I’m interested in how PBTA games handle ‘superpower’ style moves.
So moves in PBTA are triggered by ‘The Conversation’, right? If you push the bouncer up against a wall and there is a move that starts “when you threaten or intimidate…” then that move is triggered. Brilliantly simple.
Where I’m struggling in my homwbrew game is writing ‘superpower’ moves (I imagine the same applies to spell moves). Having a list of discrete powers you can invoke that begin “When you mind control someone…” or “When you manipulate shadows…” feels incompatible with the fiction-first principles of PBTA. Is this the wrong way of thinking about it?
One alternative would be to have a “Use Your Powers” basic move and define powers loosly in the playbooks with one line statements like “you can control minds”, “you can manipulate shadows”, similar to how powers are handled in Masks
My problem with this is I’m not a fan of moves that rely entirely on player imagination to define what is achievable. Firstly it feels unfair that some players can do extra cool things because they are better at coming up with imaginative uses for their powers. Some players like being told “you can do X & Y within these limits”. Secondly it creates little room to improve powers over time.
Here are some example moves I currently have:
MIND CONTROL
When you make eye contact with a victim and bring them under your sway, roll +Resolve.
On a success pick one, on a 7-9 they will know it was you inside their mind.
Commanded – You give them a brief command to act and they will obey to the best of their ability. The command cannot risk harm to anyone. Truthful – You ask them any question and they will answer truthfully to the best of their knowledge.
PUPPET
When you successfully Mind Control you can also pick:
Sleeper – Embed your command to be actioned at a set time, or in response to a certain trigger.
SUBDUE
When you successfully Mind Control you can also pick:
Broken – They’ll agree with whatever you say for the rest of the scene.
My gut (and a couple of playtest sessions) says that without clear demarcation between the levels of powers a simple “you can control minds” statement would quickly get out of hand. Thoughts? Does this break the spirit of The Conversation?
I think your gut suggesting that the game will get out of control shows a lack of trust. If you set out to play a superhero game, the players are all buying into the permise of the game. You shouldn’t be getting a player that is going to blow up the planet with a punch unless that was part of the premise.
Take a look at Masks – it doesn’t have moves about specific powers. Each hero decides on their powers.
PbtA games tend to be more about risks than success or failure. Your super telepath is able to read someone’s mind – that’s a given. But you roll to see if someone also reads their mind, or if they have a brain hemmorage, or something.
Three powers that regular break down in play, in my experience of designing and running a superpowers game (PsiRun) a LOT over the years:
Teleportation, time travel, and mind control.
An honest question: why do you want to include the ability to control another person’s mind in your game?
I mean, we do it in AW with the Brainer and In-Brain Puppet Strings, so you can see how we addressed it, but still, it’s not a thing that’s easy to design for, and in PsiRun I straight-out suggest not taking that as a power, or at least making it not target other PCs as a matter of decency to your fellow players.
You might take a look at Worlds in Peril. It is very flexible and does talk to some of what you are looking for.
I’d add Premonition to that list (though it could be used as a variation of Time Travel).
Aaron Griffin it’s not about trust really. i’m not worried that a player will use a power ‘too much’. I’ve just GMd a few players that, simply put, don’t feel comfortable with their character’s abilities being completely open-ended, they become paralysed. I think that is valid and I don’t want to exclude them in favour of those with more vivid imaginations.
They don’t need expansive rules dicatating every edge case, but I would like to create a palette of options for them to pick from that gives variation but clarity.
Meguey Baker yeah I think the ‘mind control’ power was perhaps a bad example. The inclusion of it at all was a big worry for me given how it could be used (I’ve explicitly excluded using it against PCs as you say), but it is a staple of supernatural fiction. Perhaps ‘hypnotise’ is a better term?
Even if we take the ‘power to manipulate shadows’ as a different example, I’m still having that same choice:
– leave the power open ended, meaning limits on effect are entirely up to individual player imagination & GM setting boundaries for the fiction
– specify that manipulating shadows can be used for violence, hiding, messages, or travel, limiting players imagination but also guiding them towards uses.
– use Blades-style effect levels so that the table gets to define what counts as a Narrow or Great Effect shadow power.
Leckie S that’s fair. Perhaps you could construct a power set with a series of questions on a playbook, and thus limit the power? “What is the one thing your ability doesn’t work on?” or “When things go wrong, how do people get hurt?”
FYI what I call ‘superpowers’ in the OP is a catchall term for any tiered set of supernatural/magical/amazing gifts a character can have. My current homebrew isn’t capes, it’s more supernatural weird-horror.
A couple of tools that might be useful, if your goal is a game with a large variety of different superpowers, a la Marvel and DC superheros.
1) Have the players pick tags upon character creation/advancement that define their powers. Stuff like pyschic, flight, energy blast etc. This gives everybody at the table an idea of what each character has the capability of doing. We know Superman can fly, but he can’t read minds. You can also have tags, similar to AW’s gang tags, that define the scope of powers – maybe something like slight, superior, godly or whatever.
2) With tags in place, you can have a generic “Unleash Your POwers” basic move, looking something like this:
When you unleash the powers described by your tags, roll +Super. On a 10+, choose 1. On a 7-9, choose 2:
-There’s no collateral damage
-You’re not tapped out for the time being.
-The effects aren’t diminished.
That’s just off the top of my head, of course.
Aaron Griffin this is an excellent idea and actually already part of my favourite playbook (werewolves). perhaps it’s time i made that a universal pattern for all of them.
I’ve long had this idea rolling around in my head for a supers style game, where your powers aren’t moves, they’re stats + tags.
Like, maybe you’ve got Extraordinary Strength +2 (peak mortal, natural, demanding). The peak mortal tag gives us a sense of scale. The natural tag tells us how it interacts with other powers/sfx. The demanding tag means you can find yourself exhausted after you use it.
When you use your Extraordinary Strength to Defy Danger, or Fight, or Manipulate someone, or any other basic move, you roll +2 (because that’s your stat rating). But you’re still using the same basic moves as a character with Extraordinary Strength (superhuman, cybernetic, external).
Of course, if you tried to Fight against someone with superhuman strength, you’d have to Push Yourself first, pick 1:
* Mark 1 Stress (or spend 1 resource, whatever)
* Take minus 2 forward
* Take your time, concentrate, wait for your moment, etc. (ask the GM what happens while you delay)
The thing I really like about superpower-as-stat is that it encourages players to make up their own stunts, figure out how to use their powers in clever ways. But the tags are there to give you a sense of scale, limitation, and consequence.
listening
When you strangle people with your shadows, you strangle them. When you figure people out with mind reading, you do attempt to figure them out.
There is no reason whatsoever to have rules for super powers. Masks does have Unleash Your Powers as well. It’s kinda your fallback move, like Do Something Under Pressure in other games. Same method: You are a cape. You do it with your power.
I suggest, you download Masks moves and playbooks from Magpie.
I very much agree that PbtA-games lets people with more access to creative caveats to use their abilities more. While this is true for most RPGs, it can get even more unbalanced when you also need to work language and sometimes even look the GM and the rest of the group in the eyes and stand up for your position.
Even doling out XP becomes a situation where someone who says ”I totally used my alignment this session” is going to get more XP in the long run than the person who gets insecure and does not speak up about it.
It’s something tou need to keep in mind as a GM and a fellow player. I had a group where I noticed that I almost backseat drove another player’s character because she didn’t know what to do or when or ever spoke up in-game.
”Hey X, wouldn’t you use your magic in this situation? It’s on the backside of the sheet, yes flip it over, on the bottom, under where it says magic? Do you see it? No? Ok…”
Powers and supernatural abilities are best defined the same as anything a pc does or encounters in PBTA, triggers and consequences.
How do your pcs supernatural gifts fit into the tapestry of actions and experiences that makes up their lives? Are these gifts only for action and conflict? Do they have social applications? Do the powers reflect aspects of the character, their themes or personality?
Monsterhearts feels like the golden standard to me in this regard. The supernatural is a big element, but it is only one element of the game.
What’s been bouncing round my head for a while, and what several comments here has really helped to focus, is that special powers are often more cool looking/feeling ways of doing things already covered by the basic moves, or they allow basic moves to be used under new fictonal circumstances.
Both the ability to fly and creating fists out of shadow both help me attack that enemy far away.
Jeremy Strandberg Just want to say for the record that my current draft uses tags a lot! Mostly as a way of tracking effects. Many of the ‘powers’ (supernatural abilities really) are social and they often add tags to NPCs (+suspicious, +fearful, +elated) and those tags can give bonuses.
On making abilities themselves stats + tags, this seems really interesting but not something I’m going to steal (promise!)
As others have said, take a look at Worlds in Peril. The defining of powers is wide open, yet with the Push move, there is room to grow organically during the storytelling. Other than Push, moves are triggered regardless of whether you’re using a power or not.
Moves should not be things where a failure is “nothing happens” – moves are situations where there is risk involved in failure. Consequences.
Controlling minds sounds like it would often be a “Seize Control” move. So, a 6- wouldn’t just result in “They resist your psychic probing” nor would a 7-9 be “They struggle, but you crush their mind with your own.” Here’s the results fo Seize Control:
On a 10+, choose two. On a 7-9, choose one:
• You seize control over what was contested
• You prevent yourself from ending up at a disadvantage or in harm’s way
• You put your opponent at a disadvantage
So if you fail, you’ve not only failed to get the person you were trying to control to do what you wanted them to do, but you did so in a spectacular way that put you at a disadvantage.
In addition to the generic moves that are power agnostic, there’s the principles and agenda of your game.
Masks is a game about teen heroes and identity. A Masks character who went around solving everything by removing the free will of others would quickly get lectured left and right about how he was on the path to becoming a super-villain. The principles and agenda of the game can help put rails on powers that could blow up the universe.
If you sre going into supernatural direction, maybe you should check out Urban Shadows and see how they handle powers.
Adrian Thoen all great questions – the powers are monstrous and reflect (& reinforce) their inhuman nature as supernaturals. The context of the abilities is very varied depending on playbook, some focusing on social manipulation, other violence or awareness/discovery.
Alpo _ yeah I’ve done that and while i like loads about US right now i have the itch for something that isn’t a faction game and has more definition of discrete powers (perhaps even with the option of having more than one vamp/wolf pc in a geme)
Another game to look at with highly capable PCs (not exactly super-powers) is Headspace. Again, moves don’t determine success/failure of an action; you’re amazing, you succeed at it – but the dice roll determines emotional feedback consequences.
Thanks Grey Kitten I’d never heard of that one!
Our “Farflung” game has normal people mixing with super-powered beings. One player could be the Doctor and someone else could be a companion. Or one player could be Rick the genius with all the infinite inventions, while someone is Morty, a normal person who tags along.
Our compromise was a “points-in-time” system, split into Future (Fx) and History (Hx). Doing anything obviously superpowered is pretty much limited by your imagination, but it requires you to move your Fx into your Hx pool. Hx pools could then only be used later to boost other player’s moves.
This had multiple purposes:
* Doing anything super-powered means spending a resource. Don’t invoke powerful abilities to control the narrative unless you really mean it. This let us keep the super-powers to have broad, vague, sweeping effects — rather than limit the effects, we limited the number of times they could be used. (Just like how in a story, if a character uses the sonic screwdriver to solve every problem, it starts to feel like a hack device.)
* Fx points turn into Hx, and Hx only become Fx if you help someone else. If you keep seizing the spotlight to control the narrative, eventually you will run out of Fx points, and you have to let someone else take a turn. This keeps the super-powered characters from dominating the game. (Or more related to your concept, it keeps some players from feeling over-shadowed by the one player who has a broadly-defined power that solves everything. Eventually, they have to yield to someone else.)
Good luck with your game!
Norman Rafferty THAT a great idea. I love that it balances the effect of expansive powers by dialing down the scale of the story instead of just sticking cool stuff behind XP gates.