Let's talk about "Misfortune"

#1

Let’s discuss “misfortune” and how a GM can dish it out in PbtA games.
I’d like to look beyond the obvious: hp loss, debilities, resource loss, and new threats.

#2

So much depends on the game. My local crew is playing Night Witches right now and a really solid hard move is “you don’t get a letter from home” or, harder, “you get a letter containing very bad news from home”. Or maybe I have those reversed?

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#3

What are some ways you have doled out misfortune in your own games outside of the “obvious ones?”

#4

One of my favorites from the old days is, when you’re searching or just sticking your hand somewhere, you get stung by a scorpion. Jason games always had a large variety of various scorpions in them!

These days though, I like putting them into a very bad spot where they can’t really get out on their own. I like using this to both spotlight an area where I can show them the shortfalls of their own class, but also this lets me redirect the spotlight to someone else in the group who may not be getting a lot of love, or who I want to give a chance to bond with the other character but just haven’t found the right moment.

#5

I create NPCs who the players like and then when the PCs miss a role I do stuff to punish the NPC instead. If at all possible I make that punishment directly or indirectly mirror something that is going on the PCs life.

If you want a clearer example then maybe best to PM me because one of the best examples I have involves a content warning and I don’t want to just pop it in the thread for anyone to stumble over - it was in a monsterhearts game.

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#6

Jeez, Jason. That’s the harshest of moves.

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#7

Like @BeckyA I like the use of misfortune affecting the people (or things) that a PC cares about, more than affecting the PC themselves. Especially if the PCs mistake ends up causing serious problems for someone or something they care about, and they can clearly see that they are blame (rather than a random misfortune… although that can work sometimes too)

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#8

@shane here are some from my list:

  • The current situation worsens. How?
  • Your positioning changes for the worse. How?
  • Something negative from your backstory comes into play. What is it?
  • Something isn’t what you thought it was — for the worse. Say what.
  • In GM-less or GM-full games: something bad happens offscreen. What is it?
  • A follower does something rash or foolish.
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#9

“You get a letter from home. It’s obviously been opened and resealed.”

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#10

Yeah, the ‘hint at off-screen badness’ response is underused and so, so good, especially for the comic book-y stuff I like to play.

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#11

Cool fact: There were no envelopes in wartime Russia. But all the yeses to your idea anyway!

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#12

Oh, man, yeah, getting a letter that’s all shitty and crooked when you know what care your mom takes in making them neat would be rough.

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#13

…or to find that the second page of the letter is missing entirely.

#14

I sometimes use cutaway scenes, to inform the players of bad things occurring off-camera.

These are best used at the end of a session as a cliffhanger.

For example, a known dastardly enemy of the PCs checks into the very same inn they last stayed in, and starts asking the barkeep about them…

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#15

My favorite use of misfortune as a GM is “an NPC behaves differently than you expected they would” followed by “you left this up to chance and it didn’t go well.”

In Blades there are a lot of opportunities for this sort of complication in the form of other factions who might interfere, someone catching onto a loose end, inoportune callbacks, that sort of thing.

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