Fictional nature of Villain Conditions
How important have you all found it to have the villain conditions be literally reflected in play? For example, if you check Guilty for a villain, is it really important for them to be obviously fictionally guilty? I get the connection to the specific list of triggered moves, and how that is important. But is it enough to just show the move that is triggered in the fiction?
I’m asking because for tonight’s game I’m think big robot. Big robot feels no literal emotions. Can things that feel no emotions even be threats with conditions? That seems like a silly question, but it wouldn’t be the first time the obvious answer from past experience from other games would not apply to a specific PbtA game. Also the rules seem pretty clear about the connection between checking a condition and the villain’s internal emotional state. For example: pg 158 – “Mark Guilty for a villain if they understand the terrible nature of the things they do, but aren’t sure what else they can do.”
Multi part answer for a complex question.
1) Masks is as much about human(oid) drama in the context of superhero stuff as it is about actual superhero stuff. So a robot that feels no emotions can work, it’s just a lot less interesting than a robot that can. Especially if they end up as a recurring character, or if you have any Spider-Man / Deadpool types who like to banter with the villains.
2) That said, emotions are complex things, and there are more than five of them. The important bits are the condition moves that they inspire the villain to make, and the actions they’re driven to take between scenes to clear those conditions.
3) Springing off of both of those, you can make custom conditions for your villain if emotions really don’t apply. Like Damaged from the Newborn, which is a good template in general for artificial persons.
But it’s a lot simpler to just use the conditions as is, not worry too much if they don’t directly map to actual emotions, and be open to the possibility that your big robot might have (or develop!) emotions after all. Play to Find Out What Changes, and all that.
If the robot feels nothing, who built it? Who’s controlling it? Perhaps the conditions apply to her?
I thought about this in X-Men terms when thinking about Sentinels. I resolved to give giant robots their own set of Conditions.
Confused
In Distress
Immobilized
Short Circuited
In Flames
In Pieces
And each condition triggers a move that complicates things for the Pc’s
Good robot emotions:
-Disdain
-Jealousy
-Confusion
-Recaculation
Thanks for the answers! Good stuff, and good questions for me to think about.
It ended up the robot didn’t actually get activated last night anyway, so never became an over threat.