A friend of mine is starting an Uncharted Worlds game, and I noticed that there are +1 to a stat moves that come with Origins, but after character creation, you can’t get an Origin move. However, the other 3 choices for Origin moves are career moves, so you CAN go learn those moves.
So you only have one opportunity to take a +1 to a stat move ever, take it or leave it. And the other 3 are moves you can take later if you want them. Hmm.
The big incentive here is to take the +1 to a stat move from your Origin. For instance, if I make a jovial rogue, I can take Affable from my Crowded world, then get Contacts later by advancing in Personality. But I can’t do it the other way around. It’s a perverse incentive, because you don’t realize it at first, and could feel put out by it, and if you do realize it at character creation, there’s a strong incentive to take the +1 stat move instead of one of the others, since you can’t get it later.
Seems like the game should let people take advancements from their (and only their) Origin to fix this situation.
If Sean Gomes is on here, maybe he can explain why it was designed this way. Or maybe consider changing it for Uncharted Worlds second edition 😉
Sean Gomes is on here and there’s even an Uncharted Worlds community
Cool! Well, I don’t really expect an answer. It’s not even that big a deal. It just struck me as “maybe I’m just missing the reason why this was done.”
I brought it up once to him. I believe it was a design decision.
UW is specifically built to a “lower power level” than other PbtA games, Sean has said before. It emulates Traveller, Asimov, Firefly, and other grounded Sci Fi more than it naturally represents Mass Effect, Star Wars, and similar (not that these are impossible, but that the dials don’t default this way). One way it does this is with scores that average lower than other hacks. The +1-stat moves you can only get once serve that idea.
One trade off is that XP to level up is always equal to number of moves you have. So, with a stat bump move, you will always be one “normal move” behind the curve of everyone else all campaign, but paying the same as everyone else who has more versatility. Like: if I have five moves that let me impact the Fiction differently, you have four + the stat bump, and we still pay the same to level up.
That makes the incentive to take them over the others even greater. It makes having two +2 stats even more compelling, since it’s the only time you get that opportunity.
The trade-off isn’t that big a deal, because more than half of the moves in the game are passive – they don’t give you a special die roll or otherwise triggered move (which is normal for a PbtA game).
I’m not talking about die rolls: I’m talking about shifting the fiction. More than half the moves don’t use die rolls, because they shift the fiction instead. Because of that, I’d say that trade-off is a big deal. Your +1 state bump isn’t getting all that much mileage.
So! Sorry I didn’t reply sooner. Back when I started writing UW the Origins only gave +1 to stats and the careers gave Skills.
However, I got a lot of feedback that people wanted to build archetypes that required an extra skill, or a skill from outside their career choice. While I could have left it as is and just said “well then your archetype won’t be complete until you gain a skill up in a couple of sessions”, I preferred to give the option to have the character start with an extra, cross-career skill in exchange for their stat boost.
Additionally, giving a skill-choice in each Origin allowed me to add a lot more flavor to the Origin. Even if you personally don’t pick any of the skills presented, they still exist as an indication of the kind of life that Origin provides.
Finally, Far Beyond Humanity (the upcoming Uncharted Worlds expansion) will be expanding on character progression. One of the advancement options is that the character can acclimate themselves to a new lifestyle, and take on that Origin instead. So your Impoverished character who took Criminal as a cross-career skill in at the start of the campaign could, in the fullness of time, become Privileged, and choose Decorum to boost their Influence stat.
(TL:DR The Origin cross-career Skills are optional replacements for the stat boost. Gives more leeway in crafting your archetype).
Ah that makes sense. It does feel richer.