A huge moment for our Doomed this session. She’d discovered a costly way to push back her Doom, at the cost of a number of her memories. Here’s the custom move I wrote that literally brought players to tears:
When you wear the crown of glass thorns to purge yourself of memories roll +Doom Track markings.
No matter what, every player present will propose memories that you have lost. You and the GM can both add to or edit these slightly. Mark an appropriate Condition.
On a 10+, clear a Doomsign and choose two. On a 7-9, clear your Doom Track and choose three.
—One of your secrets comes spilling out of you in the process. Now others know it but you do not.
—Shift a pair of locked labels. Explain how your self-image has changed permanently.
—Lose Influence over someone important to you as you forget everything about them.
—Whoever helped you put on the crown also loses an important memory and marks a Condition.
On a miss, mark potential and clear two marks from your Doom Track, but your memory loss is severe. What basic move can you no longer use?
Leah Libresco suggested rolling +Doom Track markings, which was an awesome bit of design.
Alexi Sargeant This is amazing. Roll +Doomtrack is a ridiculously intense modifier. Which outcome did they get?
anistuffs I’ll post a bigger recap later, to share more of the drama of the session. But the Doomed got the 10+ result—the best for her, but she still lost memories, spilled secrets, and shifted locked labels.
Woah.
And she’s hoping to use it again! As is our Transformed-who-took-a-Doom-Track.
Leah Libresco How are you mechanically justifying the Transformed taking a Doom track without having any way to survive the Doom?
anistuffs We didn’t make it up—it’s one of the advances built into the Transformed playbook (“Take a doom, doomtrack, and doomsigns from the Doomed playbook”). Our player chose to take that advance.
If Transformed is your first playbook, I’d imagine you evade that added Doom by picking “change playbooks” and having a story reason why you leave it behind. It’s our guy’s second playbook, though, so we’ll see how it resolves…
Leah Libresco I’m aware that it’s a default advancement. But I feel it’s an obvious oversight from Magpie to leave such a noticeable flaw in it.
So, I’m always curious to see how different groups tackle it in their games.
I’ll let our DM, Alexi Sargeant, speak for himself, but I think we’ve had the idea the Dooms are inevitable, unless there’s a very good story reason that turns up in game, that winds up feeling satisfying as a way to resolve it, with or without a mechanical reason to do so. (Though possibly with a love letter, to choose the consequences that lingered).
Leah has anticipated my thoughts pretty well. I believe that, by taking Doom Tracks, my players are asking for drama, and I’m not going to give them any easy ways out. The Transformed and the Doomed can now both use the glass thorns, if they dare. But yes, particularly for the Transformed, there’s no simple way to confront the Doom on their own terms. Depending on what arises in the story, I’m able to be pitched on several resolutions for the Transformed’s Doom. I think some level of DiY/homebrewing is always gonna be needed for non-Doomed’s taking a Doom Track and as long as all players are onboard that’s fine.