I may regret this but...

"If yah only stick yer neck out for yer brotherman, what use are yah?"
- Weaver Bird

Here's a universal custom periperhal move I intend to propose for my game starting Thursday.

I might regret this but...: If you help another character with whom your Hx is +1 or less, mark an experience circle.

Intent:

1) Additional incentive in the early game for PCs who may not know each other well to help anyway and later incentive to help not only when Hx is +2 or +3.  Missed helping rolls can drive plot.

2) My GM'ing technique tends to lead to slightly fewer rolls than some but I want character improvement to stay apace.

I've actually considered allowing each player to highlight one relationship: So, for example, Vega's Hx with Jan, involving any two characters other than the one they're playing. So you can't highlight any of your own Hxs, nor can you highlight somebody's Hx with you. Maybe let the MC highlight a few, too.

Yeah, that might be good.  Maybe allow one Hx highlighting per session; if a player doesn't do it, the MC has the option.  The interesting thing about that is that you're effectively saying "I want you to help or hinder this other PC during the session.  I want you to mix it up."

An alternative to my "I might regret this but..." above would of course be "help or hinder" if you didn't necessarily want to recommend a cooperative mode but did want the PCs to mix things up not only when it was relatively safe to do so.

And you wouldn't even need to change the name.  :)

I like these ideas, all of them.  I think if I used one of them, I'd want to do it in a way that allowed the player to mark experience from helping or hindering.  But that's just a gut reaction since I've yet to play the game.

These are cool! I like the idea of highlighting especially. It's a great "hey, build relationships already!" kind of carrot.

I kind of really like the highlighting Hx's idea.  How would that work?  You'd give each player the chance to name one of ANOTHER player's Hx stats, right?  Then when the player who has one highlighted uses it to help or hinder, he marks xp?

Does anyone think it would be a bad idea for me to use this right off the bat when I've never MCed before?

Yeah. As I saw it... whenever you decide to do/change highlights, each player chooses a character other than their own, and highlights one of that character's HXs, other than that character's hx with their own character.

And whenever you roll dice based on a highlighted hx stat, you mark experience. Whether it's helping/interfering, the optional battle move of "follow through on somebody else's move", using one of those replacement moves that lets you roll hx instead of whatever, or so forth.

Vincent and I talked about this at GameStorm.

Hx is a stat. It can be highlighted. If I were to do it, I'd just highlight Hx in general, not a specific pairing.

Hmmm, but in that case, John, it would be highlighted just like the other stats, right?
I kind of liked the idea of A) Letting players encourage each other to do things with specific relationships and B) Adding another option for marking xp.

Having no direct experience with the game yet (though I may be MCing the first session of a game tonight) I'm totally willing to accept that either or both of these might not be a great idea, though...

I like the idea of a general Hx highlighting but my custom move is as much about encouraging interaction when it's not safe as a general call for interaction.
 
Highlighting Hx might serve as well, but you could have a case where Abe's Hx is highlighted and his Hx with Burroughs is -1 and his Hx with Crille is +3 where he just hangs out with Crille for the session and helps her.  I want him to be tempted to help Burroughs and have things go pear-shaped.

But yeah, the people I play with might actually be more likely to help Burroughs than Crille.  That's part of why my gaming has been so great in recent years.

Oh, sorry. I wasn't saying Matthew's custom move is bad. I like it.

I was just saying, by squinting at the rules a bit, Hx is available for highlighting when you go around and highlight stats.

What do you think about Ben's idea, John?