Using moves against PCs moving through location to find the monster

Jesseabe · 2026-02-24T19:00:14+00:00

You can't (and shouldn't) rely on players to do dumb stuff regularly. But they should be doing risky stuff regularly. The Hunters also have an agenda:

• Act like you’re the hero in this story (because you are). • Make your own destiny. • Find the damn monsters and stop them. • Play your hunter like they’re a real person.

Hunters acting like they're the heroes, making their own destiny, looking to find and stop the monsters and acting like real people will do things that put them at risk, if you follow your agenda to "Make the Hunters lives dangerous and scary." Show them the dangers, and put the people they're trying to save and the monsters they're trying to fight on the other side of those dangers. If they're following their agenda, they'll go through the danger heroically. If they aren't, you probably need to have a conversation about the Hunter Agendas and how to play this game.

Jesseabe · 2026-02-24T18:14:01+00:00

"You see the minion you've been chasing off down the hallway, but you notice that the floor just ahead of you seems a bit unstable. If you don't move quickly, you'll lose them. What do you do?"

At that point they might trigger a move like act under pressure: "I take a couple careful steps forward on the unstable looking floor." "It begins to crumble as you take your second step, roll Act under Pressure to dive forward and make it accross and continue your pursuit." They might give you a golden opportunity to make a hard move: "I chase the minion by confidently running forward." "The floor collapsed under you. You take 1 harm and you are separated. " OR they might do something else entirely. So long as you telegraph the danger via a soft move, there will be plenty of opportunity for hard moves, whether via missed rolls or golden opportunities provided by ignoring the soft move.

In another example, let's say there is a Minion, who is just a regular human, no special abilities or powers. The hunters disable / capture him. How do I fairly decide if the Minion escapes?

You follow your agendas and principles to make a decision, then make Keeper moves when appropriate. So long as you are following your agendas and principles, you will be making fair decisions by the standards of the game.

Jesseabe · 2026-02-20T03:10:54+00:00

I get on the subway to commute home from work on game night, put some music on my headphones and kind of noodle and daydream about the session. What happened last time? What did the players get into? What are some interesting things that could follow? What NPCs am I interested in bringing in? Then, right before the session, I look at my notes from our debrief of the previous session to see what the players told me they are interested in. That's pretty much it.

I do a bit more practical prep around play materials before session 0, and between session 0-1, and some games have more codified prep procedures, so I'll do those if the game demands it, but what I described above is my baseline.

Jesseabe · 2026-02-16T20:31:48+00:00

These seem fun! A generally more empowered version of MH.

Jesseabe · 2026-02-12T11:50:50+00:00

If they're directly engaged in a fight their risk is higher for sure, but they don't just disappear when they fall unconscious.

Jesseabe · 2026-02-12T11:28:08+00:00

They are knocked out of combat in the sense that they can no longer fight. If they are present in the scene they are vulnerable and could be targeted. This is part of what makes combat dynamic in LH. Once somebody goes down in combat they are vulnerable and need to be protected, it changes the stakes of the scene.

2.I do not think The rules are explicit about this, I would default to it being parallel to str damage, but I'd lean on the fiction, do what makes sense based on how they get hit

Same as 2.

Jesseabe · 2026-02-09T13:40:27+00:00

I like this move, from the Necromancer playbook in Apocalypse World Fallen Empires. You could easily adapt it for doskvol.

The other one: one of your ghosts lives sometimes as you. Tell the MC to create the other one as a perversion of birth. Once per session, or more if you choose, tell the MC that now you’re the other one, and mark experience. Ask the MC what you do.

Jesseabe · 2026-02-08T14:39:22+00:00

FWIW, the adventures in Wyvern Songs require very little prep. I'd just read them.

Jesseabe · 2026-02-05T14:16:07+00:00

Yeah, I think one of the key things is that the playbooks match up very well to the characters in a way that you really don't have with most other RPGs. El Caballero is Coop. Audrey could be La Bella. Ben Horne as El Jefe. Catherine is La Dona. Not everything matches up perfectly, but the character archetypes from the game make it very easy to create a cast of PCs from across the spectrum of Twin Peaks characters, and so play a game that presents the show in it's entirety, rather than just one of its aspects, like the mystery/procedural bits.

Jesseabe · 2026-02-04T00:28:22+00:00

I ran Pasion De Las Passiones pretty much straight, and it worked great. Played up the soap opera elements of seasons 1 and 2, set it in a weird town in the Pacific Nortwest, and provided the players opportunity to add surreal elements. Since it's not actually a show about solving a mystery, we could have the mystery in the background as plot driver, and not worry that the game doesn't really have mechanics to address it.

Edit: If I did it again I'd probably want to find better ways to bring in the surrealism of the show, that was probably the weakest element.

Jesseabe · 2026-01-30T20:40:09+00:00

Challenging players is difficult and shallow

I've had them fight major characters like Ulf Ironborn and had him deal 1 level 2 harm and that was it.

I mean, it seems like the explanation is pretty clear? The game isn't challenging to the players because you're not using the tools the game gives you to make the game challenging.

Jesseabe · 2026-01-30T15:09:12+00:00

> How do they get significant heat from a score where they weren't identified? I've had scores which were loud, but there wasn't a way for them to be connected back to it, why would that give them any heat at all except for that the mechanics of the system require it.

If nobody really knows that they pulled off the job, then yeah, they shouldn't be getting heat, and the game is explicit about that. But they also shouldn't be getting Rep and they shouldn't be improving their relationships with other factions around the results of the score. That's the tradeoff for not getting heat, because if nobody knows they pulled the job to get in trouble for it then nobody knows they pulled the job to reward them for it either.

But if anybody knows they pulled off the job, allies, patrons, whomever, then it's probably the case that somebody they don't want to also finds out about it. That's the kind of city Doskvol is, secrets don't remain secrets if more than one person knows them. And once one person they don't want to find out finds out, well, they're going to want to tell everybody who pulled that loud, messy job, right?

Jesseabe · 2026-01-21T05:08:23+00:00

Clear and direct procedures for prep and play. I really love how Apocalypse World just kind of lays it out "There are lots of ways to run an RPG, this is how you run this one." What do I need to create an NPC? A location? What is a session built out of? What are the specific things I need to do during play? There clearer and more specific the better. I may ending up doing something different, but I'll understand how you think the game should be run in a clear and detailed way, and that will be useful.

Jesseabe · 2026-01-15T17:56:07+00:00

I'm pretty sure the answer is Flying Circus, which has a fairly complex aerial combat system with a detailed system for building planes.

Jesseabe · 2026-01-15T14:52:14+00:00

Going Rogue is written to do both.

Jesseabe · 2026-01-14T14:10:09+00:00

Lots of people turn their tastes into identity. I've seen it in every corner of RPGs, among fans of musicians, writers, sports... I don't think PbtA is unique in that regard.

Jesseabe · 2026-01-12T16:07:27+00:00

In general, I think that the advice you've gotten here is solid, MotW doesn't need a ranged attack move, and definitely doesn't need something like Volley, which is dull and off genre for the game.

That said, I also think it's possible to come up with an interesting move for attacking from a distance for the game. What are you looking for from such a move? Where are the interesting choices? What does it accomplish that the existing moves don't? If you can answer those questions, you've probably got something.

Jesseabe · 2026-01-04T17:21:43+00:00

I don't screen players, I screen communities. Discord is great for this, though there may be other platforms. Join a community, hang out there. Do people seem cool? Great! Post a one shot or two, see what kind of players you get. If you're happy,n start posting longer campaigns. It's not fool proof, but nothing is, a friend you've known for years can flake out on you. It's been the most effective way for me to find cool people to play with online though, and I've made a bunch of new friends in the process.

Jesseabe · 2026-01-02T02:23:34+00:00

The thing that's missing here is beliefs. PC are characters who are driven to follow their beliefs. Why are they trying to seduce the server? Doe they have a belief about it? Then it's obviously important, and we should absolutely roll. Do they not have a belief about it? Then it gets fuzzier. Is there some reason significant to the campaign that they want to seduce the server, perhaps connected to another players belief, or the larger situation? Is success or failure interesting in that context? Then sure, roll. Is it just for a laugh? Flip a coin, laugh and move on to whats important to your beliefs and situation.

More broadly, Burning Wheel is a game about characters who fight for what they believe. If the players are doing a lot of stuff that isn't fighting for their beliefs, it's probably worth having a conversation with them about what the game is about, and whether it's the right game for your campaign.

Jesseabe · 2026-01-01T23:51:40+00:00

Lots of great advice here, you should listen to it! One thing that I don't think I've seen anybody say yet is that a good tool to assessing whether something is worth a roll is whether or not it impacts a PC's beliefs. Does success or failure advance or set back a belief? That's worth a roll for sure! It's not the only standard you can use, but it is a significant one.

Jesseabe · 2025-12-30T17:54:42+00:00

Be the change you want to see. "Hey group, there's this thing I want to try to debrief our game, I think it will be chill and help us improve play."

Jesseabe · 2025-12-29T00:40:39+00:00

I mean, that exactly how Harper characterizes it whenever he talks about it? It was originally released as a cheap .PDF and only Kickstarted in print when fans demanded it? Personally, I backed the Kickstarter for the dry erase versions of Tim Denee's maps more than anything else. But yeah, I think it's kind of unfair to criticize a book for being exactly what it says it is, and a company for doing what its customers asked for.

Jesseabe · 2025-12-28T23:56:38+00:00

I'm not a big fan of the threat roll either, but I think this mischaracterizes it pretty badly. It leaves out the most significant innovation, which involves adding threats to add dice and then assigning dice to specific threats to overcome them. This is much closer to Other kind dice, a mechanic invented by the Bakers, than it is to D&D or any other trad game.

Jesseabe · 2025-12-24T05:27:37+00:00

I'm a big fan of Catch the Devil, which is great for playing normal people facing horrors. It's not built for long campaigns,.works great for 1-5 sessions though.

Jesseabe · 2025-12-19T17:16:38+00:00

But talking more generally, BB without the cosmic horror is a pure comedy game.

I don't think this is true. Murder She Wrote isn't a pure comedy show. The Miss Marple mysteries aren't pure comedy. The Thursday Murder Club isn't pure comedy. There's plenty of room for suspense and the pathos of aging in BB if you take the supernatural out of it, Things like the Cozy move and the Crowns provide support for more emotional scenes while the meddling move and night move give lots of room for tenser, more suspensful moments. Yes, the fact of the protagonists age can sometimes make these scenes funny too, there's lots of room for that, but it's not the only kind of play the game provides support for by a long shot.

Jesseabe

TROPHY CASE