I’m almost done with another Skin, so I thought I’d share my working draft, introducing someone who you probably don’t want to hang out with for very long: The Shade. This kid’s a moody downer who’s really a drain on everyone around them, and they just end up making you feel bad about yourself. Best not to be too giving, or they’ll take and take and take.
I’m almost done with another Skin, so I thought I’d share my working draft, introducing someone who you probably…
I’m almost done with another Skin, so I thought I’d share my working draft, introducing someone who you probably…
It’s good! A lot of neat stuff. I’d work on giving more in-fiction triggers to things like “Want”.
It’s a decent base for a skin, but there are two questions I expect to come up in playtesting.
1: Why does playing this skin make it more fun for the rest of the players? (Watching them do something catastrophic is always a good answer but yours doesn’t do that)
2: Why would anyone voluntarily engage with them more than in passing in character? Because they offer other skins precisely nothing. They aren’t hot (for that matter they aren’t even cold) so people won’t seek them out. They don’t make good pawns – they punish people for getting strings on them. (Is Poppet meant to have that synergy by the way?) They are unlikely to jump in and rescue people (see the werewolf and the ghoul for details). And they are unlikely to make major league villains in the style of Witches or Infernals. They don’t even have real ways of getting hooks into other people.
Now it’s possible I’ve missed something. But I think that that’s what playtesting will show?
Ah, thanks for the feedback.
I think the thing the Shade wants more than anything is acceptance. Really though it might be anything a teenager could feasibly desire. There’s also the stuff in their Backstory to drive them. Their sex move, as well as Prized Possession, both make them feel more complete, which requires others. As for why anyone would want to associate with them, well, that’s pretty circumstantial. But if the Shade has Scapegoat and it gets around that they make a good go-to fall guy, that’s something. If they have Poppet or Invasive Surgery, others might end up coming to them for even less savory means, kind of like the shaman that lives on the outskirts of the village–everyone recognizes his power but also fears it. I’m not sure what you mean by major league villains. They can be quite the selfish leech though. It’s not explicit but a big inspiration for the Skin was the idea of someone’s sense of self-loathing becoming detached from them, forming its own separate entity. I was also when designing the Skin thinking of the shades Odysseus encounters in the Underworld, constantly hungering for sacrifice.
Good catch on the Poppet synergy thing. I’ll look into figuring something out with it. I might also roll Inkstains and Want into one singular move, maybe a list of options.