Had my first use of a Moment of Truth in our game today and I felt like it ended up turning the final battle with the first big villain into a bit of an anti-climactic dud. It will have massive consequences because of what was done, but it kind of ended things a little swiftly.
I think I know what went wrong and I was tired so I may have allowed the scene to end prematurely. I’m curious about how others have used or have experienced the use of the moment of truth.
How do you actually treat the moment of truth?
I let the player tell me what he did and didn’t call for any rolls, he just succeeded. His idea was wild and pretty cool, but letting it happen ended the fight almost immediately.
When it comes up in our game, we tend to talk through the scene in detail. Its not so much an auto success as a spotlight on that PC. The PC inevitably succeeds in achieving the moment of truth but we explore what that means for the PC and make suggestions on how to best make the scene as cool as possible.
I think the moment of truth is best used as an ace in the pocket type of thing. It’s when the chips are down, and everything has failed, and you just WANT SO BADLY FOR THIS TO GO WELL and that’s when it happens. There’s fun in failure and fun in success, but just MOT’ing near the start isn’t as enjoyable
I only ever experienced one of those and it did take me very much by surprise. It was a little independent problem I inserted when a new player joined and used it to introduce a few more NPCs. The Outsider thought it proper to call in Daddy. It totally fit the fiction as Daddy was already handling a problem for the character.
Still, calling the fleet totally called me by surprise. I tried to resolve the scene in the romantic spirit we established and had the other problem shot down. – The player was a OK and thought it fitting. I still freaked a bit.
The Moment of Truth is less about the resolution of a given scene or immediate conflict and more about a narrative transformation for the character. It turns something uncertain into something certain. This is reflected not only in the text of the individual description of the different playbooks’ Moment of Truth, but also in the fact that you lock a label once you’re done. We have reached the culmination of something within the character and now a part of them is known, where before it was unknown. A label of theirs is locked.
Moments of Truth can be used to take charge of dramatic scenes and give the team a leg-up on a dangerous villain, but it really isn’t about that. The second the Moment of Truth triggers, the priority of the scene shifts. It’s not about the Fulminate’s Doomlaser anymore. It’s not about The Dread Queen’s Transdimensional Oscillator anymore. Those stop being the focus and instead become vehicles for what’s happening to that character. Talk through the scene as you normally would, albeit with the player who is using their moment having a much greater deal of narrative authority, and work towards the resolution of that playbook’s question. Toward’s the truth of that character, that is what the moment is about.
This is one of my favorite examples of a Moment of Truth. It contains spoilers for Young Justice, so if that bothers you, don’t watch it, but I’d hotly recommend it as an example of how a Moment of Truth can work.
It shows a Protégé in a moment of weakness, of vulnerability. Even though the player would be in charge of the scene, the character is not, the character is removed from control, taken into a space of revelation, about to realize something about the question that is intrinsic to their playbook. Are they their Mentor or are they their own person? A Moment of Truth.
youtube.com – Young Justice- Robin Therapy
When I used mine (as the Bull), I kept in mind the advice to the GM to be a fan of the character: which means giving them moments to shine as well as new problems to face.
We were losing a fight and I waited to trigger it till I had racked up several conditions and took another powerful blow that was going to end with me knocked out.
So, before passing out, my bull had a huge flare of her fire powers, definitively took out the villain and her creatures, but wound up with her powers sort of dominating her—it didn’t feel purely triumphant for Sonia.
Plus, I finished off my narration with a huge corona of fire in the sky, visible across half the city, which satisfied the threat of “now the people who made you know exactly where to find you.” Then passed out! (and plummeted—someone else had to catch me).
It was tremendously fun because I got to have a really showy save the day moment, with a big undercurrent of threat (that the GM capitalized on: by the end of that session, the Forge had kidnapped the girl I’d been protecting to force my character to come in).
I second Leah’s point above. Every Moment of Truth comes with a threat hanging in the background: you can’t go back to what you were before after this. That said, the player should enjoy the spotlight, and collaborate with the GM to make the moment an iconic showcase for their character.
Some tangential reading that may be interesting: Epidiah Ravichol is the designer of games like Dread and Swords without Master. In this post about SWoM, he talks about how to “invest glory in your opponents by treating them as credible threats, by suffering beneath their onslaught, and when you’re ready to collect your return, by sacrificing to overcome them.” To me that sounds like a pretty good recipe for a combat-oriented Moment of Truth to feel appropriately epic.
dig1000holes.wordpress.com – The Shield & The Ring
It definitely changed things for the character, I just feel a bit like I put too much in the player’s hands as far as narrative control. I was expecting a more detailed description of what he was doing, and in retrospect I should have still played my typical role in describing the events. Oh well, live and learn.
Everyone’s comments here have been very helpful, thank you all! My second group has two people who have unlocked their MoT but haven’t used them in the fiction yet. This discussion has really helped me with knowing how to approach their use going forward.
as they do things, you can describe what it looks like without contorl. Their actions, ripples, and collateral and crowd and everything else you can describe without actually effecting it. You CAN treat it as a monologue, but not everyone is good at those on the spot