Flexible Morals from the Thief. When someone tries to detect your alignment you can tell them any alignment you like.
When/How do you use that move. I’ve never thought of having an NPC walk up to a PC and ask: are you good or evil? Not that the answer would matter anyway (like, say, a guard asked you if you were a respectable person for they cannot let in persons with ill intent)?
Today during End of Session, the thief used the move on me, the GM, to tell me that he was Chaotic, so he would get alignment XP, which he wouldn’t have with his true neutral alignment. Is that an intended use of the move?
On my first read through I read it is for use when a PC or NPC has a move (like the Cleric spell Detect Alignment) that can determine, discern or detect a Thief’s alignment
Had an evil thief and a lawful paladin in the same party. The paladin was violently opposed to the thief’s true purposes, but the thief pretended to be a travelling merchant. The paladin, being none too bright, never caught on to the act.
So whenever the paladin would pray and ask “what here is evil”, the thief’s player would loudly interject “Not me! I’m a legitimate businessman!”
But I would say that no, the GM is not subject to the move, lol.
But NPCs are – like if you had an archduke with a move “see their true motives” or something like that, the Thief would be able to lie to the NPC.
I believe Adam or Sage once suggested that Thieves, because of their flexible morals move, can basically ingratiate themselves or (not arouse suspicion anyway) to most NPCs because they just come out as the kinda fellow the NPC would like.
I believe it’s like Alfred Rudzki said; it’s not that they blatantly say it out loud; it’s that nobody would suspect them at all. Think of it as being ‘stealthy with your morals and ethics’.
“Today during End of Session, the thief used the move on me, the GM, to tell me that he was Chaotic, so he would get alignment XP, which he wouldn’t have with his true neutral alignment. Is that an intended use of the move?”
No, because it doesn’t flow from the fiction. The GM’s “enforced credulity” in that described scenario isn’t fiction, it’s game.
Now, if XP was somehow an in-fiction thing, and the Thief was somehow lying to, I dunno, the gods, and thereby getting a boon from them, that’d be something else.
In one game I’m in, I’m playing a Paladin who has happened (due to a lightweight hack) to have the Flexible Morals move. This lets him conceal his nature as a Paladin from the (vastly outnumbering) forces in his base of operations who look at members of his order as super dangerous to their way of life.
So in a way I figure it’s a move that lets you go undercover in a world where your motivations have a solid chance of being detectable via magic.
It didn’t come from the fiction, but I applaud your Thief player’s creativity.