Category: The Dungeon World Tavern: Custom Moves

Interfere vs. custom Parley in intra-party conflict

Something weird came up in our Planets Collide session tonight that I wanted to comment on.

At one point, they narrate that they make camp on the beach. The Bard has two relics he got from Death’s domain, so he stays awake longer than everyone else to make sure no one messes with them.

He puts one on, and goes to sleep after everyone else.

When the others wake up, he’s sleeping still, so I tell them they have a chance to try to get his stuff. They don’t act decisively, and he wakes up before anyone takes anything. (I’m not picking on this player. In the fiction, the Bard betrayed the party once, and they do not trust him with this power.)

But the Bard is suspicious, and he and the Barbarian get into a verbal clash. During the argument, the Druid takes one of the relics that was left in the sand.

The Bard’s player wants to roll to spot this, and the Druid’s player asserts she’s being sneaky.

We all instinctively go to the dice, and it seems like Interfere is being triggered, so we try it out with the Bard “interfering” with the Druid holding out. He get’s a 7–9.

That’s when it breaks down. “✴On a 7–9, they still get a modifier, but you also expose yourself to danger, retribution, or cost”. They read it to me several times, because they all have the Basic Moves in front of them and I don’t, but none of us can resolve this into a plausible fictional scenario.

I mentally turn it around and think “maybe the Druid is interfering…” but then it dawns on me. The Bard isn’t Defying any Danger by looking—and the Druid isn’t Defying any Danger by holding out. I say we made a mistake, this isn’t Interfere. The Druid just has the item, and the Bard didn’t see it.

Right after that, another situation cropped up that seemed like a trigger for a move. The Bard accused the Barbarian of taking his thing, and he demanded to have it back! He pressed the Barbarian by threatening to drag her to Hell, which is a possibility. This seemed like a possible trigger for the revised Parley move by Jeremy Strandberg. (Except, in hindsight, even the revised Parley move only triggers for NPCs.)

https://plus.google.com/+JeremyStrandberg/posts/gUbwzudRooB

The Bard rolled a 10+, and the Barbarian picked 1 requirement, as per the move: She wanted the other relic in exchange.

He refused to give it up, though; and out of character, the player knew she didn’t have it.

Anyway, the contrast was stark between these two resolutions. Even though both were triggered by haphazard thinking, the Parley resolution felt more authentic and meaningful, and it didn’t strip anyone of their agency.

I recognize that this version of Parley could still cause problems if used to resolve an intra-party conflict—what if the Bard gave in to the Barbarian’s request? She couldn’t give him what he wanted. But my gut tells me there’s something robust and flexible there to work with.

This might be the first time Interfere came up in this campaign, and we’re 17 sessions in. Interfere triggered again later in the session, and the second time it handled a lot better. But hitting the snag with it makes me think it’s more of a meta-move, that relegates it to a more abstract, and thus less accessible layer of the game.

What I mean is, the trigger for Aid & Interfere seems clear at first brush: “When you help or hinder someone…” But in actual play, it requires more abstract considerations to trigger: “When you help or hinder someone who is rolling to resolve their own move, which must be identified and triggered already. “

Encumbrance already acknowledges this in the move: “When you make a move while carrying weight you may be encumbered.” In other words, the trigger is not really a trigger.

I don’t have a solution, I’m just reflecting on a bit of actual play and considering how we might do better next time.

When the players make all the GM moves against themselves?

After another pulse-and-pulp-pounding session of Planets Collide, I can finally share some of the stuff that has been a long time boiling in my campaign.

But first, here’s a new thing: This session, almost all my GM moves were provoked by misses and golden opportunities. Usually, I’m making GM moves left and right, snowballing the moves, which pushes the players to take decisive action.

This time, the setup gave them a few charged situations and it was the players who escalated and ratcheted up their own tension.

The party was so overwhelmed by the weight of the choices before them, and so conflicted about what to do, that they spent much of the session laboring and disputing in character about their power and responsibility.

It did trigger their moves, which gave me a string of misses to deliver hard moves with. (They don’t always bring their own dice, and they blame my dice for the heavy hits they endure, and consequent XP gains.)

And sometimes their deliberations triggered golden opportunity moves, as the fiction changed around them. There were also times when they looked to find out what happens, but the intra-character conflict was coming so thick that I didn’t make nearly so many moves with that prompt. I mainly had to interrupt a few times to show how the world didn’t stop because of them.

The upshot is: The tension still reached a crescendo and prompted decisive action from every player. Each adventurer not only had a character-defining moment, but those moments changed the campaign irreversibly.

Previously, there was a witch who took the Bard’s heart.

✴The Bard just watched while the witch used his heart to kill Death right in front of him.

✴The Ranger shattered a relic that could destroy that same witch, in order to break the lock on the Black Gate. The dead were crowded outside, unable to enter—including the Barbarian’s ward, who was killed last session.

✴The Bard donned Death’s golden crown, taking the role of Death in Last Breath from now on.

✴The Barbarian, who vowed to put the Bard’s head on a stick for his past betrayals, demanded the crown, and then repeatedly backed down when he refused.

✴At the moment of highest tension, the Druid used Death’s abacus to restore the Barbarian’s child to life. But the Barbarian’s closest NPC ally fell dead in her place.

✴And then, the Druid gave Death’s abacus back to the Bard, while telling him to his face that he is not worthy to hold it!

✴The Bard left in disgust through the Black Gate, as it opened to take the Barbarian’s ally.

✴And the Ranger followed him through the Gate!

As the GM, I’m usually a lot more involved in bringing the danger. I can hardly believe how much tension and drama there was while I exercised such restraint in making GM moves.

Here are the custom moves I brought to this session. Each was based on the situation in the fiction before we began:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tcb-52tH9pzK0-LDlzQwjeeApqewp6SWSB-kHVOkHcs/edit?usp=sharing

But now the situation is so different. 😉

What is the last known version of Inglorious?

I was reading Anglekite[1], and it mentioned mass combat rules in Inglorious. I thought, “hey, I wonder how that’s come along since last I looked it over?”

I checked the Adventurer’s Guild link, but it was no longer available. My copy is labeled “Inglorious Preview 2”, and I think it was downloaded 20 July 2015. It’s entirely character options though—very cool stuff, now that I know the game better. But it does not have mass combat rules.

Does anyone know if a more recent version of Inglorious circulated before the Adventurer’s Guild page went offline? (Or ever?)

Has anyone created a hireling skill akin to Arcane Assistance for the Druid?

Play experience with Pirate World ship combat?

I’m curious if anyone has closely examined and/or played with the ship combat rules in Iain Chantler’s disputed Pirate World supplement?

I’m referring mostly to the following sections:

– Basic Ship Moves, Create a Ship: 177–180, 182–183

– Mob Rules, Ship Battle!: 188–190

I’m particularly interested in knowing how well the additional structure and custom moves worked out in play.

What parts of the rules shined? How did it affect the flow of play? What were the highlights? What was confusing or fiddly? What did you discard? Would you use the system again? Was there anything that didn’t come into play that you would like to see in action?

It’s possible that ship battle might come up soon in my ongoing campaign, maybe even the very next session. I’m starting to pore over the Pirate World rules now, and I’d like to hear from anyone who has put them to the test.

It looks like there are a bunch of cool ideas, but also some more bookkeeping and moves to juggle. I was curious if you found it worth the extra work?