Richard Williams’ amazing look at “Death Moves” inspired me to share this.
It’s a first draft; I expect many revisions. But I think Monsterhearts needs a more interesting take on harm, so here’s a basic adaptation of my AW harm rules to Monsterhearts.
The basic gist is: you hurt someone to make them lose control over their destiny.
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When you are subjected to bodily harm, roll. For each statement that is true (below), take +1 to your roll.
* “They’re not really trying to cause me lasting harm.”
* “It’s not frightening: they’re not bigger, more numerous, or better armed than me.”
If you’re not sure if “they” are trying to cause you lasting harm, ask them. “It” could be an object or a place, if, say, you’ve just crashed your car.
On a 10+, choose one from the list below.
On a 7-9, choose two, or ask your opponent to choose one.
On a miss, you choose one, and your opponent chooses one.
Mark your choices. You can only choose each option once. At the start of a new session, or if you come back from apparent death, clear them all.
The MC or other players can narrow your choice. Don’t choose an option which doesn’t follow believably from your actions or the situation. If “you’re dead” was chosen, the second choice might come into play before, during, or after your death: for instance, you might flee, only to bleed out and die in the woods.
O You are scared and shaken – give a String to your attacker.
O You look weak – lose a String on your attacker, and take a Condition.
O You’re a bloody mess. This will probably leave serious scars.
O You freeze up or you panic and flee; your choice.
O You’re knocked flat on your face: dazed, senseless, you hardly know where you are.
O It’s bad: you’re going to need medical help.
O Afterwards, you have no clear memory of what happened or misremember important details.
O You’re dead.
I’d steal those to portray damage to social standing, too.
I’d love to hear how you would do that! It’s a good idea. Are you thinking of “behind the scenes” maneuvering, or something more akin to “shut someone down”?
Shutting somebody down creates one-on-one bonds, right? I was thinking more something that conveyed a person’s global standing being impacted … y’know, the equivalent of “dead” would be “You’re a total loser outcast … again.”
I feel like I’ve seen “It’s bad, you’re going to need medical help” in social parlay, for instance. It would just be fictional positioning, the same way … your social standing is bleeding out, and it’s going to take somebody in a better situation making a public effort to staunch the bleeding before you’ll be stable (much less on the mend).
That sounds like it would work well – that kind of category/list is ready for this sort of thing. I have no idea what the moves or procedures would be, though. Just rolling for something like that sounds a bit unsatisfying, for instance. Did you have something more specific in mind? How would the players interact with those effects?
I figured you’d just roll for it. If that sounds unsatisfying to you then, you know, tastes vary, you do you. I’m generally pretty good with letting the dice give structure to the story in this regard.
I understand! But where do you picture this fitting in to the game overall? When would we roll it, how and when would we apply the results?
So, you describe a threat … popular girls walking down the hallway. Loner-Werewolf-Girl becomes a target, because she’s a loner. “Out of our way, stoner, don’t you have a bleacher to be smoking under or something?”
That’s not the damage. That’s the fictional positioning that declares “harm as established.” It’s like post-apocalyptic bikers ratcheting their sawed-off shotguns. It’s telling the PC what’s at stake, informing their decision whether to back down or stand firm.
PC decides to go for it, even though the NPC is acting at advantage (got her peeps with her, ownin’ the hallways!) Rolls a Shut Someone Down, succeeds with cost.
So here’s the thing: She can make Heather feel crappy, get a string on her … but there’s a cost. She’s taking Harm as Established. Heather’s going to have a comeback, it’s going to hurt, and that hurt is going to be lasting.
Really, I feel like I’m just taking the exact same sort of situation that we would both understand how to adjudicate if the Harm as Established were falling out a window into an alley carpeted with broken drug vials. This is the same sort of thing, just a different dimension.
Does that answer your question?
Tony, I’ve reread your comments and I think I see where you’re going with this. You would use a list of conditions to track someone’s social standing, and then use the “pick from a list” features to develop new situations (like getting kicked out of a club or a circle of friends).
That’s got potential! One thing which occurs to me is that, unlike physical harm, the game’s not really well-suited to every character starting at “full health” – rather, we want to begin with some problems we need to deal with.
This suggests that there could be a really neat “game starter” move, which asks you to mark a certain number of problems, naturally leading into framing the opening scenes of the game. (Where either we see those problems first take place, kicking off the story, or we take as given and ask the player how they deal with these problems.)
It’s a little mechanical, perhaps, for a game like Monsterhearts, but I think it has strong potential nevertheless.
I’ve added another option to my post (above): “Freeze up or panic and flee; your choice.”
I’d love to pare down the list some more, but I like all the options (they’re already pared down from my original list of 12!).
I’ve also rewritten the text slightly, for, hopefully, more clarity.
Matt Doughty, any thoughts on this? We could try it tomorrow.