I’ve been piecing together a generic retire move giving the players an extra edge. Nothing revolutionary. I’m not making it for a particular hack at the moment, but it could be used for any game where the players want to go out with a bang.
I hope my idea comes across even though the writing could be better. Does it need some clarifications or better examples? I might make the move itself more succinct and attach a longer explanation. I’m particularly worried about explaining how you decide what an appropriate final achievement is, but playtesting is probably the only way to tell if it’s going to work.
Final Achievement
When you retire your character, take one hold and describe how you go. If it makes sense in the fiction, retirement might be delayed to give time for closure, but you can not take any dramatic action beyond your final achievement.
Spend your hold at any time to tell what you want your final achievement to be. It has to be in character and within your capacity through sacrifice, dedication, planning, luck, pushing your limits or sheer willpower.
It can involve actions before and up to retirement and actions behind the scenes, but the actual results might come later. Explain, describe and answer any questions asked. This is your last chance to shine, but the GM is the final arbiter.
Examples:
Perform an impressive or unlikely feat of body or mind, leave something useful behind, spur others into action, have your hard work pay off or a brilliant plan come to fruition.
(Depending on the situation and tone of the game retirement could mean death, debility, imprisonment, loss of motivation, insanity, disappearing or just plain retirement.)
Any thoughts?
I like hold in general because of the way it’s described in the book – people get that they have the agency with it in the scene way more. So I like it, I think it does what it needs to.
A bit wordy (my initial impression) but otherwise pretty good.
Jason Martinez I’ll bring the axe, but there were so many details I wanted to mention and clarify. A better explanation on the side might be the way to go.
Final Achievement v0.2
When you retire your character, take one hold. Spend your hold to declare your final achievement as long as it’s in character and within your capacity (now or in the past) through sacrifice, dedication, planning, luck, pushing your limits or sheer willpower.
Perform an impressive or unlikely feat, leave something behind, spur others into action, have your hard work pay off or a brilliant plan come to fruition. Explain and describe.
Seems cool. I would say you could probably almost drop most of the explanation and have it feel more open. Keeping things in line with the fiction and in character is, ideally, sort of automatic, given the implicit contract or whatever in playing the game together and everyone’s investment in the fiction and crafting a narrative. May not always be the case, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to explain things in an aside.
One thing you could do, that I find works well in some cases, is include a list of examples as options (as in, spend your hold to do these things), and then include a general “-something else” option at the end. This can get people thinking of the possibilities but also get them in the right mindset for coming up with their own.
I don’t think there’s any real problem with the move as written though, but I do like to keep my moves succinct. Maybe just try a couple different ways of writing it out and see what reads best?
Jonathan Semple I think a list is a good idea. It would look a little neater. If the list is inclusive enough I might not even need the “something else”. Pretty much everything can be lumped under “an impressive or unlikely feat”.
No need to tell people to be in character. I hear you on that one.
Do you think “within your capacity” is enough or do you think listing luck, willpower, planning, etc. is useful to give players inspiration?
Tor Droplets
re: “within your capacity”, or more: It could go either way I think…maybe depending on how the options are phrased?
I’ve found that even with a “-something else” option, as long as the base options are interesting, which if they’re good examples they probably will be, players often stick to them, or just rejigger them slightly to fit their character (particularly with character creation options or whatever). Interesting observation I thought. Means the options can be a pretty strong guiding hand.
“An impressive or unlikely feat” is pretty catch all, but for me it makes me think more about immediate actions (which are where the other options would come in I suppose).
I think it’s good as a generic move. But, of course, PbtA always does better by being less generic. I’ve seen moves like this in a couple of places that are tailored to specific games or playbooks. My favorite are probably the “When you die a Pagan” and “When you die a Christian” moves from Sagas of the Icelanders.
Alan Scott I agree with you. A specific retire move makes it a lot easier for players to decide how and when to use it, while a broad and generic move like this could cause analysis paralysis. I would probably consider making individual moves when I design something complete, but it works for my purposes at the moment.