20 thoughts on “Scathing Wit: When you taunt or insult an NPC, roll +CHA.”

  1. On a 7-9, They are silenced, devastated or enraged, as the GM things is appropriate, and act accordingly. 

    On a 10+, you take + 1 foward against them. 

  2. Scathing Wit

    When you taunt or insult someone, make it a good one and roll +CHA: on a 10+, the GM chooses 3 from the list below; on a 7-9, the GM chooses 1.

    * They are outraged, and will do whatever they can to return the insult, now or later (verbally, bodily, or by some other means)

    * They are momentarily flummoxed, buying you time to act

    * They are deeply hurt, and will hold it against either you or themselves

    * The immediate company thinks worse of them

    * The immediate company thinks better of you  

  3. Jason is on to it (as usual)!

    But to flip it,

    When you taunt or insult someone, tell us the depths of your verisimilitude and roll +CHA: on a 10+, choose 3 from the list below; on a 7-9, choose 1.

    * You have made an enemy

    * You have stunned them into silence

    * You have riled them to retribution

    * Their friends believe what you say as true

    * You lose no standing because of your outburst

  5. I hate “useless” moves like these… ☺☺☺

    And there are Playbooks that make the player pay for that (ie. He need to acquire them with advancements).

    Useless.

    Here the question is: what are you trying to obtain, with the Taunt / Insult? This is what you have to ask to your player. Then, it’s a common “Defy danger” move. Let’s say he tells “I want my enemy to run away in shame”, then roll+CHA. 10+, success, the enemy goes away crying a river like a lady. 7-9 GM choose a complication/minor result. 6- be ready for some nice GM move 😈 It’s the same with “I want to enrage him, so he attacks just me” or “I want to appear better than them” ecc.

    … All as usual. 

  7. I too like Nathan Roberts​ move. I also do not think this is a useless move Andrea Parducci​.

    While it’s true that you can use Defy Danger to taunt or insult someone, there is a difference. With DD, the player has no control over what the GM offers on a 7-9 result. But with this taunting move, the player has much more control over what happens, representing their character’s ability.

    It’s the same thing as the Fighter’s Bend Bars, Lift Gates move. Anyone can break things with Defy Danger. But BB, LG gives the Fighter much more control over what happens when they do smash something to bits.

  8. I can understand what you mean with “give the player the power to choose what he likes / what he doesn’t want to happen”.

    However, please notice that Nathan Roberts move have almost no sense at all (sorry Nathan), of course imho.

    Let’s give a technical look to the mecanics:

    Wanna insult somebody? (…and what you want to obtain??? In the move this seems irrilevant). Ok roll.

    Then make some choices:

    * You have made an enemy

    * You have stunned them into silence

    * You have riled them to retribution

    * Their friends believe what you say as true

    * You lose no standing because of your outburst

    So, let’s suppose I rolled 8, that should be a limited success. I have just 1 choice. Still I don’t know if what I want happen or not (is the enemy running away? Is the enemy ashamed? Had the GM asked me what I need this move for?). However, returning to the choice. 

    Choose the first have no sense at all. Maybe “you AVOID to make an enemy” could have more sense.

    Choose the second COULD have sense if that was what I wanted to obtain, so if I choose this one, then it’s like I rolled a 10+ on a “normal, balanced move”, cause here I se no costs, no difficoult choices, no minor results etc.

    Choose the third result have no sense, like the 1st point of the list (if I can correctly translate the move). Why I want them to anger and retaliate aganist me??

    Choose the fourth point can have some meaning, this could be an “enhanced”, “more powerful” effect that you often see in advanced moves (your result impacts a whole crowd).

    Choose the fifth, well, this is punishing… Let’s say the same character want to obtain the same thing with persuasion instead insults. Here, you risk no “lose standing”, so if the first place, why to have an insulting character? If insult isn’t a different way to obtain things, then you are punishing a “flamboyant” character.

    Also, if you get a 10+, then you have 3 choices, that with that list turn the things weirdly negative…

    Let’s suppose I choose 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. So now I have an enemy, enraged, but silent 😀

    And I almost have no control on what is happening in the fiction.

  9. I will respectfully disagree Andrea Parducci​. If you don’t know what your character wants to achieve by taunting or insulting someone, then why are you taunting or insulting them?

    The move is triggered by intentional character action, and so the player has control over when it happens. If you don’t want the move to trigger, then don’t have your character taunt or insult another character.

    Do you want to taunt someone into making a mistake or just to see what they do? Pick option one. I could see this being useful in intrigue or murder mystery scenarios where you want to see how people react.

    Do you want to embarrass or shock someone into silence? Pick option two. This is useful when you want to keep someone from revealing a secret or saying something bad about you.

    Do you want to make someone attack you? Pick option three. This is useful when you want to get someone to focus on you instead of someone else, or when attacking you will cause that person to lose face or look foolish.

    Do you want to get people to believe something possibly untrue about someone? Pick option four. This is great if you want to discredit someone or spread rumors about them.

    Do you have more than one option available and not want to have other people think ill of you for your insults? Pick option five.

  11. It’s ok if different people have different vision of a move. However, I don’t know… Let’s say I want to taunt a bandit gang chief, because I want him to feel ashamed, and loose the fighting spirit, maybe walking away.

    I roll a 7. This situation in all the PbyA games is usually a “You made it, but…” “You made it and…”. In a “generic move” like Defy Danger, the “and/but” part is told by the GM. In specific moves, it’s told by the player, or the player can veto some bad thing he doesn’t want to happen. This is good PbtA philosophy/mechanic.

    Returning to Nathan’s move. I rolled a 7, so: I made it. The chief is discouraged, so it will not fight. And now I also have 1 extra choice.

    – SURELY I don’t choose the 1st, on the contrary I made a new enemy! Why choose it?

    – I surely don’t need him to go away silent, so no use for the 2nd.

    – I don’t want for him to vengeance on me, so SURELY I don’t choose the 3rd. Why choose it?

    – Maybe I could choose the 4th, so I get a big result! This is better than had rolled a 10+ on a normal move!

    – Maybe I could choose the 5th, because maybe I fear the people think I’m a dirty talker, even this is an addition that make me feel like a 10+ result, not a 7-9. 

    However,I feel all of this very distant from the standard 7-9 philosophy, also the points in the list that I don’t choose have almost no impact.

    Well, I’m reiterating the same thing. Maybe I can’t explain my point in the right way, or maybe you really see in a different way that part of PbtA.

  12. I think these are really good for defining setting. Inulting people isn’t a can opener in Nathan Roberts​ or Jason Lutes​ worlds. If you dont want the outcome, don’t perform the trigger. If you leave it to defy danger, the scope of outcomes is undefined.

    Neither having a custom move nor relying on defy danger is bad. But they say different things about the world and how relationships work. TBH, I like these moves better as moves attached to a monster or group – ‘when you insult a knight of the the thorns…’ rather than a playbook move because the options are worse than what you’d generally expect to achieve with defy danger, but I think the move itself is good.

  14. The move does not work the way you are describing, Andrea Parducci​. If you roll a 7, you do not get a “you made it, but…” result and an option from the list. All you get is a single choice from the list. That single choice is your partial success.

    So if you wanted to insult a bandit chief into losing their fighting spirit and get a 7, pick option two. Stun them into silence. Thats all you get. This is a partial success because, as you didn’t pick the options, the bandit chief’s followers don’t believe what you said and your friends might think less of you.

  15. After reading your example Chris, all I would want in the world is to be the GM when a player makes a 7-9 result and chooses that option!

    ‘So sure, the Bandit king is stunned into silence but all of his cronies are slowly drawing their weapons and twitching nervously… They definitely don’t believe your accusation of him being an incompetent, elf-kissing, goblin fondler. Also, the elf ranger in the party, maybe they want to reassess their bond with you?’

  16. Ehi, usually 7-9 is “success with cost”, not “an half success with a truckload of collateral damages / effects”,,, :-/

    I wouldn’t be very confident in a game with you as GM and that move in play… Men, in that list I see thing that should be “hard GM moves with 6- results”.

    However, now it’s coming a longer post. Just a minute…

  17. I’d like to specify that my replies are linked to “I like to speak about DW”, not to “I want to win”. Said so, still I can’t enter in that move mood. I keep seeing a big distance between “I as player tell to the GM what I want to obtain, if this is possible, then the GM make me rolling a move” and “choose 1 or 3 from that list”.

    I mean, in the previously quoted “Bend Bars, Lift Gates”, I know that if I roll on that move, and I get 7+, I overcome the obstacle. Then, simply I have to choose how well I do it. In short:

    – do it quick

    – do it silent

    – no collateral damages

    – repairable later

    Other moves gives cool mechanical bonuses, and this is why (in the first place) they exist, and the GM shouldn’t rely on the standard Defy Danger.

    Now, returning to the Insult move, I can’t feel a good link between the “trigger” and the list.

    Take the “enrage the enemy” example; I want the enemy enraged, but I don’t want to roll to obtain a “Ok, you enraged it” result. Probably the GM will make the enemy enraged EVEN if I roll a 6-, if I shout at him something like “you are a coward, looser!”.

    No, I want the enemy enraged because:

    – I want him to move from where it is / lose his position, advantage.

    – I want him blind raged, so I can get +1d4 damage when he come to the reach of my weapon.

    – I want him distracted, so a friend can get +1 on him, or can act unseen for a limited time.

    – I want him freeze, incapable to act for a while, so my friend can get some time to do “something else”.

    These are the kind of things I search in a list of choices, in a move. Not the “Ehi, if I don’t choose this one I can’t even succeed in what I’m rolling about”.

    Of course, obviously with a 10+ I know I can get more choices, a better result. 

    And, I can understand you put in the move an “avoid collateral damage” option. It’s nice because as player I know that if I don’t choose it, there will be some kind of reprisal, as in the Bend Bars move. But that is a “minimal” part of the move, the result guaranteed in the 7+ is that I overcome that obstacle (or I do a thing that usually I can do even without a move, getting special bonuses on top).

    If I roll a 7+ and I choose the 1st result in the Nathan’s move, I obtain the “obvious” result that I make the other character an enemy, and then I get a load of negative effects.

    Try to imagine that in a “Defy Danger like” move. IE: You have to pass a weak, weavy cord bridge. You roll 7. You have the following list, and you have to choose 1:

    – You can pass the bridge.

    – The bridge doesn’t break under your weight.

    – Your allies don’t think you are a moron.

    – You avoid the enemy trap near the end of the bridge.

    ,,, Can you understand my point?

    I hope I explained better my doubts about that.

  18. It sounds like you want a move designed for use in a fight Andrea Parducci​, since most of your examples are about combat. You seem to be saying that Nathan Roberts​’s move is “bad”, but I think you just want a taunt/insult move to do something different than what has been presented.

  19. I’m pretty much convinced by Andrea Parducci’s reasoning on this one.

    I really like Jason Lutes’s and Nathan Roberts’s  moves. They’re dripping with insight into what insulting people actually gets you and can possibly accomplish. But I’d never take either of them as an advanced playbook move.  I can see using one them as a custom move for a danger, or even as a basic move in a campaign that was more political. But neither one gives you enough predictable control or utility to be worth taking instead of something like the thief’s Wealth and Taste or the barbarian’s Usurper.

    Jarrah James’s move is more like what I was thinking of originally (almost exactly, actually).  Some more-or-less guaranteed immediate provocation, maybe with a mechanical benefit, and the consequences left up to the fiction.  Similar to I am the Law. 

    Ultimately, I’m not sure I’ll actually end up using a move like this. I realized, following this thread, that what I want is a move that encourages the Fox’s player to be witty and cutting at the table. I think I can come up with better ways to do that than with a roll.

  20. So, for example:

    Scathing Wit

    When you pierce an NPC’s pride with a well-placed quip, take +1 ongoing against them until they get the better of you or you are yourself humiliated (by anyone).

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