Category: Monster of the Week Roadhouse: General Discussion

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