Played my first game of DW as a Druid just now. Had a great time! I really love the shapeshifting mechanic. I just wish my MC would have let me “shapeshift” and __ instead of making me wait every time. (Surely if everyone else can “defy danger” and ____then I should be able to “shapeshift” and _____?
It really is hard to get out of the round by round mindset isn’t it?
Just wondering, as an MC, if your Druid player wanted to try and purify a defiled lake, how would you handle this mechanically? My MC told me that I couldn’t do it. Whilst I’m ok with the decision, I’m pretty sure I would have made it possible as MC. (Isn’t the golden rule still “don’t say no, determine difficulty”?
If you had the Elemental Mastery move, I’d say that was covered, no question. Otherwise I’d probably just treat it as a variant on the Wizard’s Ritual move, and just make harder moves or make it more difficult based on a combination of A: your character’s background re: nature magic and B: how important it was that the lake was defiled.
But my current philosophy is that you can try anything halfway reasonable for your character regardless of moves on the sheet, your moves are special because you know the potential costs/consequences up front.
I’d probably ask “Okay, how do you plan to do that?” I don’t think I’d give a free “Ritual: lite” move, but if they were like “Well, I can’t talk to elemental spirits yet… but maybe the animal spirits I can talk to can talk to them?” or something else plausible and in the scope of their existing abilities, yeah!
But that said, “Give them an opportunity that fits the class’s abilities” is totally a GM move, as is “Tell them the requirements or consequences and ask”. So “Okay, you’ll have to do THIS, THIS, and THIS to purify the lake” is totally a legit move the GM can make, albeit not an opportunity that they have to give you.
Agree totally Ben. The Dm is not obligated at all.
The best way to handle this situation as a DM IMO is to tell the player they need something they can’t get right now (like a circle of three Druids for example).
Well, that’s my point. All of those things are potential costs of the Ritual move.
First you must (ask the animal spirits to intercede)
You’ll need help from (a circle of druids)
You’ll risk danger from (the wrath of the lake’s spirit)
You don’t have to give the player the option, but if you want to, it’s a decent way to do it.
Well, part of my point is that, without the actual Ritual move, the GM doesn’t have to give you a path that is guaranteed to succeed. Ritual says “What do I have to do to purify the lake?” and if you what the GM says you have to do, you succeed. Lack of ritual is the GM going “So what are you going to try to do to purify the lake?” And your course of action may or may not work.
A generous GM might say, even without Ritual, “Yeah, okay, that sounds plausible, animal spirits and a circle of druids, but now you’ve awoken the corrupted lake spirit and you have to defeat it before the lake is clean!” but she could also go “Okay, your circle of druids try their hardest… but even with the animal spirits’ blessing, the lake remains befouled. Looks like this corruption runs deep. What do you do?”
The DM isn’t obligated to say yes, by any means, but look at the GM principles and agenda for your answer to this question. They are obligated to be fans of the characters. Fans don’t say “no, shut up, do something else” when presented with so golden an opportunity.. They say “oh man, awesome, but it’s going to be HARD and you’re going to have to struggle for it. Where do you start? Who knows more about this than you do? Who do you have to bow and scrape to get the help you need?”
The GM shouldn’t just use Ritual (because it’s, you know, a move that you don’t have) but there are mechanical and non-mechanical venues for this stuff.
The only time a flat-out no is appropriate is if you ask something more specific or want to try a plan with no chance of success;
“If I pour a beer into this lake, will it purify it?”
“No, dude.”
In my opinion the Druid in DW has nothing to do with magic, but everything to do with animal and elemental spirits. This would probably become an engaging game of convincing spirits to join in the process, and culminate in confronting the lake’s spirit, which is tainted and perhaps either not fully in control of itself or completely taken out by a corruption spirit.
In my 2nd session the Wizard failed when casting Invisibility, I gave him a choice of either making his enemy invisible as well, or becoming permanently invisible, with the penalty for sustaining the spell, he just would not be able to simply drop it. He chose to be invisible, despite the drawbacks, simply because he liked the option.
The druid in the group then sent me a WhatsApp message asking if he could cleanse it, he also had I have showed ______________ a secret rite of the Land. as a Bond with the character but in the previous session we changed it to say he considered him trustworthy enough to share one in the future, so he wanted THAT to be the ritual.
I went with it instantly, he also got the elemental mastery move in that session, so when we were wrapping it up they found a pure place of the wild, where the elements and spirits were strong, and he performed it, I asked him to describe it, and he went ahead, saying how he asked the spirits of the animals, as well as those of the waters to cleanse the wizard’s soul.
Everyone at the table enjoyed the scene.