I’ve been looking into making new monsters – adventure conversion tends to do this – and have traditionally thought that each monster should have three moves (its what Dungeon World typically has, so why not take advice from the master).
However, there exists a tension as I work to explain the Ichtha-Gogs, an interpretation of Kuo-Toans, and their important racial “moves”. In the case of Ichtha-Gogs, they are all extremely slippery…to the point of being able to slip out of most any bindings.
Does it make sense to do this via a Special Quality or a Custom Move?
The tension becomes in limiting the number of moves to 3 (I suppose I could go up to 4).
Also, in the case of Ichtha-Gogs, the “slip any bind” is a weaksauce move, but in thinking about True Ghouls and their ability to spawn new True Ghouls, I have to wonder if that should be a Special Quality.
Thoughts?
It should definitely be a special quality. It can also be a move.
The thing about special qualities is they express the fiction directly. If you put something as a move it’s something the monster can do, in the right conditions. A special quality is more of an always-on thing.
Basically, you want the GM to have as good a chance of getting the fact they’re slippery into his head as possible.
As I was writing the post, it became clear that Extremely Slipper was a special quality. But I needed confirmation/affirmation.
The quality is totally “Extremely Slippery” and the move is an expression of that “Squirm away from danger” or something.
So you would recommend both a quality and an associated move?
Depends on how much you want to focus on their slipperiness. I’d say quality for sure, and if that’s not QUITE enough, then add a move.
Think about the differentiation between “is” and “does” too.
I am a nerd, I do advertising. I’m not an advertiser who does nerdy stuff. 😉
Yeah, you’ll see that some monsters have a move that reflects a special quality. That’s deliberate, and usually for monsters that are really about that thing.
Mhmm, or monsters that use that particular thing in a weird or unique way.