How would a player avoid the charming gaze or words from a vampire? Defy danger through mental fortitude +WIS ?
How would a player avoid the charming gaze or words from a vampire? Defy danger through mental fortitude +WIS ?
How would a player avoid the charming gaze or words from a vampire? Defy danger through mental fortitude +WIS ?
“look over there and that fat sack of blood!” (Cha)
“I close my eyes” (Dex)
“I stare back and snarl” (Wis? Con?)
I like Aaron Griffin’s answer. You could indicate the stat in the custom move, like: “when you avoid the gaze of the vampire, roll+Dex” but I would only do that if the effect strongly implies a specific response. Otherwise, just leave it open so that the player can narrate their character’s reaction.
My first answer was a misreading of the question. I thought it said “how would a player avoid the charming gaze with words”
It still totally works though.
I’d think it’d be a monster move that you can do, and they don’t roll to resist it. Instead you declare that if they obey the vampire’s command (attack ally) they get exp. I find taking control away from a player is less fun then having them debate on if they want to screw over the wizard or whatever. If they choose to ignore the command, have them explain how they resisted it in the fiction.
“I hear voices in my head, whispering for me to attack Rengar. My vision goes blurry and my mind is hazy, but I focus on striking down the foul creature in front of me.”
Patrick Schenk you can give the players the option to react to a monster move – that’s the difference between a soft and hard move in this case.
+Aaron Griffin you do what is fictionally appropriate. If vampires in your narrative can possess people from across the room with just a fleeting glance, then they can just do it. I don’t have my book on me since I’m at work but I’m 90% sure all monster moves fall under soft move anyways. And it’s up to you to decide which are frictionally appropriate to use at the time.
Yeah. Aaron Griffin beat me to it again. Giving the players a chance to react vs just having something happen I the difference between a soft move and a hard move. There’s no reason why you couldn’t make a really hard monster move, but I’d reserve that for really bad ass monsters.
If you want to have they very first monster the party meets, bite off a character’s hand when the warrior rolls a 8 on hack and slash, even though he is at full health. The rules give you a green light to do it.
Patrick Schenk They most certainly do not. There is no GM Principle that says “surprise the characters with irrevocable loss from nowhere”
You need to read the rules then. Monster moves are soft moves. On a partial success you may use a soft move on the players. This can genetic deal damage, or it could be monster move. And if the monster’s move is “bite off limb” or “poison foe” the rules say you can do it. If you as a GM don’t want to, that is your choice. But rules say you can do it.
I’m pretty sure monster moves are GM moves. You make them like any other GM move: when a player rolls a miss, when a player hands you a golden opportunity, or when everyone is looking at you to continue the conversation.
I don’t remember anything being said about monster moves being soft moves. I also don’t remember anything about making soft moves in addition to whatever else the 7-9 result of a move says.
You’re ignoring the GM Agenda and Principles. They are not just fluff, they are rules like any other.
DW is a game of constrained fiat. The Agenda and Principles are what constrains how you should act in any given moment.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. If a vampire bit off my warrior’s head when I rolled an 8 on my Hack & Slash move, and you’d given us absolutely no advanced warning about how dangerous the monster was, I’d be really pissed off Patrick Schenk.
But back to the OP’s question. I wrote a mind control move for a monster that looked like this:
When you resist Eisathora’s song of domination, roll+INT. On a 10+, you’re fine. On a 7-9, you take -1 forward as her
voice clouds your mind. On a miss, you’re Defying Danger to do anything other than follow her commands.
I specified INT as the stat the player rolls with, as I felt that represented mental fortitude better than WIS.
Sahuagin have an attack/move which is “Bite off a limb”. It’s totally legit to do that on a 7-9 Hack and Slash if it fits the fiction. The relevant principle is “Think dangerous”. However, I agree that instant death without warning is a no-no. It’s hard to see how that fits the “Be a fan of the characters” principle.
Of course it all will depend on the tone you want to go for in your own campaign.
Exactly. I’m not saying “rocks fall, everyone dies.” But if you are fighting a creature with a shark’s mouth. You should totally expect it to take a bite off.
You could use strength to Defy Danger against the vampire’s gaze as well!
“Fighter, the vampire locks eyes with you! You saw it take control of the villager earlier when it gazed into her eyes, what do you do?”
“I twist the vampire’s head around backwards. See if he can mind control me after that!”
That being said, whatever makes sense works. And the first time I use a monster move (if it’s on a player) I tend to let them defy danger against it. If they roll 6- on it after that though, it’s fair game.
I’ve got a lot of thoughts on Mind Control type moves (and resisting them) here, if you’re interested.
http://goo.gl/ZTZ4e4
A lot of how the player resists is going to depend on how you make your monster move (and how hard you make it).
“Your eyes meet his, and you find yourself lost for words, just sort of falling into those eyes, falling, falling… what do you?” (Soft move, leaves the conversation wide open to almost any sort of reaction, from turning aside to mental fortitude to muttering a prayer to, maybe, just hacking at the villain.)
“As you pull back to swing your sword, it locks eyes with you and you feel your arm check, cocked back, not moving. You can’t seem to move! It grins a way-too-toothy grin and advances, what do you do?” (Harder move, interrupting the PCs attack and also putting them in a spot! You’ve now established that they can’t move. Closing their eyes or looking away or muttering a prayer probably won’t fly, but steeling your mind [WIS] or just wrenching free [
CONSTR] seem legit.)Fighter misses a hack & slash roll, or gets a 7-9 and doesn’t take the vamp out. “It ducks/takes the blow and then locks eyes with you, hissing ‘_Drop it_!’ Your hand opens of its own accord and you vaguely hear this sort of clattering, from a distance, and you find yourself thinking just how nice the view must be over by the edge of the parapet. Cleric, you see the fighter drop his sword and start shuffling toward the edge while the vampire turns towards you, what do you do?” (Hard move, dictating PC action and then shifting focus to another PC, so as to imply that the fighter is gonna throw himself off the parapet. If the cleric doesn’t do something about that, I’ll eventually shift back to the fight and put him in a spot and ask him what he does.)
GM moves (and player reactions) never happen in a vacuum. There’s always all sorts of positioning (fictional, conversational, mechanical) that informs what people say next and what happens next in the fiction.
Here’s a custom move I wrote to be used with monsters that have some kind of mind control like behaviour: moves.vindexus.net – Compelled Betrayal by Colin “Vindexus” Kierans