Hey Vincent,

First of all, just wanted to say that I'm loving 2nd Edition as I read over the moves and other new changes.

I did have one question: With the "Battle Moves" now defined as they are, has the definition of being "In Battle" changed from what it was in 1st Edition?

In particular I'm thinking of that line on pg. 225 in the Gunlugger's move section that says "...going aggro on someone or acting under fire or even seizing something by force doesn’t make it automatically a battle. It has to be a battle."

But now the "Battle Moves" heading in the new Basic Moves section says under it: "When you're in battle, you can bring the battle moves into play."

Bottom Line Question: Is Single Combat a "Battle"?

That was the first thing I thought of when I read through the 2nd edition playbooks.

It looks like I really (really, really) missed the boat on this thing. Shame, because I really really like what you've done here. It's totally fucked and I love the aesthetic. So I'll bump this way up to the top and speak into the audient void. Jwok, anybody else, if this catches your attention and you've got C&C, I'd be honored and interested to hear it.

I'll second what the others said, to an extent. The problem is that Twisted has no built-in momentum. What drives the game? What are the stakes? AW's got scarcity, MH has insecurity, DW's got... whatever DW's got (is it greed? I haven't read the rule book). Etc.

Well, I think the source of momentum could be taken right from the setting. The Weird is where unloved things are discarded to suffer an eternity of their own personal hell. So what do they want? Love, affection, memories of The Happy Place (a hug, a . That's your momentum, your bang, your stakes. Of course they won't get any of these things, and when they do it'll be with a heavy side-dish of suffering. But the fact that these things exist in theory, or more importantly that they want these things, gives their misery poignancy and therefore humor. I don't know if you remember that bit in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the book) where the Oompa Loompa's pre-factory living conditions were described. One of the bleakest bits of prose I'd ever read as a child, not because of how clearly terrible everything was, but because it specified that their only real source of happiness was cocoa beans, and then went on to describe at length how difficult and rare these beans were to get. (Shit, I've just now realized that there's this weird imperialist-lauding subtext to Willy Wonka's industrialization of the Oompa Loompa's society. Huh.)

Anyway, I think that's what the system's missing, the pathos. They want a hug, a bar of chocolate, a daisy that doesn't try to eat them. They want them so bad that they'll crush the bones off of those who hug them, squabble over that bar of chocolate until they're beat-up and bloody and it's a Throbber that eats it after all, and when they fight over the daisy it gets trampled into the dirt in the struggle.

In order to effect this, the moves would probably have to change significantly. For one thing, I think there should be a shift in mentality from "harm" to "mutilation". People don't die in the Weird. They're just damaged, horribly, horribly damaged. If Minnie slashes at Sugar with a chainsaw, he doesn't die, but part of his guts fall out and get tangled on a nail and he's left screaming and tied to that nail like a dog on an intestine-leash. At worst, PCs are taken out of action so that they can come back next episode to suffer more.

What do you think?

Gotcha. Thanks for the reply.

I think the title is a clear-enough statement of the question, but essentially: is MotW a serious, drama-oriented game like Monsterhearts, or more of a comedy-adventure game, or a Twilight Zone sort of thing, or what? Basically, what's the default tone of the game?

Thanks in advance for any feedback and insight.