An NPC has sympathetic tokens on two PCs for, er, reasons. It suddenly occurred to me that I’m not supposed to roll the dice. Do I just decide whether a hex the NPC does works or not?
Mind, for the PC Witch, I’m pondering asking the player to roll Dark and explaining, “So, Battler has a guilty conscience, and I’m figuring that if he succeeds on his Dark roll, the hex affects him.” But, that’s a special case.
In a game ran by dave ring with an npc witch he had the pcs roll custom moves to defend against the hex.
I’ve never given NPCs proper Skins. Instead of worrying about moves, I’ve just had NPCs do whatever is appropriate for their character and the situation.
If the NPC has Witch-like magical powers, I’d just hit the PC with a head-on effect as a hard move. So if the NPC spends one of those Strings, you could come out of nowhere with a hard move, as usual.
Richard Williams Ooh, I am curious to see that.
I’m with Chris Stone-Bush on this: make a hard move; or a soft move, if the NPC has not a golden opportunity to strike the PC (or spends a string).
Daniele Di Rubbo Sure. I am just curious about the custom moves.
In my opinion, the custom move is good, too, especially if it is common for that NPC, or NPCs in general, to hit PCs with hexes. 😉
If I recall the rules rightly, sympathetic tokens also function as strings, and strings let an NPC act with Advantage. It seems like that could cover an awful lot of the narrative ground of the tokens being held (or used) as a threat, without undermining the PC agency written into the rules.
Yes, although that rule explicitly works for Witch PCs, not witch NPCs, who, by the rules and philosophy of game, should not have a playbook, as the players’ characters have.
Richard Williams Lisa Padol i just had a look for them but i think i might have made them up on the fly.
maybe:
When someone with a sympathetic token on you gets around to hexing you, roll+dark. On a 10+, pick two. On a 7-9, pick one. On a miss, you guessed it, none.
> the hex has reduced effect
> the hex only lasts for a short while
> you know who hexed you; take a string on them
Most of the games I have run have had several NPCs who were secretly or not so secretly skins. Usually I adjust the moves that have rolls to just work, especially if the NPC is at an advantage. If the NPC can be put at a disadvantage, the move would fail but that revolves around the Players and PCs being able to actively counter it, IF they have neither I take the partial success, mostly because that causes more excitement in game. Spells cast by NPCs usually have an “unexpected side effect”
Of course those are just simple guidelines that I do not always follow. What I follow is asking myself “What makes the story more interesting” and remembering it is my Agenda to “Make the PCs’ lives not boring”
In a very early game I think I had a NPC witch get sympathetic tokens several PCs and she used them to keep the werewolf PC from being able to do harm by binding him. It motivated the character to have to find a way to be able to undo the spell cast on him so he could effectively lash out physically against anyone, and then motivated him to go kick the persons ass afterward. There was a PC witch also who managed to undo the spell with application of his own magic but had it transferred to him, and morphed to lock him out of spell casting (Which was denoted as causing harm by the binding) until he managed to break it in the story (This happened because he rolled partial success and chose unexpected side effect also)
Basically I have never seen the PCs being victims of moves actually remove their agency in the game in any meaningful way. Even when locked out of something very important to their character the PCs just had a motivation to get that off. When they are stuck they can easily gaze into the abyss for an answer on what can get them out of the bind and I give them something, or a list of things, they can do to get out of their situation. These limitations motivate creative roleplay. As one of my players discovered “I can’t hurt people but I can still manipulate that gang of bikers into kicking your ass for me”
TL;DR My answer is do whatever will be most interesting for the game and stir the pot the most.
I’ve also had a npc witch who acted as a school fair fortune teller to get tokens from all the pcs.
As someone who’s run a bunch of Monster of the Week and had entities with weird abilities affecting the PCs, my approach is same as dave ring’s above — write a custom move of the form “when you’re hit with thus-and-such kind of whammy…” or “when you try to resist the-other-and-such whammy…”
So NPCs inspired by PC skins aren’t mechanically equivalent to what a corresponding PC would be and involve extra work in advance by the GM, but I’m ok with that.
This is very helpful — thank you! The Witch’s player seemed to like my suggestion that he roll with Dark, and if he succeeds, the hex affects him, as the Witch believes on some level that he should be punished.
He bound himself from doing physical harm, and I’m not considering Hexing to count. Binding someone else not to be able to do physical harm? Nope, not harm. The player figured that this would be my ruling, but the character was horrified as he’d cast that hex instinctively, and the way in which he’d harmed people was, well, by side effects of the hexing. That is, he cast Ring of Lies on his father. Does not cause harm — the father harmed himself by choosing to lie. Cast hallucinations that he couldn’t undo (as the player decided the option to Not Take was to make the hex easy to undo). So, he figured he was too dangerous to use this power and did the self binding. Oops.
He also designed a new hex, basically the Vampire’s mesmerism, but using Dark, and used it to stop his father from being able to talk — and his father knows this happened. And that his son did the other hex. Oh, and the Witch has yet to be able to undo either. Oh, and the school nurse was supposed to teach the Witch stuff about controlling this sort of power, which the father also knows, but… well, the Werewolf tried to kill the nurse for reasons, and the students covered this up. Yep, Nurse hit her head after, er, slipping, and hope she wakes up again… Yeah, so the Witch’s father is convinced his son caused the “accident” on purpose. And he can’t talk. And his wife is staying with her friend, the wife of the sheriff after becoming convinced that he was having an affair, and even if he does manage to communicate, she’ll be convinced he’s now delusional or trying to turn her against her son and vice versa and… so, let’s just say the Witch has a lot to feel guilty for, and winces every time his mother tries to assure him that her problems with his father are not his fault.