I noticed in US there is not a default search/spot move. Only one for places of power. This came up in our first session so I have made a custom move:
Scope out a Situation
When you survey your surroundings to gain understanding roll on Mind. On a 7-9 choose 2. On a 10+ choose 3.
• What is not as it seems?
• Where is the greatest danger?
• What here is useful to me?
• What is the best way in or out?
• Oracle only: What is about to happen?
• I do not bring attention to myself
Thoughts welcome.
This is by design.
The moves are the place of power move and Let it out.
If they really don’t fit and the player says they are looking around; just tell them what they find. No move needed.
While I agree Chris and older versions did have such a move, as Tim Franzke mentioned this is by design to focus on people not on places or things.
You’re trying to use a D&D mindscpe into a PbtA ruling.
As Tim Franzke says, theres no need for that.
They look for something?, tell them what they found.
Is something dangerous and they dont look for it?, make a hard move against them.
If you check your move it lacks one of the main mechanics in PbtA moves. Always advance fiction.
What happens when you roll 6- ? nothing?, if theres a chance you roll the dice and nothing happens rethink about the move. Probably it can be solved just using fiction.
Also, so much of this can be done via conversation.
I’d suggest checking out the Aware’s move ‘Snoop’ for an example of this kind of move, assuming you want to have this in your game.
As previously stated, the game is very much about people. I can speak from direct experience here, as the first game I ran started out as a murder mystery, and the PCs spent a good amount of time looking at physical evidence and other Sherlock junk like that. No exaggeration here: it was like pulling teeth until we moved away from that, got out and started talking to people.
And not due to lack of mechanical support, mind; Let it Out worked fine for actually finding stuff. But looking at stuff just isn’t that interesting in this game; the debts and faction politics, the people and their dirty secrets and vices are where all the meat of the game is at. Adding a basic move that shifts the focus away from that is going to be, if not detrimental, at least distracting from the really good parts.
Best advice: if you really want to add a move like this, reframe it to focus on what the stuff actually means to the people in the story. Ask about who’s in control, who left their mark on a place, what Faction claims the place, that kind of thing. It’s way more interesting when PCs pose these kinds of questions to NPCs who can actually answer back with strings attached, though. Think Raymond Chandler, not CSI.
Ok, thanks. Missed the snoop move. Ironically I have an aware playing and she did not notice she could snoop. Still learning with one session under our belts. Everybody is having a lot of fun though.
Beating my addiction of calling for notice/spot checks was one of the best improvements I made to my GMing in recent years. I really liked how US removed the temptation and refocused the rules on what are more fun parts of the game.
Yeah, you can use let it out for that and it feeds the corruption cycle. I like to take a film noir approach to running Urban Shadows — when in noir do you ever NOT find a clue when you go through the bad guy’s desk? And all a clue has to do is link to another character or place — a name on a check stub or the sterotypical book of motel matches.