I’m familiar with the ubiquitous Labyrinth Move, but I wanted a move to express wandering twisting dungeon passages while abstracting the concept of losing your way in the dungeon. This is done via a hold of a “Lost” resource. You need to be at 0 Lost to get back out the way you came. I also like very compact moves, and this accomplishes what I want in a pretty compact format. Like the various wilderness travel moves, I peg this to a specific stat (INT). I like the tension of not wanting to make a squishy PC take point, I think it leads to interesting choices. But just wanted to throw this out there, I tweaked it slightly after several sessions of use. Maybe it will spark some inspiration 😉
When you wander the twisty passages, whoever is taking point rolls +INT (and takes the brunt of any danger). On a hit, you make a discovery. On a 10+ the party takes -1 Lost. If the party is at 0 Lost, you can make your way back from whence you came. On a 7-9 select one below. On a miss, take both, in addition to what the GM says.
* You stumble into a danger
* The party takes +1 Lost
It’s an interesting inverse (as I see it) to the Labyrinth Move, and think it would be a good use of the “make them backtrack” GM move, where backtracking may not be straightforward. Say, use the Labyrinth move to get to the goal, but use this variation to get out (meaning the party couldn’t find, or a direct exit out of the “boss room” isn’t available). Edit: why not throw a “treasure” option into those 7-9 options and tweak the wording of the miss?
If the goal is simply to get out, why not use the labyrinth move? This feels so mechanically similar to me that I’m not sure why I would use this over that.
I also find getting to 0 to be a bit confusing, as it’s the only move I’ve seen which tracks numbers going down rather than up.
Stephen Karnes The goal here is to let the move help track how deep they get lost in the dungeon, to try and foster a sense of dread and tension. The labyrinth move is about finding a specific goal in the labyrinth, not about basic exploration. My campaign is focused on exploring dungeons without clear destinations in mind, and this works well for that.
About tracking the “Lost” hold up and down, the labyrinth move also has a case where you can lose all your hold, just all at once instead of losing it only one at a time. A number of other third party playbooks also have resources that can go up and down, so it’s certainly not unprecedented.