Two more Move phrasing questions. (I am prepping for our next game — my L1 players are finally going to be levelling up, so I’m making sure their choices won’t take me by surprise…)
1. Ranger: A Safer Place. The description says: “After a night in camp when you set the watch everyone takes +1 forward.” Is that just a blanket +1 roll on everyone’s next Move, no matter what it is and when it comes? If so, I don’t get the reasoning. Just because Aragorn is good at taking watch, the next day Frodo gets a +1 on a Spout Lore?
2. Wizard: Logical/Highly Logical. What does it mean for a player to use “strict deduction” to analyze their surroundings? How would that play out in the fiction? Isn’t Discern Realities/Spout Lore for a Wizard pretty much always deductive, as in: “I have studied this mystic language so I should be able to deduce what this scroll says”? Or is that not what is meant here?
On 1:I think the reasoning is that he/she sets such a good watch that everyone else can rest that much better. Then they all get to wake up from a great night’s sleep and start ready for the day’s challenges.
Think about it like Sherlock Holmes. He uses his intelligence and reasoning to find clues in the environment to lead him to his conclusion, as opposed to a ranger bring worldly and we’ll traveled seeing something their eyes are trained to do. It’s a narrative difference that lets the wizard be good at discerning realities with INT instead. Wizards often seem aloof and detached, but when they focus on something they can always find a way to the truth of it.
As for the Ranger, it just means they got a good night sleep with him or her watching over the camp. So they are essentially getting a well rested bonus to the first move they make.
Regarding Logical: ask the player. “Okay, how are you using strict deduction? How are you analyzing your surroundings?” Get them to give you some flavor regarding what that looks like and how they’re going about it. And answer in kind.
And, you know, be reasonable about. Don’t require them to, like, establish a scientifically rigorous experiment with a control group or anything like that.
But they should give you something about how they’re analyzing the area, and using their big big brain rather than keen senses and intuition.
Oh, and your example of “I have studied this mystic language so I should be able to deduce what this scroll says”? In my opinion, that’s a textbook example of Spout Lore, not Discern Realities.
I think Discern Realities (with Logical) would be more like “I look carefully at the parchment, the wear marks on it, the material, how its aged. I consider where we found it, and the calligraphy of the glyphs. I’m looking for anything out of place… what here is not what it appears to be?”
The answers here are spot on. To add to them:
When a player uses their bonus gained from the Ranger’s watch, ask them how it works. It is probably that they are well rested. Our maybe they slept super well, and had a prophetic dream. Or maybe while the ranger kept watch, they had time to read a book or recall a conversation about X.
Same with the Wizard – ask the player how they deduced X, and encourage them to be fun and creative.
The point is, prompt the players to help answer these questions for their characters.
Then use those answers going forward. Let those things establish patterns, build character details, and guide your work as GM in framing scenes that the players are interested in exploring.