Thanks! That's cool.

Having the slave mark experience doesn't work for me, both because it creates a weird conflict of interest, where you kind of want to do stuff that you don't want to do, and also because it's slightly icky politically. I don't really think of slaves as people who secretly want to be pushed around, which is what that move feels like to me.

The reason I like the move the way it is is because, while it means the slave gets pushed around a lot and made to do a bunch of nasty stuff, their wants are central in people's minds. The move makes what the slave wants important to the other characters.

Covert power is for certain gonna be the other side to the playbook. Maybe a thing where you can use Hx to go aggro or even sieze by force. Or maybe a thing where your bare hands are weapons (Hx harm ap intimate).

This is actually for a Conan hack, but I think it's equally applicable to Original Flavour.

I'm making a "Slave" playbook. I'm trying to make the class rich in "mindshare effectiveness" like the Battlebabe, since mechanical and fictional effectiveness don't seem right for the class.

Here's what I'm thinking: "When someone makes you do something you don't want to do, they mark experience."

Is that gonna get the job done? I feel like it needs an accompanying move, about freeing you. Also, naturally, one of the Hx things will be "This person owns or controls you. Say how, and write Hx +3"

My name is Jonker, and I'm a gunlugger.

Sex is relaxing, y'know, clears the head, blows away the cobwebs, gets me in the zone. I like to have sex before a big fight because I know it'll put me at the top of my game. Sex with Crimson though? Nahh, that's not the same. That's a whole OTHER thing.

My name is Rabbit, and I'm a Hocus.

Sex is a mystical connection between people. After I have sex with people, I get visions of them in my head for days after. They get visions too. It's a powerful thing, and I'm not going to do that with just anyone. You let the wrong person in, who knows what they might do?

My name is Crimson, and I'm a battlebabe.

Sex is whatever I want it to be.

If you really want to, you can even be like:

"He opens fire with the gun, just blazing away, emptying the clip at you. What do you do?" For a pretty sweet "put them on the spot", putting another step ahead of "inflict harm". As a rule I pretty much only use "inflict harm" at the end of a missed Act Under Fire, unless they're being attacked from ambush or something, and even then I'll usually put the harm on NPCs instead, like:

"You hear Spazzo say 'huh', and he looks down at his chest. There's about a foot of aluminium rod sticking out of it, with a razor-sharp tip."

I should specify that when I say D&D, I mean early D&D, Moldvay and Metzner editions. They're very badly suited to boardgame-style play.

So, the Hardholder isn't great at killing people or making people do what they want or getting shit done. They can do that a bit, but they're not the best at it. But! If you're playing a hardholder, you're probably playing in their holding, and you're probably playing members of their gang, and what they say about those things, and what the hardholder is like is going to have a big effect on the fiction of the game.

If you're playing a Chopper, you're better at getting shit done. You can fight and kill pretty good. You've also got this gang and what you say about this gang, and what you're like, is going to have a pretty big effect on the fiction. Not as big as the hardholder, but pretty big.

Gunlugger, you've got no gang, and no holding, and no crew, so what you say about the world pretty much only applies to you. But when you want shit done, you can get it done.

Now, the battlebabe is different. You've got no gang or shit, but you're not as stone-cold deadly as the gunlugger (close, but not quite). What do you get instead? Who's more likely to be the hero of the story, the gunlugger or the battlebabe? Who is going to make us sit up and listen closer when they're in the spotlight? Who does what they want and damn the consequences? Who can start trouble and then just leave? Who is this story about?

Like, if you've seen Kick Ass, we all remember Hit Girl more than the dude in the wetsuit. That's my take on mindshare effectiveness, but maybe I'm all wrong. I still couldn't tell you exactly what qualities make the Battlebabe this way (though I'm guessing the sex move is part of it), so I would like to hear more crazy-talk.

I'm like, breathing a big sigh of relief. I thought I was living in crazy town!

Your distinction between 1 and 2 is crystal clear to me. So that's good. I mean, maybe I'm still confused about it, but I don't feel confused about it.

But! Just because exploration doesn't have loyalty, passion, conflict across moral lines etc. It still has things that are meaningful to us as human beings, yeah? Like, things that have ethical weight, or symbolic meaning, or emotional resonance. That's why it's fun and critical to StWT, yeah? Or is that still part of story?

But if you're saying that both exploration and story are important to Step on Up play, then we don't even have a problem, because my whole point was basically that exploration and story are important to Step on Up play. That would be funny.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I like D&D better than chess because it's fun to imagine stuff. Moreover, it's fun to imagine the specific stuff that D&D makes me imagine. Some of that stuff is: Medieval fantasy, swords and spells and things. Violence and mayhem. Weird monsters. Heroes being brave or cowardly, sticking together or splitting up. Lucky escapes, tragic deaths. Hard men with big swords conquering the unknown, or being defeated by it. I like that stuff not just randomly, but because those things are meaningful to me.