Clarity and Procedure: Common Moves & Remarkable Moves
Closed this issue · 0 comments
issue 35 on workshop
The “embrace a shortcoming” move is great. It might be worth mentioning what the ‘success’ part of the mixed success looks like in each of the approach moves as well, though? PbtA works best when moves provide lots of clarity on outcomes, and the approach moves aren’t currently doing that. Do I still get to ask a question on a messy hit? Is the question I get to ask on a full hit the entirety of what my success looks like, or is there also a “Yes, and” outcome in addition to the question? Or is my success on what I’m attempting the “Yes” and the question I get to ask the “And”? I can infer the answers to these points of confusion, but it would be far better if the move descriptions made them clear. Just a “You do what you set out to do and… [ask such and such a question]”, “You do what you set out to do but embrace a shortcoming”, etc. would do wonders for the grokability in this section.
One or two of the special moves don’t specify what happens on a Messy Hit? e.g. Well of Wisdom, Ritual Spellcasting. This ties into what I was talking about above re. clarity in moves descriptions. Better to over-explain than under-explain IMO.
Also on Special Moves: they are almost all triggered by approach moves, but it’s not clear if a separate roll is made for them, or if they just augment the results of the approach moves? Or do they replace the roll for the approach move altogether? This is something that needs to be laid out clearly, I think.
If they do trigger a second roll, then does that mean I’ll be bracing myself twice over if I score a miss on two rolls from the same action? That would make things very punishing and probably a little frustrating. If special moves do trigger a separate roll, I would make the failure state just “On a miss, you gain no advantage.” (perhaps phrased in a way that suits the flavour of each move).