Looking at some of the Infiltrator moves for an upcoming game, I’m trying to figure if “psychological warfare” is supposed to cover the actual violence, or just the attempt to mess with enemy morale?
To give an example – let’s say I’m stalking the corridors of a corporate facility, causing a few inconveniently placed guards to quietly disappear from their posts, and causing the remainder to be more worried about their skins than doing their job.
The move says “when you attempt to influence the morale of your enemies by leaving evidence of violence”. But I’m unclear whether the actual violence (eliminating inconvenient guards) would come under this move – or whether this move would trigger after the guards were eliminated (perhaps with Mix It Up). Thoughts?
Or as an another example… Covert Entry allows you to spend hold to disable a guard… would something like this be considered a prerequisite for triggering Psychological Warfare?
You could easily have the move include some incidental violence, but it could also follow from violence caused by other moves. Certainly if the violence had some other purpose, I would probably have it be a move (so, psychological warfare is not a way to, say, roll mix it up with Edge and avoid the nasty consequences of that move).
To bring in your specific examples, if you had just caused violence with mix it up or covert entry, you could certainly leave evidence remaining from those moves to satisfy the requirement of psychological warfare without additional violence.
Ok, so if I was going out of my way to eliminate a few guards (instead of bypassing them) just to terrify the others, you might bundle it in as part of the psychological warfare move.
But if I was eliminating them because they’re in the way, then using that to mess with the others, it would be two actions – one to to remove them (mix it up or covert entry), then another to mess with the survivors (psychological warfare). Is that how you see it?
That’s my general thinking, yes. Although fictional circumstances, blah blah.
Yes, of course things adapt to circumstances. Just wanted to get the thinking around the design of that move, and how you think it should be adjudicated…