Hey guys, I’m new here as well as relatively new to DW, so go easy on me. I was hoping to get some feedback on an idea I had for a custom move. For all I know there is something similar out there already that I can just borrow.
Make and Enhance Master Item
When your character levels up, you have one opportunity to construct or enhance a special item that demonstrates your progress towards mastery of your class. Answer the following questions:
* How did you make or enhance the item?
* How does the item enhance your class?
* How are you personally connected with the item?
On a 10+ choose one:
* You constructed your item: +1 to a specific ability modifier when used; 1 use per session
* You enhanced your item: +1 to the modifier
* You enhanced your item: +1 use per session
On a 7-9, choose 1 of the above but add 1 tag to the item:
* Awkward
* Dangerous
* Slow
* Clumsy
* Fragile [each use roll d6: 1-3 the item is destroyed when used]
On a 6- the item and all material are destroyed.
Players only have one opportunity per level to make/enhance their master item. Each player may only own one master item at a time.
What are you rolling with? Getting a 6- and losing my stuff when I level up sounds really not fun. I think a move that emphasizes fictional abilities over a bunch of mechanical +1s would be much more interesting.
The thought was to put risk into the attempt to enhance to offset the reward of improving the item and making it too overpowered.
I think I get what you’re saying about emphasizing fictional abilities over +1s but could you elaborate. What would would that look like?
Cool idea. Definitely get rid of the +1s to modifiers on a 10+. Bonuses to modifiers are very very powerful and also not fictionally interesting. Go with tags like you did with the 7-9, but positive. Also, get rid of the 6- effect. Let the GM make any kind of move they choose to. Otherwise probably good to go!
Hope you have fun with it!
Example of emphasizing fictional improvements over +1s:
> Your item’s reputation rings throughout the land to those in-the-know
> Your item now fulfills a secondary purpose; what is it?
Things like that.
So I streamlined the 10+:
On a 10+ choose one:
* You constructed a new item with 1 use per session
* You enhanced your item: +1 use per session
I would use the Wizard’s Ritual move as the basis: Explain what you want the item to do in terms the characters understand, and the GM picks drawbacks or requirements.
It’s not plausible for the Ranger to say to an innkeeper that “this spyglass gives me +1 to Scout on a Perilous Journey”. It is plausible to say “this spyglass can peer through fog and forest”. The innkeeper might not believe it, but it’s a sentence that makes sense in the fiction.
Then “peer through fog and forest” would just be a move you can do, like a monster move. It would not give you +1 to Scout in the desert though.
Deep Dix Delver: I like that. It will force the players to think very carefully of how they word the item’s special ability.
One more thought: I would be cautious about making this move available to every character as a Special Move. If you have a Wizard in play, giving everyone a move to make more-or-less woundrous items does downplay the uniqueness of the Wizard’s Ritual move. My suggestion would be to make it a Compendium Class (p349). That way, they would be giving up an Advanced move to take it.
On the other hand, there is the Bolster move (p79) that already does something akin to your original idea, albeit in a mundane way:
Ranger: “I go around interviewing the most reputed lenscrafters in the City of Stargazers… Okay, I buy a masterwork spyglass from the best craftsman in the city, and spend eight weeks keeping watch on the city’s battlements, getting used to the instrument, and practicing every dial and switch and knob until I have perfect muscle memory of every setting.”
GM: “Okay, okay, I get it already. You have 3 preparation.”
Ranger: “Woot woot!”