I’ve written up a base class for my Sword & Planet DW hack, Rocketeer World – the Warrior. It takes some inspiration from the Gladiator written by Travis Stout, but it’s mainly its own thing, and could work perfectly well with a bit of a tweak in a vanilla DW game.
I’m looking for any feedback on the mechanics or concept that people would like to provide…
Some nice stuff in here! I really dig “Exiled Warrior” and “Come and Get It”.
I like the flavor of Ancient Order, but the triggering condition doesn’t mesh as well as the other two Earth Humans, which are always-on benefits, instead of a conditional narrative event.
By contrast, both Green Martian origins are things under the player’s control — Ancient Order and Red Martian aren’t, though even the Red Martian’s benefit is directly quantifiable.
I’d suggest looking to the Martians’ code additions as something that would fit well with Ancient Order, something like “Support the Ideals of the Order” or similar. Likewise, a hazily defined benefit that triggers on slaying a foe of the order isn’t going to come up as regularly — and therefore not be as defining — as ‘I can jump crazy’ or ‘I can see the worst thing you ever did’. I’d argue for replacing ‘slay’ with ‘defeat’ enemies of the Order, or even ‘for defining ‘people who behave contrary to the Order’s principles’ as ‘enemies’ to make this condition easier to satisfy (and scale the boon to the opposition).
I really like the Code subsystem, and the moves are capturing the flavor of the source material quite well.
At first glance this looks pretty cool. I’ll try and take a more in-depth look and offer feedback later.
A little bit of feedback:
Wrestlemania is awesome.
Excalibur is already a move – it doesn’t need the requirement. I would reverse it – so you choose a weapon, get +1 to Cha moves while brandishing that weapon, and +1 ongoing or +1d6 damage vs. legendary monsters with the weapon.
Khan of Mars: “the warband will follow you as long as you bring them victory” is a weaker form of “the warband will follow you into the jaws of Hell.”
Other than that it’s great, Wrestlemania is pitch-perfect and I really want to see the rest of your hack – I love ERB.
Actually, one other thing: there’s no reason why I’d go for four restrictions rather than two since the drawbacks of breaking them are steep. I’d suggest that following your restrictions at a cost to you should give you a benefit – maybe check the Paladin’s Quest move for inspiration.