So, my two PCs found a mysterious box and have finally found a way to open it.
So, my two PCs found a mysterious box and have finally found a way to open it. What I’m thinking of doing is telling them “inside the box, you find two strange items” and then ask each of them in turn to describe one of the items and what it does. My thought is that I can add side effects and limitations scaling with how crazy they get with their descriptions.
Has anybody done something like this with good success? Any pitfalls I should watch out for? Am I just being a lazy GM? 😀
Difficulty is overrated
Difficulty is overrated
I’ve been thinking a lot about the design of this game lately and I think I finally understand one of the key things that’s tripped me up a lot, as well as my players. In a lot of games, the question the GM has to consider after many character actions is “okay, how difficult is that?” Then we break out the dice and find out if the action is successful. The notion is that more difficult actions should succeed less often, making it all the cooler when you hit that natural 20.
But why should a difficult action succeed less often? In a world full of danger and adventure, heroes do nearly impossible things with surprising regularity. And this is where things get interesting. It turns out that it doesn’t have to matter whether a particular action is difficult or not. All that matters is what the character does and the consequences. And maybe, with more frequency than you might expect, those consequences can be awesome. Or horrible.
So the next time a situation comes up and I start to wonder “hmm, that seems really hard, maybe there should be some modifier…” I can take a step back and say, “well, it would be cool if it worked, so why not?” And then if it still misses, oh, the possibilities… 🙂
Nature’s Price?
Nature’s Price?
I’m continuing to have fun adventures with my group’s Druid, who has recently started playing with Elemental Mastery. Now, this is a rather lovely move, with all sorts of interesting side effects, but I’ve struggled a bit with coming up with good things to ask for as nature’s price (the option that he has chosen most often.) Twice now I’ve applied some elemental-themed damage (HP loss seemed reasonable, given the big things he was trying to do), but that strikes me as kinda boring. What kinds of prices have you seen nature take?
My recent questions about Discern Realities stirred up some interesting discussion, including a few custom moves…
My recent questions about Discern Realities stirred up some interesting discussion, including a few custom moves that folks had developed to address some of the issues they felt it had in their play. In that spirit, I’d like to propose my own hack on the move to see what people think.
Penetrating Insight
When you ponder a penetrating question about a situation or person, roll +WIS
– On a 10+, you get an answer and may ask a follow-up question to get more information. Take +1 forward when acting on the answers.
– On a 7-9, you get an answer. Take +1 forward when acting on the answer.
Examples of penetrating questions include those in the Discern Realities list, at least when they are applicable to the situation at hand.
I feel like this might work better in play, since it puts the question first, with the fictional trigger being the innate wisdom of the character manifesting to pull together information that others might miss. It’s also way easier to remember as a move than Discern Realities, with plenty of flexibility of interpretation for the GM.
Discern Realities: What here is not what it appears to be?
Discern Realities: What here is not what it appears to be?
This is the move I still have the most trouble with as a GM. My players get to some point where they think there must be something to find, so they say “I look around the room to see what I can find” and I say “okay, roll +WIS”. They roll a 10, then I say, “okay, ask three of the questions.”
We haven’t played enough yet to internalize them, so this involves digging out the moves sheet, then asking them. More often than that, I end up making shit up (oh, I guess there is something hidden here), which is cool and all, but the whole process still feels a little awkward and contrived.
So, I’m curious, does anyone know the design intention behind having Discern Realities use a fixed set of questions? Is it just to encourage questions that result in creative continuations of a situation that’s gone slightly stale? I do get that it’s not really intended to be a classic ‘Perception check’, but it’s definitely still the move that causes the most pausing and breaking of immersion for our group. Maybe we’re using it incorrectly?
Has anyone had any experience with running very short sessions? The members of my group have had some shuffling of…
Has anyone had any experience with running very short sessions? The members of my group have had some shuffling of work responsibilities that have made it hard to find good overlapping blocks of time to meet in. In the past we’ve run roughly 3 hour sessions, which feels like a good length for DW. What I’m considering now is trying to run 1 hour sessions when schedules align, hopefully getting in 3 hour sessions when we get lucky and have more time.
My gut feel is that this might work (you can do a lot in an hour with DW), though it might mean the players have a harder time really getting in the groove with their characters. I’m also thinking I’d need to change the end-of-session move and instead run it every few sessions, possibly at natural transition points in the story.
Can this kind of schedule work or will the play just get too fragmented?
So I’m struggling a bit with my shape-shifting Druid.
So I’m struggling a bit with my shape-shifting Druid. From advice I’ve garnered elsewhere, the best way to keep this extremely powerful ability in check is to make sure the misses hurt. But this Druid is rolling really well and has a good WIS, so he almost never misses.
One of the things I find tricky about the move is that the only downside to rolling 7-9 is that you get 2 hold instead of 3. Is it permissible or wise to also give a subtle additional downside, like slightly weaker animal form moves?
Right now the biggest issue is that he has a few go-to combat forms that I’ve consistently given lethal moves for. For instance, he turns into rhinoceros, so I say “you can stamp a terrifying warning or charge with your horn”. Of course, since he already has the hold, he can charge and kill most things pretty much for free. It feels like maybe this is not working as intended.
Maybe it’s just a matter of the combat flow? His background is that the transformation is extremely quick, so I’ve let him immediately use an animal move after transforming. This has lead to some cool sequences, but maybe it would work better if I made a soft move to intensify the danger a bit after a successful transformation?
I think my players are starting to learn how they can make things interesting when I ask them questions.
I think my players are starting to learn how they can make things interesting when I ask them questions. They found one part of what it takes to close a demonic portal and I asked them what two other things are required. They said “the heart of someone who has committed an act of violence” and “faerie dust”. I guess they don’t want to make it easy on themselves. 😀
Pacing and Portents
Pacing and Portents
I’ve received a lot of good advice on writing grim portents, so now I’m looking for guidance on how to actually work with them during play. So, let’s say I have an Adventure Front Danger like this:
Danger: Madness with wolves
Impulse: To destroy
Impending Doom: Large demonic wolf pack is now roaming the lands
Grim Portents
– Druid senses the corruption near the energized portal
– Visible signs and encounters with individual crazed animals
– Individual wolves are seen to have some demonic characteristics
– A small pack of wolves demonstrates many demonic characteristics
So, given that this is intended to be something resolved over just a few sessions, I imagine I want to be advancing the ‘portent track’ on at least one of the currently active Dangers reasonably frequently. Thing is, when do I do this? Are portents pushed forward via hard moves or is it more that the moves you perform can advance the portent by virtue of the fiction now matching the description?
Also, let’s say I have a PC who triggers Discern Realities and rolls a miss, but I don’t have an obvious hard move to make yet. Can I use a hard move to advance the portent behind the scenes, to be revealed later at a better opportunity? It sounds like that fits with the rules, so I can just pass the spotlight to a different character to respond to the current looming threat, without advancing it? A perceptive player will notice that they rolled a miss and nothing obviously bad happened, of course. But maybe that’s even scarier?
I’m trying to write my first Fronts and Dangers for a new campaign.
I’m trying to write my first Fronts and Dangers for a new campaign. I think I get the basic idea, but I’m struggling to determine how much detail to define in advance. I’m also uncertain how the Campaign and Adventure Fronts interact. I’d like to run this by folks and see if I have the right idea.
So, in the context of an overall demonic ‘invasion’ campaign Front, I’ve put together this Danger:
Danger: Opportunistic cult of mages seeks power
(Ambitious Organizations)
Impulse: To gain power from the planar forces that have recently become active
Impending Doom: Destruction (the power cannot be contained)
Grim Portents
– The cult becomes active, seeking information and experimenting
– New magics are wielded, powered by energy from the demonic plane
– The mages begin construction of a device to pull even more energy from the planar rifts
– The device becomes operational, resulting in vastly powerful spells brought to bear
– The device overloads, resulting in massive destruction in the surrounding area
Is this the right level of detail or am I defining too much up-front?
As far as how this plays out in the campaign, I’m guessing the progression of Grim Portents basically spins off Adventure Fronts to explore the details? So, some early adventures might be encountering the cultist experiments and learning about what they’re doing. Then later, if left unchecked, we learn about the device they’re building and maybe get a chance to stop it?