Okay, so played more Masks (you know, because yet again, I’m here posting silly questions).
First thing came up with one of our teen heroes Swarm standing on a building, looking down at a bunch of superpowered boxers robbing a bank-and of course she uses her powers of bug control to summon a swarm to attack them from afar-and gets a 10+! Great for her, except when she picks ‘create an opportunity’ by distracting them for an ambush, and ‘Impress or Frighten the opposition’. Just passed up on ‘resist or avoid their blows’ and so I felt the need to trade harm-but the villains are all melee style brawlers. They can’t retaliate in the first place!
So, I hedged. I told her that the bugs were killed long before they got to the boxers-thier short range powers actually killing and slaughtering them. Sure it was a distraction, but its obvious they’re not being ‘really’ hurt, and asked them to mark a condition against the seeming frustration of not doing much direct harm, even if it did distract them from the coming ambush.
Thing is, I’m not sure how much I like that, and the player argued (perhaps rightfully) that they had no means of retaliation from their position. I figured that no matter what without a lined up shot they couldn’t make a powerful blow, but conditions were happening on trade harm if you didn’t resist or avoid damage.
But, what say you gentlemen and ladies of cape and cowl? Whats the est solution?
So, I think the main problem here might have been the choice of move.
If they cannot harm her, clearly they are not a threat, so why roll (as I understand you did) to directly engage a threat?
Instead, you could have rolled to unleash her powers for example, since she was calling on her powers?
I can see your point here. They’d been able to use bugs to attack in the past (usually up close where they were swarming the attacker and they could’ve attacked right back) and so directly engaging to ‘take out’ a threat seemed right.
Though that does bring up another issue. Are ranged attacks just not possible? If Arsenal sets up with a sniper rifle to cover his allies, can he only use ‘unleash his powers’ to remove obstacles or change environment (shooting out tires or knocking down a ladder) instead of hitting the bad guys directly?
Interesting questions!
The way I see it:
Nothing says that directly engaging a threat is the only way to hurt an enemy or impose a condition.
You can unleash your powers, and if your powers hurt the enemies, that’s happening. Similarly, whenever you do something that doesn’t trigger a move… You Just don’t trigger the move. So you can still aim and shoot from a distance, simply, it’s not rolling for directly engaging if they can’t shoot back. Follow the fiction.
However, this is my understanding, from the play materials we got (which are not abundant in explanation). Maybe Brendan Conway or Magpie Games can shed more light on it?
Actually, I think you are right on this.
Lets jump over to Urban Shadows, the other game I enjoy. If you can attack someone that has no way of fighting back (say you want to stake a sleeping vampire or you have the aforementioned sniper shot) You don’t roll to Unleash. You just succeed-you do it and it happens.
Lets go with our example. If a sniper has an unsuspecting helpless person in their sights and is willing to pull the trigger, then they aren’t going to attack back. They just do it. (this being a teen game I suppose I could make the hard move of making them mark the condition Guilty, but that depends a lot on whats happening in fiction).
I think Alberto hit the nail on the head. In Masks (maybe because it’s still in early versions?), I seem to find myself looking at the possible outcomes as much as the triggering action when deciding what move (if any) to call for. And if you can’t really ‘trade blows’ in this situation, yeah, Directly Engage is probably not the right move.
Unleash Your Powers might be the right call–she was basically reshaping the environment by filling the area with bugs, creating a kind if impediment to the boxers continuing their crime. That might or might not be enough to inflict a condition, depending.
As an aside, I think if meaningfully damaging ranged attacks against enemies unable to retaliate are difficult to do within the system, that’s probably a feature rather than a bug. I mean, the core assumption is that the PCs are fairly heroic, yeah? How often do you see superheroes sniping at villains who can’t fire back?
All that said, I think the way you handled it works pretty well too. All the conditions are emotional things, so thinking you’ve got things locked down and then all of a sudden some schmuck bank robbers just shrug off your powers like it’s nothing could totally trigger Take a Powerful (in this case, emotional) Blow. I wouldn’t just straight-up deal a condition on a 7-9, I don’t think, but if I did, this wouldn’t be a bad situation for it.
You could also have had the bugs swarm/sting/injure innocent people inside the bank. That’d be good go a number of possible conditions.
I’m not too familiar with the way Powered by the Apocalypse World games work, so my input should be considered with that in mind. What I’m thinking is: try not to think too linearly when you’re dealing with these things. Dealing with superheroes, you’re largely dealing with people who will not be injured physically by things, so the things that “damage” them must be outside of the box…
If Arsenal is sniping someone from afar (Trading Blows) and he has take a powerful blow from the bad guys, wouldn’t it be possible for him to witness Starfire getting a truck dropped on her head and not moving… Now he’s Scared and Angry. Is that how it works?
Ask Swarm’s player, “In this situation what would make you (insert conditions here),” and then narrate that that’s exactly what the villains do when they trade blows.
Would something like that be helpful to you?
On a success or hard choice, I wouldn’t make a hard move against another character. Most of the narratives are about people helping and hurting the team, so unless they’re Defending or Provoking/Manipulating, people succeed and fail on their own merits. Or through failures of leadership :).
Yes, Troy Ray, what Adam says. Also, the move doesn’t say that you suffer negative consequences, it says you trade blows. It would be fair to put a teammate in danger on a 7-9 using unleash your powers, for example.
So much good stuff here! It’s good to follow the fiction and only directly engage when both sides CAN trade blows; unleashing might inflict conditions on villains in the right circumstances too!
We’ll have much more to say about this in the corebook. Stay tuned!