When a hero puts a condition on a villain, is the response a hard or soft move?
Ex: Jaguar Jr hits Toymaster with a clubbing blow (10+), sending him into a stack of boxes (making him Insecure). Toymaster brings in the Lifesize Nutcracker Robots: Do they immediately shoot a hole in the wall, endangering the factory, or is it more fair to say they Charge Up Their Eyelasers and ask RePete what he does next?
Both are fair game I think.
Most of the condition moves are hard moves though so making a hard move seems intended.
Hit them hard.
I think the softer option is fairer. The PC just rolled a straight success, so don’t immediately respond with a hard move, but offer the prospect of a harder one in retaliation and give them the chance to defend against it.
You are missing that putting a condition on them is mostly done with Engage as that gives you the option to avoid their blow.
Brendan Conway said this:
When you directly engage a threat and trade blows, on the GM side it means the villain is usually marking a single condition, and follows it up with a condition move—so for example, when you smash Geomorph in the face, then the GM chooses to mark Afraid, and Geomorph follows up by “throwing up blocks and walls,” perhaps literally in his case! He summons large walls of earth up from the ground to protect him.
In turn, the PC (if they choose not to resist or avoid the blow) is most likely taking a powerful blow when the villain strikes back. So that means the PC should roll that move to see what happens to them next. So when you’re smashing Geomorph in the face, he’s sending a pillar of stone into your abdomen, and you’re taking a powerful blow. Roll the move!
If the PC does choose to resist or avoid the blow, then they wouldn’t take a powerful blow.
here: https://plus.google.com/+TimFranzke/posts/XAncFWENKF3
Does that include environmental effects? I.E. Toymaster sets off the Rock’em Sock’em Probots and knock over a wall.
If he hits himself yeah.
This is a really good question! Here’s how I see it breaking down most of the time:
– The PC directly engages. (Titan flies straight at Dreadnought and starts punching.)
– The PC gets a hit on the move so they trade blows; the villain should probably mark a condition, and the PC should probably take a powerful blow. (Titan lays some good ones on Dreadnought, rattling the armored villain, so the GM marks “Angry” for Dreadnought. But Titan’s player rolls an 8 on Take a Powerful Blow, and chooses to give ground; the GM narrates Dreadnought punching Titan hard enough to send her through a wall and out into the sky above the city. Titan is tough enough that it doesn’t really hurt her, but Dreadnought has an opportunity to act, now.)
– The villain, now, makes a condition move as the next move in the conversation. (Dreadnought has this opportunity while Titan is flying out over the city, so the GM chooses to have him “Break the environment,” and smash through walls to reach and tear apart the power reactor of the advanced tech building they’re in. Because of the opportunity, Dreadnought just plain breaks apart the power reactor, and now it’s spewing lightning bolts everywhere. Without the opportunity, Dreadnought may just have smashed into the same room as the reactor, but not gotten all the way to breaking the reactor.)
So when you make a condition move, think of it as its own move, the next part of the conversation, and not as part of resolving the prior move. A villain who smashes something important (for example) as a result of a condition move might just be moving the action to its next step, instead of taking away from the success of the hero; the hero still clocked the villain pretty hard!
Let me know if that helps!
OK. So Titan rolls a 7-9 on Engage, which allows them to trade blows AND ONE MoRE:
1. resist or avoid their blows.
2. take something from them.
3. create an opportunity for your allies.
4. impress, surprise, or frighten the
opposition.
Which of these represents the best chance of not escalating the situation? (I.E., having a clean win?)
For 1, that obviously won’t mitigate environmental damage. But could #2 mean taking something emotional (“Their conviction that violence is the answer?”) or something essential (“Dr. EMP’s Power Core”)?
For 3, could that mean something like a Tag-team move, where you super-punch Dr. EMP over to Titan, who takes a swing before Magno disables the hospitals equipment?
Could 4 create a specific emotional condition the person doesn’t have? Two examples:
A) You strike fear in the Terror Demon Phobyia (who really can’t feel fear as part of their high concept)
B) You decide to impress Rogue Actor, who the GM wanted as a clown initially, but shifts over to being a Worthy Anti-Heroic mentor? If Rogue Actor initally had the boxes Hopeless [
] and Angry[], could this justify the GM instead writing down and immediately marking Insecure [-]?My overarching contention is this: Is the main dramatic of this game Superteens who fuck up (because supervillains are one step ahead) or is it about Superteens who fuck up (because they’re inherently teenagers and their labels dictate their abilities)? Automatic civic damage, even on a 10+ points to the former, which as a player is frustrating.
(As a GM, I always want my villains to get their monologues in, but PCs surprise ya. One of my best supervillains ended his first appearance GETTING INVITED OUT by a PC!)
When I frighten an enemy with engage do they mark the matching condition?
Adam Goldberg: You can definitely take something like Dr. EMP’s Power Core, and sometimes you can take something emotional, too! I think I might change that to “Take from them something vulnerable”, to be clear that you can’t take Dr. EMP’s Power Core when it’s hidden inside his forcefields, or his conviction that violence is the answer when so far it’s been going pretty well for him.
For creating a team opportunity, definitely! It’s left open to interpretation intentionally. Sometimes, this might look like knocking the villain far out of the way, so a teammate has a clear shot at the computer behind him. Other times, it might be a “one-two punch” kind of thing, and might manifest as simply as adding a Team to the pool. It depends greatly on the fiction, and what the PCs are actually doing.
For impress, surprise, or frighten, the GM gets to choose which state the villain enters, but they’re doing so while following principles and the fiction. So GMs aren’t going to intentionally stymie the PCs attempts, but they also aren’t going to have Phobyia get afraid. And GMs should follow their prep, which means that if Rogue Actor doesn’t have the Insecure condition, they should generally stick to it—but that doesn’t mean Rogue Actor can’t still be impressed and decide to try to act as a mentor to the PCs! (Because that is the stuff of GOLD.)
Masks can sometimes be about villains being way ahead of the PCs, but it’s more often about being teenagers and the consequences thereof. The key for the way that conditions and condition moves work is that villains don’t stop acting just because you hit them (unless they’re totally taken out, and to be honest, that does not happen all the time). When Titan beats the crud out of Dreadnought and Dreadnought becomes Angry, Dreadnought responds by taking action! Making that a hard move, an irrevocable thing that happens in the fiction, is down to whether or not there’s a golden opportunity. In some situations (such as when Titan takes a powerful blow and gives Dreadnought an opportunity) it absolutely makes sense that Dreadnought seizes that opportunity when breaking the environment. But often times, it will be a softer move, giving PCs a chance to respond.
Since the condition the villain marks AND the move the villain makes as a result of the condition are both in the hands of the GM, and the GM is following the principles, acting as a fan of the PCs and so on, it should not reach a point where players are guaranteed to see collateral damage, even on a 10+. But sometimes, they may! Sometimes, right after you pound Dreadnought into the dirt, he responds by getting up and charging for your civilian sister—and if you’ve been knocked into the sky, he may get to her before you can!
Tim Franzke: Yes, if it’s appropriate. For example, if Colossus directly engages Toad, and the player chooses to impress, surprise, or frighten, then it would be appropriate to say that when they trade blows, Toad marks Afraid—it fits the fiction and the player’s choices—and now, he’s bolting like a coward!
I’m going to consider this carefully for the final version, but at the moment when a player chooses “impress, surprise, or frighten” they are signaling that the effect they’re after is a state change in the fight. I’ll try to choose conditions as appropriate, instead of going straight to some easy mainstays (like Angry, leading the villain to hit back and prolong the fight). In some cases that may mean they mark two conditions, one for trading blows and one for being “impressed, surprised, or frightened,” but more often I fold those into a single condition; the PC is giving me fictional justification for choosing a particular condition, as opposed to leaving it up to my understanding of the character and the fiction.
What a thoughtful answer! I really think I get it now.
Do you automatically mark team when you “Create an Opportunity?”
Not always, but it’s a good and easy way to express “Create an Opportunity” when nothing else is obvious. Sometimes, creating an opportunity is actually opening up a situation in the fiction—other times, it’s reinvigorating your team spirit (and adding a Team to the pool)! I’m planning on going into more detail about it in the text of the book. Very glad that this helped! Thanks for making me think on it further!
Brendan Conway I hope this subject gets a detailed treatment with examples in the final Masks book. I can see it being confusing for many GMs. But it’s great game tech, real advancement in the PbtA engine that gives Villains teeth. Love it.