What are people’s experiences with spiked emotional states?
At first glance, it seems like the Alleviate move makes it a bit too easy to end the emotion spike. Just roll once at -2 and it’s over. Has anyone tinkered with Alleviate to make it harder to end the spike, or made it more desirable to maintain the spiked state?
I think the key is to ensure fictional positioning. They can’t act with anger at -2 and have a moment of catharsis by being “a little ticked off.” They need to be /fucking angry and out of control/. That’s what the -2 means: they’re very likely to cause things to spiral out of control when acting with that emotion just then.
And if the action is strong enough to feel cathartic, and it misses (with a -2, that’s not going to be uncommon), you get to play out interesting consequences … after all, the more extreme the act, the more extreme the consequences reasonably are that follow that act.
Interesting perspective. I might have misunderstood the numbers. I assumed that when you spiked MAD, it meant you were really angry. Meanwhile, all your other emotions would be lessened and harder to access.
The spiked stat rolls at +1, all the others roll at -2.
So if I spike joyful, then roll Mad at -2 to end the spike, do I have to be really angry?
Maybe not “really angry,” but certainly “out of control” angry.
The numbers don’t measure the strength of the emotion, right? They measure how likely you are to get into trouble when acting on them. Positive values are emotions you can handle without being likely to cause problems; negative values suggest that when you act on these emotions, shit goes downhill fast.
One way you can interpret that is if you’ve been so joyful that you spiked out on it, that maybe you’ve been suppressing your anger and now when the anger breaks, it’s out of control.
So, yeah, the character acting that out should be out of control. They don’t get to be like, “Oh, I shoot a glare at the guy cutting me off on the line to the subway, and seize by force the spot in line, elbowing him out of the way.” It should definitely be a roaring-forth, or diving in without hedging one’s bets, or snapping off hurtfully without considering the consequences, etc. Something that reflects the level of recklessness they’re engaging that emotion with.
Additionally, let’s say they’re spiked out on mad. You can imagine what reckless joy would look like, right? Think of how heroin addicts and love-addled 16yo’s act like. It’s myopic, it’s thoughtless, it’s selfish, and it causes a lot more problems than it’s (probably) worth.
> if you’ve been so joyful that you spiked out on it, that maybe you’ve been suppressing your anger and now when the anger breaks, it’s out of control.
Yeah. I like that. It’s more interesting than my original interpretation of “If you’re spiking joy, then surely your level of mad must be tepid and barely there”