For my Star Wars hack we wanted species/race to come in to play and some of you directed me to the Heritage moves. I batted that around for awhile and came up with the following idea. Feedback is very welcome.
– Each race has 4 to 6 racial moves available to them.
– At the start of the session roll +attune. 10+ hold 2 racial, 7-9 hold 1 racial, fail 1 hold racial that the MC may use.
– Spend racial hold at this time to select racial moves available for the remainder of the session.
– One racial move may be a weakness.
– One debility available is to permanently remove the currently in use racial move from the race playbook.
I would not choose moves ahead of time. If they pick one that doesn’t jive with where the session goes then they’ve been robbed of a good result they may have rolled.
An idea I tried to implement for species in a DW game, was to have a list of 6-7 heritage moves, but you can only choose 3.
Just so no two members of a specie are identical.
YMMV
I’d also advocate to allow the spend to be made as needed during the session, rather than up front.
So instead of having them pick race moves at the start of each session, have them pick them as needed until they run out of hold? The original Dark Hearts heritage moves worked like this…
HERITAGE MOVES
When you create a new adventurer, decide on your species, ethnicity, and cultural heritage, choosing anything or any combination of things that sounds interesting to you and the other players. For example, I might play a marsh-dwarf witch who has some spiderlord ancestry.
Then, pick 2-3 heritage moves to start with, selecting from the “monster moves” that best match your heritage. No matter where or whom you come from, in someone’s eyes, you and your family are monsters.
I pick the Dwarven Warrior move “Drive them back,” the Spiderlord move “Enmesh in webbing,” and invent a move based on the character’s training in wilderness
survival, “Scavenge for food and medicinal plants.”
At the beginning of a session or when you invoke your rights of blood and tradition (however you do that), roll+Wis. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 2. On a miss, you still hold 1. Spend this hold 1-for-1 during play to make a heritage move, just like that. When you gain new appreciation for your heritage, add a new heritage move or change an existing one.
In what I am proposing is that the hold wouldn’t but used for a one time use of the move as the original heritage move suggests, but rather that they pick something they can use all session. I am only pointing that out to make sure that that’s clear, because that certainly does ramp up how effective these moves will be.
Hmm my only real resistance was that I had a droid move that would allow them to switch while race move they are using… but with this change that move doesn’t really work anymore. However… I just thought of something even better, so I think I will make that change.
Thanks guys.
(being a fan of the characters is a hard thing to always keep in mind)