I’m curious how peop[e have handled conditions. In my few games, It seems that I am usually struggling to assign particular conditions to characters and villians within the fiction. You can only say “you punch him through a wall and he gets angry” so many times before it begins to feel a little overdone.
I attempted an alternate take on condition, with a more dungeon-world/FATE feel, where the characters had a harm track and then took a condition to “overcome” the harm. The conditions were cumulative unless someone used the Comfort/support move (and allowed players to use it on themselves). We also used conditions such as blinded, electrocuted, stunned etc in order to reduce harm as well, allowing the player to take a -1 ongoing for each physical condition in lieu of being “knocked out”. Players became a little stronger at first, but it quickly became very interesting as our speedster got blinded, crashed into a building, and then got electrocuted.
I am open to other interpretations and/or better ideas on how to properly utilize conditions in game!
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For clarification are you asking for suggestions for using conditions in the rules as written or suggestions for alternative ways to track damage?
Both alternative rules as well a examples on how to use conditions as written
Well my first suggestion for alternate rules is to check the back of the core book, if you haven’t already, it has some suggestions for custom conditions and harm.
For using conditions by the book you need to look at it differently between players and NPCs. For Players its important to distinguish between how significant damage and insignificant damage. Not every hit should require the players to mark a condition, only the ones that move the narrative. The significant attacks should be described in a way that lead to certain conditions. If you want a player to mark afraid describe how terrifying the attack is, if you want them hopeless explain how the attack shows that they are out of their league.
For NPCs instead of saying what the condition they just marked was go straight for the hard move and show what condition was just marked through their action. Instead of saying “You hit her and now she’s mad,” describe it as “You hit her with you best shot and for a second you think you might have taken her out. But then suddenly she’s up again and getting in your face, it looks like she’s ready to murder you.”
I feel like I’m missing something.
Did you actually say “you punch him through the wall and he gets angry” at the table?
Anyway, conditions for NPCs matter in as much to narrow down which condition moves you choose to prompt your description of the NPCs reactions to having been given a condition in the first place (which you are probably not going to literally announce to the PCs).
I’m not really understanding the need to replace the mechanic of using the conditions moves. Do you feel the 25 condition move prompts don’t not provide enough inspiration to describe an NPCs reactions?
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Okay, so, you know how in good action movies, every action beat is also a beat about the balance of social power between the two characters? Masks is like that, all the time. If the character is punching someone, there’s also something about what each of them want from the other involved in that moment. Does that give you a frame to think about this in?
You don’t say how a villain feels, that makes me feel angry! NPC emotions should trigger their moves.
For PCs, tell them to “Mark a condition”. The Bull may go to Angry and Afraid by Default while the Outsider is drawn to Hopeless & Guilty, and the Beacon is an Insecurity engine.
If you want another approach on conditions, you may want to take a look on Worlds in Peril.
I am all the time picking something from here and there myself.
All my NPCs take their cues from Kevin Sorbo.
media.giphy.com – media.giphy.com/media/L02M3FJhkF19S/giphy.gif
Yeah, I’ve been struggling with conditions too. I think part of that, in my case, is that I try to draw a hard line between my actions and the player’s characters. I will tell them what happened. They will tell me what their characters do and/or feel in response to what happened. End. So the idea that I should be telling players how their characters feel makes me a bit uncomfortable.
…On the other hand, typing this out is making me realize that conditions should really be triggered at any point where they seem like they might be relevant, and I should be paying a bit more attention to emotional cues at how my player’s narrate, if I’m going to hold to my line. So. We’ll see how this goes.
I’m not sure I understand: when Would you be telling the players what they feel? In combat, Players choose their conditions; the GM doesn’t assign them. Outside of combat, wouldn’t you just be asking the players if various things — in high stress situations — indicate Anger, Fear, etc?
Well, there’s the GM move literally named “Inflict a Condition”. Conditions are reflections of the emotional state of the character. There’s a few different ways to read that, but no matter how it’s played out, as the GM I’m making the decision that that a character feels one of angry, afraid, guilty, hopeless, or insecure.
But that’s not really my call to make… I could use the move strictly passively – if the character’s acting insecure, have them mark insecure, etc – and that’s fine, but using it actively involves the decision, on my part, that a character will emotionally react to an event. When that character’s reaction to the event has nothing to do with me.
So I can’t really use them actively. Not without making assumptions I’m not comfortable making. And the nice way of doing that (asking if their Angry/Afraid/etc) seems to fall more cleanly under the move “Tell them the possible consequences and ask” – the consequences being a possible emotional shift.
The consequence is two-fold:
1) As GM, I have no way of actively using any concept of harm to further the story, because I can’t just say “you feel angry”. I can say “you’ve been blinded by the dust” – to use AwesomePony’s example – but it’s ultimately up to the player to go from “I’m blinded” to “I feel angry/insecure/etc”. It sounds like AwesomePony just provided mechanical incentive to do-so.
2) There isn’t really a way for a character to get physically hurt, and have it matter. As written, “I’m angry [at myself] because I was thrown into a wall and hurt my leg” isn’t functionally different from “I’m angry because the villain called me incompetent”. Which doesn’t seem particularly reasonably. Yeah, they’re superheroes, but that doesn’t mean physical impediments never happen.
1) You can literally respond to a failed move (or any golden opportunity) with the words “Mark a condition”, then ask why they feel that way.
2) Fiction first means a broken arm can’t be used for lifting and you can’t read someone’s nametag when you’re blind.
I understand that I can. I just don’t think it’s my place as GM. By doing so, I’m literally saying “your character has an emotional reaction, tell me why”. I consider emotional states to be part of character roleplay, and the player’s right to play their character as they wish. That’s not something I want to intrude on. To me, that’s just as bad as telling the player their character performs an action. It’s just not something I want to do.
As for fiction first, yeah… but I don’t think that’s enough weight. Being blinded should affect my ability to defend, say, or directly engage. Same with a broken arm, or a torn tendon, or anything else. When some of the moves that can be taken are physical actions, then being hurt physically should make it more difficult to succeed.
I think a houserule I might try next time I start a game would be a simplified version of what AwesomePony 107 mentioned. Every player gets a 3-tick-long Harm track. A tick is made when something physically bad, that narratively makes sense to have an impact happens to the character. Each tick is a -1 mod to Unleash Your Powers, Directly Engage, Defend, and a +1 to Take a Powerful Blow.
A tick may be cleared, at any time, by marking a Condition (and some things just cause Conditions directly). Assuming there’s narrative justification (with significant leeway in deference to the superhero thing).
Maxing out the Harm track then receiving anything else that would mark the track is an automatic Take a Powerful Blow, with all that entails.
Greg,
I have found that system seems to work well. My players seem to understand a harm track better than the condition system as written. Of course, lots of others may have different experiences, but that is one of the great versatilities of the pbta system.
I found that a 3 tick harm track( using poker chips) works great, and then just tweak the danger move into a “bring the pain”, where you cause 1 harm to your opponent if he is vulnerable to your attack. If not, you can pick from a list- take an item, change location, or impose a condition. 7-9 means you get harmed in the process.
I also allow characters to choose a condition ( can be anything, not just emotional stress) after reaching 3 harm to avoid being knocked out, and use the “comfort” move to mitigate harm. I’ve also toyed with the idea of using team points for absorbing harm.
I use defend as a “defy danger” move that I use to push action forward. It seems to work well and it keeps the savior label (and the beacon) from being irrelevant.
I also use a lot of worlds in peril for inspiration- I love the action system and moves but not character generation, bonds or powers.
Let me know how the harm system works in your game and I will continue to share my experiences.
There was an awesome scene where my outsider was blasted into a crater by a villain and the beacon came to defend her by distracting the villain and then comforted her by giving a cool pep talk ( while he was dodging bolts of energy)- I reset her harm track by 2 and they worked together to end the fight. Players loved it and the beacon felt like the total boss after that fight. It was comic book worthy!
Greg, here are some things to consider:
-Telling players to mark a condition isn’t telling them to have an emotional reaction–it’s telling them they’re in an emotional state . Having emotional reactions is how you clear conditions, and that’s up to the players.
-Telling them they’re in an emotional state isn’t intruding onto the player’s domain. I mean, that’s obviously true in the sense that the rules of Masks specifically require you to do that, but the overall relationship between Players and GMs isn’t violate. Players dictate actions, and GMs describe consequences–and that’s what you’re doing when you tell people to mark angry, same as if you’d told them to lose 5 hp. Ask yourself–if you’re comfortable telling a player that they’re blinded by dust, why aren’t you comfortable telling them they’re blinded by rage? The physical conditions you inflict on a player alter their perceptions and limit their capabilities. That’s what the emotional conditions do too.
My “emotional reactions” should probably be read as “emotional states”, really. That’s just poor phrasing on my part.
Then I’m comfortable telling a player they’ve been blinded by dust because that’s an objective thing that happens based off physical circumstances that I, as the GM, either understand or control. If I throw sand into the eyes of someone not wearing glasses, they’re all going to be functionally blind.
Emotional states are different. The same stimulus isn’t going to have the same effect on different people. I could walk up to someone and say “Your mother’s a whore and your father’s a bastard”, and found myself sprawled on the ground because I made him angry. I could say the same thing to the very next person I see and just get a shrug of the shoulders, as they don’t care. On top of that I don’t know the mental circumstances of the character. It’s likely the player doesn’t, either, but it’s part of their job to discover their character.
Well, no. But likewise, some people could blink, and not be blinded by the sand. some people could be wearing glasses. All that stuff, within the context of the game, is dictated by the play of moves and countermoves, PC failures etc. You’re not allowed to tell the PC that they’re angry whenever you feel like it–you get to (and in fact, you’re obligated to) based on the circumstances and dice rolls of the game that no one player has control over.
And that’s the point. The fun of an RPG is that it’s unpredictable. When you wall off emotions from any game mechanic, you’re not giving players a chance to discover their emotional state on their own–you’re just telling them that emotions don’t matter, which leads to a less satisfying game. That’s why the physical harm rules in the core book add on to , rather than replace, conditions–because conditions are central to the core play of masks. Getting inside characters heads is what the game is all about–from influence to labels to conditions to the playbook archetypes. If that’s not what you want, then why are you playing Masks at all?
I don’t think GM evef tells the player what Condition to mark; the GM just Inflicts a Condition. The player narrates their reaction/Condition.
Also, can’t you clear of a Condition any time you want by taking the appropriate action. If you’re Angry, destroy something … and clear your Condition.
It’s not about getting harmed and taken out inasmuch as it’s about acting and reacting to find out what happens.
I’d go further and say that that’s what most roleplaying games are for. Yeah, there’s a few with different focuses, but at least with PbtA, I think we can safely say a large part of the appeal is getting inside your character’s head.
But that’s exactly it. The player’s job is to get inside their character’s head, to understand their character and their motivations. As a GM, my job is to provide ample motivations and scenarios to push their character. I create the “physical” realities the character interacts with it. The player controls the character’s mental state, and all that entails – including their reactions and what their character does.
Sorry to side track things a little bit but does anyone have ideas on how to use the Nova’s burn with a harm track instead of conditions?
Arc Gamedirector A straight Harm track, or a hybrid system like AwesomePony 107 and I’ve mentioned?
A hybrid system I’d probably just leave exactly the same, except maybe making it so that a miss marks 2 Conditions and 1 Harm instead. Otherwise, the idea that charging powers is going to be a mental activity, and should be hindered by conditions, seems most pertinent, and I don’t see any reason to change it.
Yes, I meant a hybrid system. My only issue is that conditions add to your roll, not subtract from it, which means that it would be hard for the Nova to succeed as frequently if they’re getting less conditions.
Oh! I missed that on first glance, likely due to not having a Nova in my current game.
Nah, I still think it’s fine. It’s just extra incentive for the Nova to patch up Harm with a Condition.
OK- Here are the moves I used. Again, not for every play style, but my players liked them and they are a work in progress. Critique would be great within the context of the moves. Thanks for the fruitful discussion! I removed the “take a powerful blow” move in lieu of the “defend” move (I didn’t like the idea of rolling for success and then getting hurt, I also think the defend move is more versatile and I didn’t understand how “failure” on that move could net you XP.)
Masks updated moves
1) “Bring the pain” (directly engage)
Anytime you want to engage another person, thing or group roll +danger and choose one of the following
– If you can harm them with your attack, mark off 1 harm and invoke an immediate villain move
– If you are harming a mob, reduce it’s size by 1 (goes from Huge-L-M-Sm)
– If you cannot harm them (or choose not to), choose one of the following
-Change venue
-Take an object from them
-Impose a condition (blinded, entangled, angry)
-On a 7-9, you take harm as well.
-On a fail, you take harm
2) Defend/Defy-
-Use this move anytime you are trying to avoid a hard move from the GM, including environmental dangers, enemy attacks, or others. Roll + Savior. This includes using powers.
– If you are invulnerable, then you need not roll for this, but secondary effects may happen
On a 7-9, you defend successfully, but you pay a price (bad fictional positioning or suffer a conditionblinded, fall off the ship, etc)3) Rally-
-If you or someone on your team gives you a reason to keep on fighting, they roll + mundane and on a success you convert one of your harm tracks to a condition (angry, afraid, guilty, hopeless, insecure). On a 7-9, either the player (if they rallied themselves), or the team member (if they rallied another) suffers a condition as well. On a 12+, erase all harm tracks.
Harm track- Every hero has 3 harm that they can take when getting involved in combat. These erase between combats and represent physical/mental stress. Each harm invokes a -1 penalty to all actions. You can use team points to 1/1 erase harm tracks by working together as a team; encouraging eachother/ etc.