I’m looking for feedback in a custom move.
When you deal the finishing blow on the Wizard Caravantius on the Cliff of Doom, the wizard will fall down the cliff. Roll +Dex. On a 10+, choose 2. On a 7-9, choose 1.
* The wizard will not take Princess Mirra with him to his death.
* He will drop his Staff of the Magi before falling.
* With maniacal laughter, he will reveal the location where King Amros is being held before he falls.
On a 6-, still choose 1, but the Wizard curses you: take -1 ongoing until you can dispel the curse. Regardless of the roll, the wizards fall 300 meters into his death, hitting the ragged rocks of the Cliff of Doom many times before disappearing into the mist. Surely no one can survive that fall, right?
I like this quite a lot.
-1 ongoing basically forever is a bit too heavy for me. How about some creative curse wich can shape the course of the story? Something like “You wille die alone, unmourn and unloved”, maybe a bit more original.
not sure about the -1. how does that move the story forward?
I think it gives the feel of being cursed without over burdening the GM.
I’m thinking a -1 ongoing is going to force a character to make his goal to get rid of it while not being actually cripling. Lots of Spout Lore, perhaps a quest, some Parley. A more colorful curse might be better, but I do want something with mechanical weight behind it.
Are the players going to want to automatically get the location of the king? Without knowing more about the game can’t tell if this is like why would I pick any other one.
So what when I take the deathblow there but in a way that would make no sense for him to fall down? This feels a bit too “the wizard must die there in this way!” For me.
The curse might cause a Debility, or even 2, rather than -1 to everything. Maybe “I curse you to be feeble in mind and body until _________ (name way curse can be lifted)”, and the result is a Debility to 1 physical and 1 mental stat.
steven stewart Yes! Assume they are fighting the wizard to get those three things: save the princess, get the staff and free the king, but no matter how well they roll, they will only get two out of three. And the player that lands the killing blow will decide.
Tim Franzke Yep, that’s actually what it is, in a way. I wonder if it’s ok to do that in Dungeon World. My guess is that it is ok, you’re still playing to find out what happens, you’re leaving a hard choice in front of the players to make (what will they obtain from this fight, wich was surely epic), but you’re leaving some options out of the characters reach (i.e. the wizard might return to fight again, they can’t try to raise him from the dead). The basic moves seem to do the same thing, albeit in shorter scale.
Fiction first would apply anyway, that is, if you don’t trigger the move (because you flee the wizard or because you disintegrate him, for instance) then there is no move and fiction follow different.
However, this is one of the reasons I wanted some feedback on this move. If you would care to expand or explain how would you fix it so that it might feel less “railroady” it would be very helpful 🙂
Tom Miskey That’s great. I think I’m going to change the description of the curse to a Debility.
I think it’s pretty good. What you can do is write the trigger on one side of an index card, then the rest of the move on the other and lay it out on the table. It might incentivize the players to try and kill him that way to see the move without it being too railroady.
Also, I’m really sorry. I forgot that you were the one talking about the card thing in an earlier post. Oops!