of the move anyway, since if the Returned becomes their Darkest Self from almost dying, they probably shouldn’t be getting +1 forward. Also, now that I’ve typed out that fiction example, I want to change a bit how coming back to life works. Instead of still having 1 Harm, I’m thinking a Condition? Something like “scarred” or “supposed to be dead.” Or maybe a list of choices the player can pick from. “You come back with 3 Harm/You come back with the Condition “supposed to be dead”/The spirits of death demand a favor from you.”
Now that I’ve gotten some sleep, I’m going to ruminate more on the unquiet dead issue. I’m thinking I’m going to make a one- or two-sentence final paragraph to This Mortal Coil pertaining to what it means.
Also, Topher, I hope that this Skin doesn’t step too much on your Calaca’s toes. I think that one’s really cool and I’m hoping that I’ve differentiated the Returned enough from it that it doesn’t feel like I’m just retreading ground here.
I’m so very not worried about that. It’s not like there’s anything official about my skins! And this one has a whole different vibe anyway.
I like the idea behind This Mortal Coil but I still don’t think it works, or at least is not attractive to me as it currently stands. To use your example of Zoe the Returned:
“During a session, Bertrand the Vampire, in his Darkest Self, accosts her and drains her of all her blood. The next scene, she gets back up, woozy, but otherwise alright.”
“Later in the session, she’s exploring a cave behind a waterfall the ghost of her father led her to, and she slips on some slippery, loose rocks, falls, and breaks her neck.”
“After freebasing some coke she picked up from Tim, Zoe’s speeding down the interstate, trying to feel something other than doom and gloom, but she gets into a car crash at 120 mph without a seat belt, and since she’s got nothing more to live for, that means no more Zoe.”
Any Skin can do that using the normal rules for mitigating death. Let’s say Zoe is a Werewolf. The first time she dies (killed by Bertrand), she chooses to lose all her Strings on other characters. Her Harm track resets to zero, she gains the Condition drained, but she’s up and moving again right away.The second time she dies (breaking her neck after slipping on a rock), she chooses to become her Darkest Self. Again, her Harm track drops to zero, and she gains the Condition drained (or retains it if she didn’t get rid of the previous iteration). Note that she could reverse those, becoming her Darkest Self the first time and losing all her Strings the second time. It doesn’t really matter.
The third time she dies (from the high speed car crash) she can’t mitigate death (as she’s done so twice already this session) and so she dies for real. No more Zoe.
From my perspective, This Mortal Coil is great flavorwise, but doesn’t actually do anything. I really like the Aspirations, and how achieving one allows the Returned to mark XP while losing one triggers Darkest Self. I would suggest changing the wording of the Darkest Self trigger though, as deciding when a goal becomes unattainable can be messy. I would change this to “When you abandon one of your Aspirations, cross it out and become your Darkest Self.” That makes it completely up to the Returned when and if they stop pursuing an Aspiration.
Hmm.
Yeah, I see what you mean now. Once I get done with some other work today I’m gonna hop back on this and see what can be done.
Again, I don’t mean to crap all over your idea. I like what it’s trying to do. After struggling for a long time with some of my own Skins, sometimes it helps to take a step back. Leave mechanics completely out of it, and just write out what aspect of the Skin this move is meant to capture or evoke, or what kind of behavior it’s meant to encourage or discourage. Looking forward to seeing you nail this one. 🙂
One thing you might do is focus on making death (and bouncing back from it) even more painless for this skin. Resurrection with no cost (no strings lost, no Darkest Self), all Harm removed, and you lose all Conditions. That’s extremely potent, in that you can basically engage in really risky/dumb behavior with no repercussions while you still have Aspirations, but (A) that’s very in-theme here, and (B) it’s a very inward-facing kind of potency – it’s not the sort of thing you can beat someone else up with or use to steal their boyfriend.
I like it! It definitely plays into the theme, and it gives me extra reason to add another clause to the Move that I had been thinking of but was on the fence about:
“Committing suicide does not activate this move.”
What Topher Gerkey said. There are two ways (that I can think of) to go with the “back from death” theme.
One is to emphasize the “second chance” aspect. The Returned has died, but been returned to life (for some reason) and now realises that every moment of life is precious and important. Their “thing” is to convince other people (and themselves) to take those chances, because life is too short for regrets. They’re not immortal though, and are possibly even living on borrowed time, and so will die for real when they achieve some goal or their time runs out.
The other way is to make the Returned truly immortal. They’ve beaten Death at their own game (Twister, perhaps?) and through some contract loophole, always come back to life. So they can take those stupid risks teenagers do and never suffer the consequences. So who gives a shit if they get into a car accident or OD on coke? It’s not like that’ll do anything. Imagine a high school version of the movie Death Becomes Her.This version is much more selfish, much more like a teenager, and (in my opinion) more fun.
You could also roll the two ideas together. Several Skins provide multiple ways to play, determined by what moves the player selects. (Shameless plug, this is what I did, or tried to do, with the Oni.)
Oh man, I thought your Oni Skin was way cool. Mainly because I knew a guy back in high school who was definitely a social policer like that and I despised him for it.
I do like your suggestions for the move. I’m going to meditate on it some more. On the one hand, that they can get away with all the risky teenager business definitely plays into the themes of the Skin. On the other, I feel like there should be some sort of consequence for dying and coming back, beyond the fact that once you’re no longer Aspiring you’re not long for respiring.
Then again, one thing I found frustrating about Geist was the fact that resurrection blew through your Synergy, and you could only get a good four returns before you’re just a meat puppet. The part about someone else having to die in your place, though…There might be something there. And it could tie in nicely to the Skin’s secondary theme of having to deal with the concept of death as someone emotionally vulnerable…
The Oni was one of those lucky accidents where an aspect of teenage life (conforming and being bullied for standing out) overlapped what a monster was about and everything just clicked. Others I’ve made haven’t worked that well. As I said originally, you’ve found a great overlap of teenage life and monster theme.
I like the idea of linking the Returned’s ability to come back to life to their Aspirations. But I don’t know if there needs to be a penalty when they die. Not a mechanical one, anyway. Explaining to people who saw you die that “Oh no no. It just looked really bad. But I’m fine. Honest.” can get pretty messy. The fictional complications might be all you need here. To really push that, have moves that encourage the Returned to take dangerous risks in front of people, ensuring there are witnesses to their death. ;)
Ooh, good advice. I’m thinking: “Take a String on anyone who sees you die.” Maybe I’ll get rid of Beacon of Life and replace it with that. Call it “Die Like a Rockstar” or something.
Okay, I still need to work out Backstory Options and tinker with the Sex Move.
Edit: I just completely reworked the move Necromancer into something much more interesting.
Taking a String on anyone who sees you die certainly works. It’s simple and that’s usually the best way to go, but it’s a bit direct for my tastes. I don’t have an alternative suggestion though.
Necromancer is interesting, but open up a whole new issue. The mantra of AW-based games is “to do it, you have to do it”. So characters have to take the appropriate action in the fiction to get the mechanical effect. But Necromancer says “_while_ you’re dead” not “when you die”, meaning the character still has to take the appropriate action to trigger Gaze Into the Abyss while they are dead. That opens up a whole new thing. Can the Returned take other actions while they are dead, and if so, what does that mean?
I don’t know if the move needs a roll though. As This Mortal Coil says the Returned gets -1 ongoing if they come back after their time has come, I’m always going to choose the “make a bargain with death” option (if I get a 7+) to gain a new Aspiration and shake that penalty. Unless I want to retire my character and start a new one.
I see what you mean. As intended, I meant for the move to be used between death and resurrection, not in perma-dead situations. I’ll change the wording to make that a bit clearer. I’ve also added a new move! It might or might not stay, or something else might be chopped, since I don’t want the Skin to be cluttered with too many moves.
I don’t think the new wording of Necromancer fixes the issue. To me, saying “When you are between life and death, you can gaze into the abyss.” means that the character still has to take action. The move, as written, doesn’t eliminate the need for the character to take fictional action to trigger the effect.
I think you need to make dying the trigger. Like this:
“When you step across Death’s threshold once more, gaze into the abyss.”
That says “When [fictional action] happens, you get [mechanical effect].” The fictional trigger is dying, and instead of saying “can” or “may” (which I am interpreting as requiring a separate trigger) you just do it.
I’m still confused about the move though.What is GitA while dead supposed to do? I get that a Returned without any unfulfilled obligations to Death has a chance of getting a new Aspiration. But that’s only if the get a 7+. Is there a reason the player has to roll for this?
The intention of the move is to represent a sort of communing with the dead, like Odysseus does when he goes into the Underworld. It’s supposed to be like the Fae’s move Beyond the Veil, which adds new options to Gazing into the Abyss under specific circumstances. I think you’re right that the move needs more tweaking though. Maybe it needs more incentive besides itself.
How about:
“When you step across death’s threshold once more, gaze into the abyss about what still ties you to life. On a 10+, add this option to the list: You have visions of the one who can make your passions burn. Write down a new Aspiration related to the person who has the most Strings on you. On a 7-9, the spirits of death bequeath you a task. Write it down as a new Aspiration. Choose this option only if the spirits are expecting nothing else from you right now.”
Although, that’s starting to move away conceptually from what I had originally planned for the move. So, hmm…
“When you gaze into the abyss while at death’s threshold, on a 10+ add this option to the list: ……………….
Blanking. I will finish this later.
It’s nearly 12:30am here, so this’ll be short as I should go to bed.
Look at the wording for Beyond the Veil. It says “When you attempt to communicate with the Faery King, gaze into the abyss.” It says “when you do this fictional action, this mechanic triggers. The player still has to narrate their player trying to communicate with the Faery King. They still have to take an action. There is also no “you can/may” in that trigger. If the player doesn’t want the effect, then they don’t narrate taking the action. No need to build a “may” clause in there.
If you want this to be a “talking with the dead while in the Underworld” move, why not word Necromancer in a similar fashion to Beyond the Veil? Like this:
“When you return to the Underworld and commune with the dead, gaze into the abyss. “
But if communing with the dead isn’t about getting visions, but is about asking the dead t give you a new aspiration (at the possible cost of a favor), why not make an entirely new move, rather than using GitA?
Okay, I’ve reworked Necromancer some more, to put it more in line with Beyond the Veil, et al.
I almost want to give them a move called Affected: When you shut someone down, roll with Hot, but I feel like that’s beating an undead horse.
Anyway, I still need to figure out the Sex Move. I’m thinking something about writing down a new Aspiration about your partner, or maybe changing one of your Aspirations to be about your partner. Or something with Memento Mori.