Hey guys.

Hey guys.

Hey guys. I was wondering if people ever punish on Comfort or Support misses. I know it shouldn’t be every time else it would be chaos, and because there’s always to option of not opening up to force a miss, but sometimes it just seems like the perfect time to tag on Hopeless or Insecure, or take away Influence if they really screw up. This is definitely a roleplay question rather than a mechanics question, what do people think?

15 thoughts on “Hey guys.”

  5. Echoing what Aaron Griffin said, thinking of your moves as “punishment” is probably the wrong mindset. You want to reward the PCs for taking risks and doing things they might not succeed at, not punish them. It’s just that sometimes that “reward” consists of making their story more dramatic by giving them more complications to deal with!

    If they roll a miss, you can always make a move against them, including inflicting a condition. If simply inflicting a condition doesn’t feel fair, you could try telling them to take a powerful blow, because that covers emotional blows as well as physical.

    But having an NPC refuse to open up to them is not the same as a miss. They still rolled a hit, but you (or whoever plays the character whose mask they tried to pierce) decided to shut them out. Making a move against them for that strikes me as needlessly harsh, in most cases at least.

    Also, remember that NPCs will always try to clear conditions, even if that means opening up to someone they don’t like. After all, what villain doesn’t love to rant to the heroes about their motivations?

    As far as I can tell, there’s no GM move to take Influence away from the PCs, so you probably shouldn’t do that.

  6. I totally missed the part about ‘not opening up to force a miss’ on my first read of this post. Yeah, that’s not how the move works. OP, are you sure you follow how Masks is meant to work, or was that just a terminology slip up?

  7. If you don’t open up, nothing happens. If you roll low, nothing happens. That is what I meant by force a miss. I know its not a miss, and I would never make a move if they refuse to open up because its already an interesting situation. A team mate doesn’t trust another team mate? Break out the popcorn and enjoy. That was brought up as an analogy, not a proclamation. And I never brought up NPCs so I don’t know why that’s in the conversation.

    Also “punish” is not a bad word. Press them, push them, make their lives difficult. Making moves is all about increasing the drama, and that makes it inherently rough (or conditionally nice) else there would be no drama. Punish is just a synonym for a move you can do, literally in some cases. Like if a Secret Identity roll makes the mother of a Janus ground them and force them to sneak out. That’s is a great punishment literally and figuratively and it will be really fun to see how they Ferris Bueller there way out of that one.

  8. Jordan Davenport​ on a miss the GM makes a move. Maybe “show the effects of collateral damage” or “put innocents in danger” by having the TV flick to an emergency news broadcast in the middle of their comfort session. Or just have a villain crash their hug-circle.

    “Nothing happens” should never be the result of a roll in PbtA games.

  10. If you feel like someone should lose influence after a failed or shut down roll I’d handle it like this. If a player, lets call him Alan, tries to comfort or support another player, lets say Betty, and either fails or Betty chooses not to open up I’d ask Betty if she thinks Alan is trying to tell her about herself or how the world works and let that move resolve.

  11. You can hold off on a negative roll until you get a really nasty, wonderful idea. (This is why short breaks every few hours are vital: how else can you make the malfunctioning cyborg the Protege’s crush?)

  12. Jordan Davenport you don’t really need to “turn it back on them”. A miss is your opportunity to make things happen in the world. If the heroes are sitting around in their hideout rolling, the misses can be used to make the outside world move around.

    It’s hard to understand, but a 6- doesn’t have to relate to the roll at all. Just like a 6- doesn’t always indicate a failure of what was intended.

  13. Aaron Griffin Good point. Turn it back on them has just always been in my head as the standard miss, especially for PC on PC rolls. But that makes total sense. Something like reveal future danger sounds perfect for a scene like that, or any number of other moves. Thanks for the tips.

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