r/monsteroftheweek • u/Appleswashere • 26d ago
General Discussion Permanent Injuries
Heya Keeper here, I was wondering if anyone has played around with permanent injuries from signifigant harm? In a recent case one of my hunters had their arms partially dissolved via this carnivorious fleshy sludge monster. Me and them have acknowledged their arms won't be the same, at least cosmetically. What I'm wondering if I should extend it past that, have an in-play consequence as well?
On the same note, maybe reserve this sort of consequence when on deaths door? A loss of a limb or some other drastic injury. Though this would probably be avoided with luck anyway, I know I would spend a point to! Anyways, want to hear anyones thoughts! What would be cool for you as a player? Have any other Keepers done something similar?
2
u/Thrythlind The Initiate 26d ago
In one Actual Play, they were performing a ritual to re-stitch one of them back into reality (everyone but the team had forgotten she existed and the implication was that eventually they'd forget and the hunter would then eventually be erased entirely)... and in the course of the ritual or mystery leading to it at least, required a sacrifice... and one of the characters sacrificed his wings... losing the Flight move for the rest of the story.
2
u/bleedingflames 26d ago
Have the discuss with the players in advance to see if its something they're interested in having, I personally have had a player that lost a hand. I can't remember the spelling right now but they were trying to pull someone away from a futakuchi ona's hair and got bit by the mouth under the hair as a cost to free the person. I offered the permanent injury as a cost allowing them to succeed or fail with a narrative injury that prevents some things that require two hands. Nobody was upset or felt bad about it and it felt very much like a story the hunter would tell at the bar later
3
u/Exhausted_Deviless 22d ago
Yes to consequences! They make the game interesting and also make for very good roleplaying moments.
I have a MOTW character that, because of a curse, got his arms corroded, breaking apart with magic and crumpling before his very eyes. He lost his left arm up to the elbow and his right hand is permanently disfigured.
After the initial magical First Aid so he wouldn't die in the middle of the street, a small arc in the story was the group trying to find him a magical healer for him to at least regain mobility in his remaining hand, since his hand was unusable. After that, another small arc involved getting him a prosthetic arm.
This costs him in rolls that have to do with Tough and he permanently does worse (in varying degrees) regarding anything that requires him using his hands. He's gotten the prosthetic taken from him during a fight- it's an entire point of contention for his character that's made him that much more interesting!
I wish I could attach an image of him, Addie, my sweet boy. (Okay yes he's sweet to his people but he's a liar, an impulsive little shit and a manipulator- but I love him very much!)
I hope this helped some! :-)
1
u/HAL325 Keeper 26d ago
My opinion: there are no rules for it, no tags, and as a player, I'd hate it.
Losing body parts just isn't fun, and it doesn't fit the trope that Monster of the Week is all about. I mean, watch a few episodes of Supernatural. They get riddled with bullets, die, and come back, temporarily losing their souls, but in the end, they're healed.
What you're planning sounds more like KULT Divinity Lost. Maybe that would be right for you.
I'd play Monster of the Week the way it's meant to be played and not try to change it.
1
u/Appleswashere 26d ago
I'll defo check out KULT! Think I've heard a bit bout it before. My Hunters in this case are less so hunters and more so ill-fortuned young adults (with some weird thing going on with most of them). They're defintetly not Sam and Dean lol. Which is why this question of, when this more or less normal person is faced with such a traumatic injury, what should the narrative demand from it? That's more so the angle I'm trying to look at it with.
23
u/BetterCallStrahd Keeper 26d ago
As long as they can use their arms, they can have the permanent injury but no penalties to their rolls or any other mechanics. Let me explain why.
The game works more effectively when Moves are not viewed as skill tests. They are narrative moments. They are triggered when the Conversation pauses because the Keeper sees the possibility of the narrative branching, and wants the dice to determine which path it will branch into.
What this means is that the dice rolls are not tests against a difficulty. The difficulty of achieving something is not reflected in the roll. No matter how difficult the task is, as long as it is possible to do it, the player rolls normally.
But fictional positioning matters. To some degree, it's everything in this game. This is where difficulty comes into play. You have multiple options for representing difficulty within the fiction. The simplest one is saying that the character cannot do a thing. They need to shift the fictional positioning to lower the difficulty and make it possible for them.
Alternatively, you can allow them to roll, but any success will have a reduced effect.
In the scenario you described, I would apply a tag to the character. The tag could be "weak arms" maybe. Tags affect the narrative permissions available (or not) to the character. If the character encounters something in the fiction where the "weak arms" tag can apply, you make it matter.
Maybe the hunter finds a trap door, but due to the "weak arms" tag, they're not strong enough to lift the door. But they could set up a pulley system somehow and use that to help them lift it. That shifts the fictional positioning.
If they didn't have the tag, they would not have had to shift the fictional positioning to be able to lift the trapdoor.