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Messages - ctrail

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Apocalypse World / Re: Scarcity of atruism and reason

« on: September 27, 2011, 08:16:07 PM »

That actually is helpful narretei, because part of what I'm struggling with is how to keep things interesting when my natural inclination is to play most NPCs in a fairly reasonable fashion. I think it may stem from the fact that the PCs are so powerful that nasty and stupid NPCs get killed pretty fast, and making the world seem real to me means that others see that and learn to behave around them. But that can run up against keeping things interesting, if NPCs never push hard against the PCs then things can get boring. One thing I'm thinking is that failed rolls can be a prompt for me for an NPC to cross a line, but thoughts on how basically "good" people can cause problems is useful as well. I guess the last thing would be to work more on PC-NPC-PC triangles, because not everyone interacts with everyone the same way, and an NPC who seems helpful to one PC but problematic to another is a more interesting situation than one who everyone agrees is a nuisance.

Apocalypse World / Re: When to use Manipulate

« on: September 27, 2011, 08:11:07 PM »

Quote from: Shreyas on September 27, 2011, 07:36:44 PM

I'm saying, "honesty demands."

What's happening, procedurally, is that the two characters start out JUST TALKING. At any point, one character can intervene by saying, "Okay, this isn't getting me anywhere, so I will use leverage," or the other character can intervene by saying, "It's clear that this character will not deal unless further leverage is applied." Either way, this indicates that fictionally, negotiations have given way to persuasive pressures of one kind or another, and that (most likely) the characters are aware of this - that's why the effects of a manipulative hit are so punitive and the effects of a miss are "the MC tells you what." There is social violence going on.

I do think that you can manipulate/seduce when your intended victim isn't necessarily putting up a lot of social resistance. However, there's a difference between saying, "Hey Josh can you please do the dishes?" (just talking) and "Josh, if you really loved me you'd do the dishes..." (manipulation) and IMO this difference should be fictionally expressed.

My impression from your initial explanation was that you could use the move or not without any corresponding change in the fiction, but it's a little clearer from this that you take a player deciding to use the move as signaling intent to use a particular kind of tactics in the fiction.
Do you think someone can use make a manipulation even when the target is inclined to "just plain accept the offer as it is", because they are using manipulative tactics, or do you skip the roll in that case?

Also, "social violence"? Can I take it you think this move is always a violation, then? One of the appeals for me of how AW models persuasion is that, between players at least, it doesn't involve leverage and can use the "carrot" instead of the "stick", so it's possible to play a charismatic character who can persuade others to do what they want without it feeling like violence against the other character. I guess I don't see the results of a hit as always being "punitive", as you put it. Using the move on an NPC it requires leverage, so that seems a little darker, but I just saw it argued that appeals to reason and humanity could also be manipulation. I'm on the fence in the latter case, but I've seen people play this move as something that could go on between friendly characters without anything really evil going on. I'd be interested in hearing another perspective, could you expand on this?

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 27, 2011, 12:47:48 PM »

Interesting. I wonder why it was obvious to me that you couldn't use those other rolls more than once per situation, but I thought you could heal the same injured person more than once. That power is very different from what I thought it was.
Thanks for pointing that out to me, the question I should be asking seems much easier to address than the one I was asking.

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 27, 2011, 06:05:03 AM »

Quote from: Johnstone on September 27, 2011, 05:49:24 AM

Yes. A single level of harm can keep a character from dying. If that resolves what is interesting about the character being wounded, skip the rest. If he is probably going to heal, let him heal and pick it back up at that point.

I think our disconnect may be here- healing a single level of harm can't always keep a character from dying. If they were at 11:00 or 12:00 before they healed that level of harm, they are still dying, so the thing that was interesting about them being wounded hasn't been resolved.
I think the rest of your advice is probably the appropriate way to handle it when the injuries aren't potentially fatal. But if we treat the conflict like it's resolved after a single roll when someone was at 12:00, we're either rewriting how the move works, or ignoring the harm rules, because by the rules they are at 11:00 and still dying and it's still up in the air whether they will live or not.

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 27, 2011, 05:48:07 AM »

I'm a little confused. You had me convinced that Healing Touch was so risky that it wouldn't be used to instantly heal someone who wasn't at risk of death, even though the default angel kit can't do that at all. But now you are worried that it would replace stabilization via stock completely if you could stabilize someone with a single roll. If you are worried that it might replace the default move completely, why aren't you concerned about spamming it outside life or death situations?

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 27, 2011, 04:59:19 AM »

Okay, let's say the move is, or can be made, dangerous enough that it's something you only want to use in life or death situations. I'm still not happy that it often takes several rolls to stabilize someone. The obvious change is to make it work more like angel kit healing where a single roll sets someone at or past 9:00 to 6:00. What are your thoughts on changing it to work like that?

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 27, 2011, 04:21:41 AM »

One of the things that makes this move interesting is that it lets an Angel heal the first two levels of harm quickly, which they couldn't normally do. Making it so dangerous that you'd never want to do that seems unfortunate. But suppose that it's already so dangerous by the book that it's not worth using except to save a dying character, or that we can treat it as such a high impact move that it becomes something you only want to use in such circumstances.
Then, we still have the problem that it sometimes takes two or three uses to stabilize a character who is at death's door. That's not as bad a six rolls, but still feels kind of clunky and at odds with how the rest of the system works.

The default angel kit moves never require more than a single roll (and possibly a second acting under fire roll to deal with the consequences) since if someone is past 6:00 a success sets them to 6:00, and a roll isn't required to speed up healing the first two harm. I think the problem with this move is that it heals one level of harm at a time, instead of stabilizing someone in a single roll. But I'm not sure that making it work exactly like the angel kit is the best way to go either, I think the fact that it isn't exactly the same as the angel kit is what makes it a useful move for an angel to take.

A lot of the advice I'm getting feels like variations on "make the move such a hassle that it will only be used sparingly", which really isn't doing it for me. If the move is so clunky that I don't want it coming up in play, I'd rather redesign it to work better than discourage them from using it. And the life and death situations where you'd use a move even when it was a big hassle include the situation where the move feels especially clunky, and in those situations I think a lot of these approaches might make things worse.

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 27, 2011, 03:28:08 AM »

It sounds like you are suggesting that the healer be able to stabilize the dying character and resolve that conflict with a single roll. That's not a bad way to change the power so it acts more like the angel kit. But by the book, that's not what the move does, you only heal a single level of harm.
I'm not sure what your point was with regard to different wounds taking different amounts of time. Are you suggesting that multiple levels of harm could be healed but the single roll might represent a longer period of time?

This is a little bit of a digression, but I was surprised that you thought that it is the MC's responsibility to frame scenes and decide their scope and range. A lot of the time I have seen the MC ask questions while the player frames the scene. The rules are pretty explicit about MC responsibilities, but I don't think this was addressed.

Also, I found it odd that you don't think we should be beholden to the wounds on the character sheet. If we're going to ignore them, why are we tracking them in the first place?

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 26, 2011, 10:10:52 PM »

I see. I had thought since the Angel had a move to "stabilize and heal someone as 9:00 and past" that 9:00 was unstable, but it looks like if you are at 10:00-12:00 it stabilizes you and sets you to 6:00, and at 9:00 you are already stable but the same move can set you to 6:00. Do I have it right?

That would mean you need at most three moves to stabilize someone instead of four, but that's still three consecutive moves to achieve a single goal (stabilizing someone on death's door.)

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 26, 2011, 09:50:05 PM »

Quote from: help im a bug on September 26, 2011, 09:16:06 PM

Huh, I guess we were playing debilities wrong; we kind of played them like, any time your health would change, you can take a debility and set your harm to 9:00 and stable.

It looks like you're only supposed to take them at the moment your health crosses 9:00; I kind of liked what we were doing though.

I have always found the language used a little unclear, but my understanding was that when your health crossed 9:00 you could take a debility to stop there, but would not be stable- you must still be stabilized by an Angel or healed to 6:00 with Healing Touch to prevent death.
I like the way you describe having it work, but even if you could use it after the fact, wouldn't it set you to 9:00 but you'd still be unstable?

Quote from: Evan Torner on September 26, 2011, 09:14:21 PM

Well, whenever Burroughs the Angel uses the healing touch, it's an event because he is invading your flesh and nervous system with his mind.

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=608.msg8683#msg8683

So make every Move impactful and you won't have this happen six times in a row.

Yeah, I don't buy that. Remember I'm not (just) talking about topping off an already stable character, but also cases where you need to stabilize someone who is at death's door. It'll be an event, for sure, but you'll either decide it's worth invading their flesh and nervous system with your mind four times to stabilize them, or not. I can see why you wouldn't use the move frivolously, but it's hard to imagine you wouldn't use it to save someone's life- or if the consequences were that dire, it's hard to see when you would use the move, ever. The problem still seems to me to be that it takes up to four rolls to stabilize someone.

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 26, 2011, 08:47:21 PM »

Quote from: help im a bug on September 26, 2011, 08:34:28 PM

If your worry is that you feel trapped in a decision between "either I sit here and do nothing or I make this PC die", well, I think that's why debilities exist.

That's part of it. I'm not sure how debilities help. If you take a debility, you will slow down death, but will still die eventually unless you are stabilized. Since you can't stabilize yourself by taking debilities, either those four rolls get made, or the character eventually dies, it just might take longer. And besides "either I sit here and do nothing or I make this PC take a debility" doesn't seem great, either.

Quote from: help im a bug on September 26, 2011, 08:34:28 PM

You don't have to be the one making the moves each time, either; the idea of letting a player have 6 moves in a row (or really, more than 2) seems bad to me because it means the other players aren't making moves, not because I (the MC) am not. I feel like if the other players are around, just giving them the opportunity to do things with their characters is likely to provide enough distraction.

I guess that's a little better since the other players aren't bored, but it now takes the healer most of the session to stabilize someone. Again distraction doesn't seem like it improves the situation, I think the real problem is that stabilizing a dying person is really a single action in the fiction, just like you can make one roll to shoot someone for 3 harm rather than three separate rolls. The angel kit rules handle it that way, and the fact that this move doesn't treat it that way is kind of weird and causes some problems.

Apocalypse World / Re: Scarcity of atruism and reason

« on: September 26, 2011, 08:38:47 PM »

Quote from: help im a bug on September 26, 2011, 08:29:58 PM

I guess your original question was, hey, why isn't there a non-manipulative, non-threatening way to get someone to do something you want. I guess my answer is, if you want to do that, feel free to roleplay it out. But there's not really negative consequences beyond failure inherent in that sort of dialogue; if you're behaving like a rational human, then maybe you're not putting enough of yourself on the line to call for a roll?

I guess my original question was "does the fact that there isn't a non-manipulative, non-threatening way to get someone to do something I want, mean that all NPCs are asshats and manipulation and threats are the only way to get them to do something?" Chroma's answer was "nope, that wouldn't make apocalypse world seem real." I think you are right, we don't need a roll for that case.
I don't think that quite settles the issue for me completely, but I need to think a little about what it is exactly that I'm worried about.

Apocalypse World / Re: Healing Touch

« on: September 26, 2011, 08:07:11 PM »

If you have Weird highlighted you gain a ton of experience and Hx, right? Sorry I didn't make that clear, but my concern about experience was when someone has this move and also has Weird highlighted. If they don't have Weird highlighted that's not an issue.

I don't like the idea of a player making six moves in a row, either, and that's exactly my problem with this move. But it doesn't sound like a silver platter for me to make a move, to me. In fact if they are in a safe environment, there is nothing I see that suggests this move takes a lot of time, so why wouldn't it make complete sense for them to just use them more six times quickly, before addressing anything else?

To be more concrete, imagine we're back at the holding after a battle, and one of the player has taken six harm and is on death's door. I could let the healer make four moves to stabilize them, which doesn't sit right with me. I could make a move each time between each move- that doesn't make sense to me on a successful roll because they aren't looking for me to say anything, they know exactly what they want to do next. But suppose I do find an appropriate move. After that's resolved, they will return to healing the dying player, because otherwise they will die. If I make a move that prevents them from healing the dying player, I've ensured their death which doesn't sit right with me. If I make a move but they are able to return to healing afterwards, they are still making four rolls, and I've stretched out the amount of time it took and given the healer even more screen time, which seems like it only makes the problem worse.

Apocalypse World / Re: Scarcity of atruism and reason

« on: September 26, 2011, 07:55:37 PM »

Oh yeah, I can totally see using someone's humanity to make them feel like crap as leverage. But although they need to have some humanity for the threat to work, what the manipulator controls is not whether the action is right or wrong, but whether they can make them feel awful. I don't think manipulation would have worked in that example of the Savvyhead wasn't willing to make the Gunlugger feel like crap. Could you see a manipulation roll in that situation if they had just told the Gunlugger that shooting them would be wrong?

In the reason example, I don't think pointing out a course of action is stupid would be manipulation, but making it clear you are going to make them feel stupid if they do something could be. In your example, the Savvyhead changes the situation emotionally through what they say, I think you need to have a point of control like that to make it manipulation.

Apocalypse World / Healing Touch

« on: September 26, 2011, 07:45:59 PM »

If someone is seriously injured, it seems like you could get a situation where a player wants to use Healing Touch on them up to six consecutive times to heal them completely. That's kind of an unusual situation for this game, where one roll usually resolves a problem. I'm concerned both that it could be unbalancing if a player with Healing Touch could gain up to six experience per injured person after a fight, without taking any moves that don't seem justified by the fiction, and it's also just kind of clunky and time intensive to play through that many rolls, each of which could require another acting under fire roll.

Am I confused about how this move works and there is a reason why the wouldn't happen? I know it's a risky move, but I don't think that alone will mean it doesn't get used like this, since it's worth taking risks to save a dying character and could take four rolls to stabilize someone on death's door. Assuming it is a problem, how would you fix this move? I have a couple ideas but I'd like to hear some suggestions.

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