In case this doesn’t happen before the game (since this was said a few days ago which is weeks in quarantine time) I’ll give the heads up that I’m pretty low energy tonight so I’m not up to heavy stuff for me. But looking forward to game.
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Hell, holy frickin’ heck.
- I missed this part of Mike’s post:
Which would have guided some of the snap tropes I came up with. So I was going to go back to my post on what motivates me/Joe, only to find that James inadvertently deleted it. So hopefully that will come back soon. 
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I think that’s a great way to frame it.
I agree that doing it at the end of session thing makes sense, since it’s kind of a meta thing.
I think that fits neatly into the “we need a team feel” thing. Whether that’s an abandoned room at the campus we snag, or something out in the city (something cheap and informal and probably of dubious trespass law issues), can be discussed.
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Picky picky. It’s back btw.
I agree. I think this is generally what has been done, either by habit or on purpose, but it’s good to keep in mind.
This can go along with the “How is everyone feeling. Energy levels?” Getting into that habit.
Love the idea of it being a teaser. Kinda an end credit snipit.
{chants} Dubious! Dubious! Dubious!
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So, Dark Joey …
He knows his origin. He was clearly altered to become a weapon – against his will. He hates it. It took his life from him. It hurts. But there’s nothing he can do about it, so all he can do is lash out, break things, break people.
He cares for nothing but for what makes him feel better. He cares for no one but for those who respect his power. It’s a bitter life, but it’s the only one he thinks he has.
He’s the Behemoth. He’s a human dinosaur for hire – or psychological manipulation.
So this is me checking in with @doyce and anyone else for a big important question:
“Did the pacing work well for us?”
The super optional second question is:
“What do people think of the Architects of Evil so far?”
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worked well for me but I’m unreliable as a witness
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I felt, overall, the mechanics worked. I’d have rather seen an overhead view than a looking-down-the-hall view, but it worked.
There feels like a bit of vagueness as to when Take A Powerful Blow gets invoked.
The AoE were all good, though I’m not sure I had a good feel for all of them coming into play. Similarly, most of the PA students (and our field trip supervisor, Prof. Fryth!) plus any normal folk in the room really didn’t get appropriate play.
Net-net, I had a good time.
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I thought the pacing went really well, until I started getting tired and it was hard to find a moment to slip in a comment about the time. Which is why I dropped it into chat.
I like them, which should be obvious from me suggesting them. I feel like there were a few too many of them on the scene (as we sometimes lost track of them, what they were doing, and what they were a threat to) but some visual aids may have assisted with that.
I felt that too. When Joe took his second Power Blow, I kind of felt there didn’t need to be anything dice worthy about it. Personally, I always feel dice getting involved is “hey, let’s negotiate what happens next” territory and I felt like that was clearly “I the MC have been given all the narrative thrust here!”
Plus something like “Joe, Blaster’s plasma burst sends you out through the museum wall, onto the street, and crumple on top of an unoccupied, parked car. But at least you’ve kept Mette safe. Would you say the experience made you Angry?” would have quickly raised the stakes of the situation without the need of any dice rolls. But that’s just my backseat GMing instinct kicking in.
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Also, because in hindsight I felt I was being overly negative, this was a very good session. Probably my favorite session (right there with the gym class opening) due to the amount of meaningful decisions that were made by the whole team and the way I was able to both directly and indirectly help steer the narrative.
A very enjoyable session.
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Take a Powerful Blow, RAW, reads:
“The GM always tells you when you need to roll it. Most likely, you’ll get smacked during a fight, often as a result of a directly engage. […] You can take a powerful blow on an emotional level too, getting punched with a deep and terrible truth, maybe, or hearing someone you care about utterly rip your heart to shreds.”
The ‘emotional’ thing is why, with such scenes, I usually ask "this is big enough to make you take a powerful blow?’ - because really I might think so, but if it doesn’t seem that important to the player/character, then I’m wrong and something else should happen.
When I ran the Menagerie, I tended to shy away from it as the ‘harder’ option, compared to just saying “take a condition” from Directly Engage, but my thinking on that has changed DRASTICALLY. Just saying “take a condition” has its place, but it’s basic; simplistic - the kind of thing to do when you don’t want any more rolling (TAPB can roll out into multiple additional moves, depending on what options are taken), or when the results are fairly obvious.
“Take a condition” is a basic LED flashlight beam, and is similarly workmanlike and useful - it’s often very good to have those conditions build up - it gives people motivation for those personal scenes and drama, if nothing else, and selecting the condition to say how you feel about what just happened is good fun.
Take a powerful blow is that same beam, shone through a kaleidoscope, breaking out into all kinds of interesting results (few of which actually result in taking a condition, interestingly, which is why I think of it as - sometimes - the softer move, since it provides many narrative options and a decent chance for getting potential as a result of getting hit).
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Yeah. That’s fair. When Joe later picked up Angry for some OTHER reason, my inner response was “oh yeah that should have happened earlier.”
I love TAPB (as shown by previous post) but it does sometimes end up with a rabbit hole of resulting moves.
There’s a really good podcast where Lloyd G (one of my favorite gaming people I’ve never met) gushes about the move a bit. Take A Powerful Blow by The Hard Move
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I should have been more clear. Most of the class that’s there is OUT. Sync’s opening love letter kept the newborn in play, initially.
Everyone else that’s there basically becomes relevant or wakes up as the team’s moves effectively resuscitate them somewhat, out of necessity. (Emma and Nono regained enough consciousness to be threatened by Madhesive’s move - Gothwitch is now at least slightly awake, because she needed to see what Kiln did. Etc.)
So, if Joe hits a 6- and needs a bad result, maybe Roy pulls himself upright just in time to terribly misinterpret one of Joe’s rage outs. Or the professor blinks his eyes into focus just in time to see Kiln cause collateral damage, or…
“Hey I want to spend team to help Alex.”
“You’ve been knocked into the Silver Age Symposium…”
“Yeah I know. Can we have Vic wake up enough to throw a spell that will help them?”
“That’s awesome. Yes. That happens. Narrate it please.”
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OH WAIT THIS PART IS IMPORTANT
No. Except for Fryth, there were no normal people in the whole great hall when this happened. At all. So weird, right?
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Yeah. That’s why I had intern and super-grandma taking a bye on this event. Four was PLENTY. Three probably would have wrapped up the fight by the end of the night.
With six sessions of Silverline written, and a seventh eventually on the way (I promise!), I want to talk about this move from that perspective. I’ll also say up front that it’s different from a live game in that I’m both the GM and all the players, so I can perfectly divine my own intent. 
But it’s not all that different from a live game in that I write the skeleton of each session in about the same length of time a real session takes, so there’s no pausing for long moments to decide on the ‘perfect’ outcome.
I keep the “Core GM Reference” PDF from Magpie Games open in a tab. On a miss, even in combat, my go-to list for moves is the general GM moves list from that reference, and then the specific moves for each playbook. I’ll add the villain’s moves list if a combat is going on. I don’t have a priority order, but I’ll tend to look at playbook and villain moves first just because those lists are more succinct and specific.
Here’s some specific examples:
- Session 3: Sabine and Ghost fail an Assess and a Provoke move in succession, and later on, Pelagos rolls a playbook move. All three get playbook moves that cause trouble for them, either then or down the road.
- Session 4: Astralis fails to Provoke someone, and gets a Doomed move that escalates her particular crisis.
- Session 6: Astralis fails a Pierce the Mask roll to figure out what to do about a teammate’s crush that she just noticed. I make a move from the Doomed list, which ends up turning into a Powerful Blow for someone else.
I’m not going to play backseat GM and say “here’s how it should have gone”. Instead, I want to talk about how it could have gone, with the hope that this inspires future ideas.
- The roof comes in, Joe and Mette take a powerful blow. The GM move here, “Put innocents in danger”, could have come into play, letting either of them roll to Defend or Unleash their Powers to keep themselves or other kids (or a museum guide?) safe.
- Joe defends Mette, but exposes himself to danger. The Bull has a playbook move, “swarm with mundane forces”. Who has mundane forces? Rubble Rouser, who can conjure concrete minions. As Joe takes the plasma hit, maybe he’s now surrounded and has to fight his way out.
- Mette fails 21st Century Studies/Assess the Situation. The Harbinger move “reveal clear future paths” was effectively what we ended up with.
Take a Powerful Blow is neat, but it doesn’t have the unique ability to make things snowball. Any move in the game, by design, should have that. There’s a lot of opportunity for the GM to channel bad outcomes in ways that specifically match up to a particular playbook, and not just be “take a hit”.
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That’s an interesting take, since I think of it as one of the most snowballiest of the basic moves, either narratively or via mechanical following-rolls.
Your point about using the GM moves for each Playbook is a good one. I often forget about those.
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This right here is the important distinction. I feel like the interplay between player actions and GM moves creates the snowball, because the players answer “what do you do” and the GM answers “what happens that compels player action”.
TAPB is the only move that forces the player to take further decisive choice, not just select from a menu of benefits, but it’s basically a GM move that replaces GM discretion with the dice + the player deciding which GM hard move to make. - edit, on thinking about this, further action is required by a few other moves, e.g. Defend’s escalation option.
So to answer the original question, “when is the time for Take a Powerful Blow”, I feel like it’s a good default or fallback when a more appropriate/specific GM move isn’t indicated or doesn’t feel obvious/interesting. It’s the move to make when you as GM are like “I’m not sure what should happen here, hey dice, surprise me”.
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I feel like this is really important. From Silverline, this is how I push hard on Ricky’s insecurities as a Beacon, on Astralis’ Doom (highlighting and magnifying her combined impatience and disdain at saving a planet that hates her), on Sabine’s feelings of isolation and inhibition as a Delinquent, and so on.
I am convinced that the characters will come through to you much more sharply if you lean on these moves a lot more. A lot of the playbook flavor comes from the GM making these moves regularly.
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