I’ve got another question about how people interpret something. Was looking at the Whisper special abilities (i.e. Summon, Channel, Compel, etc). Much of the stuff described there is stuff that I would have already assumed the Whisper could do just using Attune. So my question is do folks see those abilities as not being available using Attune or some other skill until you take the special ability, or do you see the special abilities as basically allowing you to do the various things by spending stress instead of rolling?
I’ve got another question about how people interpret something.
I’ve got another question about how people interpret something.
I don’t have the rules in front of me, but my gut says that if you have the move, you do the move (“if you do it, you do it”, Apocalypse World style), but if your game allows Attune to be used in those ways, then, yeah, it can still be done as a roll, but with the various risks that come along with rolling.
I see Whispers as being tuned with supernatural senses, to detect the supernatural and possibly have some minor effect on it. The special abilities allow authority and control, not just seeing and understanding but escalating to creating and compelling.
If you wanted whispers to already be able to do these things, then you could make the special abilities shift situations one direction towards control, add +1 effect to results, and/or affect a magnitude normally out of reach.
We used Attune for the Lurk to decipher the message that a time-daemon was playing on her head.
For me Attune means getting all entranced and weird. You wanna know what’s so creepy about the crypt of the Eldegard family? Attune. You want to make love to the ghost of your beloved? Attune. You want to decipher the secrets of the Ancestor Blade? Attune.
Duamn Figueroa makes good points. That also underscores for me that there is a fictional component to this too; I would just allow a whisper to do something automatically that I’d require another character to roll for. Describing the environment, I’d give the whisper different cues than the rest of the crew.
Attune can be about activating magical items, sensing the supernatural, empathic connection with inhuman things, and other great uses. In the hands of a whisper, the skill has more power.
I also suspect that, of all the playbooks, whispers will vary the most from game to game.
Also I agree with Adam D. Having the ability means that you are special because you can accomplish things that no one else can.
For anybody else (or for Whispers that chose a different ability) Attune is weird, but not superpowered-weird.