Playbook: The Shifted

I think this is an amazing concept. But eh whole I'm part ghost screams to me for a beginning of session roll like a hocus or operator. Off the top of my head: One Foot in this World Roll +Hard at the beginning of each session. 10+ through sheer force of will you anchor yourself securely to this plane. 7-9 Your connection to here is somewhat shaky but choose 1 of the below.

• Your form is unstable take plus one to harm rolls
• You have to concentrate to maintain your self. When entering battle roll +cool. If you fail take -1 ongoing throughout the fight.
• The maelstrom perception is different than here... and its hard to think clearly sometimes. Take -1 ongoing to sharp based rolls.
  

6 or lower: Your existence is fragile indeed and your mostly in the maelstrom than here. Take two of the above.

Just a thought because Hard is imposing your will, so why not your very selfhood if you flicker in and out of reality?

This idea is intriguing, but I have a couple of issues with it. Namely, as was mentioned to me before, rules that make you suck are generally a bad idea. I also have a personal distaste for rolls-within-rolls (roll+hard then either roll+cool or roll+sharp). Like I say though, interesting. I'm going to put my brain to work on this. Anyone else have related suggestions?

"Take -1" is also pretty much not a good mechanic. It's there as debilities because, well heck, I don't really know, but as a player, when you say, "Take -1 in circumstance X," I hear, "Do not take action in circumstance X," and that isn't fun. Penalties decrease player involvement and cause disengagement and consequently create bored people. Not what you want.

Either just let it be a proper miss and the MC makes a hard move (which prompts the character for response, obviously) or invoke action under fire or just use a mechanic that isn't bad.

Penalties decrease player involvement and cause disengagement and consequently create bored people. Not what you want.

I have to disagree with this, especially in a game that's story first. In "heroic" power-gamey games taking penalties sucks hard, although I don't think I would ever say they made me bored, but in games like AW (and as another example, something like Mouse Guard) I have never felt bored, uninvolved, or disengaged when I had to take a penalty due to circumstances or trying to do something I was bad at, or whatever. In a story based game, penalties simply highlight our failing points, and when failure is intended to drive the story forward as much as success, that can't be a (only) bad thing. There is, in my mind, a significant difference between rules that make you suck and simply being bad at some stuff or having to take a penalty when you fail.

My rule of thumb is, in any case where you would give a mechanical penalty, give a fiction-based complication instead. "You have to concentrate to maintain your shape" is just fine by itself, 'cause later the MC can say something like, "There's sudden gunfire through the window. You drop the vial of penicillin you were holding and it spills everywhere as you ghost out."