Help me write this custom move:
When you go on a perilous journey through the Down Below realm of the Black Gates, roll+X:
10+:
7-9:
-6:
Help me write this custom move:
Help me write this custom move:
14 thoughts on “Help me write this custom move:”
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What is the best option that could come of journeying there?
Is this a move that you would check once, when you cross over, or periodically while you are journeying in Death’s Realm?
Karlen Kendrick something like seeing a glimpse of your own death getting a future +1 to last breath? Or learn a secret of the surface world?
Ray Otus more than once. Going from one underworld location to the next.
Hmmm.
On a 10+, your dreams bring you useful omens: a clue to the “thing you seek” and/or a vision of death – yours or that of one close to you.
On a 7-9, your dreams are troubled. They bring you interesting omens that might prove useful if you can interpret them. However, your presence is detected by the ghouls that infest this land and they are now on your trail.
I’d make players (yourself included) write out a bunch of omens and deaths (maybe two or three each per play) on bits of index card and then shuffle them up in a bag. When you they trigger this move, draw a card and figure out what the hell it means togehter.
I was thinking more like, what would be cool for someone to happen upon while trying to traverse the under realm. What would they see, stumble upon, see, feel, while going from one end of that realm to the next.
So … more like a list of impressions than a move?
I guess I don’t know what I want. I guess it doesn’t need to be different than the perilous wilds move. So… Impressions is what I’m looking for…or not…
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/jUW3G20e2ZnI65it_uelrjAC5hCvOnA-K0Ngtdt5g_KeVJLBU9qk1DrVZG0-XCX1g5hrGpIh92A3c4kTlpjM-ZCNqy9jS8TiyZk=s0
😀
I guess it depends on the nature of your afterlife, but things you might see in the underworld could include:
* Loved ones who have gone before you
* Slain enemies
* Heroes of yore, or other figures from history
* Spirits that try to bargain or trick you out of something that is valuable down here
Are all these souls enjoying their afterlife existence? Toiling in unceasing torment? Doing something unexpected? Is their fate determined by the Gods, or by Death, or does each soul make its own afterlife?
Really, the questions they could ask and answer on this trip could establish all sorts of fundamental things about the nature of your world.
In episode 7 and 8 of crudely drawn swords they venture into the underworld to retrieve the soul of one of the heroes, the Thief. It has some rather nice scenes and world building. For example the souls shed aspects of their personality as they move further from life, so before she can be raised, the Thief must reclaim them, through encounters with various animal spirits.
This is some of my best brain-squeezings here. I reserve the right to shove them in a future Plundergrounds. 🙂
– The bones of a species long dead or as yet to exist.
– A hole with a phosphorescent light at the bottom of indescribable hue, in your heart you know it leads to one of the 9 heavens. Roll+WIS or run away in terror.
– An army of strange humanoids, noble of visage but insubstantial to your touch and seemingly unaware of you marches by. They come from gods knows where and are headed to an unknowable battle. A trumpet sounds, calling you to join them!
– A dark bird appears overhead, the color of dried blood. Soon it is joined by another, and another. They circle you…
– A cemetery of tiny graves and tiny headstones, guarded by the skeletons of long-dead pets: dogs, cats, birds, toads, and other things. Their eerie howling and screeching warn you to keep your distance while the gosts inside watch you with sad eyes.
– From this muddy plain pokes a number of smoky crystals, the accreted essence of this land’s magic. It’s power is part of the fabric of this place but you wonder what it would do if brought back to the land of the living.
– The brass palace of a demon, a kind of embassy in this blighted land and almost an eyesore in its incongruity. You feel eyes watching you from it’s black windows.
I don’t understand WHY you’re writing this move? Is going down through the “Down Below” interesting? If so… RP that shit. If it’s something you want to keep kinda ethereal.. something the players don’t remember or can’t comprehend… then it makes sense. It seems like you’re compressing fiction into a move, but fiction is what every game powered by the apocalypse is about.
The only way I see the move making sense is if something magical prevents the players from understanding or remembering what happened in the down below. If that’s the case..
When you pass through the entrance of the Down Below roll plus + XX. On a 10+ choose two from this list on a 7-9 choose one:
Nothing followed you back.
You remember something valuable.
You brought something valuable back.
You suffered wounds.
If the Down Under is a place where you can remember things and it’s interesting enough to have as a set piece… just play it out. Find out what happens.