Hypothetical: Superkid has used an advancement to lock his mundane label at -1.
Superkid’s mom is telling him not to worry about the weight of the world yadda yadda, essentially things that would trigger shifting his savior down and mundane up.
What happens?
Does the move not trigger because mundane can no longer be shifted? Savior is still able to be shifted.
Does his mom end up inflicting a condition on him since one of the labels can’t be shifted?
The second. Any time a label should be shifted and cant be it turns into a condition.
Yep, he gets a condition and neither label changes.
Thanks. That’s what I thought.
My understanding is that there’s no condition for an attempt to shift a locked label. Otherwise it wouldn’t be much of an advancement.
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And doesn’t Reject an Influence still apply? Meaning someone who has a locked Label can still benefit from Rejecting someone’s influence? If they roll a hit, not only is there no new condition, but they can potentially clear an existing condition (or any other benefit of the move). If they roll a miss – then the condition gets applied – but the stats won’t move regardless?
Yeah that’s what I’d assume.
According to the rules (I looked at pg 118 under advancements for this snippet), if a label is locked, you ignore anything that targets that label shift. So the hero could have someone tell him to move mundane up or down and nothing would happen. The label is locked. There is no condition gained, because nothing happened.
Of course, that also means whatever else was supposed to shift up or down also wouldn’t move. Locking a label just makes you immune to anything that targets that label. Your hero knows who they are in regards to that label, and someone telling them otherwise isn’t going to affect them much anymore.
I can certainly see them getting angry that they’re being told they’re a danger when they know they’re not. If the move triggers then they should be liable to get a condition in place of a shifted label
Again, all I’m saying is that the rules say locked labels don’t get triggered by moves and they ignore anything that tells them to shift. If it makes sense for your group and they like that idea, great. By all means, go for it.
Labels aren’t triggered by moves, moves are triggered by the fiction. Label shifting is the effect of a move. Page 118 doesn’t keep the reject influence move from triggering.
Arguably, locking a label forces you to reject influence more often resulting in the move triggering more often. You can never accept influence that results in the locked label shifting. That’s from the fiction you’ve already put in place by locking the label. While you can’t shift the label, if you miss on rejecting influence you get a condition regardless of whether labels shift. Page 80. You also get all of the benefits of hitting on the reject influence move.
The point is that a label lock means they’re confident enough in their own self image that nobody can make them feel angry or insecure or whatever by talking about how dangerous they are, or how much of a freak they are, etc.
Right. So it will never change. They always reject the influence. The move triggers. Absolutely nothing in the text says the move doesn’t trigger normally.
A player does not have to roll to reject influence on a locked label. They are allowed to “ignore the effect in its entirety”. If they want to roll and potentially gain a condition or potential, that’s up to the GM.
Moves are not effects. If something happens in the story it triggers a move, not an effect. Only the result of the move is an effect—even an MC move.
Target a different label.
Applying a condition only happens if you try to shift a label beyond its minimum/maximum, or if the hero attempts to reject the influence and fails. Neither of those is happening here. A hero automatically rejects an attempt to shift a locked label, thus no condition is applied.
Rejecting the influence in the narrative is the trigger for the move so the move triggers.
The reject influence move is not a saving throw against a label shift mechanical effect. It’s the move that triggers when Superkid says, “No Mom, that’s not true,” which the kid does because his label is locked.
Mom isn’t using a label shift move on the kid. The MC doesn’t say, “oh your mom said this so roll reject influence.” Reject influence triggers by the character actually doing the act of rejecting in the fiction. If the kid’s label were not locked and he said, “I guess you’re right mom,” the MC just uses their shift labels move and his labels shift because he’s accepting the influence. With the locked label he can’t say, “I guess you’re right” and accept the influence because the story has already established that he’ll never agree with that kind of influence. He has to say, “no mom that’s not true,” and that triggers the reject influence move. There is no label shifting effect to be negated by the locked label until he misses on the reject influence move.
Can’t target a different label because his mom isn’t saying he’s a danger or a freak, she’s saying his mundane. The move has to follow what’s happening in the fiction.
I would word it a different way. The hero doesn’t actually need to reject their influence because the rules let them ignore the effects of a label shift on a locked label. No “reject influence” move is triggered, because they basically ignored the advice about how mundane they are. How mundane they are is something they aren’t even concerned about anymore. There was no rejection of influence because a locked label ignores label shifts, even if someone moved to influence them.
So, in following with the fiction, the hero’s mother would say “You need to be more mundane” and triggers a label shift. The hero shrugs, because they know exactly how mundane they are. The move/trigger/whatever was neither rejected nor accepted, just ignored. Because it doesn’t matter to them, and it isn’t a narrative point the player is interested in anymore (because they locked that label).
But her saying it doesn’t trigger the label shift. You keep positioning the label shift as some sort of attack the character is rolling defense against. It’s not. The label shift comes from either the character accepting the influence or missing on the reject influence move. That’s how the book describes it in the section about influence.
Rejecting influences is more like The Sprawl’s harm move than it is Dungeon World’s defy danger.
The problem is, mechanically as a player character, it doesn’t make sense to accept or reject that influence. Performing either action would not change who they are now. By the rules, they’ve locked their own label, they already know how mundane they are. If they accept the label shift, nothing happens because the label can’t shift. If they reject the influence, they can roll to get a condition and potential, but with no corresponding label shift when they miss? That’s just abusing the system for exp. To me, this is one instance where the rules create a bizarre paradox.
In the fiction, I would allow them to say either “yes” or “no” to the question as they wanted to and just move the game along. The mother is trying to tell them “who they are or how the world works”, but the hero already knows the answer in this case. It seems like a failed attempt to use influence more than anything else to me, because the hero can’t be influenced about this label anymore.
But again, if you want to, I don’t see why the player can’t roll for it if they’re trying to act up and wrestle influence away from the NPC using the move against them. In that instance, it would make sense to try and roll for it and maybe get a condition or potential from the results. Or maybe we just really won’t see eye to eye on this.
It’s clear neither of us is changing the other’s point of view so instead of escalating to more and more paragraphs of variations on the same points—like focusing a telescope—I’ll just say it was nice having the conversation with you since it made me think about my own point of view and made me more confident in my own point of view. Thank you.
Agreed. Thanks for your time.
Locked labels make you immune to the shift. So when the shift WOULD try to happen, which would inflict a condition, it doesnt so no condition is inflicted.
This represents the hero growing up, which the the theme of the game.