Strange Idea #33: Group Moves
I had a fairly dramatic situation in a campaign earlier this year, and the whole party pulled together and rolled to affect a single result. It was damn cool and really tense, and since then I’ve been thinking about moves that require the entire party to pull off. I’m thinking each class could have one Group Move, and you’d roll 2d6+ number of helpers. Here’s a wizard example:
Pentagon
When your blood brothers place themselves on each point of a carved star, and you stand in the centre as they draw their own blood, roll +Help.
On a 10+ you call on the power and cast a potent spell from outside your normal reach (e.g. one of the level 7 or 9 spells, or a custom list)
On a 7-9 the side effects reverberate throughout the circle, inflicting pain or vulnerabilities in your blood brothers.
That move could be tied into ritual effects.
I reckon there’s tons of potential for really, really cool moves. Probably about halfway in power between a normal move and Grim World’s death moves, with fairly big consequences for failure. How would we work the rolling, though? Should it require a number of characters, or just give a set bonus for the entire party joining in? Maybe just Bonded characters, or +Bonds? In the example below we did a load of separate Aid rolls, but would it be better with one single roll?
In the actual campaign I mentioned above, the whole group came together to stab a vampire in the back. It was a momentous occasion; the vampire had been found in the halls of the dead and had been feasting on that city’s gods, so was elevated to god-like powers itself. The knife was ridiculously potent though, and if one guy could just stab the vampire with it then this Big Bad would die, releasing the gods trapped within.
One of the characters got into position and tried to stab but rolled a 7-9; everyone else decided to Aid, and we ended up with a few +1s bringing it into a 10+. Then the Gladiator, who’d been promised eternal life by the vampire, hindered the stabbing instead of aiding; carnage ensued, and the stabber got his neck snapped!
I know Aid is only supposed to stack once, but it was bloody cool all the same 🙂
Cool story bro.
Great idea!
I really like the idea of group moves. Certainly would encourage teamwork. I think it would be cool if each member of the group rolled a die to add to the total. The cut-offs for failure, okay results, and great results would have to change depending on the size of the group.
Any chance you can add some to Pirate World? 🙂
Here’s my quick idea.
Take -1 for each level of difficulty above the spell caster’s normal level.Â
Then take +1 for each spell caster who successfully Aids the active caster.
Then do the  normal spell casting move with the resultant modifier.Â
Sorry Greg Israel, the Pirate World workload is full! And yeah, it’d be cool to have everyone rolling; one alternative is make everyone roll +Aid and work out failures individually.
That’s pretty mechanically simple, Wynand! Unfortunately I’m looking for a Group Move system that’ll work for any playbook’s given move, but I might just type that up as a cool Wizard move anyways 🙂
So I looked into some possible fail/success with complications/full success breakdowns for rolling more than 2d6 if everyone rolled one die. Here’s what I came up with (assuming no modifiers):
2 PCs (same as a PC rolling two dice on their own):
2d6
6- (41.67%)
7-9 (41.67%)
10+ (16.67%)
3 PCs
3d6
9- (37.49%)
10-13 (46.29%)
14+ (16.2%)
4 PCs v1
4d6 v1
13- (44.36%)
14-18 (45.91%)
19+ (9.72%)
4 PCs v2
4d6 v2
12- (33.56%)
13-16 (42.52%)
17+ (23.91%)
5 PCs
5d6
16- (39.9%)
17-21 (44.82%)
22+ (15.19%)
This assumes that the chance of success is (roughly) the same regardless of the size of the group. Another way to go would be to increase the chance of success as the size of the group increases, which may make some sense. It might depend on the move too.
Thanks Greg. I think increasing the success based on the size of the group would be good!
If everybody’s rolling a die, you can just treat it as an Ultimate Die of Fate:
1 – No, and (-3)
2 – No (-2)
3 – No, but (-1)
4 – Yes, but (+1)
5 – Yes (+2)
6 – Yes, and (+3)
The numerical values are for rough equivalents if you want to get people to cancel each other’s secondary effects out or something.
James Hawthorne
 Here are some with increasing chances of success:
2 PCs
2d6
6- (41.67%)
7-9 (41.67%)
10+ (16.67%)
3 PCs
3d6
8- (25.92%)
9-12 (48.14%)
13+ (25.92%)
4 PCs
4d6
11- (23.91%)
12-15 (42.52%)
16+ (33.56%)
5 PCs
5d6
14- (22.13%)
15-18 (37.88%)
19+ (39.95%)