6 thoughts on “Going aggro or manipulating with violence? :)”

  1. Manipulate. When the player declares the kick the MC doesn’t ask for a roll and just says “Yeah, he gets sucked up by the turbine. What do you do?”

    “Well, the other guy that’s left, I say the same thing to him. Should I roll+hot?”

    “No, that’s cool. I’m going to treat your violence like barter, you hit 10+ with no roll.”

  2. I agree it’s Manip on the second guy but I would make Mal roll it and I might give him a + because the first half of the scene already set up the leverage.  I wish to assume a chance the second guy doesn’t just roll over.

  3. My inclination is for Manipulate. The previous violence is the leverage.

    Though, I don’t think we have any real doubt that Mal would do it to the second guy too, so Go Aggro is perfectly reasonable too

  4. Using the previous, gruesome death as barter for Manipulate on the second mook is a great idea. As for mook #1, Go Aggro doesn’t feel like the right answer. Mal is leaving the violence as subtext. Or at least current, immediate violence.

    And even though he is manipulating, my gut is telling me he isn’t being convincing enough to make a roll. Have you ever vetoed a PCs attempt to make a manipulate roll? And if you have, did you then treat that attempt as part of the fiction?

  5. First attempt: Manipulate with violence, mal rolls a 6-. He doesn’t know it, but a hard move is going on in the background — Niska is going to come after him, no matter what he does.

    Mal does the kick, no roll.

    Mal sets the other guy up, tells him the deal. There is no roll. At this point, the player should be a little nervous. Make sure he gets the moment of sheer epic — but the guy rolling isn’t the problem for Mal. Niska, off screen, plotting how to best take out the crew — that’s the problem.

    Its a hard move, but one that takes a while to come to fruition. Think offscreen, too.

  6. Yes, I’d agree Mal’s conversation with Crow is an attempt to manipulate gone bad. Crow describes the consequence of failure and Mal thinks he can get rid of it by disposing of Crow. The real hard move comes a few episodes later (“War Stories”) when Mal and Wash are captured. Mr Niska became a Front, with the agenda “ensure my reputation is fact.”

    I agree about Mal’s success convincing the second guy too. The humor comes because Mal seems to have sincerely returned to persuasion while the guy perceives it as go aggro.

    I’ve just realized this is also an example of when NOT to ask for a dice roll. There’s an interplay between the nature of the two NPCs and their circumstances–Crow is vengeful and oppositional to the core while the other guy is just working for pay and benefits.

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