Alright Tavern-goers, I need a little help designing a move! While working on a 1-shot for a group I’m GMing this weekend I came up with the idea that some of the enemies I’d like to include will be spirits that feed off connections to the divine/spiritual realm. To this end I wrote this move:
when you use spiritual/divine magic in the presence of a maddened spirit roll-wis. On a 10+ you get a strange feeling but are otherwise unaffected. On a 7-9 the spirit drives you closer to the brink, lower your wisdom by 1 (cumulative) until you are able to reestablish a safe connection to the spirits/gods. At 0 wisdom you are driven beyond
rationality as the spirits’ feral desire takes over your body, take your last breath.
Reading through the move a few times however I’ve come to 2 conclusions. 1. the move seems EXTREMELY difficult to succeed at, since modifiers are reversed (rolling minus a stat). 2. Because of this, I’m having a hard time coming up with a “fair” 7-9 result.
My first instinct is to move the 10+ result down to 7-9 and add a positive effect to the 10+ (maybe something like +1 forward acting against the spirit) and move the 7-9 “madness” effect to happen ona 6-. What do you guys think?? All opinions welcome!
You don’t need an extra roll for this. You arguably don’t even need a custom move.
Establish with description what’s going on. “Sigurd, as you start casting your spell, you feel a strange… pulling? Yeah, a pulling on the connection between you and your god. You sense it’s coming from that horrible mad wraith. Do you keep casting?”
If they do, and miss, then hit ’em with the full effects of mad-spirit-tearing-at-your-faith. On a 7-9, if they choose that the -1 ongoing to cast, describe as the effects of the spirit. If they lose the spell, describe it as the spirit tearing the spell from their mind. If they expose themselves to danger, that spirit is all up in their spiritual grill.
If you really want a mechanic, make it simple and automatic. Like, maybe impose a -1 or -2 ongoing to cast a divine spell, and on a 9 or less they lose 1 Wisdom.
Yeah, this guy has some sound reasoning. I was reading it over and thought ‘6- you die? that’s kind of extreme.’
After reading your post I came to the exact same conclusion as Jeremy Strandberg. Make this a GM move as a consequence of a partial success or miss on a Cast a Spell roll. A 7-9 always has a 1 wisdom loss. I would let this snowball on multiple Misses as the spirits get a firmer grip on the PCs soul – first miss lose 1 Wisdom, second miss lose 2 more (-3 cumulative), third miss lose 3 more -6 cumulative), etc.. As the Wisdom loss stacks up, things get more desparate and the negative modifiers for low Wisdom will appear on their own.
Jeremy Strandberg I like where you’re coming from, and will probably end up going this route. The only reason I saw need for an advanced move to start was I was imagining a situation to the effect of cleric has +2 wis and manages to cast his spell, but then backpacking on that powerful connection is this spirit, so the high wis actually hinders you. Thanks for the input, and like i said, I’ll probably end up going this route instead.
Victoria Harlette I never meant for the interpretation to be that a 6- would outright kill you, just some damage (or other GM move) in addition to losing 1 wisdom (so say a cleric has 16 wisdom, fails a roll, down to 15) and then taking that last breath is when your wisdom is reduced to 0 overall.
Edit: Robert Finamore managed to post as I was writing my original response. The escalating 1 fail = -1 wisdom, 2 fail = -2 wisdom mechanic seems much more interesting to play than a custom move with a 7-9 result. I’ve rewritten the move as something ot the effect of:
when you use spiritual/divine magic in the presence of a maddened spirit it attempts to invade your mind. On a 10+ you get a strange feeling but are otherwise unaffected. On a 7-9 the spirit drives you closer to the brink, lower your wisdom by 1 (cumulative) until you are able to reestablish a safe connection to the spirits/gods. On a miss the spirit gets a firm hold in your mind, lower your wisdom by 1+previous consecutive misses. At 0 wisdom you are driven beyond rationality as the spirits’ feral desire takes over your body, take your last breath.
So the 10+, 7-9, and 6- results are the result of the cast a spell or other move being used, and the custom move just adds an additional effect to what normally happens with that move (on a 7-9) or will serve as an additional “custom GM move” for missing that roll.
Thanks for the feedback all, definitely helped!!!