The rule on page 118 says about locked Labels “If that Label would shift, ignore that effect in its entirety.”
A move says “Give them Influence, and shift your Mundane up and your mask’s Label down.” If either Mundane or the mask label are locked, clearly you ignore the second clause. But do you ignore the first as well? Is the whole sentence the “effect” that is being ignored, or just the bit about shifting labels.
Just the Label shift! You get the benefits of the Label lock (no shifting Label), but the Influence is separate. Good question!
Brendan Conway thanks for the quick answer, now a follow-up to make sure this is a consistent principle. The new Brain playbook has a move: “During a debrief, when you downplay your role in helping a teammate during the mission, mark potential and shift Superior down and any other Label up.” Two questions, very legalistic, but I think important:
* if Superior is locked, does the player just mark potential and do nothing else?
* if Superior is not locked, must the player choose an unlocked label to pair with it in this move? Or could they choose a locked label and cancel out the shift?
More generally, in any move where someone gets to choose labels to be shifted, can they choose a locked label to essentially negate the shift? For example, Alice already has influence over Bob, and gains it again. Alice gets to shift Bob’s labels. Must Alice choose a pair of unlocked labels, or can she choose to “shift” a locked label and essentially do nothing?
Another important example, from the new Soldier playbook:
I can do this all day: When something causes you to remove yourself from a fight, you can shift Savior down (and another Label up) instead. If shifting Savior down would move it below -2, you have to leave the fight instead of shifting Labels.
If Savior is locked…what the heck happens?
I, quite obviously, do not have the same authority as Brendan Conway , however the way we’ve done this has been if the move explicitly mentions the locked label the shift does not occur. If the move mentions a label shift choice then we’ve been restricting the choice to only those labels not locked.
Joshua R. Leuthold that’s mostly how we have been doing it, but its trickier in the context of moves where a label shift can be seen as a cost or benefit for the other part of the effect. Also, we have played enough now that several characters are starting to have locked labels, so the edge cases are becoming more obvious.
Hans Messersmith: Woo this one got complex!
* if Superior is locked, does the player just mark potential and do nothing else?
– Yup! You clever bastard! 🙂 I think it would be appropriate to talk it out in the specific situation, but basically what that means to me is that the Brain is so self-assured in their superiority, it no longer costs them ego to downplay their own role. And they’re still rewarded for it! The Brain has become immune to the effect of downplaying their own role.
* if Superior is not locked, must the player choose an unlocked label to pair with it in this move? Or could they choose a locked label and cancel out the shift?
– For sure, they have to pick an unlocked Label. I hear the point there, but when you can CHOOSE any Label for the shift, you should choose Labels that aren’t locked.
For your example with Alice and Bob, it is technically the choice of the person who gains Influence again, but I’d either push the choice onto the fiction, or push the choice towards Labels that aren’t locked. If Alice gains Influence over Bob again, and Alice would be like, “I really think you’re SUPER DANGEROUS!” but Bob has Danger locked, then it might be appropriate not to shift anything. (I do this with villains all the time—makes PCs feel awesome that a Label is locked and the bad guy tries to shift it and just WHIFFS.)
But if Bob has Mundane locked instead of Danger, then Alice shouldn’t choose to shift up Danger and down Mundane, just so no shift actually happens—the core of what Alice cares about is that Bob is actually a Danger! She should find another Label to shift down. (If the core of what Alice cared about was that Bob was not Mundane, though, then it would be appropriate to cancel the shift.)
Joshua R. Leuthold and you have it right, for a general rule, though, ignoring the fiction. If you can choose a Label, you should choose one that’s not locked.
For the Soldier move specifically, what I’d say is that the move actually has you “shifting Savior down” instead of going out—as a cost. The point being that you could always choose to go out, but if you’d rather, you can shift Savior down. In the case of a locked Savior, I’d say here that you basically can’t choose to shift Savior down anymore—so you can’t do that instead of going out of the fight.
Here’s the principle behind all this:
Locking a Label means it can’t be changed against your will. People can no longer tell you who you are and make you someone else with regards to that facet of yourself. Many moves that produce Label shifts as an effect, then, can’t hit you there anymore.
BUT! Moves that use label-shifting as a COST are a different story. You were always making that shift of your own volition. If you lock your Label, you give up your own right to choose that cost.
So, for the Brain move, shifting Superior down kind of looks like a cost…but the way the move is written, it’s an effect of downplaying your part. Which means that locking the Label would protect you from that effect.
But for the Soldier move, shifting Savior down is the cost that you can now pay instead of leaving the fight. Which means instead of just ignoring that if you locked the Label, you no longer have that choice.
I suggest trying to use the framework of cost and effect to figure out where the locked labels cancel moves. Costs must be paid, and if you can’t pay them, the move doesn’t work; but effects can be stopped by locked labels.
With that said, you should totally adjudicate these specific cases at your table, too—I could see someone saying “I would never have locked Savior if I knew it would make ‘I can do this all day’ no longer work,” in which case I might allow them to still use the move, or just swap that move with another!
Hope this helps! This is a really good discussion, and really good questions!
Thanks Brendan Conway that is very helpful.
I like the distinction between shifting as cost versus shifting as benefit/neutral outcome. I also like the emphasis on the benefit of locking being someone cannot shift against your will anymore. I’m not sure what we will do, but hearing your philosophy on it is very useful.
Very helpful clarification Brendan Conway ! Thank you!