Some ideas for revising Debilities, Make Camp & Recover

Some ideas for revising Debilities, Make Camp & Recover

Some ideas for revising Debilities, Make Camp & Recover

I’m seriously thinking about implementing these in #Stonetop, but they’d work pretty well with standard DW, too!

Interested in your thoughts.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18HVXpyAiWP-q9dh2W3G8ni8vj7gJJGc_souVWmT3kqA/edit?usp=sharing

17 thoughts on “Some ideas for revising Debilities, Make Camp & Recover”

  1. I love it! The debilities feel specifically impactful while being generic enough to use in a wide variety of very different situations.

    I really like the new Make Camp move and how it creates moments for characterization and playfully exploring bonds. I’m curious how you’re using the Die of Fate here—is it to check for “wandering monsters” and other random events?

  2. Yup! I use the Die of Fate when I don’t know what’s out there, but I figure something could be. Sometimes I’ve got a random table, but more often it’s like

    1 or 2 = danger

    3 or 4 = disturbance

    5 or 6 = uneventful

  3. That’s pretty cool. Although, the reduction in the number of debilities does impact your “drowning and falling” move to “mark a debility, or take your Last Breath”, which I always thought was a particularly elegant move.

    On the topic of recovering from debilities in camp… I wonder whether there might be more leeway given to recover a debility beyond just “use a remedy”. Like, a good night’s sleep could reasonably cure Fatigue, and a good drink and camaraderie with your companions might cure Miserable. However, you’re camping somewhere unsafe, so a good night’s sleep and carefree camaraderie aren’t guaranteed.

    Perhaps you could say that you can Defy Danger overnight to try to overcome the debility, but consuming a remedy allows you to recover automatically? If you succeed on the DD, you shake off the debility, but there might still be lingering issues or complications (on a 7-9).

  4. Everything you put out there is scores above what i can even dream of! This is fantastic, and I will definitely be adapting this to my games! Keep up the good work

  5. Just on the topic of which pair of stats are affected by each debility… it’s fairly arbitrary, but it could arguably be:

    Fatigued: -1 to STR and CON

    Dazed: -1 to DEX and INT

    Miserable: -1 to WIS and CHA

  9. Robert Rendell your point about recovering debilities in camp is similar to what Christo Meid commented in-document. Rolling it around overnight, I think you’re both right. I just changed that item to this:

    * Expend 1 use of an appropriate resource (rations, whisky, remedies, etc.) to clear a debility; everyone must agree that the resource makes sense.

    This still means that recovering from debilities in camp will grind through your resources more quickly. And there’s still the decision to be made: HP or debility.

    It also means you can also use remedies to treat the debility outside of making camp, which was part of their original intent.

    Finally, I swapped “Fatigued” back to “Weakened” (which is what I had it as originally). “Fatigued” was striking me as too specific vis-a-vis cause. (Same with “Exhausted,” the other main contended. “Enervated” and “Enfeebled” and “Shaky” were other contenders, but I think “Weakened” is the right sweet spot of accessible, descriptive, and symptomatic-not-causal.)

    Regarding the alternate attribute pairings… yeah, I hear you and I can definitely see where you’re coming from! But the ones I’ve got now feel right to me. It might be because I’ve got a lot of players with precise weapons and I want the DEX-based warriors to be just as hosed by Weakened as the STR-based warrior. But I also really like the implications of Miserable affecting your ability to stand in defense or to endure.

    As for my drowning move, I think the right thing to do there is keep the rules the same but allow PCs to clear a debility caused by holding their breath much more easily. A few minutes of rest (with plenty of air to breathe) should do the trick. Maybe also combine that with the “easier” mode (hold Breath = CON+2 or CON+5 instead of CON+1 or CON+3).

  11. Jeremy Strandberg These are solid!

    I’ve been cooking up something pretty similar, but now I’ll have to look into which I prefer. I might pilfer a thing or two (probably not the lot of it!) to refine my own takes, if that’s quite alright with you.

  12. Jeremy Strandberg ooh, yeah, Weakened is better. You could be Weakened for many different reasons (such as from poison, blood loss, starvation, or yes, prolonged physical exertion) while Fatigued/Exhausted is less generally applicable.

    Have I mentioned recently how hyped I am about #Stonetop? 🙂

  14. The debility rules always trips my players up. They would go for session after session without doing anything about them, but not really embracing the fictional consequences of being Weak or Scarred, simply because taking 3 days off to heal wasn’t an appealing option.

    I like these rules, but I’m not sure my players can handle any more rule changes in a while.

  15. I reckon that the current naming restricts their narrative usage. A lot of time I end up wanting to give a debility to a character to, let’s say, dex, but in the narrative it doesn’t make sense that the character is “shaky”.

    I would prefer keeping the default system but finding better names for the debilities.

  16. Addramyr Palinor I wonder if maybe you don’t need the Debility names in the first place?

    Maybe not for this rework, but for standard DW where each Debility is keyed to only a single stat. Just let the GM and other Players figure out what the Debility means in the fiction at the time, with the current Weakened/Shaky/etc Debility descriptions as guidelines?

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