The optional rules for Harm in the pre-release really answer a question I’ve been struggling with. Conditions are emotional states. But what if you have a character that has no emotions. Such as a soulless automaton attacking the city. It’s pretty hard to justify inflicting emotional conditions on a robot the fiction says has no emotions. Having harm boxes instead of emotional conditions is forehead slapping common sense. I probably wouldn’t use it for PCs but when they’re facing off against robots, I can definetly use it there.
The optional rules for Harm in the pre-release really answer a question I’ve been struggling with.
The optional rules for Harm in the pre-release really answer a question I’ve been struggling with.
Yeah, it’s a helpful fix for NPCs, but having PCs without emotions just seems wrong for the game.
Now, PCs who deny having emotions, that’s different.
In ‘In 400 miles, turn left’, when I was creating alternate villains, I just gave them different conditions which trigger different moves.
So a giant robot could be Insecure [when its programming is vague], Damaged [systems go offline] and Omega Mode [when it breaks off into 5 animal-themed component robots.]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RX1ov1KyvwG61dZaBGvZ_UqmYuNOOmi9iaGzjz6_EIQ/edit#heading=h.yz6vqa5ep99g
Here’s the way Masks deals with this—if the robots don’t have emotions, they aren’t actually villains. They’re parts of the scenery. They can still be dangerous foes in high enough concentrations, capable of striking blows against you—but probably they go away quick once you bash them, since they don’t have any conditions. They’d be taken out immediately. Think about the Chitauri in Avengers—they probably don’t really have conditions, so they’re probably just part of the environment, treated not dissimilarly from a falling wall or a bomb. The Ultrons in Age of Ultron fall into two camps—there’s the hordes, who never actually feel like Ultron, and who are probably treated just like the Chitauri; and there’s the main Ultron robot, who definitely has emotions, and is a real villain.