Seeking advice for a set of custom moves involving tracking/hunting, trapping, and foraging for dungeon rations when your PCs don’t have any and don’t have a shop to go to for more.
The PCs in my PbP Dungeon Planet game and I have written several version already, so I’ll post the two latest ones with some feedback/concerns from the PCs. We wanted to try ourselves first, but we’re still not coming to a consensus, so I’m turning to the Tavern, because you are all awesome and I’m more than certain I’m not the only GM who’d love to have a set of custom moves like this for their DW game. 🙂
Version #1:
TRACK & HUNT
When you spend the day hunting, roll +WIS,Â
On a 10+, you may then roll VOLLEY or HACK&SLASH;
On a 7-9, as 10+, but you got lost while tracking your prey
On a hit on the VOLLEY or H&S roll, you kill your prey and, if you rolled 7-9, apply the result of either move you chose
TRAPPING
When you spend the day trapping, roll +INT, or +WIS.Â
On a miss, something ate your trapped animal, now the predator wants you. On a hit, you’ve trapped 1d3+2 rations-worth of animal(s).Â
On a 10, pick 1, on a 7-9 pick 2:
* Slim pickins, -2 rations.
* You’ve attracted a predator.
* You contract a disease from your prey. The GM will give you the details.
* You suffer 1d6 damage from the environment.
FORAGING
When you spend the day gathering, roll +WIS. On a miss, you’re lost. On a hit, you’ve trapped 1d2+2 rations-worth of plants. On a 10, pick 1, on a 7-9 pick 2:
* Slim pickins, -2 rations.
* You’ve attracted a predator.
* Your rations are poisonous, or otherwise disagreeable. The GM will give you the details.
* You suffer 1d6 damage from the environment.
Version #2
TRACK AND HUNT
When you spend a good amount of time tracking and hunting down prey, roll +WIS.
*On a 10+, you successfully hunt down a sizable quarry or several, smaller ones without any complications. Describe what they are. Add dungeon rations (5 uses, 1 weight) to your gear after you skin them.Â
*On a 7-9, as above but not without complications. Choose one:
• You’ve become lost while tracking your prey, and you run into danger. The GM will describe it to you.
• You’ve contracted a disease from your prey. The GM will describe what kind. Take the SICK debility.
• The prey you were chasing put up a good fight. Take d6 damage.
TRAPPING
When you spend a good amount of time constructing a trap and waiting patiently for your prey to fall for it, roll +INT or +WIS and describe your process of trapping the prey accordingly and what it is. On a hit, you trap the prey successfully. Add dungeon rations (5 uses, 1 weight) to your gear after you skin them.
*On a 10+, choose 1. *On a 7-9, choose 2:
• The trap falls apart or, otherwise, can not be reused.Â
• Slim pickings. You’ll have to make do with what you can. Subtract 2 uses from the dungeon rations you acquired.
• You’ve contracted a disease from your prey. The GM will describe what kind. Take the SICK debility.
• You’ve attracted a predator, placing yourself in a dangerous situation. The GM will describe what it is.
FORAGING
When you spend a good amount of time foraging for fruits, vegetables, nuts, or anything equivalent and edible, roll +WIS.
*On a 10+, you successfully gather a sizable portion of edible, non-meat, food without any complications. Describe what you found. Add dungeon rations (5 uses, 1 weight) to your gear.
*On a 7-9, as above but not without complications. Choose one:
• Slim pickings. There just wasn’t a whole lot around. Subtract 2 uses from the dungeon rations you acquired.
• The food was spoiled, rotten, poisonous, or otherwise disagreeable. The GM will describe how. Take the SICK debility.
• You’ve attracted a predator, placing yourself in a dangerous situation. The GM will describe what it is.
Cool, so there are the two versions. Version #2 is, essentially, a revision of #1.
Concerns:
• Player feels it’s weird only using +WIS for Hunt and Track – that strong/dextrous PCs wouldn’t be as good at hunting as wise/perspective ones.
— Fair point; however, I’m not a fan of calling for another move within a move. Perhaps leave it as a choice between WIS, STR, DEX?
• Player said, historically, foraging usually brought less food per time unit than hunting or trapping and suggested Foraging shouldn’t bring in as many rations or should simply take more time.
— More time, perhaps. I defended keeping the rations the same for two reasons: 1) ‘Historical accuracy’ falls apart when we’re talking about a game of Dungeon Planet and being stranded on a planet similar to Earth, but millions of light years away. Things could be totally different. 2) Simplicity. If we’re designing two moves to bring in dungeon rations, the same thing should be acquired at the end, right? You could make the argument that since they’re different moves, they can bring in different amounts, sure, but that’s not keeping things simple. And this is DW.Â
Point is for the PCs to spend background time tracking and hunting or trapping prey or foraging for food when they’re completely out of dungeon rations and have no place to buy them (or steal them from).
OR are these custom moves a waste of our time, and I should just let them find rations somewhere or have some NPC/monster carry some? That sort of defeats the struggle of being stranded on an alien planet – for this game, at least (though these are custom moves that can be used in any DW, I think).
I’m dying to hear what you guys think.
Cheers!
Richard Robertson Philip Espi Matt Smith Chris Sakkas Joshua Royer Tagging you five, since you’re playing this game!
Kasper Brohus You used to play in the game, so I’m tagging you too. 🙂
Thank you for sharing! You asked for feedback. I like version 2 best. If you’re worried about WIS only for track and hunt, maybe you should say tracking lets you find the prey and put them in combat to kill it/them. Or have them roll STR/DEX to avoid taking d6 damage (whereas 7-9 demands it). For trapping, another danger is that a predator had taken your trapped prey and the trap is wasted. I agree with less yield for foraging, maybe 3 uses.
1) One player definitely wasn’t agreeing with just +WIS for Track and Hunt. I don’t like Volley/H&S after, but I might have to concede to a +DEX/+STR roll with a hit on the tracking (+WIS) portion of it.
I also thought about turning these into two separate custom moves, but another player didn’t want that.Â
Heh, finding compromises can be a bit tricky sometimes!
2) Awesome idea for trapping – I hadn’t even thought of that danger. Perhaps I’ll replace the ‘Slim Pickings’ choice with it.
3) What if you’re on a planet whose equivalent of fruits, vegetables, and nuts actually yields more nutrition and keeps you sated longer than the meat from the aliens?
The real question is: what’s established in the story already? The answer (at least for above) is: not much. We have purple-colored coconuts, but that’s about it so far.
Rereading the example I wrote in defense of the Foraging option, that doesn’t describe why it yields less. Instead, how about: “What if there were like ten or twenty times as many options for foods to gather on this planet than prey with meat to hunt?”
In that case, the planet would have custom Hunt and Foraging moves.
I just noticed that when trapping v2, there’s always a consequence. Is that intentional? Usually 10+ is an unqualified success.
Even more custom moves? Still haven’t finished this one! Heh, I think I’ll just take my players’ side on this one and go with less rations. 🙂
For the consequences regarding the trapping move, I re-wrote v2 based off v1, and the players wrote consequences for each choice.Â
Like you, Chuck Durfee I also thought that was strange. 10+ should be unqualified; but, I guess, I didn’t want it to sound just like the Track and Hunt move, so I made one of the consequences much less severe compared to the others.
Once you’re done trapping, you really have no need for the trap anymore – even with a 10+. So the trap breaks or can’t be reused is perfectly valid.Â
It’s not like the option hurts you – even with a 10+. Next time you trap, you’ll have to spend time creating a new trap anyway.
But, it’d make just as much sense to do without it completely, right? Keep things less complicated?Â
Well, if you don’t need the trap regardless, then losing the trap is a false choice and should be removed. Maybe the trap mangles the skin and it’s worthless, although that consequence might suit Track and Hunt better.
I honestly think we might be overthinking this. This seems like we should be making a perilous journey.
One roll for each of the tasks using wis.
If we don’t have the rations then we defy danger to continue on.
Obviously us not being able to go on the journey is boring so maybe we lose other resources as we go. A bow breaks from trying to make a fire, a sword is lost after we throw it at potential prey, and so on.
I don’t think DW is meant to play like DCC so maybe a twist pops up that gets us out of the dungeon crawl and back to the things that make our characters look awesome.
If the players wanted to focus on long journeys through the wilderness on of em would have picked up ranger for their class.
Since that’s not the case, but we have to get through this obstacle, let’s pay what we have to pay and get to the good stuff, or make it clear that going this way is not possible.
Just my thoughts.
True that, Matt Smith . You can blame Richard Robertson for getting us started on coming up with moves for finding rations (lol, I’m jk Rich).
We can decide what we want for the game, but I still think this is a great discussion to have and a useful custom move in case this situation ever comes up for anyone else in DW.
I think that foraging should yield less. You can forage without gear, but you can’t hunt without gear.
Also, hunting should have “mark ammo” as a choice on 7-9 🙂 it makes sense at least 🙂
Okay, i will be controversial here:
Outside an PbP i would not use these moves. I want players to struggle more to get food back. Make them actually hunt or trap for it. Using more GM Moves etc.Â
It’s an interesting part of Dungeoneering and therefore should be more central part of the game.
However, in a play by post game this takes a lot of time away from what is maybe perceived as the “actual game” and has it’s place there.Â
I agree Tim Franzke , play by post is a different animal.