I have a move for a 1 player game. Let me know what you think.
Live to Fight Another Day
When you are engaged in combat against a foe and would be dropped to zero HP, you attempt to distract your foe by any means necessary. It doesn’t matter what the entended use of your gear was, your life is on the line. Lob your weapons, use your pack as a shield, strip off all that useless weight and run for your life! Roll 2d6 and discribe your feeble attempt.
On a 7+, you succeed in getting away with just your life. Your gear was lost or damaged durring the scuffle and endless retreat. Just your soiled and tattered undergarments remain.
On a 7-9, you lost more than your gear. Perhaps you have a bumb leg, a missing eye, lost the respect of your allies or even your integrity. Describe what you lost and how it has changed you, then mark a debility that resembles that loss.
On a 6-, make your Last Breath
#DungeonWorldCC
I think you want the first part of the move to be 10+….
Oddly, I think this would be great for a swashbuckling kind of game.
I understand the mechanical impulse to consistently make the gear be the cost of survival, but I’m worried about fictional applicability.
Is it really going to consistently be the case that the best thing to do to ensure your survival was to drop all your stuff? And especially that this would always happen immediately after you’re struck down to 0 HP?
I like the idea of a “get out of death” move, but I think you should try to build a little more fictional flexibility into it.
This sounds a lot like the Apocalypse World Gunlugger move “Fuck This Shit”, which goes: “Name your escape route and roll Hard. On a hit, you’re out clean. On a 7-9, you can go or stay, but if you go, it costs you. You leave something behind or take something with you. The MC will tell you what. On a 6-, you’re caught vulnerable, half in and half out.”
Notice the fictional flexibility of “leave something behind or take something with you”. I like that better than “you lose all your gear”. Maybe you do lose all your gear– that’s a solid move in this situation– but it’s not the only fictional option.
Your 7-9 result has some good fictional flexibility, but I’m not sure why the player gets to choose what the debility is. A move should unify fiction and mechanics, and this doesn’t seem like a fictional situation where it makes a lot of sense to mechanically hand over that kind of narrative control.
So, modeled after FtS, but with a more flexible trigger and more severe consequences:
When you’re in over your head and want to bail on a fight, name your escape route and roll +stat. On a 10+, you’re out, but you leave something behind or take something with you. The GM will tell you what. On a 7-9, you are also marked by your escape. The GM will tell you to mark a debility. On a 6-, you’re caught out vulnerable. Prepare for the worst.
I’m not fond of that first sentence; move triggers should flow from character actions, not dictate them.
I’d rephrase it along the lines of when you make a desperate attempt to avoid a killing blow by distracting your opponent…
Thanks guys. Ill tweek it a bit. I definitely dont like my current trigger. It gets the point across, but does feel…not quite right.
And i do fall into a group where alot of the narrative control falls on the players. I get allot more positive vibes during play when my players make choices. I have also found they begin to RP better stories when they know they must lol.
Maybe just flat out replace Last Breath in a 1-player game with something like…
Death’s Door: when you should be dead, roll +nothing. On a 7+, you somehow, against all odds, escape your fate. Tell the GM how. But on a 7-9, you must also ask the GM what it costs you.
On a 6-, you find yourself face to face with Death, who offers you a deal. Accept and live, or pass on through the Black Gates.
(Basically: shift the usual 7-9 result down to the 6-; give the player narrative control on a 7+, but make it costly on a 7-9. It ensures that the game goes on unless the player chooses otherwise.)
Robert Doe Could you tell us why you were making this move? I get the 1-player game idea, but would love to know more.
I second Jeremy Strandberg’s take.
Ari Black, a means to give a single character in a dangerous world a way to turn the tides of death.