Okay so I’m making a setting for AW2, it’s about giant monsters.
This is one of the core moves involved with it:
HIT THE SWEET SPOT
When you hit the sweet spot, roll+hard.
On a 10+, deal your harm.
On a 7-9, deal your harm and prepare for the worst. MC, shift to red.
So having got on top of a giant monster and found its weak point, it’s eyes, some acid carrying sack, you hack that thing to pieces! No where else but the sweet spot does any lasting damage. In the fiction you might even be able to blow a hole in it, but only the sweet spot matter when it comes to killing it.
On a 10+, you start whittling away at its health, might take two goes at it, but I want the fight to end swiftly once you battled your way past the flame-breath and the falling buildings. Advanced moves will provide more flavour to this roll, but I want it to be on point for the basic.
On a 7-9, you still hurt it, but it throws you off, or the thing covers you in bile, or your weapon snaps.
Now the final bit, MC, shift to red. All the giantmonsters have three states [yellow], [red] and [black].
Yellow covers the general monsters.
Red is a berserker rage, a charging of powers, a metamorphosis into something more sinister. They’re harder to kill, and always shocking.
Black is how it behaves near death. At this point it’ll wear down its own health, which I think will be thematically cool, like you can swarm and ankle bite them to death if you’ve got the time and resources.
I’m still tinkering with how you make a giant monster, but they’re not going to be DnD stat-blocks, more like acting prompts and vague abilities.
Thoughts on the move?
I realise this is the tiniest of moves, but I guess I just want Humongous (the setting) to really shine.
I’ve just realised how there’s nothing to really comment on, I guess I just needed to think. 🙂
What about stats/prompts for the monster, and different ones for the ‘sweet spot’? (getting to the sweet spot is like killing the pilot of the giant robot – you don’t need to deal with the huge metal thing, afterwards..)
I’m of the opinion that Basic Moves should really help players (including the GM) see what the game is about.
Currently (and looked at in a vacuum) this move is not really that evocative. The move’s trigger and results don’t really tell me anything about the world. The follow up explanation you’ve put below the move’s text is much better.
I know you said advanced moves will provide more “flavor” but I think that is a mistake. As Basic Moves happen most often, I think they’re the moves that really need to set the tone and establish the setting with their triggers and results. You need to juice this up as it is currently very dry.
I get what you’re saying, but basically the rest of monster has no set in stone health, it only matters for the sweet spot. You could hit the thing in the chest for 5-harm, and it might bleed lava, but its not going down until you chop of its wiggly psychic antenna, you know?
I guess I just like the idea of using all your rockets on a Godzilla-lookalike, and after the dust settles, its still coming for you, maybe dragging a leg, but damn, it ain’t dead.
You’re right Chris, I’ll keep at it. Thing is, I don’t want to sway the action too much, because every giant monster will be different, so rather than giving the player a choice of “fall off”, “take appropriate damage” and “lose something”, which I could well do, I (currently) am settling for a catch all “prepare for a bad time”.
But with the fiction first nature of PbtA games, it doesn’t really matter if you provide “impossible” options for a move’s possible results.
If “fall off” is one of the 7-9 options but there is nothing to fall off of from, the player can’t pick it as an option.
I’m not saying you should write moves that have a lot of non applicable options, but I think you’ve gone way too generic here.
HIT THE SWEET SPOT
When you hit the sweet spot, roll+hard.
On a hit, MC, shift into red phase.
On a 10+, inflict harm, or put yourself in serious danger to deal +1 harm.
On a 7-9, inflict harm and choose 1.
– Fall, or get thrown from the don.
– Lose, or have your weapon destroyed.
– Take severe harm, or a crippling debility.
On a 6, you falter, stumble or are forced to hunker down, prepare for the worst.
I think that’s it.
Honestly, this move makes me feel like it wants to be the finishing move from World Wide Wrestling. It’s about that single dramatic moment that ends the fight. The thing is that in WWW, this moment is fake. You spend the match putting on a show, falsly building up tension. That game isn’t about the fight, it’s about trying to maintain the illusion of a fight, which is why that last move is so important, it tells if the whole thing was worth while. I guess my question is, what do you want your game to be about, not just in setting, but in play experience? Whatever you answer make your core move about that.