After I MCing Dungeon World, Worlds in Peril, and The Sprawl(now playing), I feel keenly the importance of using Tags as fictional positioning and as an ingredient in MC moves. But sometimes, I forget to use (or don’t know how to use) them and just make a series of dull description. And I realize the story starts to go flat.
I love Tags because they fuse into the fiction seamlessly(which is the main reason why I switched my go-to system from Fate to PbtA. Sometimes, using Aspects feels artificial to me). But unlike Aspects, I find it very easy to forget to use Tags because there is no bonus or penalty to use Tags. They are only for fictional positioning.
So, how can I become proficient in using Tags as a MC? Could you share your tips?
Man, this is such a good question. I, too, recognize the importance of using tags – it prevents fictional positioning from being just GM fiat. I’m also not too good at it.
The problem I have, is in recalling tags that exist and are not on a thing when looking at said thing. I might not think that the 3-harm sub machine gun doesn’t have the “area” tag so shouldn’t be harming multiple people at once.
Forceful and Messy are two I always make sure I have a good handle on. Someone (PC or Monster) hit by either in an attack can carry huge fictional repercussions.
I have been highlighting the tags in my notes so that my eyes will find them easily. I usually highlight in yellow, but use orange for forceful and messy to extra-emphasize them and remind me that they’re super important to remember.
Copy/paste from the same question on a less active thread… 🙂
It helps if you can get players to remind you of their tags from time to time as part of their descriptions. Like, “I pull out my discreet pistol, check to make sure it’s been reloaded, and enter the room…” Just having the terms come up kind of helps remind you to use them when it’s time to make moves.
Brian Holland How do you describe if PCs hit a monster with a Forceful or Messy weapon, but low damage(probably 1 or 2)?
.
I “scale” the forcefulness or messiness based on damage: 1 or 2 dmg forceful might be “you get knocked down” or “you stagger back several feet” and 1 or 2 dmg messy might break or rib or cause a nasty gash. High damage might “send you flying” or tear off a limb.
Brian Holland Very helpful tip! Thank you 🙂
What Brian Holland said about using the damage roll to modulate the forcefulness & messiness. Also, I modulate how “permanent” a messy attack is based on:
1) How much I’ve set up the threat. I’ll almost never rip a limb off without making it clear that’s a possibility.
2) The roll itself. A 6- might slice a hand/arm off, but a 7-9 will probably just (just) cost you a finger or give you a dislocated shoulder.
3) Fictional positioning, obviously. A messy assassin vine is going to cause less dramatically horrible injuries than a messy orc berserker.
Regarding range tags (and other “constraint” tags, like reload): I think it’s mostly about internalizing fiction and what those tags represent.
Like, for DW and the hand vs close vs. reach tags, and awkward, doing some actual fighting/sparring can help a lot. Failing that, play some fighting games that really focus on distance and timing… Bushido Blade and Samurai Showdown both jump to mind. If you can really get a sense of distance, time, momentum, and how they affect fights… that can really help your ability to GM a melee. And if you can visualize it, the tags become more of an afterthought, a common language to help everyone know what to visualize.
Low damage messy: I’ve got bad news about your finger.
High damage messy: I’ve got bad news about your arm.
Would it help if there was some kind of “cheat sheet” for tags? My problem is I often forget what a tag means or does in the heat of the moment and just gloss past it rather than making sure it impacts the story in the correct fashion, and grind the game down to “looking up descriptions for tags” every time. But I confess my memory for rules is terrible. I “fly by feel” way too often.
Tags can be used as sort of a linguistic hierarchy (instead of a numeric one) Light vs. Medium vs. Heavy (I personally love the tag “Intimate” for range).
However, I think tags are so much more useful when they give “character” to an item. “Sleek” “magnetic” (as in alluring) “chic.” These all add, in my opinion, role-playing possibilities to the object’s owner.
This question also reminds me of a book of which I read the first chapter. It was a fantasy story and the protagonist practiced not “black magic” or “fire magic” but something like “chocolate magic.” Once I read that I was like, Oh shit… you can just shove any noun in front of anything and get something new:
I just had a random list generator give me a list of three nouns to prove my point:
“Afterthought magic”
“Downtown magic”
“Observation magic”
Are all very evocative.
You can easily do the same with adjectives
randomlists.com – Random Adjective Generator – Adjective List
Come to a game armed with a list and insist on people picking from it. At worst, you can force them to create funky pairs.
I love it.