* Using Conditions*
Since the release of the 2nd Edition, there’s no longer anything in the book about how the MC interacts with players’ Conditions.
I’m running a campaign, and I’m finding that the players are accumulating Conditions and – clearly – it doesn’t really matter. No one has ever even so much as tried to remove one.
Using them as “reputations” (particularly at school) can certainly inspire how I play my NPCs, and sometimes I try to really exaggerate that.
Aside from that, though, what and how can an MC really make Conditions feel significant?
How do you leverage them and make them count?
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Had similar issues in the Monsterhearts games I have run, no one used really ever used conditions. I mostly just rolled with it.
If you want to make it “count” though you have to make it sting, make it hurt. Start treating people like their conditions would suggest. Is someone a “Bitch” or something like that, excluded them from plot points or social gatherings and when they ask what happened say “Well your kinda a bitch”. Someone has the condition “Stupid” maybe people just ignore what they have to say “Ah don’t listen to him he’s an idiot”. Does someone have the condition “Beaten up by Brad Landry” make him the laughing stock of the school, describe people snickering not so much behind his back.
If that doesn’t bother them, give them different conditions next time. Maybe the player is happy being seen as a Bitch and wants to play that roll, but they might not like being seen as and idiot. Maybe someone is cool with being not the sharpest tool in the shed but they don’t want to be the wimp
I’ve also seen them used as great fictional positioning to either invoke something that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, or to make things worse.
“You still have ‘wimp’… Hmmm… – 1 to turn on Haley”
“You’ve got still got ‘stinky boy’, as soon as you enter the room, you can see the noses scrunch up. You see Trevor has a wicked grin and is walking towards you and you can see him taking the lid off his drink.”
Oh yes I thought I would add a piece of advice. This will require the use of competent NPCs that matter to the PCs (even if they PCs don’t think they matter) and giving them the consequences to their actions.
If the PCs are always the stars of the show and everything they do is so gosh darn amazing that no one can ever compete, then yeah the little people who don’t get screen time thinking your an “asshole” doesn’t really matter. You as a GM can make it matter.
While the PCs are encountering roadblocks in the pursuit of their goals because of their several conditions, have an NPC (even a brand new NPC or one they have some animosity towards from past interactions) start achieving their goal with simple ease due to not having those conditions (and not having to make rolls). Now this illustrates that to get what they want they have several paths to achieve their goal. They can power through their detriments, work harder than their competitor and beat them against unfair odds to achieve their stated goal possibly to little or no acclaim depending on what consequences they have and what more they picked up on the way. They do things to unburden themselves from their conditions and try to even up the fight a little, or they can sell out and start sucking up to the person who is achieving it so they can simply win by proxy, or they can kill their newest rival like the monsters they are deep inside and in the ensuing chaos try to quietly slip into the role they once filled.
The first option is the stuff classic heroes and antihero are made of, overcoming adversity to achieve their ends anyway. If your players are willing to slog through challenge after challenge with a boat anchor around their neck obviously pulling them down every chance it gets and some how still manage to legitimately achieve their goal to your satisfaction, heck it may not have gotten them to remove consequences but that might be because they like overcoming their adversities and possibly doing the Tyrion Lannister “Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness” approach. Then can be not just a bitch but the head bitch in charge or not just a fool but a fool who bested the smartest kids in class, or maybe he’s the punk who got his ass beat by Brad, but he is still the guy now dating Brad’s Ex.
The second options is the thing your looking for
The toadie option may seem like a cop out and the easiest path (because it is) but it also is keen to remember that happiness comes at the expense of others. As a Toadie, your probably the one left holding the bill for everyone’s happiness. And you now have an NPC that can very easily push the story forward and can probably manipulate the player without needed a special mechanic just saying “Do what I want or I cut you out of your space in the limelight”.
The murder option may be chosen more often than a GM might like but it’s pretty hard to always hide a string of dead bodies of people who opposed you (Fairly certain investigators call that a pattern) and if those NPCs aren’t cardboard cutouts they should have people who care that they have disappeared or were found dead or are suddenly acting really weird and different. Basically killing the other person doesn’t solve anything it just kicks the can down the road and changes the nature of the struggle and the more people start disappearing the more threats should align against them. Remember most Monsters are defeated not by other monster but villagers with torches and pitchforks, every murder is just more living bodies in the angry mob.
Some principles that address how the MC should interact with conditions:
-Make Labels Matter
-Find The Catch
-Ask Provocative Questions and Build on the Answers
Conditions totally impact the question of whether it’s time to set it up or knock it down. Consider: “So how do you know which to do, moment to moment? The cheeky answer is: you’ll know. The other answer is: if you’ve already set something up, and now people are looking at you expectantly again, knock it down.”
Some reactions that the MC can use to take advantage of a condition:
-Leap to the worst possible conclusion
-Expose a dangerous secret to the wrong person
Part of your Agenda is to say what honesty demands. What does honesty demand you say about each of these conditions, and the ways that opinions are coloured by them? Remember that conditions aren’t inert and mechanical. They are perspective-tainting opinions that are IN CIRCULATION. Circulate them.
If you’re stuck on how to apply any of these principles or reactions in your game, give me an example of a condition one of your main characters has right now.
Avery Alder So similar to first edition’s Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic for when an NPC could take advantage of a PC’s Condition? That was always tricky for me to get the hang of. I’m not in or running any games at the moment, but if you’re still interested how about the examples given in the section on Conditions? Dead Meat and Out of Control. What are some examples of how you would interact with them as the MC?
Yes, that is a good overview of the situation and the problem. Conditions make a lot of sense in the context of a social situation where rumours and assumptions circulate, and where labels matter.
The first problem I have is: is having a Condition any different from just being assigned a label in the fiction? Let’s say your character is a foreign kid, and doesn’t fit in. Of course, as MC, I’m going to bring that into play in various ways. Now you get into a confrontation, and someone says, “Hey;, you’re not one of us.” Dice are rolled and a Condition is applied: “Not one of us”.
How do I, as MC, work with this? Should my approach to the way I make moves be different now that something we applied all along is an “official” Condition?
In 1st Ed, it was meant to apply quite explicitly (e.g. Advantage/Disadvantage). Now, it’s not so clear. I could see it being just a “reminder”, as well – like Tags in AW, which don’t really have mechanical weight but act as a reminder to treat the fiction in a particular way.
Second, what happens when Conditions don’t make sense outside the particular group? For example, in my current campaign one PC was labeled a ‘sinner’ by a Christian group at their school. I can make efforts to stretch this, by implication, into other situations, but it’s not obvious how it matters to, say, people who don’t care about the concept of sin. Worse yet, another PC was given a Condition by his single father (“out of control”), and applying that in any scenes where the father isn’t present (which is very, very rare) is very tricky.
Thanks for the input so far!
Any more interest in this topic? I’d love to have some more of your thoughts.