That's a good list, so is that the number of basic moves you want? It's fairly long and though that's not a bad thing, I tend to find that things that seem like separate moves can often be collapsed together into one umbrella move: for example, could 'Reject a friend' and 'Talk your way out' be aspects of 'Acting out'? It's common for basic moves to be about the ends rather than the means as well, so 'Talk your way out' could even be something you do when you 'Stand up.'

I'd be really interested in seeing more of your thoughts behind these moves: what do they do and why does your game need them to do that? (That's meant to be constructive rather than challenging, I'm really interested in the thought processes that have lead to these choices.)

I see "Talk Your Way Out" as being kind of the Ferris Bueller/Cher Horowitz MO-- sort of the "Manipulate an NPC" move.

Acting Out seems to me more the "misbehave" kind of thing, but I could see collapsing it with "Try to impress someone". I think that's one of the better moves I came up with in terms of what you're telling me, because it's all about the intended result. Reject a Friend is much more a means than an end, so that might be worth ditching/collapsing.

My thought process in designing the basic moves has been "What are things that a character in a high-school setting might try to get ahead regardless of their clique/stereotype."

As the title says, I want to do a high school drama sort of game. Monsterhearts is awesome and it was what finally made the Apocalypse engine click for me, but it's not quite what I want... it's a little too dark and a little too supernaturally focused. I'm not really against having some angst, or even having a supernatural setting as an option, but I'd prefer it to be more on the level of The Breakfast Club, Glee, or Degrassi (or on the supernatural front, Spider-Man or Monster High, for a particularly low-angst example).

First of all is there anyone who's worked on something like this already? I hate to reinvent the wheel.

Second of all, if there's not, could I get some coaching and/or brainstorming when it comes to moves? I find them tricky enough to write, and creating basic moves for an entirely new hack is proving to be especially tricky for me. There are one or two I might be willing to crib from Monsterhearts, but I don't want to take the basic moves from that wholesale because I think they tend to not be quite in line with the experience I want, which is after all meant to be slightly less brooding.