Okay, I've got a bunch of feedback, almost all of it related to Moves, and a fair chunk to the Spooky character type (since that's what I'm playing). (BTW, you talk about taking moves from other "playbooks" in the list of advances; you might want to change those references to "character type" as well?)
Stat/Move Foolery: Most increases to the stats are listed as Advancements rather than Moves, meaning that they can only be taken once (until they get to the Advanced Experience), and cannot be taken from another character type. However, the Flake move
Crazy Eyes allows anyone to get +1 Weird (max 3), and the
Unfazeable Move for the Professional gives +1 Cool (max 3), meaning that any character type can override their "max +2" for those stats with their first Advance. Is that intentional?
The Mundane's Panic Button Move: The current write-up looks slightly wrong -- it says that, on a roll of 7-9, it will cost you to
stay; I think it is meant to say that it will cost you to
go.
Use Magic Move: One of the aspect that came up was the "Bar a place or a person to a given monster type" option -- the on-the-fly ruling was that the monster took 1 harm from interacting with the person from whom it was barred. Does that seem in line with the intention? Or was it meant to be more a "they've got to stand back and throw things" sort of deal?
The Monstrous Breed Ghost: I think there are some interesting issues with this breed, at least as we are currently using it. It feels like there may be a problem with agency -- in play, in order to interact with anything (other than talking to/grossing out the other PCs), the player has to succeed in a Move (generally
Manifest). Not being harmed by normal weapons and being able to move through walls are big things -- but they are essentially
passive. The ruling that ghosts cannot flit from place to place for free is understandable (and there may be an interesting Move there, allowing The Monsterous to turn up near anyone they're bonded to); but since (as we're playing it) the
Ghost can't interact with vehicles (unless they make a check), they currently have to rely on other people to provide them transport faster than running as the crow flies, which may be more of a penalty than was intended.
However -- reading through the rules-as-written, the actual
text of the Move/Curse looks a little different to how we have been playing it. The
Incorporeal Move says: "You
may freely move through solid objects" (emphasis added), which implies that the character can chose
not to do that, and move things about/lean against walls if they want to. Further supporting this interpretation is the fact that the curse is called
Invisibility, not
Intangibility -- that you need to
Manifest in order to be seen or interact with normal people (which doesn't mention normal objects). Maybe this is where the confusion lies -- if you can interact with the world, you can interact with normal people (write them messages in condensation, hit them with a bat).
It feels like the intention should be clarified -- and if the actual intention is to make a character that's dependent on others to affect the world reliably, then it might be useful to signpost that, since it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. :)
The Spooky's Tune In Move: Would it be appropriate for its results to act like those of the
Read A Bad Situation Move? That is, "If you act on the answers, you get +1 on your rolls"? This came up during the game, where I was wanting to know if I could use a Hold to know "How can I attract its attention", and then use the result to improve my
Manipulate Move to get the monster to focus on me rather than another character.
(For that matter, would it be appropriate for some of the
Investigate A Mystery Move results to act in the same way?)
The Spooky's Evil Lightning Move: This is the odd one out in the Spooky Move set, since it's the only one that's overt -- all the others have results that can be explained away by observers. It feels like it might be more appropriate for the Monstrous Character Type?
That said, the ability to use Weird instead of Tough is very handy to the Spooky Character type; I wonder whether it's just the fictional trappings that I'm objecting to? It would seem more fitting with the other Moves if it just inflicted harm that was immediate but explainable-away: heart attacks, aneurysms, seizures, being hit by a car that someone forgot to put the parking break on rolling through a wall... that sort of thing. You could call it
Whammy,
Evil Eye or something along those lines? Unless, of course, the idea is that it's
meant to give the Spooky something overt, in contrast to the other Moves?
Hmm. The downside of this approach would be that you're getting a strong overlap with Hex... which I'm also not sure about, as we'll see below.
The Spooky's Hex Move: From the write-up, it sounds like the intention is to cause a lingering problem (the examples given are "get sick", "suffer bad luck" and "fail at everything you try"), but the result seems immediate (suffer Harm), and less effective than
Evil Lightning as written. I'm not super-attached to the following suggestion, but here is a possible way that it could be changed: keep the bad results as written, but have a set of possible hexes? For example (they're terrible, sorry):
- Miasma: Dogs growl, cats hiss, their girl done gone cold on them, and they have -1 on any Manipulate rolls on anyone mundane
- Bad Luck: Guns jam, swords catch the scenery, cars won't start and computers bluescreen; -1 to any roll where they need to use equipment
- Black Dog: A panicky funk descends, giving them -1 to any Act Under Pressure rolls
These effects last until they break the curse. Breaking the curse would be straightforward but annoying -- being sprinkled with salt, salt water or holy water, a blessing from a religious figure, saying a rosary, meditating on consecrated/holy ground, etc. Or should it be for a limited number of tests? I don't have a good feel for the relative power Moves should have, I'm afraid.
I also wondered whether it would be acceptable to expand the ways to curse people -- instead of just to their face, adding via a poppet (needing blood, hair, teeth etc), or by making a gris-gris and planting it where they'll sit or sleep... or is that overcomplicating things and/or slipping into the "Use Magic" move? I guess I was just thinking about the traditional trappings of curses.
Anyway, I hope there is some useful feedback tucked in their somewhere.
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