I am working on a move for my shape shifting Druid. what do people think of this? both my process, and any advice for a fourth version:
Second version:
You explore the caves as a bat. You discover two things of interest, also Roll 2d6 + the number of holds you wish to spend.
On a 10+ pick 3
On a 7-9 pick 1
You return to safety as a bat
You do not find something that hunts bats
You find something valuable or powerful
You find what you are looking for
I think the first and second choice overlap.
I think the third and fourth could be the same thing… in the current situation this is not the case, but as a custom move added to the game, I see potential to overlap.
I am worried about a driud spending 3 holds. That is only a 1 in 12 chance of getting a 6-.
third version:
When you search or explore an area alone, and in a form native to that location, you discover something of interest, the gm will tell you what. Also roll 2d6 + INT.
On a 10+ pick 2
on a 7-9 pick 1
You find what you are looking for
You do not take a long time
You do not get noticed
For this more generic move, I though maby there are no holds… but abilities could modify the roll, and INT seems like something that goes well with scouting, finding what you want, and staying out of trouble.
This new version does not feel as powerful as the previous one, but all of the choices are things that are wanted. thoughts?
Might be easier if you generalize it to stuff to work for all animals (or at least flying, swimming & walking), this would save you from having hundreds of charts with hundreds of moves for all the different animals out there.
Also when you talk about things that are valuable, is that good for the party, just the druid or a bat? I do think that it’s up to the druid on how the holds are spent, and exploring doesn’t seem to cover the range of the options with other forms & spending a hold while shapeshifted.
Wouldn’t things like scouting just be Discern Realities?
Hello Darren Priddy I thought my 3rd version answered most of your points. For my fourth version I would like to find words that indicate any form native to it’s environment, that would include someone in a elemental situation, like fire elemental on a plane of fire…. but exclude things like people in a city. Not sure how to word that concisely.
As for what is valuable, I thought that would depend on the fiction…. and again I re-worded it in the third version.
As for Discern realities, the trigger for that is to “studying a situation, or a person”. This move is triggered by “exploring or searching an unknown area”.
Anyone else have thoughts about about this move? Is it powerful enough for the characters? Are the choices balanced? Anyone have opinions about discern realities already covering this move?
thanks,
I tend to use Discern Realities for this…the druid IS exploring and looking around, exactly the way Discern Realities is meant to be used.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create a custom move is you want to. It’d make things cooler for the druid.
As for what is valuable…that depends on how well the druid succeeded on his shapeshifting roll. A partial success might mean that he is distracted by the animal spirit’s nature. Thus, he focuses on what’s valuable to a bat, rather than to the party.
(A failure, if I allowed the shift, would mean that the animal spirit is definitely in control, which my players likes because then he gets to play an actual bear, rather than his PC in the from of a bear. It ends up being like the Avengers trying to control and focus the Hulk.)
Thanks for the reply. Perhaps I simply do not get discern realities yet. Darren Priddy I challenge you to use discern realities in a way that will teach me about it during our next session.
In the meantime I have a 4th version for this move that feels pretty good to me, any review is welcome.
Natural investigation:
When you search or explore an uncivilized area alone, and in a form native to that area, you discover something of interest, the gm will tell you what. Also roll 2d6 + INT.
On a 10+ pick 2
on a 7-9 pick 1
You find what you are looking for
You return quickly
You avoid unwanted attention
There is nothing else interesting in the area
My own criticism is that it might not be strong enough to allow the GM to be a fan of the character. However adding a third choice on the 10+ did not seem like a good option. Opinions?
ah hah! “take +1 forward the next time you enter this area” I could add that to the move perhaps only with a 10+ ? and make it easier to be a fan.
For exploration I can see doing a new move or just coming up with another set of questions for Discern Reality as the way I see it if I was playing a druid & having up to 3 special moves with the holds for the shapeshifted form, I’d feel kind of cheated if one was just looking around for things. Why I mentioned the need of coming up with sets of moves since the druid will have a handful of animals to pick from for each climate area so it’d be easy to just do some new discern questions.
As I see it all shapeshifted forms will be able to easily do the following: call for similar animals in the area (to the druid), scare prey animals if a carnivore, summon similar animals for attack/defense/hiding, use a weaker sounding animal sound to summon predators. Holds could be used for these as well as other special abilities but innate abilities of movement & perception (like night vision or echolocation for your bats) just come naturally so with the rules, it’s already there which saves you some time to create things you might need for the game/world.