Squamate! Squamate! OK!
Went to the office, attended an all-hands where none of the (minor and completely surmountable) problems could be construed as the fault of my team, ate a rice pork burger-shaped thing that made me vaguely queasy, did some work.
Watched (live-action TV): Leverage: Redemption 1.2: Still chasing the opiate billionaire, Hardison has to bail to the other side of the world but look! there’s a new hacker that he vouches for. (We knew this was coming, the actor wasn’t able to commit to the whole season.) She has good ideas, though, and an appropriate regard for Parker.
Read (manga): Daemons of the Shadow Realm vol 8 (Hiromu Arakawa): The complicated city-wide murdering scene is over, now all the characters are regrouping. So many characters, who are all these people? But many of them are entertaining people, so it’s okay.
Read (novel): Primer for the Apocalypse vol 1 (Braided Sky): Alien magic and the system will come to Earth, but right now a time mage from after the point has escaped back and is trying to rebuild her power so she can protect her family, without giving away that she will be able to time travel. Bog-standard litRPG.
Read (short): “Trap Line” (Timothy Zahn): An SF story in the old style: a human gets into trouble among the stars and has to figure out the problem and work with some aliens and against other aliens to save the day. In this case, the problem involves astral projection.
Written (game design): 465:
We could do Harmony-based magic like XZQJY. (When you spend a while
in meditation, roll with Mysticism. On a 10+ hold 5 Harmony; on a
7-9 hold 3; on a 6- hold 1 in addition to whatever the GM tells
you.) But we don’t actually have to, there are plenty of other options
for non-battery magic. Like, enchanted or cursed places/objects/monsters
have a Weirdness rating, and you can do any feat of magic (ie, cast any
spell) equal to or less than that Weirdness, but if you roll a 7-9 on
using magic, you can’t use that aura of strangeness against for a while,
and if you roll a 6-, it definitely gets to turn your spell back on you
or possess you or curse you. Or, the gods inscribe spells on the inside
of your skull, but when you roll 7-9 to cast one, it gives you a
concussion and on a 6- maybe you suffer serious brain damage. The
possibilities are endless!
Is it 10+/7-9/6- based on 2d6? It could be 0d6 to 4d6, keep the highest,
6/4-5/1-3, and that’s still officially PbtA. There’s a recent big FitD
fantasy release, Grimwild, though. Let’s stick with 2d6 for now and just
say you can’t roll at more than +/-4.
Back to classes. Cleric and Wizard are the only spellcasters. Druid is
all shapeshifting all the time, which doesn’t need to change. Bards can
spont a few magical effects, but I’m not sure we need bards at all. Any
spellcaster can have singing as their special effect, and any character
can try to seduce all the things.
Actually, can anybody seduce anything? “Hot” isn’t exactly a personality
trait, so there’s not an ability for it. We could make being good at the
D&D stats into moves you can take, though. Brute Force (move and break
things, maybe roll with Aggression), Striking Looks (seduce people,
maybe roll with Focus since paying attention to someone is allegedly
seductive), Educated (you know all about something, like the Bard’s
move), Unkillable, etc.
Back to classes. Do we want thieves? Anybody can sneak up on someone and
murder them without a roll if the fictional positioning is right, but
thieves can have specific moves for it, that’s fine in DW. Not sure
about paladins. Probably not barbarians, they seem OP and/or not really
suited for a party. Having been around since AD&D notwithstanding,
they’re kind of in a different genre.
I keep talking about wizards instead of The Wizard and such, which shows
a lack of commitment to PbtA, but I’m waffling over whether to have
classes like that, or classes at all. Pick one of the major beginning
moves (spellcasting, signature weapon, animal companion, etc), another
from the general pool, and away you go as some unique weirdo?