Hey people, i have some questions.

6 thoughts on “Hey people, i have some questions.”

1. .

2. Hi Luca,

   First

   Take Down is about subduing a threat by doing damage while Seize Control is about gaining control over something contested, so if you want to subdue Siberia by shooting the gun out of her hand, that would be Take Down (and you’d choose Take Away an Advantage). If you want to shoot it out of her hand so that you can get the gun (or wrestle it away from her or whatever), that would be Seize Control, with the gun being contested. 

   Second

   For anything going on the fiction, you’re going to want to examine what’s being said throughout the game. Something must be happening for the bus to be falling off the bridge, so what is it? Are the cables snapping off one by one and your character is a master of magnetism? Just say that you’re using your powers to keep the bridge steady, or to float the bus up the street. You wouldn’t need to trigger the Serve and Protect roll at all. 

   If you’re Spider-Man, like in your example, and let’s say the Green Goblin is throwing a pumpkin bomb at the bus to try and make it explode out and off the bridge. The EIC informs you that there isn’t much time, the bomb’s been thrown, what do you do? You say you dive in front of it (triggering Serve and Protect). Depending on how good your roll is, you can redirect the attack to yourself (it blows up on you instead), reduce its effectiveness (you manage to form a webshield around it to mitigate some of the blast), etc. 

   As a general piece of advice:

   Instead of thinking on the macro level about what moves would trigger in specific situations, or along the lines of “what move would I have to make in order to get the desired effect”, just say what you do in the fiction and determine if a move is triggered or not depending on what’s going on in that moment. There may be times when a move is triggered at all, you just do it (like the magnetic powers example), or times when multiple moves could trigger and you need to clarify your intentions (like with the gun – do I want to end up with the gun, or do I want to take out Siberia?).

   Hope that helps!

3. Thanks, Kyle. 

   I have a very huge experience with others PbtA (expecially DW and AW), but it’s very difficult for me to write in english, so i can’t explain how i wish (and all i wish). What makes me a little ‘problems are the superpowers, that being far away from everyday experiences are difficult to judge in fiction.

   So… 

   My questions were to better understand the triggers of the moves.

   For the first question, I want to make Siberia less dangerous taking away her gun.

   … but I still can’t see differences between Take Down and Seize Control. Taking away the gun from Siberia’s hands means make her less dangerous (Take Down), but it also means taking control over his weapon (just the pistol is far away from her and she can’t use it, no?). 

   I’m confused. 

   For the second question, I try to clarify the scene (I’m sweating for it XD).

   The bus is about to fall from the bridge because Goblin detonated a bomb that destroyed the asphalt. 

   So, as a player of Spidey (we pretend that you’re the GM, Kyle) I say that I use the web as a rope to drag the bus safely.

   What’s up now?  

4. No worries, I didn’t mean to imply a lack of experience, I was just hoping to provide some possibly helpful, if general, advice. I’ll try to clarify further:

   You’re right that there are times when Take Down or Seize Control could be triggered, depending on what is going on in the fiction. The trigger is important, but so is the fiction that has to happen first in order for the move to trigger, so let me explain that first (and the difference in mechanics second).

   Take Down vs. Seize Control

   I think where you’re getting confused is that you could get the same result with either move, am I right? You could get rid of her gun by doing either one, sure, but you only trigger the Seize Control move if two people want the same thing, and your main focus is getting control of said thing. You could take away her Advantage (her gun) by doing whatever you like, but you aren’t going to end up with the gun at the end. Either move removes the gun from the equation, but only with Seize Control are you going to be in possession of the gun afterward. With Take Down, the main focus is on taking Siberia out of the fight, so you could get rid of the gun and still Impose a Condition (deal damage to her), or other things. With Seize Control, all you’re trying to do is get her gun, there is no possibility of you dealing damage to her in the process, because that isn’t what you’re focused on doing.

   Second Scene

   So there are a number possibilities here, depending on what your EIC wants to have happen in the fiction:

   EIC: You shoot a web and start hauling the bus to safety, but the Green Goblin is hardly going to just stand there and watch you drag it up without making life difficult for you: he throws another pumpkin bomb at you. It’s going to blow up right in your face if you don’t do something, what do you do?

   (Could be you Defy Danger to try and kick the bomb away, or let go of the bus for a second, shoot another web out and fling it away before catching the bus before it can fall again, in any case, in this scenario it’s about you, not the bus since the Danger in this case is a bomb exploding in your face, you’d have to deal with that first before dealing with the school bus).

   EIC: You shoot a web out and start using it as a rope to drag the bus to safety, and you’re hauling with all your strength when suddenly, you feel like there’s no resistance at all. You turn your head and you see your line has been cut! What do you do?!

   (So there is no real imminent threat here (except gravity, and you can’t really do much about that ’cause you’re Spider-Man and not Magneto), or at least not yet. You could shoot a bunch of web lines and anchor them to the concrete, now realizing that you’ll have to deal with Goblin or he’ll just keep attacking you while you’re left open, or do whatever you like to try and mitigate or save the bus.)

   EIC: You shoot a web out and start dragging the bus to safety, but your Spider Sense goes off. You turn to look and you see another pumpkin bomb hurtling towards the bus! If you drop your line, they’ll be in free fall, but if you don’t do anything, the bomb is going to blow it up anyway! What do you do?

   (So now there’s an imminent threat here in the form of something you can resist: an attack on the bus. You can try and get in front of the bus and absorb the attack; you can try and fling the bomb away; you can try to web the bus up in a shield, or a bunch of other things. If the move you make is about trying to protect the bus and the people in it, you trigger the Serve and Protect move, so you can go about mitigating the danger in whatever way you described, which I assume will be most actions if you care about what happens to the bus. If you’ve got like, I don’t know, a frequency jammer you could try and trigger the bomb so that it goes off before it reaches the bus, then maybe I’d let you get away with Defy Danger instead, but with the danger being that if you’re too slow, the bomb hits and the bus blows up (way riskier, but technically a better move for you as you won’t end up hurt vs. Serve and Protect, which you’ll probably end up getting hurt by doing, but at least you’ll have at least mitigated it, probably). 

5. Kyle, now everything is clear. Thank you. 🙂

6. Glad to be of service!

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