The Leap Home
When you intentionally travel to another dimension through a rift in space-time, roll+CON. On a 10+ you safely make it through to the other side. On a 7-9 you make it through, but choose one. On a 6- you barely make it, choose two and the GM chooses one.
• Travelling was bad, but your landing was worse. You take 1d6 damage.
• One of your items (and some of your dignity) is forever lost in the endless void between worlds.
• You’re badly shaken by the experience, take -1 ongoing until you next make camp.
• Someone – or something – from the infinite number of worlds beyond follows you out of the rift.
• The unpredictable magicks of the rift have changed you in some way.
• The rift spits you out right in the middle of a particularly unusual situation.
Ha. Ha ha. Awesome.
Thought I posted an explanation of this move, but I guess I didn’t. So here it is now!
In my game, the two-man party were sent to investigate some strange purple rifts which were spitting extra-planar creatures out into the world. Or that was the plan… what actually happened is the Bard with no Wisdom to speak of took the scout role for the party’s Undertake a Perilous Journey move and utterly failed his roll. I’d ‘saved’ a whole lot of hard moves in the previous two sessions, putting them off so that I didn’t kill the party accidentally, so I decided now was a great time to use them. I told him that he blindly walked straight into one of the rifts, dragging the Ranger with him. That rift turned out to be a portal to a completely random dimension. A dimension where they had to fight an over-stuffed, life-sized, plush Tyrannosaurus Rex which squeaked like a dog’s chew toy whenever it got hit. While the Jurassic Park theme played in the background.
It’s a long story.
Anyway, you can probably tell the tone of the campaign by now. Until they figure out a way to control these rifts, the hapless Bard and Ranger are facing a series of crazy Sliders / Stargate SG-1 / Quantum Leap-style mini-adventures. They pop out of a rift somewhere, blunder through whatever crazy obstacles are in their way and desperately try to reach the location where the next portal will open, just in time to jump through it. Each time hoping that their next leap… will be the leap home.
As awesome as that scenario is, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for continuity and it leaves them completely at my mercy at the start of each session. I thought writing a custom move to let them have some influence over what happens when they pop out might be a good idea. So I listed out a bunch of things I was planning to do to them anyway, turned it into a move and I’m going to let them roll to choose what terrible fate happens to them. I’m sure it’s not balanced at all (if they have any sense they’ll both pick damage and have the Bard heal everyone) but the idea was more to keep the players feeling like they have some control over things 🙂
How about boiling it down to
When you step through the purple rifts, you DO arrive somewhere
on 10+ all three, on 7-9 choose two
– it at least looks like home
– nothing came with you
– you land safely