In the course of the game I’ve been running, our Barbarian has described a pretty awesome place of origin. I’m thinking of making it a potential destination, and to differentiate it from the rest of the world, give it a full Swords & Wizardry makeover. Specifically, I’d like to put a twist on the magic of the Bard and the Cleric. In the land of barbarians, magic doesn’t simply “work”. Sorcerers are evil, and bring plague and suffering! They sacrifice princesses to dark gods to power their evil magics! I’m thinking something like a move, triggered on them casting/playing.
For the Cleric, it could be a chance that the spell fails because their god isn’t present here, or perhaps an outsider listening in and allowing the spell to be cast, but with a twist (Demon? Lovecraftian horror? Who knows?!).
For the Bard, perhaps a “deal with the devil” could be in order, where some local outsider (see above) is willing to give them back the power to cast, but with a price.
Is this the right way to go? I’m a big fan of the S&W genre (Conan, Thongor, etc), and I’d like to get some of that into DW rather than switching over to Barbarians of Lemuria or something while we’re in the Barbarian’s homeland. Do you guys and gals have any ideas? Have you done something like this before? Maybe a compendium class or three is the way to go? Should I just do this in fiction, moves be damned?
(For reference, the party is a Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, and Thief, and I’m not worried about the Barbarian and the Thief fitting in)
For the Cleric you can just step in at the first failure with a move.
Don’t take away their magic, that would be uncool, at least not right away but hint at a distance from their god, at the possibility to loose the connection with the divinity, because it is not strong there. Then present them temptation in the form of a dark pact: follow the precepts of this lovecraftian horror and you will keep your magic even if your god will be silent.
See what happens, what the Cleric values most: Faith or the power Faith gives. What would happen one they go back?
For the bard removing the magic they worked for right away could be a serious bump.
Maybe you can just change the rules.
What about changing the 7/9 results in “choose one: you forgot the spell; the spell doesn’t work; you have to do a sacrifice for it to work”.
Either way, remember: taking away what makes a character “cool” is the best way to have boring characters. Put a price on the coolness, make them work for it, challenge them with it but don’t simply take it away.
You should not loose your coolness, but if you renounce it, it should be a very dramatic and important moment.
A slightly more mechanical approach: you could create a countdown to how much you think it’s appropriate for each spellcaster, describe the players how strange/evil/alien it feels to them casting spells, and add to the hard moves (6- or when appropriate) the option of marking off one from countdown.
When the countdown is finished, let the players face the consequences of their choices.
If you do manage things this way,it’s important that you make the growing evil/corruption clear and the countdown long enough that the player can meaningfully choose if the use of magic is worth the risk.
That’s not a move. That’s a whole Front with Grim Portents and an Impending Doom.
It would work like charm, but it will focus the game on that.
It’s a move taken almost verbatim from the new moves in the Plarch Codex (p.10 italian ed., don’t have the original version readily available) where it’s proposed as a simple way to manage a single source of growing danger that’s going to manifest later. There are no prepared grim portents, just the players’ awareness that some danger is getting closer when they do something connected to it. A Front lite, if you will.