Hi,
I want to share with you two custom moves I made for a StarWars 1-shot I run using Uncharted Worlds.
Rogue One spoilers ahead!
The idea was to represent something in the flavour of THAT scene at the end of Rogue One.
In this case, the PCs are recovering the body of a Jedi in cryostasis from an abandoned facility in an uncharted planet.
They deal with the features of the planet, they deal with the defenses of the facility and imperial troops arrive.
When discovering the body, they are surprised by a heavy, metallic breathing coming from the shadows. A red light switches on and Lord Vader is revealed, lightsaber in hand.
The 2 custom moves are:
FEAR OF THE DARK SIDE
When you are in presence of a lord sith, a sith artifact or a place of power owned by the dak side, roll+Mettle:
10+ You feel the darkness coming from it, flinch for a second, but gather your breath and carry on. Ignore the source for the rest of the scene.
7-9 You are scared and shaky, but you find the guts to do one action. You’ll have to roll this move again if you want to do something else.
6- Your heart is shrouded in cold darkness, your whole body shivering. You can’t control yourself and choose one:
– You run for your dear life.
– You freeze out of fear, unable to do anything but uttering a few words.
– You react with madness and anger, attacking recklessly.
The GM also makes a move as usual. She may impose a debility on you, or she may say something you lose (you forget what you where doing, you drop what is in your hands) or anything else appropriate.
FACE DARTH VADER
When you dare to face Lord Vader, say what you do and roll+Stat.
10+ You stop, divert or somehow prevent him from acheiving his goals, for a short time.
7-9 As above, but you suffer his wrath in return. GM makes a move (force push, lightsaber cut, your weapon flies to his hand…)
6- You don’t know the power of the dark side. GM makes a hard move. Force choke strongly recommended 😉
The idea behind these moves is to make it almost impossible to kill him, but let daring players try to delay him and scape with their prize.
If everything goes terribly wrong, the sleeping jedi will awake in the last second to save their asses, and he will sacrifice himself to let the PCs scape.
In this case the mission will be a failure, but not every PC will be Force-choked to death.
Let me know what you think. I’ve run this mission twice and both groups gave very possitive feedback of this encounter.
Nice!
“I’ve run this mission twice and both groups gave very positive feedback of this encounter.”
I think this is all the endorsement you need that you’ve got something good. 🙂
That said, I’d personally be wary of double-dipping on the 6- for “fear of the dark side.” Rather than the player choose one and the GM choose a normal GM move, I’d just let the GM choose one. But that’s my own personal take, and it’s hard to recommend it in favor of your own playtested move!
Chris Wilson Yep, it’s kind of double dipping. My rationale behind it is: I won’t make you run, I will let you choose, a per the UW book “Give your players a rope and tell them to hang themselves”. Then I usually impose an appropriate condition such us frightened, frozen or mad, depending on the choice. In my mind it is the same only thing, but I kindda overexplained it.
This is really cool! There are some minor template/structural changes that I would suggest, but those are mostly little details.
I will say that I’m personally not a fan of deus ex machina -style rescues from the results of failed Moves, but hey, you go with the narrative.
This post inspired me, enough that I wrote an alternate to the Villains rules for Far Beyond Humanity. Made a post about it here:
plus.google.com – So I got particularly inspired by Alpo’s post about the custom Move he made f…
Sean Gomes I feel delighted to have inspired you. Such an honor.