Category: The Dungeon World Tavern: Custom Moves

Follow-up to a previous post:

Okay, I think I found the next thing I’m going to try in my attempt to make a superhero game that can start play in 10-15 minutes. I still like the Dungeon World playbook approach, so I’m going to keep trying that (here’s five options, pick one, quickly customize and let’s play). One of the weaknesses of the previous version was the powers system. It was very mechanical, it didn’t have a way to be creative or do neat things with your powers, and sometimes you were spamming the same power over and over again and never got a chance to use your other powers.

New paradigm: Powers as moves. For a controller:

When you use Ice Control, roll+int. On a 10+ pick two, on a 7-9 pick one. On a 6-, the gm makes a “move” (language and concept of the GM move to be polished later.)

• Deal your damage

• Create icy formations

• Make an area much colder

• Stop movement by freezing something in place

• Make things slippery with ice

• Affect 1d4+level targets

• Freeze the moisture out of the air

• Use your powers at near or closer range

When you use Gravity Control, roll+INT. On a 10+, pick two, on a 7-9 pick 1. On a 6-, the gm makes a “move” (language and concept of the GM move to be polished later.)

• Deal your damage

• Make something lighter or heavier

• Bring down something that is flying

• Affect 1d4+level targets

• Crush something under its own weight

• Throw something at a far target

• Levitate yourself or others

• Use your powers at near or closer range

One advance move at level 2-5 could be to pick one additional effect when you use your power, and a replacement move at levels 6-10 allows the choice of two additional effects when you use a power.

This idea puts the fiction of what you can do with a power first. The consequences are going to be determined by the situation in which you use it. During the playtests, I can gather ideas for fictional effects (power stunts) to augment or replace the current power options. The player gets a variety of choices on how to use their powers. I can limit the number of options a power has to a reasonable number of choices, so as not to overwhelm players with too many options.

I’m thinking about starting with five options for each of the five archetypes. That means I’d be writing 25 powers with options on the front end, which is a reasonable goal that doesn’t sound overwhelming. I wrote six powers last night. I’m not sure I’m going to follow the CoH paradigm of a primary and secondary power. That may overwhelm the player that is just sitting down with too many choices. We’ll have to see how that playtests. I’m somewhat worried that a team would need to have every archetype present to be balanced. The primary/secondary power combinations would help mitigate this, but I don’t know if it is worth the trade off in additional complexity.

So, next things to work on:

• Edit the basic moves for clarity and the special moves for the same. Also, evaluate if there has to be a special move included or if it is going to come up infrequently enough that, I can drop it from a main list.

• Write 3-5 power moves like those above for each archetype for the next playtest.

• Edit the playbooks to reflect the new powers paradigm, drop some confusing wording from moves, and modify or rewrite some of the starting and advanced moves.

• Possibly come up with a briefing sheet that instructs new GMs how to teach the game. I think it’s too early for this, but right now, a cheat sheet for me to cover the things players were confused about on in the last test is a good idea.

I’ll update again once I have the sufficiently worked on the next phase. I’ll upload the stuff to DropBox so people can take a comprehensive look at it.