Hey Johnstone Metzger, we were playing through our first session of Adventures on Dungeon Planet last night and one of the players chose the Mutant playbook. We were a bit confused about choosing the “monster moves” and how to use them in play.
I told her to just make up a few things that she liked and how those particular mutations were physically manifested. She chose “chameleon”, “alternate spectrum vision” and some third thing I can’t recall. Did I do this right?
Any advice on how to play a Mutant?
Also, two of my players chose evil alignments, which is always a pain in the ass.
That’s pretty much how Richard Robertson chose monster moves for his Mutant in our Dungeon Planet PbP. Under Advantageous Mutations it also says: “When you employ an advantageous mutation, defy danger to make it work properly.”
So if a Mutant’s activating their mutant power, it’d be a Defy Danger roll (with the stat based off the mutant power the player chooses).
Actually, Johnstone Metzger I’ve got a question too. Should you choose just one stat based off the mutation for the DD roll or is it based on how you’re using the mutation in that specific situation? Some mutations seem like they could apply to different stats for the DD roll based on how those mutations are used.
Brennen Reece traditionally, evil alignments are a problem (and can get quite nasty) when 1 player is evil and another is good. While I haven’t yet had this happen in DW my understanding is that most of the problems would weed themselves out in Character creation during the bonds section.
Depending on the bonds, you’ll be able to see how this group “functions.” While you may not be able to do the easy move of “The town is in trouble, they need your help,” you may be able to do the “that bastard who stole your heirloom has gotten himself into trouble and if he dies you might never find it again” move.
More complicated, but your players have indicated to you that a tension like that is what they are interested in.
So…good luck! 🙂
The idea was that, since most classes are built off 3 principle, useful moves (more or less), the Mutant just gets to pick their 3 moves, and since they pick from the monster moves (just like the Druid does when shapechanging), they are phrased as actions. So they have 3 things other PCs can’t do at all, and they just roll for them with Defy Danger.
In play, we always use the Metamorphica, so “passive” mutations do tend to come up sometimes. I probably should have included a note about that in the book, but I don’t make them roll if it’s mostly cosmetic, or doesn’t include the Mutant taking action.
So like if the Mutant has the advantageous mutation “immune to electrocution” and the alien wizard shows up and blasts the whole party with chain lightning, the Mutant just doesn’t take any damage. Don’t need to roll for that, it would be the same if a PC was standing behind lightning-proof glass, or had a magic lightning-deflecting amulet.
If the Mutant wanted to deflect the lightning back onto the alien wizard, THAT would be defy danger with CON probably. On a 10+, only the alien wizard takes damage. On a 7-9, everybody (all the PCs and the alien wizard but not the Mutant) takes either full damage or half damage, Mutant’s choice. On a miss, the Mutant doesn’t take damage from the lightning, but maybe it makes heavy stuff fall over onto him.
And definitely use whatever stat their actions call for, don’t tie mutations down to one stat. Make sure the Mutant player reads defy danger so they can describe their actions based on which stats they want to be really good.
The guy who did most of the Mutant playtesting for me is an old-school D&D player, so he put his CON and DEX really high, took a magic sword with the precise tag, and charged into action at every opportunity. He saved his mutation hold for critical moments and never needed more than 2 in a single session to be really effective. He made good use of his resources (basic moves, HP, mutation hold).
The other optimal strategy is to entertain the other players and the GM with “cool mutant stuff” so they give you more hold that you can use to do yet more cool mutant stuff and not have to roll for it. So basically, being a good player by helping everybody have fun.
As for evil characters, I have noticed lots of players putting anti-authoritarian streaks in their PCs. I usually have them be agents of the Humanspace Secret Service, and they want to play oppressed androids and marginalized aliens. So you could always make their antagonists be parodies of pulp heroes, who hypocritically talk about “doing good” but are actually agents of repression. Which gives the PCs a legitimate reason to be “evil.”
It’s also a fairly easy choice to make if you’re playing a fighty game, since all my evil alignments just ask you to hurt people you don’t like. Some of the other alignments are actually easier to get XP for, but if you have multiple fights every session, evil gets XP. If you want a less-fighty game, with more rescue, investigation, and parleying, you may want to state that upfront and ask them not to all be evil.