76. Affliction Addiction

An affliction threat isn’t a person, it’s something threatening that people are doing, or that is happening, or that has come to be (110).

This is our first threat that isn’t a human being. Afflictions affect and are perpetuated by populations. As such, they make for a whole different type of problem for the protagonists of the story being played out. Warlords and grotesques are individuals (with or without gangs) who can be confronted head on, battled with, bargained with, or undermined. Afflictions potentially have many more vectors for drama. How do you address a disease? How do you deal with the holding’s water filtration breaking down? How do you deal with the violent customs or an entire people? Or a poisonous opinion held fast by the people? You can’t shoot your way out of those problems. You can’t bargain with an individual and be clear of affliction. Hell, not all afflictions can even be “solved.” Customs and delusions can easily become background threats that are constantly haunting and harassing the protagonists.

As much as I love the very notion of afflictions, it’s the threat moves that make afflictions awesome:

• Push reading a situation.
• Someone neglects duties, responsibilities, obligations.
• Someone flies into a rage.
• Someone takes self-destructive, fruitless, or hopeless action.
• Someone approaches, seeking help.
• Someone approaches, seeking comfort.
• Someone withdraws and seeks isolation.
• Someone proclaims the affliction to be a just punishment.
• Someone proclaims the affliction to be, in fact, a blessing.
• Someone refuses or fails to adapt to new circumstances.
• Someone brings friends or loved ones along.

The threat moves are awesome because they focus not on the affliction itself but on the people’s reactions to the affliction. The disease, condition, custom, delusion, sacrifice, or barrier is made present by the way the individuals in the community (the “someone” of each move) create trouble, seek to comfort, attempt to make sense of the affliction, or fall apart in the face of it. By focusing on the people, the game makes the affliction threat effectively a bipartite threat. A disease threatening a population is bad enough, but someone taking the political stage to declare the disease a just punishment creates a whole new facet to the threat. The broken down water filtration system is an immediate danger, but someone taking self-destructive actions because of it threatens the protagonists that much more and possibly spreads them that much thinner. Every one of these threat moves draws attention to all the individuals that make up the community, to all the NPCs the MC has at their disposal, and together they hand the MC an unending set of flash points to pressure the players’ characters.

Of course, as beautiful as each threat is individually, bringing them all together during play keeps the narrative landscape tilted and dynamic. In a world with warlords, grotesques, afflicted populations, brutes, and landscapes, there is no way to create a status quo even if you tried. That is the gift of these threats.