I have a question for GMs:
I have been thinking about messy and forceful and other weapon/move tags that are more abstract.
How do you show it for PC moves with a messy/forceful weapon and/or for messy/forceful monster moves?
I can easily see how something messy in the fiction (flail, dragon talons, etc) could be represented, but does it play out any differently in the mechanics than a regular attack (additional damage, debilities, etc)?
In short, what do you do for these more abstract tags?
Some setup fiction, mechanics/justification, and then followup fiction would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Forceful tags: give the player some freebies on a success, like knocking the enemy down or moving the enemy around. On a miss, do the same but places where they don’t want it (they knock over a teammate on the wind up, for example).
Messy tags: on a success, bring the nasty and gruesome up the enemies. They lose limbs, eyes, bowels, blood, etc.
For enemies with these tags? If the PCs miss, bring the tags into play. The character gets knocked down, tripped, moved somehow — or lose an arm, a leg, a foot, a hand, an eye.
Messy is the harder of the two: its a fictional effect above and beyond HP loss. If you lose your eye? Yeah, that’s HP but more importantly you’re defying danger more often just to keep your footing or find people, or at -1 to detect things, or some other bad stuff. Golden opportunities to complicate the character’s life.
I think this goes hand in hand with the AW wisdom “make as hard a move as you like.” If it’s time to sever a limb or take an eye, it just is.
One of my player’s fighter unhorsed a mounted knight with his huge, forceful and messy axe. The other time he fought, it was a bloodbath of spilt guts and exposed vertebrae. It’s easy when the stars I’m a fan of have those tags. It will be much different when they face something with them.
So, pretty much how the book describes it? If the PCs let a monster get in a messy blow or two, someone is losing something or equipment is damaged, etc.
It is as brutal as I expected it. Now to see if it is as brutal as my PCs expect it, lol.
The other thing to remember – nothing is any more permanent than you want it to be. So everyone gets mauled by the vorpal golem? Sounds like a good reason to go on an adventure to find the Fountains of Restoration, or that crazy extraplanar tinkerer who sells clockwork prosthetics etc.
The barbarian in my game dropped a horse sized rock on his foot and crushed it beyond repair. I later let him find a magical prosthetic, but it was an entire leg, so they had to operate…