It's raining in London... again (OOC)

Absolutely, however, you first need to find 'a Place of Power' as the Move Study a Place of Power is not about finding them, but about studying them once you have found one. You are close though.

Mark is an experienced magic user, so he he noticed it easily enough and can resist it without needing to roll. He has learned something about the sort of magic in use here, and that may be a clue he can pull on.

I’m thinking of rolling Let it Out again ("display your dominance; low-Status NPCs flee, PCs must **keep their cool**") to try to scare the dog off. Obviously there’s a risk that I could fail and make the situation worse (and even on a success the other PCs would have to keep their cool), but the possibility of avoiding a fight with the dog altogether seems like it might be worth it. Does the dog qualify as a low-Status NPC? Also, does growling back at it qualify as ‘displaying dominance’?

Sounds like an excellent plan. :)
Sure is. :)
It does now.
I would think there is more than just a simple 'growl'. It needs to be enough to trigger the Move and scare away a guard-dog (from hell?), and you imply that the other PCs would need to Keep their Cool, so it is surely something more scary, which it needs to be anyway.

If you are referring to the text of the Move, 'low-Status NPCs flee, PCs must keep their cool', then those are two separate clauses for when you choose to target PCs vs NPCs. If you are not trying to scare the PCs away or to dominate them then they probably don't need to roll (unless it is very freaky and scares them, which we will deal with if it comes up).

Describe how you display your dominance (the others don't know about the hell hound yet).

Oh! Okay, great! I misunderstood the move as meaning it affected everyone in the scene, but being able to target it is much better :)

Rather than make a new post, I edited the existing post (and added the roll …It didn’t go great lol)

Given the misunderstanding followed by your rolling a 4 it is tempting Turn the Move Back on you and your friends. But I don't want to induce a fear of you in them, so let's not do that.

However, it makes a lot of sense to have the dog be even scarier than it first seemed (hence not fazed by your display) and ask everyone to Keep their Cool.

We might want to discuss as a team what sorts of things could happen. Do we want to allow for the possibility of being frightened away from here and losing this thread (for now?), or do we want to limit it to things that still allow us to stay down here and finish this exploration? There will be other opportunities if we flee, but I don't want to force such a decision based on the dice.

When you roll [ref] to Keep Your Cool, think about what sort of 'costs' you might have to pay on a 7-9. The costs should not overrule the success of the Move, and need not be directly related to what you feared might come to pass, but this is something that needs to borne in mind when setting the terms for the Move, if there are no logical 'costs' on a Partial Success then maybe the Move does not apply and should not have been rolled.

@Stalker05: What are you worried about or wanting to avoid with your roll? What does it cost you to overcome that fear?

That does sound like '• reshape the essence or nature of a magical spell'.

I am not sure how much that would help with the scary dog. The dog is real, not part of the spell.

The spell might make them more inclined to 'go home', so dispelling that might make that a less likely outcome, but that takes away their choice of what they are worried about...

On the other hand, the Let It Out Ability says 'reshape', so you might be able to use the existing spell to try repel the dog? That sounds like a tall order, though, so expect high costs if you try that.

We first need to deal with the round of Keep Cool rolls, though.

Can anyone think of a way to Lend a Hand for poor Benji with his apparently-cursed rolls [ref ref ref]? We could turn that 6 to Keep his Cool into a 7. I am not sure how one would help with 'bravery', though...

By RAW we only roll the Lend a Hand Move to help, but it might make sense that turning off the 'go home' magic would 'diminish the desire to flee' and count as helping (everyone), in this case. That would mean the magic effect is gone (if Mark can do it, of course) and can not turned against the dog. We would also need to deal with Mark's Partial Success on resisting his own fear [ref] before he can act to do that.

Everyone, so far, has a Partial, though, so there is already an overwhelming desire to get out of here. "Guys? Should be just leave?"

Unless Rhiannon rolls a 10+ and acts like the brave heroine that inspires the rest of us... yeah, perhaps the fiction is demanding retreat right now.

BTW, I don't know what summer plans you guys have, but I just wanted to warn in advance: from July 8th to July 21st I have my summer vacation and I'll be completely OFF any screen.

If the rest of you can continue with the game, I'm fine: I don't want to be the one who stops everything, so you can just put Jacob in NPC mode those 2 weeks.

There are two factors here, we don't want to turn these Partial Successes into Misses, but we should also keep in mind why we came down here, and it was not to fight hell-hounds. We came down to see if the rumours of the hell-hound were true (it sure seems that way) and to find information about how the demons got on the train.

We have succeeded at both our aims. So leaving a dangerous situation to do more research into this spot, or to arm up and prepare to face the hell-hound, might be what we want to do anyway?

Recklessly trying to drive the hell-hound away (and possibly trying to follow it to see where it comes from?) is still an option, but that comes with risks (both inherent and probably part of these Keep Your Cool rolls).

Decide what you want to do, then we can try to make it happen in the fiction.

Not a problem. Thanks for letting us know.

I don't 'NPC' player's characters, but then I also don't tend to play games where that is needed (mechanical need to 'have your turn'). Anyway, in a 'city game' we can easily say that Jacob is at home, dealing with his own stuff while we play on, then we can do a Love Letter when you return to see if your actions impacted our situation.

Cool, that works for me, thanks!

Well the good news is that Rhiannon doesn’t just kill some innocent doggo.