Hi guys I was curious about something involving marking conditions. Can a player give themselves a condition whenever they want, similar to how they can always give influence to whomever they want?
My player has the transformed move ‘Coming at you’, which gives him a +1 against whomever he blames for giving him the condition. He is angry (in fiction) at a villain for endangering lives, so he just gave himself Angry without a move asking him to, and blaming the villain for it.
I’m personally ok with it-because the condition has more negatives than benefits, but I wanted to find out what you guys (and potentially the game creators) thought of this situation.
I don’t think so.This should work but you should have a talk if this happens too frequently. At some point that level of angry just becomes their new normal.
Yeah, we corrected it. Turned out it was a miscommunication, but I wanted to hear other people’s opinion on the matter.
/sub
I don’t know if the rulebook says anything about this either way, but I frequently give myself conditions and I’ve always encouraged players in my games to do so as well. Only when fictionally appropriate, of course, and only where it fits the short-term, high-intensity nature of conditions: being angry that Firefly only lasted 14 episodes is different from being Angry, etc.
With conditions being an almost purely-negative thing, mechanically, I can’t see it doing much harm, and I’ve not seen it cause any issues in play thus far. Even your Transformed with that move is only getting a +1 forward out of the bargain — valid for a single roll — and they spent a move choice or an advancement for that privilege, so if the condition fits the fiction, sure, why not?
On the flip side, having conditions marked is awesome for encouraging players to engage with some of the coolest, less-frequently-seen elements of Masks: the comfort or support of a teammate, several playbooks’ share a vulnerability moves and all the delicious “do something reckless to clear it yourself” actions.