2nd Edition and Seize by Force (and similar moves)

DeadmanwalkingXI, You need to stop talking about the snowball that happens later. We all know very well how to run games on this system; everyone involved in this has had a very long history with the game.

In your responses you keep referencing specific tags as a defense of an entire statement, without regard for the fact those tags are the exception to some of these examples, not the rule. For example, collateral damage. This mattering depends on a few things: a.) there is something the Player cares about on scene getting destroyed; b.) the Player is using a weapon that has that type of collateral damage, and c.) the damage to the area isn't also to the benefit of the Player.  If these conditions are not met, collateral damage isn't really a threat to the player at all. Sure there are fictional repercussions, but that's not what we're talking about when we say with high enough base numbers, battle becomes predetermined.

The suggestions you've had up to this point about how to handle a player who is a badass work. We know them already. Most of us have talked about them in great detail on this forum. That's never been the point. The point has only been that rolling to find out means that we don't know what will happen before those dice get rolled. Even with a +4 to the roll, it can still go badly. That has been a huge part of the fun. The elephant in the room is that this is no longer the case with most if any battle move under certain circumstances. 

Needing to give your enemies bonus to counter a player's moves is the same thing as letting a player level up to get a +5 more damage, and in response to that gives a bunch of enemies +5 or +10 more hp. It's basic game logic, level-up, fight stronger things. Whatever. Fine. Maybe some of us picked up AW because we hated that? And suggestions that say now to make battle dangerous, we should level-up the enemies, that just might not be okay with us.

I for one have made my AW games lethal as fuck. To the point where I've trashed the harm clock, removed gang set sizes, focused on injuries, making sure no one can "take a shotgun to the face" and be okay with that. For me, changing the battle moves back to how they were is absolutely going to happen, and honestly, I was pretty straight up about that through this entire thread. The more important question was to learn why did this change to the rules appear to go in the other direction. What was improved by doing so, etc?

This is a summation of what I've learned:
• MC's can (and should) make anything go wrong, at any time, regardless of a players roll.
There is no safety in the apocalypse world. Hitting your roll does not mean you should expect good things to happen, just that you can claim authority through your hold that these things definitely did happen. MC's should take to heart that the fiction should always come first both when determining if a character can roll, and for determining what should happen after they rolled, regardless of that roll. Missing a seize by force simply means you have even less control over what's happening then you couldve.

• A Character's Harm and Armor are the most important numbers for determining conflict.
Not their hard. A character with no armor is dead is vulnerable, a character with no harm is harmless. If they're willing to be more violent, it can have a slight advantage to the results of a battle, but it is the single least important number. (+1 hard could be a ~10% better chance to get 1 more hold, +1 armor is 1 hold, thus x9 more important).

• Contested rolls provide a hold on a miss.
As mentioned before, hold is how much say you have over the numbers up to a maximum of +1 or -1. Two player characters rolling against each other have a better gradient of options. Although this puts more emphasis on the starting harm/armor stat then before.

• Battle has a different flow
I reject both DeadmanwalkingXI and Lumpley claim that this makes subsequent rolls either more likely or smoother. As I've long learned how to have smooth conflict with the former rules and in all of these many comparisons, not once has it been shown how the AW2's way offers something the former could not. However, it is a different kind of flow, so it is entirely likely that many others might find it more comfortable for their particular style, even if I do not.

• There is no need for an explicit miss
Since we can always make the worse possible thing occur, there are less guidelines on when we should. In contrast, if the scene doesn't have an obvious "hard" move to make that makes sense, we are no longer asked to think up one and make it. Thus it's not the miss that matters, but the seize by force. So we no longer watch the dice, instead, leave our full attention on the fiction to decide what comes next.

I mean, the necessity of an MC move on a miss really does just bring things to a halt...

Hmmm, this is interesting. I have very rarely lacked for immediate things to say for a hard move. Following the fiction usually makes this easy. Sometimes the hardest part is picking from all the good (mean) options. And if you do lack for something to say, right after a player misses is a great time to cut away to someone else and leave a cliffhanger. That gives you time to decide.

The Harm move is also a bit more front and center...

The Harm move is pretty much exactly where it's always been. I guess I don't see that it's changed at all. We've always made it on 0-harm, even in AW1.

Also, you need to be a little careful about knocking characters out - if I've succeeded in my attempts to take definite hold of something, knocking me out is in many cases denying my success - because presumably I am at the mercy of the people I just "beat." And if I'm not (say they've fled because I've dismayed or frightened them), then what point does knocking me out serve? If I just come to a bit later, what was the point? And if I'm in some kind of trouble when I come to, I no longer have definite hold over the thing, do I?

Now that isn't necessarily bad or incorrect, but if it doesn't have an ironclad fictional tie, it feels like you're bagging on the PC because you can, and runs the risk of setting a confrontational tone at the table.

I'll give you a good example and a bad example. Here we go: in the previous situation with Gremlin forcing her way through the gang's blockade in The Knives, she missed SBF but chose to force her way through as her one pick, and is now clear of the blockade. She also took a point of harm. Let's say she makes the harm move and tanks it with an 11. Bad example: when her vehicle takes a bad hit, she bounces her head off the steering wheel and loses consciousness. Since she's alone, the car is uncontrolled; mercifully, the MC says it doesn't crash, but just comes to a (relatively) gentle stop up against a big rock formation. The gang (whom it must be remembered are not frightened and still hanging together) is free to act against her, to do whatever is fictionally appropriate for them to do; perhaps it follows that when Gremlin comes to, she's tightly bound and being roasted on a spit.

Good example:  when her vehicle takes a bad hit, she bounces her head off the steering wheel and loses consciousness. But this time, Gremlin isn't alone - another PC is riding shotgun. Now there's a fantastic "SHITSHITSHITSHIT!!!" moment as her passenger is frantically trying to climb all over her unconscious form in order to keep the car moving, all while avoiding the pursuing 4-wheelers (snowballing perfectly into the second character needing to act under fire).

One is taking the ball and passing it to a teammate, the other is taking the ball and going home.

As an aside, the bad example is actually functionally equivalent to making a hard move on her miss - only you've taken away her stuff, captured her, and put her in a spot all at the same time. See how that feels kind of unfair? It would feel even more unfair if she hadn't missed the original SBF roll.

Seize by Force alternative:
vs PC, opposed rolls.

vs NPCs, same but:
7-9 MC chooses 1 to use against you first.
Miss: MC chooses 2 or 3 to use against you first.

Might be neat.

--edit--

reasoning: If the PC move is opposed and that works. It stands to reason that the NPC roll being opposed would also work, but since they don't roll themselves, they are considered the inverse of the PC but slightly worse.

Ebok,

I'm with you on your comments regarding the high importance of harm and armor numbers (I also find it tremendously bizarre that, in a fight, a point of armor is arguably as important as +3 Hard, given this new version of Seize by Force). I've always wondered why Vincent chooses to emphasize weapons and armor so much in many of his designs - in AW, at least, to me, it doesn't seem to fit the genre. However, that's a matter of personal taste, and we can easily differ there. (Ebok, I believe you said that you use my AW "Descriptive Harm" hack in your games, is that true? If so, we may have similar tastes there. That definitely clarifies the function of injury in the rules, and also minimizes the importance of weapons and armor in comparison to your stats and rolls.)

I see other advantages to the new version of Seize by Force, however. The greater ease of use in opposed rolls is a BIG deal. The choices presented to the player on a miss are also very interesting. I can see where Vincent's going with that. In some situations, it's clear to me that it's going to do what Vincent is describing, and there is a tremendous advantage to the clarity and directness of the new move.

You wrote:

"Dunno. I still believe that: choose 1 on a miss, and prepare for the worst, is by far the best solution."

This is what I'm seeing, too. Is there a downside to this approach?

I'm really interested to see what Vincent has to say; this discussion is getting sidetracked, but I'd like to get back to the earlier examples and our observations.

I'm still very curious to hear about some of the details, as well:

* How do we best handle interfering in opposed rolls?

* Is the harm move, as suggested, intended to take the place of a hard move on a miss? And, if so, do we consider it "kosher" to pick options which take away a successful roll's results? Can we ace a Seize by Force, only to lose all the results because of the harm move roll, for instance?

(This is a potential problem with Seize by Force in any case - under standard rules, under my hack, under the old and new versions of Seize by Force. What happens if you die or pass out after a success? In some situations, that feels very natural and fitting. In others it can require some finagling.)

The harm move used to be optional (at the MC's purview), I think, in part to avoid this kind of outcome. (As someone suggested earlier, if that's the case, it can be used to punctuate the difference between a successful and a failed roll in AW 2nd Ed.) Has that changed in 2nd Edition?

Nothing has changed about the harm move in AW2.

When I play in a text based game I use the Harm Clock (faster because there is less discussion), and your hak Blood and Guts because well, my players absolutely loved having a say in how they got hurt. They normally took it and went into descriptive detail with it, adding a lot of information both for how a character handles pain, how the player views their badassery (or lack of it), and what weaknesses that opens up. The biggest weakness of that hack was that it did not make healing anywhere near as engaging, and emphasized that healing in AW doesn't (in certain circumstances) make a lot of sense.

The downside to this:

"Dunno. I still believe that: choose 1 on a miss, and prepare for the worst, is by far the best solution."

which I deleted afterwards... is that it isn't clean and honestly might not be correct. (thus the deletion) Sometimes making a hard roll is great, sometimes it isn't. It's presence there means we're less likely to make a "hard" move after the character Hits. And sometimes it may be very fictionally appropriate to force a character off the road and into that dangerous terrain if they didn't seize that road by force specifically. Not having the miss condition stated, and instead having the general rule: "the MC can make moves as hard and as direct as he likes whenever you're in battle", is more flexible fictionally.

The only REAL loss to me is the ability to flip seize by force. That means, the only reason I want an explicit miss is to be allowed to do so. Considering PvP is opposed seize by force and that works... and after considering this in greater detail over the last few days... I believe the post example I made above is possible my favorite way to do it. Here it is again:

Seize by Force alternative:
vs PC, opposed rolls.

vs NPCs, same but:
7-9 MC chooses 1 to use against you first.
Miss: MC chooses 2 or 3 to use against you first.

this feels like a more natural approach to NPCs given the use of the move in AW2. It means sure you MIGHT get that thing you wanted, if the NPCs haven't claimed it. You can however prevent either of you from claiming it. That handles the cost/miss ratio pretty well and stays in line with the move's design. This way you don't have to hak all of the battle moves, you can keep the freedom to make moves according to the fiction first, and we reinstate the feeling that seize by force doesnt always go your way.

You've rather lost me, when it comes to most of that last post. But maybe we'd better take that elsewhere (and particularly your version of the Seize move, which, if you're serious about it, you should discuss it in another thread, both for clarity and in case other people are interested in it). I don't want to clutter things here too much. My focus is still on hearing about people's experiences with the rules change to Seize by Force.

Did this thread die? That would be a shame; it was very interesting, and educational. A few of us are still hashing out various other things as a result in other threads.

I was still hoping to hear about interfering and misses and the harm move. (Vincent, any chance you're still interested in this? The rest of us don't seem to be able to reach consensus on those things, so it would be fun to hear how you do it.)

Tell me which passages in the text you're having trouble with and maybe I can help.

If you're looking for guidelines or a consensus that isn't in the text, I don't endorse any.

-Vincent

Ok! I'll look over the text and get back to this. Thanks for engaging in this mad discussion with us!

Is that how it's supposed to work in 2nd edition, or just the way you handle it at your table?

Old convo, sorry.
But I'm with ebok, I still make a move on a miss if I think it works with the fiction. Not necessarily a hard move, but something bad happens somehow, or perhaps I just announce future badness.

For example, would it be legit for you to negate the exchange of harm, and have something else happen?

NO! You exchange harm THEN you roll. Seize By Force is pretty explicit on that point.