There’s one that takes some explaining to the youth!

I took today off to go to Roseville but then that fell through, so now I’m just useless all day.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage Redemption 1.7-8: The one with the privacy-destroyer and the one with The Mastermind.

Read (manga): FAIL.

Written (game design): 532:

Other ways to have magic that people know but don’t understand are a
dying earth setting (arguably a subset of post-apocalyptic), which I
like generally but am not leaning toward in this case, and magic being
just plain beyond human comprehension: if you exactly follow the instructions
laid down by the Great Seer in antiquity, you get the miracle, and if
you change them at all, you get somewhere between nothing and disaster.
Incomprehensible magic is arguably what D&D has, since “work with the GM
to make something new that you hope isn’t broken” isn’t a rule. There’s
no question that unalterable menu magic has its advantages, but
admitting that’s how it works in-character is meh for worldbuilding.
(Merely pretending it’s not, as D&D kinda does, is meh in general.) If I
were smart, I would be able to make up multiple magic paradigms and how
each one explains the other, and then everybody could feel not only like
they understood magic but that they were smarter than those other guys.
In the real world, however…

I never explained how people turn into monsters or how monster powers
work, because I have no idea. so at least I’m not as explainy as I could
be?

Leaving this to ferment for a while, back to Actions. I realized that
although I was thinking of the thirteen moves (Act Undetected, Analyze
Something Complex, Befriend Someone, Build, Repair, or Sabotage
Something, Influence Someone, Mingle with the Crowd, Patch Someone Up,
Read Someone or a Situation, Scour a Place for Information, Scramble
Around, Spout Lore, Travel to a Different Place, Work Magic) as
analogous to Dungeon World basic moves, but they don’t have to be.
There’s always Act Under Pressure (maybe needs a better name?) for when
somebody doesn’t have a specific Action. But having the specific Action is
better (in ways to be determined, besides probably getting a higher
rating).

Is this our equivalent to classes? Just like you pick a couple of Traits
based on your ancestry, you pick a couple of Specialized Actions, away
you go with your niche protected? Seems like it could work. Actually,
there might even be Specialized Actions from ancestry, although most of
the ones I can think of are just narrative positioning (if you don’t
have a small body, you don’t have the werewithal to wiggle through the
tight opening, have some +D.)

There could of course be even more specialized Actions with the
regular SAs and appropriate backgrounds as prerequisites, for more
esoteric magical or psychic or martial arts or detective or whatever
abilities. These would include some narrative permission to do the
thing, so characters of vastly different specialties might not even be
able to roll Act Under Pressure for them.

Do we need to split Act Under Pressure into a couple of still very
general Actions? Do The Thing and Find the Clue? But the GM should just
give out the clues, right? Maybe Spout Lore? But I’m not sure Remember
Pertinent Facts Under Pressure needs to be broken out. Maybe Think Under
Pressure in general? How often would that come up? I have no idea!