Author: James Meyer

A couple quick move questions

First, in the Divine playbook, both myself and my player (who is spellslinger, but ‘took a move from another playbook’ on this one) have read and re-read the ‘what I need, when I need it’ move, and can’t decide if it means a single item is held at a time, or if multiple items can be stored at a time, and the one needed can be retrieved at any time, individually. Each time I think I decide, and I then blink and suddenly realize it must mean the other. I was just going to go with it being multiple items as long as she doesn’t go too crazy with it, but curious what the actual intent was.

Second, with a spellslinger’s combat magic, I’m having to make a lot of quick calls on the fly as to how things work… it’s all pretty clear, actually, until you start using the ‘wall’ base. So first, she has wall as a base, and force as an effect… so I’m reading that as she can make a wall with either 1 harm and 1 armor (the base), 2 harm and 1 armor (base + effect on base), or 1 harm and 2 armor (base + effect on wall), but NOT 2 harm, 2 armor (that would be base + effect on base + effect on wall, and there is a very clear OR in the effect… so this I think I’m clear on, but just wanted verification).

The bigger question is: if she can cast a barrier during a KSA using weird rather than tough (which makes sense if she is maybe defending herself when a monster corners into using KSA), what happens if she tries to use the barrier to help someone else… if she’s trying to use it to defend someone else, should that be Protect Someone (rolling tough, which is the rules to the letter), using protect someone (but rolling weird by extending the idea of spellslinger combat magic to Protect Someone), or Use Magic (rolling weird, because this is the spellslinger casting a spell which just happens to be protecting someone). I’m thinking Use Magic should generally be used when casting (with a possible Act Under Pressure addition if under stress, like when in the midst of combat), with KSA only a situation where the player is actually trying to (or forced to) get physical with the monster (and for a spellslinger, this allows for casting their combat spell, but for other playbooks, magic would not be an option), and Protect Someone would only be for physically intervening… since the barrier only provides 1-2 armor rather than fully preventing damage like Protect Someone (ideally) does, I guess it does make more sense that it isn’t a Protect Someone roll.

As usual, that’s what I’ve worked out while typing, some of that differs from what I was thinking before starting this post. So then it really just comes down to the fact that the spellslinger can probably use Use Magic to cast that wall at any time, while it is in Combat Magic to help them personally when cornered and forced into a KSA rather then Use Magic to help mitigate their own exposure?

Oh man, now what about Help Out? :p. Could you roll a Use Magic to act as a help out on another player’s KSA roll? Well, off the top of my head, I guess I might double the rolls, rolling a Help Out to try to aid the other and a Use Magic to determine the actual effect (where if help out was used with a standard weapon, it might just provide the benefit to the player helped plus possible harm of the weapon, help out with a barrier may provide the benefit to the player plus the benefits of the barrier (+harm and +armor)? So many options!

I guess, in general, I’m occasionally having trouble with moves that take effect during KSA, but that occur in situations where the player can act beyond the monster’s range or awareness… since it isn’t technically KSA if the target can’t reciprocate. But then it gets hard to write off why the player would perform better when under far more pressure and danger than when they aren’t… I’m fairly good at making spot decisions, but it would be good to be able to lay out somewhat consistent rules for players to be aware of so that similar situations don’t keep playing out using different mechanics just because I’m trying to figure it out on the fly. 🙂

Thanks for any thoughts on my long rambling!

-JM

Question about duplicate range tags

So if you have something with tags, and a tag gets doubled for some reason, what happens? I’ve been largely fudging this for whatever makes sense at the time, which is probably ultimately the ‘right’ answer, but I’m curious what the intended answer would be.

So for example, lets say you have a Chosen, and they have a special weapon with a base of staff (which is 1 harm hand/close).

First, this brings up a separate tangential range question… I was thinking the close range would work at hand range also, but since staff explicitly has hand/close, I assume that means it can be used effectively at hand range or close range… which implies that something with hand range won’t work at close (which is pretty clear), but also that it wouldn’t work at intimate (also, not hard to grasp), but harder to grasp, this also implies that a close weapon is not effective at hand range? I guess this makes sense, may vary in situation, but so, a shotgun (close) would not be effective at hand range, not because you couldn’t hold it up against something and fire, but that it would be too unwieldy to bring to bear against something actively trying not to get hit by it at hand range? So, maybe sawing off the same shotgun might change it to (close/hand)? Ok, so that’s interesting, hadn’t thought of that until asking this question just now, but I guess it makes sense.

Now, back to that chosen with a staff… if they choose the modifier long (add the close tag)… how would that work… would it change hand/close to just close, would it be ignored since close was already applied, or would it double the close tag in some way (maybe out-range another non-throwable close weapon)… hmmm, this wasn’t as confusing an example as one I had earlier, but can’t remember what it was, but if you double it, does it really become more a flavor choice, or how might you apply double-close?

The more I type, the more it seems like I know the answer, but I swear, earlier there was some case where it really did seem unclear! 🙂

So, a spell-slinger’s missile combat spell base (far) can not be used effectively from intimate to close/throwing range?

Thanks for thoughts, again my putting words to the question has in many ways answered a lot of the questions for me, though.

-JM

Struggling with Chosen’s fate

I just started running a MotW game for a group of 3 players, and we just got through the first session which ended up (expectedly) being just character creation and some world building. I’m trying to plan out an arc and general direction, and while I have a LOT to work with, but I’m struggling a little with the Chosen’s fate as he selected it. He is fairly vague about the details too, so I was just hoping to get some examples of how one might use the Chosen’s fate. Many of the options I could figure out, but those he chose for some reason are just not congealing into a cohesive plot or direction for me.

So he’s chosen for his heroic fate tags: Visions and Mysterious Inheritance. His Doom tags are: Sympathizing with the Enemy, and The Source of Evil.

Now many of the other tags are things that can be done TO him, and those I could manage, but his doom choices are sort of things he needs to choose to act on. I’m trying to figure out how these might manifest in play. As a side note, he also has Destiny’s Plaything (visions at start of each mystery about the mystery), and Dutiful (if fate rears its head and he acts according to one of his fate tags, mark experience, and if it’s heroic tag, +1 forward)

Visions is easy, once I get the focus of the larger arc of his fate I can probably easily find ways to throw those at him… though what does acting on that tag entail… maybe just following up on something he saw in the vision?

Mysterious Inheritance seems like it makes sense, but I still seem to be struggling slightly… he’d thought maybe his chosen weapon might be an aspect of that, but I wasn’t sure if that would cripple the class, not having access to that until his fate was manifested in some way… narratively that makes a lot of sense, and is a very likely direction we might go… but how would he act according to that tag.. once he gets the weapon, would every time he uses it in response to fate manifesting get him a +1 because he used the weapon from the tag in response to his fate manifestation? We also thought through having the inheritance be some other item that is somehow contextually important, and since it might not specifically be a typical weapon, that one is a little more clear on how I would use it in the above cases.

The Doom tags are causing more issues. I’m not entirely sure how to work sympathizing with the enemy in. I’m sure I can figure something out, I have some ideas, but seeing some examples of how others have used it might help. I was thinking I could try motivating him in situations where maybe there was some aspect of being able to sympathize like a hunter might manipulate another hunter, but then that implies he might get 2 experience marked when he does this (1 for following up on the manipulation attempt, and 1 for acting on his fate tag due to the Dutiful move)… I thought maybe the +1 from acting on he fate tag might be the draw itself, but since he did use one of his move selection on dutiful, it seems like I’m punishing him for that (since it implies I would have created the same reward even if he hadn’t selected that move to draw him toward the doom tag).. so maybe marking 2 is ok, since part of that was because of his move selection… but am I totally missing the point of how I could make use of this in general?

And the source of evil… I can see this implying that in his attempt to meet his destiny, he may become a key part of it, on the wrong side… paired with sympathizing with enemy, that makes sense… but then this is the first point where I realized maybe the fate is multi-headed, and it’s direction is based on choice… at which point, I started thinking I might be using the heroic vs doom tags wrong… in reality, I think I realize it’s just nuanced and purposefully vague, and I can do whatever seems to make sense for the game and narrative, but as I said, it’s just not quite gelling. So maybe his visions and inheritance are trying to guide him to defeating some big bad as his fate, but the doom is trying to lead him down the path of siding with and ultimately becoming the very thing he’s trying to stop? So maybe every battle using his chosen weapon (if that ends up being his inheritance) could be two-fold, a battle between the chosen and evil, but also a battle between the weapon and the chosen, or between the chosen and himself.. maybe the weapon is powerful and necessary to defeat ‘evil’, but also attempts to corrupt the chosen.. actually, writing this out has helped, as that last sentence JUST became apparent, and started shifting things just enough that I think maybe they are falling into place in my head…. hmmmm… Thanks for letting me throw text at you, even without responses I think it helped!

However, I’d still love to hear ideas on other ways I could go, ways to use or bend this, etc.

-James