Here is my feedback after an extensive reading of the new rules (some of these I have already talked to Andrew Medeiros about, but would love to see the opinions of others as well.)
1. Curious people’s opinions of Keep it Cool. This move was derived as a combination of Face You Fears (which was later named something else that is leaving my mind) and Take a Chance. My issue is that it feels an internal action when you as a person Keep Your Cool, but an external action when you Take a Chance. This becomes easier to judge what to do as an MC.
2. I am curious on Persuade an NPC vs Threaten an NPC/Persuade. If my Werewolf is tackling the bouncer, not to do him harm, but to let his friends sneak in …. that felt a perfect move. Now, I am trying to feel what move do I use, I wouldn’t use Unleash, and they are def. not Keeping Their Cool.
3. I really don’t like various other Archetypes having the Workshop …. not every character wants to play a person tied to a place. Wouldn’t it be better to just add another “Take a move from another Archetype” advancement and if they wanted to take “Tools of the Trade,” they could?
4. Really curious on the playtest background on the alteration of starting move #’s. You used to get one move and choose one move. Now it is all over the place, my guess for reasoning is balance, but I would love to hear examples so I can get a good understanding.
/sub
I’ll give you this Tommy, when you dissect our work, you don’t mess around. 🙂 Let’s take this one step at a time, shall we? cracks fingers
1. Regarding Keeping Your Cool. I think the problem here may be the wording. Mark and I will dig into this more deeply and see if we can improve on this for you. But what I’d like you to see in this move is an internal action that directly leads into the external one. If you need to sneak past a couple of vampires then keeping your head level and calm is the trick to doing so: it’s not about luck. Panic is the antithesis of action, if you can’t keep you s&*t together, you’re going to lose it when things get real. I welcome further questions on this as always.
2. Getting someone to do something for you with words has always been, and shall always be, about having leverage over them. When we had the two moves that we did in previous versions, they had the same trigger and the same outcome, you provide leverage and the person cracks. Pooling them into Heart is all about how well you apply that leverage, not about how scary or sexy you are. If your concern is that the classically intimidating archetypes (Werewolf, Tainted, etc.) don’ t have the ability to do this, that’s not true, anyone can make the Basic Moves after all. We also have some great moves that let them roll Blood instead of Heart to issue threats. And besides, rolling poorly on a threat roll doesn’t mean you fail, just means the MC makes a move. If you’re threat is legitimate, the MC should react accordingly with his moves.
3. We gave the Workspace advancement to the Archetypes that it felt right to have access to them. We went with our guts on this and for now I feel very confident about the choices, they just feel right to me. But if we hear others mirroring this concern, we’ll of course have to review this choice. And yes, I made Tools of the Trade a move for the express reason that if someone really wanted a workspace but didn’t have that advance, they could burn a ‘take a move from another playbook’ slot to gain it.
4. In terms of balance, we didn’t stress over that too much. The Archetypes are a little asymmetrical in terms of starting punch, and I think that’s really cool. An Aware starts with a lot more moves than a Vamp, but the Vamp gets his Web and this whole mythos to create around their kind. Ultimately, whichever way we went with this, we’d never achieve a true “balance” between them so instead we just tried to make appropriate choices for the genre and the Archetype.
I hope that wasn’t too long-winded (though it was) but I also hope it answered some of your questions and maybe brought up some new ones too that you can share with us. Thanks Tommy! 🙂
I’d also note on #2…
If your Wolf is tackling the bouncer, it sounds to me like it’s an Unleash move because you’re trying to “create an opportunity” for another character. The weapon is probably 1-harm, your fists, but you can’t expect to tackle the bouncer without doing a bit of damage. If he’s wearing some sort of armor, then it should bounce off…
sub
deleted
Curious, is 2 a verbal action only? If not, then my issue is the use of “persuade” as it just feels very much a verbal action only.
Also, I am concluding that you removed the PC aspect of Persuade as debt covers the same issue?
My issue with 4 is that it just takes away options from players to advance. Look at Wizard, he has no Wizard “moves” to take, yes he has spells …. but spells do not mean everything.
@Tommy, Persuade does not require talking, but it does require some form of communication, but that’s no different than it was with Threaten. Pointing a crossbow at someone and then putting your finger to your lips in a motion of silence is saying a lot to someone without using a single word, that’s persuasion just not a very nice form of it. By the same token, stroking someone’s cheek and motioning to a bed also says an awful lot without any words. It’s all about getting someone to do something by communicating your leverage to them.
The Wizard starts with all their moves pre-selected, just like a Chopper or Hardholder in Apocalypse World. Their advancements then build off of those locked in choice to further customize them. I’m sorry you feel that new spells and adding options to your pre-existing assets isn’t as good as a new move, but I think it totally is.
Again, my issue with Persuade is that the word has a usual communication aspect …… not with the move.
Its not about being good or not, I talked to John Layton about this last night, we are loving the new spells. I was just curious.