Alright. So my group contains a wizard. Specifically, they are really hooked on the idea of being a necromancer. The beginning bits of this were easy-the sanctum has a knowledgeable servant (a ghost they bound) and a few lovely necromantic themes.
The issue is for when they complete the first items in their sanctum. They obviously want to raise some dead, and here is my preliminary write up of a book of the dead-
When you read from the book of the dead over the bodies of the fallen, roll with Spirit. On a hit, you raise a small horde that will obey your commands- On a 10+, pick 3, on a 7-9, pick two.
-They can serve your will at a distance
-They do not hunger for human flesh
-You don’t take -1 ongoing while they are summoned
-You do not have to mark corruption
On a miss, you summon them, but things go horribly horribly wrong.
I took inspiration from the Ghoul move in the MC book, but was curious if we had any thoughts to iron out the kinks here-I don’t like there are two drawbacks to the wizard (corruption and the -1 ongoing), but was struggling to think of compelling items-and how compelling those are is debatable.
they are not noticeably dead
think of the raised dead from Dresden Files, they look much more alive once the ritual is finished.
Okay, thats genius. I can think of strong reasons why you’d want to hide that fact, so its not a no brainer to skip that particular aspect. Perfect!
Yeah, noticeably dead is a good one. I’d simplify the whole thing a bit, though:
When you perform a ritual from the Book of the Dead, roll with Spirit. On a hit, you raise a small horde of undead minions that will obey your commands. On a 10+, pick 2. On a 7-9, pick 1.
– They do not require your presence
– They do not hunger for human flesh
– They do not appear dead to mortals.
On a miss, you must mark corruption to complete the ritual and you take a -1 ongoing until you release their souls to the lands of the dead.
Man, I see these awesome custom moves being built in threads all the time. I wonder if there should be a google document that just has a collection of non-specific playbook additional moves.
That’d actually be genius. See if there was a way to collaborate that-in our campaign alone we have made two or three that we’re bouncing around, and I’d be willing to toss them somewhere.
The real bit is dealing with sanctum and workshop items-those are what trip me up the most since you want something interesting but also want to reward the player-but what move do you even given when the wizard sets out to make a set of wings?
A thread of custom moves at least would give some ideas for baselines in addition to what is in Shadows chapter.
Mark Diaz Truman, would you mind if I put that custom move into a freely available and editable Google Drive document as part of a custom move resource?
And Artifice, if you’re willing to toss your custom ones up, we can get this thing cracking!
Go for it! We’ll probably make some stuff available ourselves via the Magpie Games website eventually too.
Cool! I’ll set up a temporary thing and share it!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17mzgjpkOlh8JdrYGMhIOIZhIANrhUFmLIo5CRMWFnQs/edit?usp=sharing