New Basic Moves & Healing

The following comes from the working text!

To give context, SA is basically an exploration of swords-and-sorcery fantasy as post-apocalyptic fiction. The world has had longer to recover than in AW, but there is still a very important sub-stratum, culturally and materially, of a prior age of greater learning and plenty.


The following basic moves from AW are used in Set Apart: act under fire, go aggro on someone, sieze something by force, seduce or manipulate someone, read a charged situation, read a person, help/interfere, and the session end procedure. You can also consult your preincarnations, which uses the same mechanic as opening your brain (but the MC will respond differently).

You can also do these things:

When you try to impress someone, roll+cool. On a 10+, hold 3. On 7-9, hold 1. While you’re showing off, they have to:
• do something you tell them to
• defer to you
• speak on your behalf
• give or promise you something
...until your hold’s spent.

When you try to show someone up, roll+cool. On a 10+, hold 3. On 7-9, hold 1. While you gloat, they have to:
• concede something they value
• misreact revealingly to something
• commit a social gaffe
• lose a social role to you
...until your hold’s spent.

To make plans, roll+sharp. On a 10+, hold 3. On 7-9, hold 1. You prepare so that when the shit hits the fan, you set up:
• an escape strategy
• who will and won’t be there
• where it happens
• a trap
...until your hold’s spent.

To rule a thing of power, roll+weird. On a 10+, hold 3. On 7-9, hold 1. As you wield it, you:
• make it bow in obedience
• learn its worth
• use its power
• enlist its cooperation
• terrify someone with it
...until your hold’s spent.

Healing
Debility in SA isn’t always permanent! When someone heals you, they can try to heal your debilities, even if they’re old and unrelated to the injury at issue. That’s the radiant spirit at work!

To do so, they roll+weird, independent of other healing efforts. On a 10+, the debility is healed. 7-9, it isn’t. On a miss, you find out the debility is permanent for sure; it can’t be healed by any means.

Do the impress someone and show someone up rules work differently on PCs and NPCs, a la "Seduce/Manipulate Someone" in standard AW, or did you intend to make character's ability to control other PCs more concrete?

Jeff, I'll have to think about that for a while!

I think that there might be a difference between the PC and NPC mechanics in the end, but I'm not sure how - eventually I'll have to decide which action is outward-turning and which is inward-turning, I think, so that one affects how people see the target and one directs the target to action.

Cool. I like the way the manipulate/seduce person rule in AW works, where the PC can do it and take experience, or else not do it. This fits in with Vincent's notion of giving the 'loser' meaningful choices to make, and ever since I heard him explain that, I've been an ardent fan of that dynamic.

Still thinking about impress. Elizabeth says: "Well, when we first came up with it, it was a move for just one splat, and does it really cover new ground?" I think maybe it doesn't necessarily, so it might just go away. Seduce/manipulate is pretty good.

I feel like Impress/Show Up are two sides of the same coin; a coin which is Seduce/Manipulate in AW and Presence/Manipulation in Exalted.