Tag: Joshua Ramsey

Any thoughts on how to do magical characters that don’t use a spell list (and don’t necessarily resort to some…

Any thoughts on how to do magical characters that don’t use a spell list (and don’t necessarily resort to some…

Any thoughts on how to do magical characters that don’t use a spell list (and don’t necessarily resort to some version of Ritual)? Or is spell list still considered the most mechanically preferable?

I have a concept – a sort of thief-wizard mash-up – that I think could go with a thematic approach (trickster, social, something along those lines) to using magic but I’m not sure whether a traditional wizard method would work best.

Two of the methods I’ve seen that seem to appeal are:

(1) using tags to create freeform effects (mostly seen with elementalist-type playbooks and obviously combative magical types)

(2) selecting effects from a list of predefined options (mostly seen in racial playbooks that have natural magic)

I’m wondering if anyone has done non-weapon tags before with (1) and how that worked out. I haven’t got an idea whether utility, control, and other stuff would be underpowered or overpowered in such a method. I don’t think I’ve seen a playbook use that kind of approach yet.

I’m also curious whether anyone with experience in (2) has decided that (2) is too strong or weak. I’ve seen alternate versions of the Elf that all have this approach and some look weaker to me than others in terms of what they can do, but then some might be too strong in the first place.

As an example, let’s say I want to create an invisibility effect. With (1), I would have to be able to assign some kind of tag that would include not being seen as part of it, but that would also open up other types of concealment, potentially, which might be okay. While with (2) I am basically just saying: one of the magic things you can do is go invisible.

I’m not sure I’m explaining well enough, so let me know.

Something that came out of our Roll20 game tonight that I discussed with the GM afterward: when he asked about any…

Something that came out of our Roll20 game tonight that I discussed with the GM afterward: when he asked about any…

Something that came out of our Roll20 game tonight that I discussed with the GM afterward: when he asked about any feedback I had to improve things, I mentioned a point in the game where my character’s actions led up directly to shifting the spotlight to another character. We then talked about spotlight shifting and how that is something we want to work toward developing more in practice.

Part of that discussion referenced a time in a previous session where another character used Defend to “open up the attacker to an ally” and how that mechanic seemed to invite a player to signal a spotlight shift to another player/character by saying I want you to get involved here – take +1 forward as an incentive.

This then led to my suggesting the GM should consider whether he could learn anything from “popcorn initiative” as it’s used in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. We thought for the purposes of Dungeon World it might make more sense to have the GM use player actions as a guideline in general for how the flow of spotlight might shift, rather than having players explicitly name who would go next.

But the idea remained. Any thoughts on whether I am hitting an insight here? If so, is there other space within the moves to suggest that you can adopt a sort of popcorn approach to how to let the spotlight get shared?

The biggest thing I can see might be that it would still be up to the GM to pull players in from time to time who might need the help in getting spotlight time, because of table dynamics or other things, but I think there might be something here.