Ok , just got the book and am digging the system. I just have one question, though. In regards to the difficulty levels on the power profile. Does doing something on the on your profile happen automatically, or is a move needed? This is mainly referring to tasks listed under “simple”.
Example: your hero whom we will call “Ironclad” has “Super strength, impervious skin, and enhanced leaping” on his powers summary. On his Powers Profile under simple, he has “shrug off bullets.”
Scene: Some armed thugs with machine guns begin to fire at a lone bank guard who’s revolver just ran out of ammo. Ironclad immediately leaps between them, triggering “serve and protect”. He rolls an 8 total and spends his 1 hold immediately to redirect the attack to himself. Now, would the EIC just “follow the fiction” and narrate the bullets bouncing off him, or would he have to roll “defy danger”. (Maybe to see if a bullet ricochets off him and hits a bystander.)?
Imho. You can do either, based on how you want the scene to go. But if he had impervious skin no result should result in the hero’s skin become ruptured. I think I would go with no roll needed most of the time.
I guess what I’m getting at is , are tasks listed under simple just done without rolls, or would there be circumstances that would require one?
If there’s no effort or risk, there really shouldn’t be a roll for the power. The roll is for Ironclad to succeed in positioning himself between the guard and the robber, which is not guaranteed.
Also, the difficulty levels define how bad things will go if the roll misses, the scale if you will. So if Ironclad misses, the guard gets hit, but not badly.
+Tim Osburn To my understanding Simple, Borderline categories etc have nothing to do with whether or not there is a roll required. They are all about fictional positioning and whether or not their character triggers the Push roll. You just roll when the conversation triggers a move. What triggers a move always depends on the fiction. For example, a minion fires a machine gun at Spider-Man and his player narrates him dodging. If he has dodge bullets anywhere in his power profile then he could trigger the Defy Danger move . The Hulk in the same situation my have “bullets bounce off” in anywhere in his power profile and maybe you don’t roll (just narrate then bouncing off) or maybe it’s in Times Square and you decide it’s going to trigger Defy Danger but a failure won’t mean the hulk gets hurt (narratively he can’t be hurt) but that the ricochet hurt someone else or cause damage.
The categories in the power profile only are there to set the known limits of the powers. It’s what you use to define narrative positioning and to trigger push.
Christo Meid Ironclad’s Serve & Protect roll in my example generated 1 Hold which he immediately spent to redirect the attack to himself. So he’s taking the hit. I was more or less curious, that in all similar situations, is his “Shrug off Bullets” is sufficient fictional positioning to just ignore the attack’s damage, or should one check to see if ricochets harm a different bystander.
My mistake. Hitting a bystander sounds like a miss to me. Instead you could have it damage his uniform, weapon, comm, etc since the move is framing for him to take some form of damage, no?
He succeeded at Serve and Protect, so redirecting the attack to himself should not put the people he just rolled to protect in danger.
As his powers include an impervious skin that allows him to simply shrug off bullets, there is no danger to him so nothing to roll. The EIC describes how another hoodie gets ruined with bullet holes and he will need to get one of those trunk deals with clothes delivered every month or always be in tattered clothes.
Now if he pulls the same protect stunt when the criminals he pisses off upgrade to firing a rocket launcher into the Chinese restaurant he’s in, that’s different from bullets so a Push roll could be called for.
Grey Kitten In my mind, I’m picturing him jumping in front of a single bystander who was the target of the attack, but thinking a bullet may ricochet off him and hit another bystander who may have just rounded a corner, unaware of the fighting. The first bystander was completely saved from harm. I know something like that wouldn’t always be the case, but an interesting possibility.
At the point where he has already saved the one guard from being gunned down, it’s time for the next GM move.
That could be “turn their move back on them” with ricocheting bullets putting other people in danger…
If that happens as a result of a success roll on a Protect and Serve, it will suck a lot if the GM immediately uses a Hard Move and turns the move back on him to just hurt other bystanders. Turning a success into an unpreventable, unforeseen failure should be done rarely to never (maybe the most evil of season-ender villains could be nasty enough to warrant such hard GM moves, but the average villain, no.)
If you can instead handle it as a soft move by showing how bullets are now putting someone else in danger, yet still give him a hard choice about how to handle things, that’s better. “You jump between the gunman and the old security guard, turning your back to the barrage of auto-fire bullets. The old guy stares, wide-eyed, into your eyes, forgetting to reload his revolver, as the bullets tear up your shirt and jacket and massage your back. A bit of concrete wall beside you shatters in a small explosion; the fluorescent light above you suddenly goes out. The bullets aren’t just stopping when they hit your rubbery skin, they’re ricocheting off in random directions! Another bullet cracks the glass of the teller window and sends the girl behind the window diving and screaming for cover. People inside the bank are moving all over the place trying to get away, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets in the way of a ricocheting bullet. What do you do?”
Grey Kitten Makes sense, if he had rolled 6 or less, he could still save the original bystander, but a ricochet could hit another.
Tough skinned characters can also twist an ankle, get slowed by debris, get blinded, etc. Few characters are truly invulnerable if the scene calls for risk and danger. Maybe the goons or villain need to see what doesn’t work on a hero before they pull out plan B. Makes for a more interesting scene that way too, because the hero is forcing adversaries to try harder.