My latest skin (with a lot of help from Adam Goldberg already). The Avatar. Also known as the showstopper, the MVP. Or behind their back “That entitled jerk!” Adults love the Avatar – and they need the limelight. They need to be the star of the show.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vJjGfvll1gFpSpOCvHRlbRI9n-7gCseufQo5DjZJw2I/edit
Feedback given.
And updated to reflect comments. Thanks, everyone! (Biggest changes are simplified sex move, splitting the core move in half, dropping a move, and making the home stadium more supernatural).
Honest opinion. The skin is bad as it currently is. I haven’t left it there because It’s something you care about and so I personally have put in a lot of brainpower to look at how it can be fixed and made better. You claim the skin has teeth, but to who? You’ve personally described it and tried to set it up to be some untouchable badass who flips back and forth into Darkest Self like it’s no big deal. Please excuse the critics who tell you that has no place in a game where people consider losing every advantage they have over everyone instead of becoming a Darkest Self to avoid death. What bad/dysfunctional decisions is the skin encouraged to make? The Queen Is set up to use her friends as pawns and play-things. The Mortal dives headlong into all trouble without looking back. The Werewolf is possessive and flies into rages (and that skin is actively rewarded with Xp for making Darkest self a revolving door, meaning that your Avatar skin is pretty insanely broken when combined with Unstable). The Ghoul pursues its hungers heedlessly. The Fae is a vengeful jerk who doesn’t forgive and doesn’t forget. The Hollow self harms. The Vampire eats people and toys with them. The Chosen kills things and gets into dangerous situations. The Ghost is an antisocial stalker.The Witch is a deviant. The infernal is an addict. What about the Avatar? They are… untouchable? God-like? A golden child? Possibly you could say power-mad but none of your moves back that up. Possibly you could say a glory hog but never do they really feel like they are pushed to it or that it will cause them trouble. Do people love them too much and expect too much of them? Where is that in the moves? And if it doesn’t actually cause them problems then they can go jump in a lake for all I care because the Ghoul just had sex with the Mortal and is now trying to eat her face off all while the Fae is brooding and seething over how the Witch promised to call him but never did because she is too busy harassing the Vampire to take part in her sex rituals. How does the Avatar fit into that mix? As the option of desire that everyone wants to talk about and say they had sex with but never actually did? Shoot me in the face! If you want someone like that in the game make them a NPC, because exploring the tragedy of this guy is just not gonna matter. In the list of those entries what you have written falls far short nearly all round. Perhaps you do have some grand idea of how this guy should work in your head but that’s the problem. It’s in your head and not on the paper. In short, it is arguable that it is you who has “failed to reach the level of competence needed to actually help construct anything”.
By move your skin is:
– Forced to shoot into Darkest self at 4 conditions, which is a bare shadow of the original possibility but not entirely without merit. This says that the thing that really bothers this character is being labeled something, kind of like the Anti-Hollow. While that is interesting it does not fit with your image.
– Encouraged to soak more damage at the risk of becoming their inner monster, which a very different core than the one above and more inline with a sports athlete.
– Encouraged to Cheat to win. Which is a bad decision and fits with the sports core’s win at any cost. The String added at the end is superfluous. A better fit would be something more akin to you forming a rivalry if someone beats you.
– Encouraged to lead a team and gain fans. Which the fans make sense but team leadership, while part of the sports sphere, does not fit with the cheating jock asshole very well. Perhaps there could be a dichotomy but you don’t play it up at all. However giving commands is a Chosen thing and controlling a group of people is domain of the Queen. Both of them do this better, and your insistence on keeping this in is an example of you being too close and liking something too much to be objective about what it adds to the game as a whole, not just the skin.
– Encouraged to hit something when they should be feeling scared. Again this fits the theme of a sports jock asshole although apparently leads to problems with the Lash out physically rules
– Encouraged to defend things that they have claimed. This is somewhat sports adjacent like taking back the title or defending the home field or making an away game your home turf, but the concept of claiming this is only brought up here and it feels like it should be a bigger part or a different skin that is a collector, not a jock
– Encouraged to have every contest/event in front of an audience and in the same exact place which is really restrictive in combination. Having a move about Showing off, would fit better and having a move about choosing where things happen would too
– Encouraged to go to an authority figure to solve all problems. This is iffy because if done right I just kicks the can down the road but if not done right it is a get out of trouble free card.
From this I do get an image of an interesting skin. It just doesn’t seem to be the one you are making with the choices you use to describe it. There is a disconnect that is at the core of the issues, that disconnect is making it so you have moves and influences from all over the place, some of which don’t tie together into a cohesive whole. Not all of them are out of place, but enough of them are loose enough that it rattles when you shake it
I’ve been in the middle of dealing with move or else I would have put this up sooner but this is the version of the skin I will be offering my players for playtesting.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DGh9RNmbCwq0YbsZJgFFeEP9hWvCUxuXtGdq2cH1bhA/edit?usp=sharing
After mulling it over for some time it became obvious that tying it too directly to sports cuts out all the other super competitive pursuits that can crop up in and around people like Band or Theater.