Revised Shut Down basic move
Here’s a revised Shut Down move which better encapsulates for me the role I want the Shut Down move to play and also mechanically works in a way I like better. I’ve named it ‘Shut Someone Down / Put Someone in their Place’.
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Shut Someone Down / Put Someone in their Place
When you put someone in their place, roll with cold.
On a 10 up, you’ve got them, they choose how you show them up and whether to end the encounter. Take a String on them.
On a 7-9, choose one:
– The encounter ends in silence as neither gives an inch. Each gain a String on the other.
– The encounter ends loudly with name-calling and angry words. Each give a Condition to the other.
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I’ve seen Shutting Someone Down confused with actually limiting what the target can do “I grab them, they’re struggling to resist, I roll to shut them down” etc. To clarify it, I’ve previously described it as a ‘social attack’, but really now I see it as a status attack – I am trying to change our respective statuses by either raising mine or lowering yours (or both).
As to the name: from my experience at school, there is a perceived social order that is maintained by those within it (often by those at the top, but not always and exclusively). “Putting someone in their place” can have both a benevolent and a vindictive angle (perhaps even depending which side of it your own), if a guy’s acting crazy you can say “Back off, man, you’re losing it”, conversely if someone from a lower level goes to a higher level party you can say “Who the hell do think you are, coming here?” So, putting someone in their place is entirely subjective: you think they are acting outside of the place you think they should be in.
Mechanically, the significant change is to flip losing a string into gaining a string (and bringing the 10+ in line with the Turn On move). This is a personal preference as I find it’s more interesting to spend strings rather than lose them. It also makes it easier for a high Cold character to increase their influence without gaining loads of Conditions and avoids the awkwardness of the 7-9 “What do you do when you don’t each have a string to lose on the other?”
If you play with it and have feedback then let me know. If you’d like to go the whole hog then I attach a pdf where you can download 6 copies of the wording of an appropriate size to paste over the Shut Someone Down move in the Reference Sheets.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9aDy3dv5nWvQVRNZ2JXd3J5Skk/view?usp=sharing
I also recommend Ross Cowman’s Crabby Basic Moves if you have them (if I find a public release of them I’ll link it here).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9aDy3dv5nWvQVRNZ2JXd3J5Skk/view?usp=sharing
It’s interesting. Your intepretation of ‘shut someone down’ is exactly how I saw it – it’s potentially triggered by any kind of conversation-stopping (or -preventing) dig; excluding someone from the decision-making about what the group’s doing, or minimizing someone’s needs or preferences. “Yeah, that’s ’cause your lame.” For that reason, I’m not super-fond of the scene-ending nature of the new wording you have; I think shutting people down is often a gambit to getting what you want, rather than terminating conversations entirely.
I agree that “end the scene” should be a consensus thing, rather than a move. Because sometimes you want to Give Someone a Condition then immediately manipulate them, or turn them on. [This is good for conditions like “Wuss” or “Cruising”.]
I wonder if “they choose how you show them up” is too close of that player taking control of my character. I get what this phrasing is trying to do but this literally gives the other player control of the character.
Just noticed: Shut Someone Down is VITAL for the string economy. Without it, no core move lets you remove strings on someone. And having someone with strings on you is POWERFUL: it basically powers the Mortal and Fae.
So while it’s nice to gain things in roleplaying and less fun to ‘do nothing’, this seems like it’d introduce game errors.
First, it makes hot much less useful (you can gain strings with an OK cold).
Second, there’s no way to deal with alternate string gain (like a werewolf’s “Primal Dominance”). If they lash at you physically and gain a string, there’s nothing you can do to get rid of it. And if they have “Unknowable”, they can get rid of your strings with no chance of retaliation.
I’m curious, why do you see having strings on someone as powerful?
Because then you can manipulate them, mess with them and make them tasty offers?
Strings are what a lot of moves manipulate, they are far more important then a lot of other mechanical stuff.
Reread what you can use strings on other PCs.
At minimum, they can make you succeed (6 turns to a 7), the other person fail (7 to a 6) or make them unable to act (spend a string to cause someone to freeze up, for example).
Most String gaining moves require misbehavior in a way that staring at someone at a hallway doesn’t allow. The Fae uses bargains (or +3 to turn someone on). The Chosen uses “Mercy” (which means you have to be the type of person who has reasons to kill everyone). The Ghost “Creeps” on people.
The infernal Can’t Save Himself; he has to put himself in danger to gain power over others.
In my own play experiences, I’ve never been concerned with other characters holding a large number of strings on my character (and I’ve only rarely seen Shut Down to be used to reduce strings). They have a 3 in 13 chance on their roll vs me to shift into a higher bracket and the same to shift my roll vs them into a lower bracket. They can force me to Hold Steady (which I may or may not be awesome at) (the make unable to act you reference is only in relation to NPCs). They can cause extra Harm (though, to be honest, if they’re genuinely out to kill me then I’ll most likely not have a problem with dying). They can put a condition on me (moving it to a 5 in 18 chance to shift their roll up).
But they can roll against me as many times as they like, but – short of some skin moves or killing me – they can never actually get me to change anything about what I’m doing.
What they can do with a lot of strings on me is bribe me. I can get all this XP just from doing what they ask (and they probably will ask me to do stuff, because they’ve got all these strings on me)… and if I don’t want to do it, well, they lose the string anyway.
I ran a Hot Fae once on a string acquisition strategy and I found that all my strings did nothing to protect me when my fae’s world went south. That’s part of my experience that’s led me to feel that strings on other PCs are a cool symbolic item, but their real strength is in rewarding others rather than dominating them. For me, a greater number of strings in play is more interesting than fewer – as I put in the OP, flipping losing a string to gaining a string is just my personal preference.
Making you fuck up and fail is absolutely going to change you. Making a 2 harm baseball bat do an extra harm can trigger your darkest self (or make you lose all your social control) — and you won’t be the same person on the other side of it.
The problem is when you’re the Ghoul and your Mortal keeps obtaining strings on you, then uses “Entrenched” to get a permanent +1 to fuck your world up. It dis-incentivizes taking moves that get you strings in another way, since it’s rare a skin won’t have a good Cold OR hot OR a stat replacement move for TSO or SSD.
Also, this nerfs the vampire hard. “Hypnotic” is useless, as is “Cold as Ice”.
That’s a good point. Perhaps for those folk who want to use this move and yet still have a desire to reduce strings for some reason they can choose to use this or the regular shut down.
It may be a good Queen alt move.
STORM OFF:
“WHEN YOU PUT SOMEONE IN THEIR PLACE, roll +Cold. On a 10+, the conversation is over; you or they leave immediately. Remove a string they had on you. On a 7-9, as above, but you can leave instead; either way, you both lose a string on the other.”
Hm, maybe because I have only played one shots, I’ve generally found that the lose a string option is either useless (at least one party doesn’t have a string on the other; often neither has one) or used because no one wants Yet Another Condition floating around. I’d not thought about the String economy, probably because it didn’t ever develop in the games — or possibly because I didn’t notice it developing over time.