Author: Ben Wray

Originally shared by Ben Wray

Every now and then I toy with the idea of “World of Exalted”. Here’s a move I came up with while bored at work that I’m rather proud of:

When you complete the 5 ordeals necessary to initiate into a new circle of sorcery, roll+Twilight, with a -1 for the celestial circle and -2 for the solar circle.

– On a miss, you fail. Your ordeals were in vain, and you must try again from scratch.

– On a 7-9, one of your ordeals was lacking, the GM will tell you which and how much further you will have to go to succeed.

– On a 10-11, you have succeeded, and have access to the new circle of sorcery.

– On a 12+, in addition, the process of the ordeals has revealed the insights of a new spell of that circle to you, the GM will tell you which.

When initiating into a higher circle, each of your ordeals must be harder and more meaningful (a longer and more difficult journey, a more personal and costly sacrifice, etc) than they were for your previous initiation.

So here’s a little idea I had over in the comments of a post in DW community.

“Make your move, but never speak its name” or some variation of it is a pretty common MC rule in most *W games. What if it were a PC rule, too? What if it was against the rules to say “Go Aggro” or “Turn Someone On” or whatever, and you just had to describe what you were doing in sufficient detail to make it completely unambiguous before you picked up the dice?

I dig the idea, but I’m curious what you all think.

What have been some of your favorite PC outlooks? Mine was a hardholder I briefly played named Barnum: “You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a gun alone.”