Guys. A Doomed in our group used their sanctuary to ask the question of “How can I defeat my nemesis?” It darn-near caused me a heart attack. I did my best to answer the question, but damn. Should I have made that one off-limits?
It also seems like a weird question on my side, because I’m going to have trouble sticking to the idea of “Once they’ve met A-D requirements, the nemesis is defeated.” I feel like it’ll be hard for it to play out that neatly.
I don’t know. I’m probably just anxious. It’s probably fine, right? Tips, anyone?
Make the cost one they do not wish to pay. There may be other ways, but it is a broad question. You should also ask for clarification… defeat in combat? Over a particular issue?
Jason Cox He wanted to be able to jail him, basically. Like, over and done, no more, etc.
A cost that they wouldn’t pay would feel like GM bullshit to me. Can I really just make it something they wouldn’t do?
My alternative was just to make it something hard to do instead, something that would take time and effort.
Sure, that’s what makes them a good nemesis.
I asked to cure my Doom; the conditions are, you need the help of your Nemesis; you need to sacrifice a human soul; the result will be partial (i.e., I’ll save my soul, but not my body, my doom being being unmade). And I sure don’t want to sacrify a human soul (and the body thing… I’m not particulary happy with it either, as character; as players, I’m having fun trying to understand how to met all of them in a feasible way).
I’m not sure how this could play out, but the fiction has to follow the conditions, so that meeting all of them means the Nemesis is (near) defeated.
Also, as difficult (in fiction, and maybe the character doesn’t really want to do them), Brendan Conway suggested things like, you need the help of this famous supervillain, currently held in a superprison.
I am more familiar with other PbtA games than with Masks, but I would agree with Jason Cox and Jason Corley; make the answer something difficult, dangerous, or uncomfortable. Something like “strip them if their powers” or something like “unmask yourself to the world”. I’m pretty sure the point of the game is to cause drama, so giving them an easy way out to a big question like that is no fun.
Also, keep in mind one of the Doomsigns let the player ignore one condition.
Remember that “able to” and “want to” are different. This email S a game that thrives on hard choices. Raven could have protected the world from her father and her own destiny by leaving it. But she had reasons not to.
I think it should certainly be something really hard, or really objectionable. Otherwise, it’s boring.
Super long essay-style response, naturally, but you guys probably know that’s my jam by now. 😛
I’ve got a Doomed in my home game and I play one (albeit a weird one) in Living Halcyon, so I’ve had to take a long look at their rules (which have changed significantly between playtest versions, for extra confusion).
First up, the Sanctuary doesn’t have the Doomed ask you a question, it has them state a course of action. “Say what you want to do”. (It also requires you to “call upon the deeper nature of your powers” to use it, but I struggle to make that line up with the effects in a way that’s doesn’t seriously limit its use). Question vs statement is semantics, mostly, but it does lend itself more easily to a different kind of discussion, in the vein of:
“I want to defeat Dr. Destructo.”
“Okay, how?”
“Uh… I don’t know. That’s why I’m using my Sanctuary.”
“So what you really want to do first up is figure out how to defeat Dr. Destructo?”
“I guess so!”
“Okay, cool. You dive into your Sanctuary and hatch a plan via full-page montage that involves you telekinetically flipping through a lot of books and scrawling on a blackboard. You figure that first, you must infiltrate his lair. There, you’ll have to obtain something related to his doom-armor; schematics, a piece of it, etc, and then to analyze it properly you’ll need help from Brainiac Bill…”
It’s kinda like layered Sanctuary goals, where the first requirement for “I want to defeat Dr. Destructo” is “_first, you must_ figure out his weaknesses”, which has its own series of objectives. Making the knowledge its own mission goal makes the end result feel properly earned, opens up more sessions of clear “made progress towards defeating your nemesis” checks and importantly, gives you time to think. Otherwise you have to come up with the key weaknesses and sure path to victory over the nemesis on the spot, and with how important those answers are, that’s way too much to ask.
The thing with defeating the nemesis, specifically, is they’re not just some dude you fight a lot, they “represent and embody your doom”. They’re tied to it somehow, pretty intimately. Every session you haven’t made progress towards defeating them, you mark your doom track, meaning left unchecked, something your nemesis is doing actively brings your doom closer. So if you defeat your nemesis, once and for all, you’ve gone a long way towards averting your doom’s arrival. Which is totally viable as a story point, but I feel like it’s almost in the same league as, like… a Protege distancing from their mentor, or a Transformed figuring out how to go human again. A big deal. The sort of thing that might put switching playbooks on the cards. So I think panicking when your Doomed asks you how to make that happen is a perfectly natural response, but have a chat with them and if rounding up one of the major components of the playbook is really what they want, then sure, run with it; maybe make it difficult, but certainly make it achievable. I mean, it’s their story arc, after all. 🙂
If they’re happy just defeating their nemesis in the temporary, traditional comic book style, your first selection from the Sanctuary condition list’ll likely be “The best you can do is a lesser version, unreliable and limited.” Defeating their nemesis is a natural goal, and you want to give them what they’ve worked for, obviously, you’re just leaving room for sequels and subsequent issues. ’cause big bads don’t often get defeated forever or in fool-proof ways: they get sent to Arkham, or shot into space, or have their powers taken from them — and inevitably break out/come back/regain them when fictionally and dramatically appropriate.
So after that selection you can give your Doomed whatever Sanctuary requirements you feel comfortable with, because the end result has gone from “your nemesis is dealt with” to “your nemesis is dealt with… FOR NOW!”. Which oughta take a lot of pressure off what happens when you actually get to the finale and turn it back into just a neat way of generating a mission arc. And when the nemesis gets put out of commission, everyone celebrates, The Doomed gets to breathe a sigh of relief, and the story focus shifts to some of the other heroes and their problems for a while.
…then, a few sessions down the road, when everyone’s had enough time to largely forget about the nemesis, cue a “Meanwhile…” panel with Dr. Destructo sitting quietly in supermax prison. Followed by a prison-wide blackout, a lot of chaotic shouting, and a final shot of the villain’s face looking gleeful and sinister in the red glow of the backup generator’s lights. Then end session.
Players love that shit. 😉
Yeah, you need to know OOC whether this is a Recurring Nemesis, or a “Moment of Truth, this guy goes away and my character evolves” nemesis.
Matt Morton Adam Goldberg
Matt Morton, spot on as always.
I actually did try to get clarification on what exactly he meant by “defeat my nemesis,” and his response was just on the far side of explicitly stating that he wants him to be dealt with permanently. My first mistake was not making sure it was 200% explicitly stated.
I guess my follow-up question is: If he did want him out of the picture for good, should I have explicitly stated he can’t use this move to get my word as GM that he won’t show up again once the conditions are met?
Kryptonite
Oh, the nemesis should always be able to come back. But only as part of a hard bargain the player makes. Save the city at the price of bringing the bugger back to life.
Blaze Azelski If your player has their heart set on a final, to-the-death showdown with their nemesis, I don’t see any real reason to deny them the opportunity. Could be that the arc towards said showdown is what drew them to the playbook in the first place. That said, they need to be fully aware that while fighting and potentially beating their nemesis is part of the standard Doomed package, permanently removing their nemesis from the picture represents a fundamental change to the character that’ll probably make them not-that-playbook anymore, amongst other possible ramifications.
If they’re fine with playing towards that outcome, then sure, permanent defeat is on the table. As GM you get to craft the steps necessary to achieve the nemesis’ defeat and you get considerable ability to dictate the pacing of the story arc, so why not? If you’re afraid of it wrapping things up too quickly, don’t design the requirements in a way that are quickly-wrappable. Make the requirements individually interesting, long-term and challenging-but-achievable — hard choices are fine, but avoid cheap bullshit roadblocks. Use the layered Sanctuary objectives thing in the previous post to line up your pieces and provide short-term goals to get things rolling, if you need to. Then, if they finally meet all the conditions you’ve laid down, absolutely let them take the nemesis out of the picture for good: they’ve earned it fair and square.
And from there it’s the same as every other Masks scenario: “What do you do?” and play to find out what changes.
Matt Morton: the layered thing is interesting; usually (also in AW, with things lke the Angel’s infirmary) I saw a thing more like the “I want to defeat Dr. Destructo”, because the move de facto asks a goal (“Say what you want to do” asks for a goal, and “I want to defeat Dr. Destructo” is a lecit answer to that wording), and the conditions seems to outline a course of action (First, you must find about his weakness by sneaking in his lab; then, you’ll have to obtain the tech needed to exploit that weakness; etc.), so the wording seems to suggest an “State a goal, I’ll give you a course of action”.
Indeed, in you example you’re giving a course of action, it’s just a course to find how to destroy the villain, rather than to destroy him.
Did you play it also in this way (“I want to destroy Dr. Destructo”, “Ok, then you have to…”), or did you always used the layered approach? If you played both I’m interested in what you found different, since as I said I usually saw a non-layered approach (but I have not a big experience in this regard).
Also, Fabio Succi Cimentini could be interested in this.