Question that came up tonight: under the Influence rules, we have “*When you take advantage of your influence over someone,* surrender your influence and…
My stop-gap ruling was yes, since I feel like you should always get the chance to reject influence when it comes up, but the way that the rejecting influence move works behaves a bit weirdly when it comes up against the above stuff instead of “being told who you are or how the world works.” You could choose to clear a condition that they just spent their influence to give you, or cancel influence that they don’t actually have since they just gave it up, or on a miss have your labels shifted, which wouldn’t necessarily be on the table if you hadn’t resisted their influence in the first place.
It worked out in the fiction this time, but I think that may have been because the inciting player was basically telling the receiving player who they were, in addition to what they were mechanically trying to do by surrendering influence. Goth lashed out and an innocent got hurt during a mission, so Command Line called her out on it and spent influence to have her mark Guilty. Goth tried to reject it and failed, so Command Line shifted her Danger up and her Savior down; she had a “crap, maybe I am out of control” moment. We discussed this briefly afterwards, and I figured that Goth would have marked the condition regardless, since C.L. spent the influence for it. But if you can reject influence, I could see ruling that a successful rejection cancels the attempted ‘cashing in’ of influence both in effect and in cost.
So, clarity: do you only get to reject when someone is telling you who you are or how the world works, or any time they exert their influence over you? Is it perhaps intended that any time someone exerts their influence, they are also de facto telling you who you are or how the world works? How have you ruled on this, when it’s come up?
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The moves trigger separately.
Take Advantage Sez:
When you take advantage of your Influence over someone, surrender the Influence you hold over them to choose one: …
Reject says:
When someone with Influence over you tells you who you are or how the world works, accept what they say or reject their Influence.
When you take advantage & surrender influence, you no longer have influence; ergo, you aren’t the “Someone with Influence” for the Reject trigger!
I think that’s too rules lawyer-y a reading. You have the influence at the time that you’re surrendering it (which is why the person you’re influencing cares enough about what you say to take a -2 to a move or mark a condition or whatever); if you count as someone with influence for the purpose of influencing them in the first place, then you should also count as someone with influence for the purpose of rejecting influence. They would trigger at the same time, not consecutively, by my reading.
Well one of the PBTA principles is “to do it, do it”. There are few situations I can think of where someone says “I’m doing a thing” and another person can react “no, I roll to cancel it” (outside of aid/interfere.) There’s no cascade where you can interfere on an interfere, because it violates fiction-
>roll->fiction.Edit: Missed this the first time, but it’s rules lawyery to answer a rules question by referring to the text of the rules?
It could get ESPECIALLY crazy if you get influence, say, by defending someone, and want to give them the condition “insecure” (for having to be bailed out.) A success on that Resist roll would mean the influence is wasted; a failure would trigger a hard move and put the PC in a hell of a spot.
The normal way you use influence for PCs is the +1 rolls against them and to manipulate their stats so they become perfect teammates. They can certainly resist when you tell them who they are, but the effects from “Surrender your influence” are instant in my reading.
Magpie Games ?
Regarding the ‘rules lawyer’ thing: as I read them, the underlying fiction and intent of the taking advantage of your influence move is “you care about my opinion, and I’m going to use that to tell you something and get under your skin,” while for rejecting influence it’s “I care about your opinion, but I want to believe that this specific thing you’re telling me is a load of crap.” Asserting that the relationship represented by Influence evaporates after the first ‘goes off,’ so that the second can no longer apply, feels like using a narrow reading of the rules’ mechanics to subvert their intent, which is what struck me as rules lawyer-ish. Discussing the rules is not, of course, automatically rules lawyer behavior, and if the above was not your intent I apologize.
The “to do it, do it” principle is about putting the fiction first; you need to do the thing within the fiction before you can engage with the mechanics, which is why it feels to me like you should be able to reject what a fellow PC tells you just as you can reject what an NPC tells you, even though the mechanics are different.
One more note: the rejecting influence move doesn’t actually mention someone telling you who you are or how the world works. The Influence move for when someone does that specifically calls out rejecting as a possibility, but the rejecting move itself doesn’t say that’s the only time it can be used. Hence my confusion.
I think we’re on the same page from a principles perspective, we’re just taking different readings on how to apply those principles.
Great question, James Etheridge! Here’re some answers:
When you take advantage of your Influence over someone, they don’t get the chance to reject it. This is for two reasons.
(1) Taking advantage of your Influence is an exertion, a direct and blatant usage. It’s not just making vague nudges—it’s saying, “If you’ve ever cared about what I think of you, then hear me right now!” (taking that extra +1 on a comfort or provoke, maybe), or “Hey! You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you never have! Shut up and get out of here, now, before you get yourself killed!” (inflicting Afraid). It’s such an intense push on that relationship that it creates an immediate response—but it then severs that connection, at least temporarily (indicated by you losing the Influence).
(2) Smoothness of the system. This is just pragmatic, so the game flows. It’s a big deal when you choose to wield your Influence like this! The cost is that you lose it, but the benefit is that it just happens. That way, we stay focused on that big moment, and move on quickly to the next big moment, without “Reject” taking away from the intensity of that moment by potentially revoking its effects.
That said, otherwise? You definitely should be able to reject Influence whenever it’s appropriate. This doesn’t come up all that often—PCs most often reject Influence only in direct response to being twisted by it. But if Magneto’s got Influence over your PC, and you give a big speech about how he’s just wrong-headed? Even if he didn’t specifically try to shift your Labels, you’re still probably rejecting his Influence in that moment.
Let us know if that helps!
That all makes sense. I’m inclined to keep the drama threshold well below mid-season showstopper to make sure the move actually comes up, but yeah, I see what you mean about it being an intense moment and why the mechanics work to support that.
Also: bonus thanks for that last bit. I hadn’t considered rejecting influence as something that can be done proactively instead of just reactively, but now I can totally see it, and that’s awesome!