3 thoughts on “a thought, Magpie Games.”

  1. I have thought about this before. There are two reasons I don’t think so: 1) You do not have to lock in one of the labels the Janus regularly swaps. Spider-Man and Parker are pretty much always Savior +2. 2) Because other people shift your labels constantly, the Janus ends up being hyper aware of their self-image and what other people think. It seems to me that his advance ends up reinforcing that idea for traits you have not locked. 

  2. Thanks for calling this out, Jacob Ross! Definitely worth looking at more carefully. The Janus can change their Mask label, and that might help if you choose to lock your current Mask label as something high. (I’ll think about adding more ways to do that, too.)

    But also, I would hope that locking a label can be used in two directions—to lock a label that’s high and keep it that way, preserving a positive score, or to lock a label that’s low, ensuring that you’re never going to see yourself as that thing, and you’re never going to shift points into it. That second version is what Jason Cox is aimed at, I think. Peter Parker might eventually lock his Danger at a -2 after a moment of truth. He’s not a killer. He’s not even really a fighter. That’s not how he sees himself. (Or at least, this version of himself.) The tension of his character is between being a Savior (his Mask label), and being Mundane.

    The advantages aren’t as obvious, but they’re there—when your overall stats add up to +3, locking one at -2 means the others are guaranteed to float around positive levels, and that’s not going to change. 

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