Talk at Them and Grapple
My players seem to love to do these, and it’s always awkward there’s not a canon move for either. Custom move time!
When you tell a hostile creature you just want to talk, roll +CHA. On a 10+, they’re listening. Speak your piece, and take +1 forward to parley if it turns out you’ve got leverage over them. On a 7-9, they’ll hear you out, but only if you disarm or otherwise put yourself at their mercy. On 6-, at least you can say you tried! Mark XP, and the GM makes a move.
When you grab or tackle an opponent, roll +STR. On a 10+, choose 3. On 7-9, choose 1, and they get an attack on you while you wrestle:
* You hold them in place; they’re not going anywhere until they get free of you
* You restrain the limbs they use for attacking
* Hold 1 per the defend move, usable for or against them
* Take +1 forward against them
Note that applicability sanity checks apply. If you don’t share a language, you don’t get to talk at them. If your opponent’s six times your size, you don’t roll grapple.
Isn’t #1 just Defy Danger with CHA? Also, PBTA triggers usually don’t use “try to” or “attempt”. Trigger for #2 should probably be when you grab or tackle an opponent.
Noah Tucker: Lots of moves could be waved away as “just Defy Danger,” because Defy Danger is something of a catchall. I find that making a move like this explicit helps ease GM cognitive load and lessens “OK, defy danger again” repetition.
Good point about the phrasing on grapple. Fixed!
Both of these could be handled with Defy Danger, but I like them.
I see “it’s just defy danger with X” as a response to peoples custom moves a lot. To that I say: So what?
Custom Moves are great at speeding up game play and making things flow faster. I’m not going to have to stop and figure out what the results are for DD when a custom move has them all nice and laid out for me. The DD results are vague in the extreme and to have everything clearly defined for players and GMs alike is great, especially if it’s a thing they do all the time.
If you ran a swashbuckling pirate campaign you’d develop all kinds of moves. When you man the cannons…When you swing from the yard arm…When you hold fast in the storm…Technically most would fall under the “it’s just DD with X” but they’d add so much flavor and feel to the game because they are YOUR moves you and your players came up with.
IMHO Custom moves are one of the great things about Dungeon World and it’s DIY nature. These are great Sabe Jones !
Also #2 is more likely to get you into danger than out of it so, no they aren’t “just dd”.
I like #2 more because #1 seems like almost a direct rephrasing of DD. You succeed on a 10+, you have to do something extra on a 7-9, and you fail on a 6-.
Grapple is more interesting to me since it covers something that is left unaddressed by the rules. I have a couplethoughts about this one:
1. 7-9 says they attack you, but you can choose option #2 which makes it impossible for them to attack you.
2. Option #2 seems like a watered-down version of option #1.
Noah Tucker: Question 1 – I’d pictured it as the enemy getting a stab in before you manage to get control of its weapon. Is there some timing rule in move resolution I’m not aware of? Like, sometimes on hack and slash 7-9 you kill the target with your damage, but still suffer some pain along the way.
Question 2 – I expect folks will often pick both of those on a 10+. If not, or if you’ve only got a 7-9, it’s a question of which is more important: making it tough for the enemy to get away, or making it tough for them to hurt you? Pick the second option and you’ve got a tug-of-war going where they can’t fight effectively but can drag you around or maneuver you into a bad spot; pick the first option and you’ve got them pinned but they’re able to hack at you to get you off them.
As for talk at them, sure, it’s a rephrased DD with a small explicit mechanical bennie for 10+. It’s still useful to me.
📌
Maybe to set apart those moves from a “vanilla” Defy Danger, you should provide different results instead of obvious ones.
Take grab or tackle, that is quite good in its 7-9 results because it makes the player choose. Unfortunately I don’t like the hold one and take +1 options, they don’t add anything more to the fiction.
Think about the first two: is there any situation in which one player would not choose one of them in a 7-9? I’d reduce the option to those two and reword the 10+ result to allow both.
Regarding ‘Grapple’ and its choices: the first two do sound very similar. Perhaps phrasing the second choice as ‘you disarm them’ or you could combine the second and fourth options and say something along the line of ‘you cause the enemy to be less capable of causing you harm, take a +1 forward to Hack and Slash’
Sabe Jones No timing, I don’t think, but fictionally it seems odd. The move says “they attack you” and you can choose “you restrain the limbs that they use for attacking”. I would have trouble resolving that.
That differential between moving and attacking makes sense for my second question. Is there some way you can make the differentiation more clear in the move?
Grapple seems to me that it might could work about like so.
On a 7-9, choose 1 but they make a move against you first. So if you pin their sword arm, first they get a cut in on you then it’s pinned.
On a 10+, choose 1. You can let them make a move against you first to choose 3.
Because as it sits now a 10 is worlds better than a 7.
I will say that talk at them really just seems to be Parley with “I don’t want to fight you” hard-coded in as the leverage you have over them. And it’s completely legitimate to require several moves in a tough situation like trying to negotiate with something that initially starts out hostile, but I don’t see what you get out of it other than a +1 to future Parley (as opposed to discern realities/spout lore/whatever else you might buy time for).
Tonight’s the next session of the game, so we’ll see shortly how these work out in play! Thanks for all the feedback. I particularly appreciate the pointing out that the mechanical-only options on grapple don’t add to the fiction, and that the spread of effect between 10+ and 7-9 is too wide. Here’s what I’m gonna try:
When you grab or tackle an opponent, roll +STR. On 7-9, the opponent makes a move before you get a solid grip, then choose 1. On 10+, choose 1 free and clear, or take both but your opponent makes a move along the way.
* You bear them down to the ground
* You restrain the limbs they use for attacking
Talk at them I’m leaving as is for the moment, as a go-to DD interpretation for a common scenario. If it gets tired, I’ll revise!