Hey guys,
We’ve just completed chargen for Worlds in Peril. My players are keen and we’ve brainstormed a pretty cool setting.
However, there’s a few things I didn’t get on my read through that I was hoping someone could clear up for me.
1) Do characters start with a Drive book? Could just be me misreading the text for unlocking future playbooks but I was left unclear about whether a beginning character started with one unlocked.
2) How are limitations during character creation supposed to work? Do the players just choose one of the options provided on the table of Bonds vs extra powers? Thats what the Arrowhead example seems to indcate but then the text talks about getting additional bond points for limitations.
Is the process supposed to be:
-Choose option from table, then get additional bond points (but not threshold?) by applying power limitations
3) How does a power like ‘Take out regular guys with ease’, ‘Take out a well trained opponent’ or ‘Take out a room full of guys’ given in the Arrowhead example actually map to moves and the Take Down move in particular? One of my players created a Daredevil/Batman style super martial artist with some similar powers (Simple: Defeat a trained opponent in single combat, Difficult: Take on three trained opponents at once, Borderline: Take on a whole gang)
I couldnt explain how something like that would really work. School me please, dudes.
/sub
1) They take a drive book to work towards unlocking during play. So, make a note of what they’re working on, and try to set them up to get into that fictional position.
2) You pick actual fictional limitations, and decide how inconvenient they are. You need to know the actual narrative limitations so that you can use the EiC move to “activate their limitations.” If the Limitation is “electrocutes people on contact” then find on the table how inconvenient and isolating that is, get your Bond points.
3) Their power profile is true. If its simple to clear a room of professionals, then they’re likely not encountering any dangers if its just them and three professionals in an empty room. They knock them out, end of story. No move! Your job as EiC is to apply the actual context of events to the power profile: so, ask yourself things like “is it still simple if the room is ON FIRE???” Probably not! Honestly report the truth of the fiction. If someone can’t just flat out knock out a team of professionals with no resistance, tell them why, and go to the move.
Often times (this is my experience in my game) you may want to prompt them to roll the move anyway! If something could still go wrong even if they have the situation otherwise under control, have them roll, but softball on a miss… What happens on a miss is your call, as EiC. Batman doesn’t fail to punch out a gang of professionals on a Miss — something unrelated goes wrong. Power Profiles like “beat up a bunch of guys” just set the stakes of the player’s rolls. They’re saying “even if I fail a roll, don’t let these guys get away or hit me unless it REALLY makes sense”
I don’t have much to add to that, but another useful way of thinking about their Powers Profile is that it’s what they’ve done so far, in their experience (or what they’ve mastered doing you could say). So if all they have in their profile is beating up dudes, then definitely give them dudes to beat up (because they obviously really want to do that), but also give them challenges that push the envelope, make them have to Push to expand and start mastering other aspects of their powers.
I also always recommend that powers are more specific, about actually doing something. By “Take on a gang” I’m not really sure what that means as the EIC. Does that mean that in ideal conditions he’ll never get hurt at all? Is it because of his powers – does he have 360 vision or something? Is he just strong and has a lot of stamina? Can he take them on, but is almost dead by the end of it, just tired, or what? I’d probably have them amend it so we know what’s going on there, like “Feel and read the motions of everyone around me so that I can dodge their attacks.” In any case, like Alfred said, your job is to make things challenging for each player regardless of what powers they have, so you can do that by making the conditions of the fight harder, the quality of the opponent, you can totally let him be badass but have to make hard choices about saving and helping others, etc. At the very least, always push the players to explain what their characters are actually doing to trigger to move, don’t let them get away with something like “I use my borderline power to take out the whole gang” because that doesn’t give anyone any idea of what’s happening and you can’t jump in to affect the situation and make it dangerous.
By way of example: one of my players’ characters is someone with superhuman vision (microscopic, telescopic) vision and enhanced visual processing in their brain. In short, they can read microexpressions and process body language faster than it can play out. So, its Simple for her to “defeat three trained professionals she’s had time to read.” Awesome!
Well, when she waited in someone’s apartment to drag information out of them — and opted to leave the lights off — I knew she’d be in for a hassle with the bad guy waiting to show up. See, its Simple if she has the chance to read the guy. In the dark, with no read on his body language? It’s still possible to give her hell!
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Thanks for the replies, guys. Definitely cleared things up a fair bit.
I might have misrepresented the player with the martial artist, as I just gave examples of his fighting powers. He used Arrowhead as a model, who I think has a power related to taking dudes out at most tiers.
But yeah, just trying to work out the point where a power dictates if a move is/can be triggered and when the power overides the move completely.
Thanks again 🙂
Yeah, check out the move triggers and put it in the context of the players’ characters and their powers. In order for Take Down to be triggered there has to be an imminent threat. If the thugs are coming up on him but his powers say that basically thugs are not dangerous, then there is no threat. When he wants to beat them up, just ask him what exactly he does when he does. If you want to give him a moment, just listen. If you want there to be danger, which is most cases, then start making soft moves – point to looming danger is the most common soft move (something that is actually a threat coming down the pike) by having some innocent bystanders try running past the thugs and the fight (implying the thugs might use them to threaten him instead), or a shadow stretching across the street from overhead, and so on.
If you aren’t sure, just ask the player – do you think these guys would be a threat at all? Are you worried? If not, then you find more dangerous challenges for them later, or give them a nice spotlight by highlighting certain tasks that are easy for them (and, of course, make sure the spotlight shines on each PC). If you aren’t sure how to put them in danger, then you can collaborate with them on that too – everyone is there because they want an interesting story and interesting stories need conflicts.