This topic is a rough survey of sorts:

When you use the "read a person" move, how often you do use the "holds" mechanic and play out the rest of the conversation?

I've seen a lot of people ask all the questions right away (just like for Read a Sitch), so I'm curious how many don't do it that way, but keep the hold and spend it during the conversation.

If you do:

What makes it work, or what encourages people to do it?

Does it improve your game?

Vincent,

You mentioned somewhere that you had a really disappointing experience playing "Hand to Mouth..." with some teenagers. Have you written about this anywhere? What happened?

How similar is "Hand to Mouth..." to "Freebooting Venus"? (They sound pretty similar, from the capsule description...)

We started a Poison'd game yesterday (and will hopefully get the chance to squeeze in at least a couple more sessions). Lots of great stuff about this game. My favourite aspect is how "Pick-up-and-play" it is. You read through the first few pages, and you're basically ready to go.

(The GM has a LOT of moving parts to learn, and some guidance on which ones not to worry about right away would have been great - like, for instance, all the uses of Xs in fights - but for the players it's very easy to just pick up and play. And even for the GM, there's no "prep" aside from reviewing the rules and, maybe, making a list of pirate names.)

I have a few questions and observations, but the main issue we struck right away is that everyone apparently decided it would be fun to "play against type", and made their pirates reasonable, "let's talk this through", and "I don't want to be in charge" types. Mild-mannered pirates, huh? Interesting. It didn't break the game, but it was definitely a bit challenging. Since I, as GM, kept expecting them to do something a little more active, the game dragged a little, and it took us about 2 1/2 hours of play just to settle the Tom Reed and election of a new captain issues. We enjoyed the attention to detail and learned lots about the characters, though.

One reason I think this happened has to do with ambitions: all but one ambition (a single pirate wanted to be captain) were very long-term things. (You can't meaningfully act on "I want to be respected by higher society" in the first hour or two of play.) This seems like a good thing to keep an eye on in the future.

I think that, from now on, at the beginning of a game I will...

Tell each player to choose at least one immediate, short-term ambition, whatever the others may be.

Tell each player it should be something they can imagine how they could pursue almost immediately, just by being on the ship.

One interesting thing happened:

One of the players, who ended up being the Captain, wanted to do so surreptitiously. He pretended to be reluctantly chosen for the role, while scheming to manipulate those around him to support his candidature. (We even used a flashback to describe him "priming" one of the other pirates to nominate him.)

This was a bit awkward in play. I wasn't sure whether this kind of scheming falls into "free play" (i.e. none of the rules were being triggered, unless he made a bargain) or whether some of it could be covered by "stealth and deceit". Talking to others and manipulating them is a bit of a grey area; sometimes we did one and sometimes the other, but neither was *great*.

Any advice on this point from experienced Poison'd folks?

(I also made a few minor adjustments to the rules I'd like to discuss, but I'll see if there's any discussion to be had about these points first.)

Vincent,

I'm looking at the Bestiary and trying to see if there are guidelines we should follow for assigning stats to monsters (and NPCs).

Generally speaking, it's not a big deal - we've all probably done it before in various games. However, I have two specific questions:

1. Is there anything in particular we should know about Harm ranges and choices, other than what we can glean by imitating your own choices in the Bestiary as provided? (Some monsters have a large range at one end of the scale, others at another range.)

I'm guessing this is not crucial, we can just fool around with different options "by ear".

2. More importantly, how do we distinguish between assigning a Monster a Violent score and a "Bonus to Spend"? They seem somewhat like overlapping concepts (both add to your ability to spend on the Fighting move), so I'm not sure if they "map" to anything concrete in a reliable way.

Thanks!

Vincent,

This question concerns the interplay between the conversation of play, Saves, and the Interrupt move.

Is it fair to assume that the conversation in Freebooting Venus is more-or-less the same as in AW? I'm operating under that assumption, since there's nothing to contradict that in the text you've shared with us.

If so, it would really help us to have some clarification on how it interacts with Interrupting and Saves.

In AW, if there is a danger, the MC announces it, and then asks the player "what do you do?" Then the player can react and try to make a move to avoid it (which often turns into "acting under fire").

Is it the same in Venus? Or is it more like D&D, where the MC might say, "Hey, there's this danger! Make a Save to see if it gets you or not"?

In AW, there are very few situations where a roll doesn't come from a player's declared action (only a handful of custom moves, start-of-session moves, and other "reactive" moves come to mind). I'm not sure how to fit Saves into this framework.

Furthermore, my second question is related:

When is it ok to use the Interrupt move, and when should it be a "Quick" Save instead?

From the wording of the move ("Interrupt...") I get the impression that it is more or less like the "interfere" option in AW. Someone is doing something, and you move to interfere with them, hoping to get there first. This implies that the move is not a defensive one - you don't get to "interrupt" when something comes flying at you out of the darkness, and it's not a generic "how gets there first?" move, a la initiative roll.

However, one of the ghosts' duties can be to "alert you to danger". That sounds more like Save territory ("avoid a falling boulder"). However, mechanically, this ghostly duty boosts a character's ability to Interrupt others. This, in contrast, implies that the Interrupt move *can* be used to avoid danger or unexpected threats.

Third, the rules aren't entirely clear on when and how Saves come into play. For instance:

If I set up a danger, and the player doesn't make particular precautions to avoid it ("on a golden platter", in AW terms), like running through an arrow under fire from stone darts, should I grant them a Save to avoid or mitigate the effects, or not?

If I cast a spell on a victim, do they get a Save to avoid the effects?

Etc.

There are lots of different possible interpretations, but the basic idea is that it's hard to see exactly how "Saves" (which are rolls the MC asks the players to make) interact with the roleplaying conversation, a la AW. They serve a specific role in games which don't have the sorts of moves that Venus has (like D&D), but here I'm not sure where they do or do not overlap with other existing rolls and procedures (as in the case of the spells).

This could really use some clarification for us! Thanks.

In Freebooting Venus, when you examine treasure, you find that you have opportunities to do certain things but not other things.

This implies to me that Venus has no standard, liquid currency. (Otherwise, why would a treasure be good to pay off your debts but not to hire someone's services?)

Is this a good assumption? (If so, it might be good to have this spelled out; it removes some confusion about the intent of the rules: a treasure or valuable commodity does not only lack inherent/standard value, but it's the combination of a specific good and the presence of a buyer - someone interested in that particular thing - which makes the opportunities/advancement rules really make sense.)

Hi, Vincent!

Of all the new moves, this one seems rather significantly unlike most (or all?) the AW moves. It's not 100% clear to me what the "fictional trigger" here might be, as sometimes I can imagine it being used in the heat of the moment (you've been stunned, lying in the corner, and the necromancer is about to complete his ritual - you roll to see if you can snap out of it and get up to try to stop him somehow) and sometimes I can see it working as a real "time passes" kind of move, a la "and so, a month later..."

It seems like it might not be that well suited for situations at either extreme of that spectrum, so you probably have something more specific in mind.

This also makes it - as far as I can see - much more challenging to consider the effects of a miss. Presumably the MC makes a move, as in AW, but it's not necessarily that clear-cut. If a long time is passing, something bad might happen to the character... but if a month goes by, surely it would ALSO make sense to choose some of the "positive" options, since a calamity is unlikely to take up that entire stretch of time.

I suppose that's a long-winded way of saying that some better explanation of this move, and what purpose you intend it to serve in play, might be useful.

I asked this same question of Joe (in the context of Monsterhearts, where this move appears to be from, more or less), but never received an answer:

Re: the "Hold Steady" move

Why is it a good idea to have a move where the most interesting and most common outcome (the 7-9) is "nothing happens"?

On the face of it, it seems like a missed opportunity.

In Monsterhearts, rolling to "hold steady" is often a negative side effect of some other move or action (for instance, you can spend a String to force someone to Hold Steady). This doesn't seem to jive well with its effect: generally, it means that either nothing happens, or the character rolling gets an advantage (not to mention potentially marking XP if it's highlighted).

I don't know if this is also true in AW:Dark Age, or not.