The latest round of playtest with the enchanted is nearing to a close and several changes have been made from both comments received and issues discovered during actual play.
Here is the newest version of the skin
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AakVUKfe_blwRBks_mW1LJ-juo1c-6pKroFhDz6mjxk/edit?usp=sharing
I know the goal is to be passive, but this is too passive. It’s a “Worse” Mortal*, with no inherent way to fight back.
It also has some weird moves whose wordings don’t match intent, and the Darkest Self lets whoever’s controlling you say “I command you to leave town forever, or lock your house from the outside and burn it down, or “Go into the bomb shelter until I call for you in 50 years”, or a billion other de-protagonizing things.
*While people think the Mortal is a skin about abuse, it’s really about codependency. You’re not REALLY going to give your Lover a break forever, but those strings let you be Entrenched, or spend’em 1-for-1 for Harm.
Most of this has already been addressed. The skin is not about being passive, it’s about rebelling. The intent is to trying to break out of the control of those giving you orders, which is what i’m guessing you’re missing when you’re reading the skin. Not every skin is meant to be a powerhouse.
It can be as passive or as active as you choose to play it. I am the latest tester of this skin and I have had more fun trying to figure out ways around the commands, even when they hurt friends and help enemies.
One of the DM’s perogatives on a botch is “trigger darkest self”, which could happen on a failed “Rebel” roll.
The way the curse/ability works will also change how it’s played. You can set ground rules with the ST at the beginning that you can’t be forced to kill or to steal children or whatever your hard lines are for the character.
And just because it’s an option, doesn’t necessarily mean it is going to happen. Plus the darkest self isn’t supposed to be good or kind or any of that. It is a hard darkest self and the players know that going in to it.
Adam Goldberg Yes the GM is allowed to choose that option (and should if that makes sense in the story) but they are advised to use that sparingly. I fail to see your point and I am currently running a game so it is hard for me to fully respond.
“While people think the Mortal is a skin about abuse, it’s really about codependency. You’re not REALLY going to give your Lover a break forever, but those strings let you be Entrenched, or spend’em 1-for-1 for Harm.”
You might give your lover a break forever, or you might just decide that you don’t give a care anymore and decide someone else is your lover because that’s what a Mortal is encouraged to do. It should be noted, and only one of the Mortal moves gives you Strings on other people (Sympathy is My Weapon), so most of the Entrenched move’s bite comes from giving other people Strings on you. The one for one comment also seems really odd to me. You can do extra harm by spending a String on someone, but not just dish out a random point of harm (unless you’re also a Fae). The other half of this point, is the Mortal is also about love, it’s their justification for everything. You would never hurt someone you love, even if they hurt you. No, the skin is not about abuse, but anyone in an abusive relationship will attest: no matter how badly someone you love hurts you, you’re not going to hurt them back.
Okay Adam Goldberg, Time for a full reply (Apologies this was almost done and then a cat attack deleted everything so I am trying again)
“I know the goal is to be passive,”
Well that’s a bad starting place because it’s not really. IT has the option to just be passive but the core of the move’s actions are all about resisting.
“ but this is too passive. It’s a “Worse” Mortal*, with no inherent way to fight back.”
Except for the inherent way they skin has to fight back via resisting, which was written into the core move. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t split resisting and obedience into two moves as suggested.
“It also has some weird moves whose wordings don’t match intent,”
Possibly, coming up with names are hard. I’m confused as to which ones though. Obedience is about the obedience curse the player is under (while also talking about how to subvert it). Voice of Honey and Oil is direct source reference to learning to manipulate better, and evokes the image of someone smooth talking so should make sense even out of context. Razor Wit is about making biting comments have more punch than normal. Following Orders is about following orders and was formed from suggestion others had about waiting reward for being subservient. Enchanted Item is a magical item that lets people see the future better. Bide Your Time is about being able to come back again if an attempt to manipulate an PC fails. and Wishes is about Wishes
Or are you talking about the wording of the moves proper? And which intent are you talking about? Because you seemed to have incorrectly pointed to the intent above which I addressed.
“and the Darkest Self let’s whoever’s controlling you say “I command you to leave town forever, or lock your house from the outside and burn it down, or “Go into the bomb shelter until I call for you in 50 years”, or a billion other de-protagonizing things.”
Which all seem to lead directly to finding something to fight for (I.e. Your place in town, your life, your freedom) which would snap them out of darkest self. Additionally there is also nothing stop another character from coming along at the right moment and telling the Enchanted to stop, which would give a conflicting command that the player to follow and rob the first command of its efficacy.
*While people think the Mortal is a skin about abuse, it’s really about codependency. You’re not REALLY going to give your Lover a break forever, but those strings let you be Entrenched, or spend’em 1-for-1 for Harm.
It’s about both really. The Mortal is about getting into trouble and pulling others in with them.
“One of the DM’s perogatives on a botch is “trigger darkest self”, which could happen on a failed “Rebel” roll.”
I know I already addressed this but this REALLY rubs me wrong. It COULD happen. is different than SHOULD happen or WILL happen. The MC could make you darkest self on ANY failed roll, there is nothing unique about THIS particular circumstance except the importance that you place on it. If you’re asking people to make skins that are immune to people being jackasses, well you have me there. I can’t do it, but neither can you or anyone else. I will admit that I tend to make the assumption that the players and the MC are here to have a decent time and not go out of their way to screw another person over too much. And by too much, allow me to clarify that I have played several amazing Monsterhearts games where the players ended up killed every one dead (with no more buying off death available because it had all been used up) and then NPCs rolled in to kill the survivors, and I do not consider what anyone did in any of those games going too far or intentionally trying to dick a player over, because it all happened naturally and everyone was pleased with the result. If anything may be one was a little melancholy at most.
Many of your concerns seem to boil down to “I actually don’t understand this” (Which I would like to fix though I am at a loss to figure out why because the blurb talks about getting revenge, patient and vengeful are among the adjectives used to describe the skin, and the core move itself commits the bulk of it’s text to telling you how you can avoid commands given to you. I’m not sure how to better highlight that aspect than to flat out tell people how to play the skin themselves which I absolutely refuse to do) of “This can be abused by an asshole trying to be an asshole” which makes me think that you are either an asshole who would abuse this skin or play with a lot who do. Either way I’m sorry for you and I hope the situation improves.
In all seriousness, I thank you for your time and thoughts. As it seems you did not get what this was going for I would be interested in hearing thoughts now that we hopefully are on the same page. If you disagree with this I will be happy to continue this discussion though I will admit that I will have to give more weight to actual play-test data than just your opinions, though I will endeavor to see where they are coming from and try to fix them.
Edit: Allow me to clarify something I may have understated out of humility but since you seem interested in fisking my word choices that confounded you instead of actual points made, I suppose I should correct this.
When I say I have “played several Monsterhearts games”, I mean to say I have “Run several…”. I MC Monsterhearts, weekly and have been doing for over a year (likely two possibly more), sometimes running two or three games of it a week. The longest running game spanned four seasons until the group found the logical end point to the characters and they retired them all to start new one in a new setting… of Monsterhearts. Additionally these are not the only games I am running at those times either. It is safe to say i am experienced with running games in general and Monsterhearts in particular. While the make up of each group varies with new people coming in and dropping out for various life reasons, It’s also fair to say that the individuals who have repeatedly played in such games have a wide breath of understanding born from immersing themselves very deeply into the system. To discount what they see is a grave mistake that I know not to make.
Second Edit:
This is not to say others are not capable of seeing things or can’t provide anything of help or assistance or valid points of view, but from what I have seen you seem to think your point of view supercedes the point of view of others without giving a good solid reasoning (particularly with how you responded in the post below, and especially before it’s own edit). There is more that I would say but this is already too close to my comfort to personal matters that do not think have a place here in this thread. I add only added this part because I did not want you to get the impression I was telling you to be quite or that you don’t matter, truthfully I would be happy to clear this out and get on the same page so that it can be made better (a sentiment which you seem to share in the second post her which is why I am continuing to engage as well)
Look, it’s ok to dislike critique, but three people don’t need to come from the woodwork and tell me I don’t get it. Maybe I got it and saw that it did what other things do, less effectively. Maybe it was confusingly worded.
The wording was unclear when you posted this skin. Eg:
>The latest round of playtest* with the enchanted is nearing to a close”.
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?word1=%22Nearing+to+a+close%22&word2=%22Coming+to+a+close%22
*Playtests or playtesting, but playtest is a singular.
It seems like a skin that’s OK as long as everyone at the table is perfectly aware of all your limits and caters to what you’re going for, which is ideal, but doesn’t reflect a majority of gaming groups. Or maybe I’m a grump and this isn’t something I’d want to play even with perfect mechanics, but this doesn’t jump out at me as a Real Teenager. (There’s something preteen/princess-esque about defining yourself by how you feel about another person’s rules, Wishing to solve your problems and eventually Getting Experience by doing what the authority figure asks when you see the wisdom in it).
Can you describe the AP of the skin? Maybe there’s an in-fiction example that will clarify how the moving parts work.
Normally I would respond to both posts in full, but the first post (As mentioned above and as I told another individual in conversation) is much more of a personal issue in nature and not germane to the skin, I am going to address very little of it here, if I address any of it at all.
As to the points of the second post
“It seems like a skin that’s OK as long as everyone at the table is perfectly aware of all your limits and caters to what you’re going for, which is ideal, but doesn’t reflect a majority of gaming groups.”
I would have to disagree to an extent. Yes it requires the player and the MC to come to an consensus (which is heavily discussed in the playing section) and set limits and rules but it is very easy for the MC (usually with full support of the enchanted player) to hold everyone in the game to those preset limits and rules. After that it comes down to the universal guideline for all MCs, STs, GMs, and DMs that they need to make sure that no players idea of having fun is stopping other players from having fun too. While “ideal”
groups may never exists, a good MC deals with that and still makes everything fun, and if you have a bad MC who is the one doing this I still stand by my original suggestion of Rage-quit with optional table-flipping action.
” this doesn’t jump out at me as a Real Teenager.”
Honestly, what about being pushed to do something other people tell you to do doesn’t feel like a real teen? Hell to me that sounds like a real everything be that someone else a parent, a boss, a spouse, a friend. In fact you kinda admit as much in the next line by bringing up it feeling “preteen”.
“There’s something preteen/princess-esque about defining yourself by how you feel about another person’s rules,”
You seem to be stuck on the idea that it’s a single person giving rules. Which while that could be the case I would say the MC is missing out on a huge opportunity there to get more people in on the action.the bigger point is that it’s “Others” or society and not “A person”, and I would argue EVERYONE measures themselves by the standards of others. If it is just a person your aren’t really defined by your reaction to it you are defined by the level of control that person is exerting in your own life, like an over controlling parent (And seeing parents as over controlling pains in the ass is a VERY teenager thing).
Additionally the only move that is really seems to fit that description above is “following orders” which the skin is free not to take. It has a long story as it was mostly inspired by comments that my first submission got and was made to facilitate people who wanted to have the option to reward more subservient play, and I would not quantify this as “defining yourself” though i would qualify it as “defining your relationship with this person”
“Wishing to solve your problems and eventually Getting Experience by doing what the authority figure asks when you see the wisdom in it)”
Again with the singular “authority figure”. It would be more akin to say the Enchanted can get a point of experience by not making their own decisions (which is a bad move in the long run) or by caving into peer pressure.
The Wishes point has been brought up elsewhere. It doesn’t solve problem immediately. It Isn’t guaranteed to work ever and says nothing about what the consequences will be. After all one of the tenets of the game is all happiness comes at someone else’s expense. Who else does the wish affect the world? How did it not effect the world?
“Can you describe the AP of the skin? Maybe there’s an in-fiction example that will clarify how the moving parts work.”
As I mentioned in the first posting, This was inspired by Ella Enchanted [Origin: Blessed] because of a player’s desire to play a skin under that curse in the supernatural high school world of monsterhearts. The character fit in with the world no trouble. When another player from a different group saw the skin they decided it was interesting and that is when I thought to release the version I had worked out through those playthroughs.
It should also be noted that when creating the skin, I instantly noted similarities between it and playing a Genie (Bound to live their life for others and do that is commanded of them) [Origin: Born this way]. It also invoked images of what is possibly the worst monster of all in my mind, the Stepford Wife [Origin: Not so brainwashed slave]. Additionally there is a lot of body horror in the inability to control what one does much like the classic voodoun imagining of a zombie [Origin: Under a powerful spell]. The themes ran deep and in most of those stories they are told about breaking free from the oppression because this is a very basic human drive that does begin to REALLY kick into high gear in puberty when we are trying to find our own way in life.
For the most part every move comes from reading Ella Enchanted. Obedience (Her curse), Razor Wit (which Ella posses from having to choose words carefully), Enchanted Item (Ella’s book), Voice of Honey and Oil (Which Ella learns from the ogres) and even to some extent Bide your time (Ella’s patience). Wishes came about because of the connection to being able to playing a genie, and Ella did have access to a fairy godmother (which originally was in one of the moves that got removed before release) who could have granted wishes if it wasn’t totally verboten by the all the fairies except the one who Blessed Ella in the first place. Following Orders as mentioned above came from the community feedback.
I posted the skin originally in the hopes of getting play-tests rather than unfiltered opinions. I’m fine with other people having opinions on the skin and I will listen and respond to them because I think discussion is more helpful than dictation in these matters. It will take a lot of effort for someone to show that something I have seen work and add to a game doesn’t work or won’t add to a game. Most problems at this point are in conveying how the parts fit together which IS a big issue and DOES need a lot of help.
In short, I’ve seen the gears turn and this engine move in glorious ways though I may still need to give people a proper instruction manual on how to run it (which is one of my greatest weaknesses).
Adam Goldberg
“There’s something preteen/princess-esque about defining yourself by how you feel about another person’s rules”
I’m not sure what you mean by this skin feeling like a princess. Please explain what you mean more fully.