I’m finding the rules for player hooks a little vague and have some questions. Hoping some of you can help.
*How do I use the ‘hook impulse’s? Take for example Mundane vs Savior, ‘To ask for empathy and mercy’. Is this something I should activate as a move? Should I have an NPC asking this player for mercy at the moment of his defeat?
*under Freak vs Savior there is an impulse I don’t grok. ‘To place responcibility’. it doesn’t read as a complete sentance to me, and I have no idea what it means.
And feedback appreciated.
Impulses aren’t moves, they’re guidelines for what kind of things you should say — and Moves you should make — when representing the character who holds the Impulse. So, yeah, sometimes have the NPC ask for mercy at the moment of his defeat… or ask for mercy towards others… or beg for empathy towards a villain who maybe doesn’t deserve it… and similar. The Impulse motivates the NPCs agenda toward the PC.
For your other question: “to place responsibility” means to hold the PC responsible for their actions, or to expect the PC to be responsible for what they do. So, the NPC would be scrutinizing — or over-scrutinizing — the PCs conduct, critiquing their use of their powers or their choices should anything go wrong, I would think.
Alfred Rudzki Hitchcock That helps a lot thank you.
And the place responsibility thing makes perfect sense now, good to have another pair of eyes from time to time.
Thanks.
It reads like the rules pull a little bit on the Dungeon World’s Front rules. Impulses aren’t moves per se, but they do provide the fictional context and/or GM guideline of when to invoke a move. In the case of hooks, that move is usually going to be “attempt to shift the PC’s labels”.
Keeping in mind Masks’ “Play to find out” philosophy, the author doesn’t want you to plot things out strictly, but to provide you with guidelines to realize the sort of rich character-driven play Masks has become known for. That’s the role that hooks and impulses play.
A hook is, put simply, an NPC (with influence over the PCs) who has opinions they will express to the PCs during play. Since you aren’t plotting things explicitly, the impulse provides the GM with a goal to drive towards which will play those two labels off each other.
So if I am a GM designing hooks to play off Savior vs. Mundane, I know I want one hook to encourage the PC to have mercy, while another would encourage the PCs to protect others. In play, this might be an AEGIS commander who has decided that the crashlanded aliens are a threat and must be taken out to protect the city, and a second hook–say, your legacy’s kid sister who had a peaceful encounter with them–might try to convince the player to see things from the aliens’ viewpoints and that they aren’t inherently hostile and worth saving.
Hooks read to me to be for player story direction of a sort. Like which two aspects of that character do you want to bring into conflict with each other to add that extra bit of drama to the story. Will the Transformed accept his status as “a freak” or will he ever toward “Savior” to try and alter his/her public image?