Today’s game made me wondering about a thing:
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PROVOKE SOMEONE
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For PCs: On a 10+, both. On a 7-9, choose one.
● if they do it, add a team to the pool.
● if they don’t do it, they mark a condition
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Add a team to the pool (instead of potential) feels a bit small as incentive, also because it could be Team is reset before the team is spent; while marking a condition feels quite big; I was wondering about the reasons behind this design choise.
Brendan Conway Magpie Games
Mario Bolzoni Nicola Urbinati Fabio Succi Cimentini Steve DeCarli
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When two superheroes face off and one yells “let’s take this to the Danger Room, I’m sick of your bellyaching!!!”, if the other one goes with them to the Danger Room and they duke it out, they become closer/better teammates no matter who wins – always. This makes sense to the audience because we understand the characters are operating on the same wavelength even if that means they have to shoot their laser eyes at each other (“THEY’RE NOT LASER EYES, NOBODY HAS LASER EYES!!”) and may disagree about how to go about things, they share sufficient values (the only thing ever really at stake in superhero stories) to be effective together.
However, if someone yells “let’s take this to the Danger Room” and the other sniffs haughtily and says, “As if. I have closet reorganizing I’d rather do.” then no matter how “cool” they seem, they are always made more insecure/afraid by it since their decision isolates them from the rest of the team. The audience recognizes this because it shows that they don’t even want to respond on the same level as the other character. There will be some severe consequences to this because naturally that’s what the villain is going to hammer on when they show up.
Jason Corley’s is a good explanation for the thematic reasoning, but doesn’t help address Mauro Ghibaudo’s concern that mechanically that going along just works out as “add a team to the pool”.
And it does feel lightweight. Most other PbtA games I’ve seen do this incentivisation as marking experience.
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I don’t think it deserves XP. When you think about high school, people yelling at you and calling you names didn’t really help you reach your potential.
Yet, if the carrot is unconvincing, as an option it’s dead on the water.
Adam Goldberg, I agree with what you are saying, but this is also about the motivation to change course in a way undesirable to the player. Consider that it would be a fictional growth, and usually player-to-player growth too, which is fittingly represented by a point of potential.
The carrot is not marking a condition.
Keep also in mind, provoking someone could be helping them to reach their potential. Case in point: our Nova (Nicola Urbinati) in the past said to our Doomed (me) that her powers make her a threat, such a threat to be perhaps worth killing in the future.
Last session, our Nova lost control of his powers and leveled a bit of forest. No casualties, not even a bulding, just a bunch of trees. Due mainly to this (and something else) he was on the verge of leaving the team (i.e.: he had his luggage in one hand and the door handle in the other).
Our Sentinel (Mario Bolzoni) tried to make him see that he did lots of good and almost no damage, but our Nova was still leaving; at this point, my character (the Doomed) had enough and said to him that her powers threaten the world (and her very existence), and he fears his powers to the point of leaving because he leveled a bunch of trees? One thing my powers taught me, you don’t avoid those problems by running away from you powers, you confront them and harness them to do more good than bad.
We discussed this and agreed that it was a Provoke more than a Comfort, both because my character wanted the other to do something (and effect-wise that’s a Provoke effect) and I was being confrontative and provoking, not comforting, I was basically saying to him that he threatened to kill me, then he was running away from his powers at the first hint of troubles.
But convincing him to remain with the team? Totally helping him to reach his potential.
Jason Corley: the carrot is not marking a condition, if you choose the second option; if you choose the first, it isn’t. And if the carrot for the first option is not choosing it… then the first option has some problem.
Part of *AW is giving you options to hinder other player characters, even to their detriment. Some games give it a bonus (MoTW) while some, like Dungeon World, let you give a +1 or a -2.
Compare the moves to the adult moves. “Persuade with best interests” is the upgraded comfort & support.
“Emphasize” makes the other person open up or take a condition; it’s the grown up Provoke.
Lack of stick is not carrot, Jason Corley.
I don’t think the analogy holds here (despite me trying to do my best to play along; sorry if it didn’t clear anything up) since there’s a stick on the other side too – you have to do the thing you’re being provoked to do.
oh, right. the Adult moves. Well okay but I would say that Persuade is the grown up Provoke… and Empathize is the grown up Comfort/Support move, but yea just the same.