Two questions, both of which have likely been presented elsewhere:

Two questions, both of which have likely been presented elsewhere:

Two questions, both of which have likely been presented elsewhere:

* How do you represent physical injury that doesn’t lead to an emotional condition?

* On the GM reference sheet, there’s references to paragon and generation moves; are those’s described anywhere?

9 thoughts on “Two questions, both of which have likely been presented elsewhere:”

  2. If a PC is impaired by an injury, this will impact on what the player can narrate for them and how moves are triggered. For example, an unconscious PC (to take an extreme example) would not be able to initiate many moves, and an injured PC may need to narrate differently to trigger them (and maybe even trigger other moves to trigger the one they want).

    Conditions are all emotional, but will accompany physical injury. Afraid seems that it would be common but others could apply too.

  3. Hrm.  I suppose; that just seems a bit off to me.  I can think of more lasting injuries from inspirational materials (lasting as in, impacting beyond the scene they were dealt) than times characters were loaded down with multiple emotional conditions.  And that goes double for villains.

    I’m probably also biased; some of the conditions (Angry, Afraid) seem like ‘regular’ occurrences during a fight, while others (Guilty, Insecure, Hopeless) seem more like ‘aftermath of a fight’ type things.  While I’m certain that you can narrate them arising during a fight, I worry they won’t feel as organic.

  4. GUILTY: “Oh shit, I just knocked the robot into the orpanage!”

    INSECURE: Maybe Omnitron is right. Earth >is< pretty shitty.

    HOPELESS: I’ve thrown everything I can  at Cretaceous Creep, but he’s feeding off of it! WE’RE DOOMED!

  5. Drew Stevens: Good questions! Physical injury is part of the fiction, and you should always be following the fiction honestly—so if a villain has a broken leg and can’t fly, then it makes sense they’d have a hard time actually getting away. But for Masks, what matters most is the emotional states that come with injury. Characters take a lot of hits in this kind of story, and while Artemis might come through a fight bruised and battered, what makes us all lean forward is when her spirit is broken because she knows she can’t win. The hits that matter most are the ones that make the characters feel something. 

    As for generation and paragon moves, good catch! Those are two additional elements for GMing the game that I was working with, but may not include moving forward. There’s already plenty on the GM sheets already! I’ll make sure to fix that for the next draft.

  6. Hrm.  Lemee put it another way; when a character takes a powerful blow and fails the move check, why would they become guilty or hopeless or insecure?  When would a villain become guilty or insecure or hopeless because Superboy just punched them in their face?

    All three of those examples seem more like consequences of failed moves initiated by the players.

  7. If you miss a Powerful Blow, you weather the blow and suffer no Conditions. The explicit result overrides the usual GM Move on a miss.

    The Powerful Blow move is reversed from other moves as it is +Conditions. So, a miss is actually good as all you do is mark Potential.

  8. As for your second question (and assuming you get a hit on the roll after taking a powerful blow, I could see the following applying:

    – You feel Insecure at being beaten.

    – You feel Helpless in being unable to stop your attacker.

    – You feel Guilty in letting down those relying on you.

  9. Luke Walker has got it. If you roll a miss on Take a Powerful Blow, “you stand strong. Mark potential as normal, and say how you weather the blow.” So you come through fine if you roll a 6 or less on Take a Powerful Blow. If you roll a 7-9, you can choose to “struggle past the pain; mark two conditions”, which means that you are saying your PC internalizes external pain—instead of giving ground, for instance, you become Insecure (“Do I even belong here on this battlefield?”) or  Hopeless (“We can’t win! They’re too strong!”) or Guilty (“I didn’t get him enough—he’s still going. This is all my fault.”) 

    And for the villain, it helps to consider what specific villain we’re dealing with. When you create a villain, you choose which conditions they have. So a villain might not have some conditions if it will never make sense to you for them to mark those. Blockbuster (from Young Justice) probably doesn’t have Insecure or Guilty or Hopeless, because he’s just a raging monster. 

    But let’s say Superboy is punching Mr. Twister (a robot, also from Young Justice). He rolls to directly engage, gets a 7-9, and chooses to take something from Mr. Twister: the robot’s arm. The GM marks a condition for Mr. Twister, which is Hopeless, and then picks a move off the Condition Moves list for Mr. Twister to take. The GM picks “Burn down the world around them” (and does not actually say that to the players, because “Make your move, but never speak its name”). Mr. Twister’s arm is ripped off, but his response is to exclaim, “No! This isn’t possible! I’ll destroy you all before I let you take me down!” He’s given up on whatever his other goals were, and the GM describes him calling down endless cyclones upon our young heroes.

    Hope that helps to explain how conditions play into combats, and what it looks like when a villain marks them! 

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