For playing Buffy (S1-3), it seems MotW can be too grim as previously discussed (see link below). Does anybody have experience with balanced houserules that work for handling a less deadlier Buffy setting? (i.e. Kick Ass 10+ with no harm, more luck/harm, weaker mooks…)
For playing Buffy (S1-3), it seems MotW can be too grim as previously discussed (see link below).
For playing Buffy (S1-3), it seems MotW can be too grim as previously discussed (see link below).
Here’s some things:
– Give minions just 1 or 2 health.
– Give the hunters plenty of chances to rest up between fights. Healing happens fast.
– Most monster attacks only do 1-3 harm.
Not house rules, but this is all intentionally able to be dialled up or down.
Yeah, I completely agree with Michael Sands here. You don’t need houserules to adjust the difficulty or danger level of the game. As Keeper, you set that yourself with the hardness of the Keeper Moves you make. If you want things to be less dangerous, pull your punched a bit.
I’ve been treating mook encounters like challanges and not fights. These encounters are fast and furious so everyone only gets one roll. However they’re never straight up fights. Maybe there’s foreshadowing that lets someone roll to alert others or set up an ambush or an innocent bystander is nearby and needs protecting.
Rolls break down as 6-: you take a point of damage and you fail at your stated goal. 7-9: you take a point of damage and win. 10+: no damage and you rock. So by the end of the fight, maybe the PCs dusted those vamps, no sweat. Or the PCs dusted most of them but a few got away. Or maybe most people blew their rolls so I narrate that the PCs retreated to lick their wounds.
For my mook encounters damage receives lingers for half the session, to represent, stress, emotional drain and physical injury.
So basically, you made a custom move that vastly speeds up unimportant fights. I’m not really a fan, because it feels like you’re not putting the fiction first, but it works if that’s the way you want to go.
It’s okay to have moves that dictate fiction, as long as the influence goes both ways. Like, you can roll a move because that’s what you are doing and then describe how the fiction changes, or you can describe the fiction until we notice you are making a move and then resolve.
William Carson one suggestion for your move: I’d be wary of making the 6 or less result so predictable. I prefer to leave it as “something bad happens”. That allows you to (eg) capture a hunter rather than it being a predictable drain on a single resource.
My feeling was that taking damage at 10+ Kick Ass move was – while perfect for Supernatural – kind of brutal for Buffy. But maybe weaker minions can balance it.
Changing Kick Some Ass so that characters don’t take damage on a 10+ is a way to make the game “softer”. But as Keeper, you say how much harm characters take, most often based on the monster involved. You could also make weaker monsters,or ones that do less damage.
Oh, plenty of ‘something bad happens’ occurs. If they blow a roll I might ask them how things went pear-shaped and they tell me how badily it went for them. Or if for example they tell me they want to tail someone and they blow the roll I’ll tell them “Well..you lost him after about 15 minutes.” and move on without mentioning the full failure so they’re all sitting there thinking “crap..i rolled a 5 and nothing super bad happened….crap…when’s this going to come bite me in the butt?”
Then why not just leave the 6- clause off the move William Carson? That gives you the freedom to make an appropriate Keeper move for the situation. As written, all you’re really allowed to do is deal them a harm and tell them they failed.
Chris Stone-Bush I guess I could say 6-: Bad stuff happens. Its just in my experience that 9 out of 10 times when I lay out this challange they roll Kick Some Ass and if they fail, I invert what their plan was back on to them. As with all things, its a matter of circumstance.
Remember that a written up custom move is a promise to the players: when this happens, then that might happen.
(I’m not criticising anyone, by the way, I just wanted to pull out an important aspect about why what you write for a move matters).
My preference, for any PbtA game, is to leave the 6- clause off of moves except in very specific circumstances. Most games already make it clear that a 6- result means the GM will do something, usually a something that the players won’t like. My feeling is that you don’t need to say it again.