Clouds, dark, everywhere. When the sun's even shining, it's dim anyway.

Rain. Always rain. When you manage to grow some crops, when the ground's not too wet, it'll flood the next week. If you're having really shitty luck, it's acid rain.

Wind. Biting wind, cutting you to the wind and blowing down anything you build too high.

Cold. Freezing, deadly cold in many places. In others, just enough chill to be annoying.

Mud. Landslides, quicksand, unsteady ground, sinkholes.

Depressing shit. Least, that's how I see it. One way to see it.

Here's an interesting mechanical thing: Many Moves can be sold out and tainted, based on Rob Bohl's Misspent Youth.

Here's an example, for a Thundering-Hammer:

Booming Voice (Sells out to Living Cacophony): Your voice channels the might of thunder. You can use +wild in place of +cunning when rolling to seduce or manipulate someone, but if you fail that roll, you must immediately go aggro on them.

Living Cacophony: Your voice embodies the raw force of the Storm. Whenever you speak, everyone who hears you suffers X-harm (ap). X is 1 or your Changed stat, whichever is higher, and they must act under fire or suffer corruption by the Storm.

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Living Cacophony itself is inspired by Marvel's Blackbolt. I'm not fully sure how Moves get tainted/sold out yet.

The Playbooks are as follows. I'll say more about each later, when I don't have to go to work.

Cloud-Seer (Aware)
Lightning-Dancer (Calm)
Raging-Storm (Changed)
Rain-Kissed (Changed)
Ray-of-Sun (Cunning)
Stalwart-Mountain (Calm)
Steel-Rain (Wild)
Storm's-Eye (Aware)
Thundering-Hammer (Wild)
Wind-Speaker (Cunning)

I've got about a dozen hack ideas; I decided to post about this one first.

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The World Between The Storms is called such because of the endless, raw storms of elemental might that exists outside the Edge of the World.

The World is divided into a hundred kingdoms, all squabling and petty, but that's not, primarly, our concern. Our concern is the border of this world, the ring of magical and mundane defenses that keeps the Storm and it's children out.

And our chief concern are those men and women - orphans, outcasts, madmen and patriots - who exile themselves to the temple-strongholds on the edge of the world  and learn the ways of the Stormguard - warrior-sages who embrace the Storm in order to fight it.

Have you read the Maestro'D yet? I think some modification of it could work really well; it's not hard to imagine a lord having this guy on hand who manages the feasts and takes care of (and schmoozes) the guests, and so on.

So, I think this is a nice, mostly-unexplored design/hack-space. There are a few like this in the core game and a few in hacks, but I'm interested in where they'll go from here.

I don't have much to say, yet, on the topic, but I do have a few examples.

Whenever you use a gun as part of another move (usually to Go Aggro or Seize With Force, but not always), take +1 to the roll. On a 7-9, the MC chooses one of the following. One a 6-, you choose 3.

- You bring heavy legal trouble down upon yourself, for possession or use of a firearm.
- You shoot someone, intentionally or accidentally, and they're hurt bad (+1 Harm).
- You lose your gun, either to another person or just plain lost.
- Your reputation is affected - for better or worse, people know you're packing.

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You can use magic to influence or improve almost any other move. When you do, roll +weird and do the following:
10+: Take a +2 to the move's roll.
7-9: Take a +1 to the move's roll.
6-: Take a -1 to the move's roll.

Regardless, add the following to the modified move's roll:
10+: You awe or impress one or more viewers with your magic.
7-9: Choose 2 from the following list. If you had a hit on the above roll, you may choose to forgo your bonus to avoid any penalties suffered.
6-: Choose 4 from the following list.

- Magical feedback harms you or a bystander at the MC's choice (1-harm).
- You're temporarily disoriented (s-harm).
- Your connection to the magical currents is distorted (-1 Weird until you next sleep).
- The magic will take an hour or more to perform successfully.
- The magic will require some material cost, rare or expensive, to perform successfully.

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When you wear the carcass or carry the head of some beast or monster, you terrify all those who see you. Take +1 to any rolls to Go Aggro, but -2 on rolls to Seduce or Manipulate.

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These are just examples (and the magic one's probably too clunky), but for some reason, moves and ideas like these really excite me, so I want to see what other people come up with, and what folks think.

Insight about the fiction, or game design, or both, wrapped up into this playbook, right? (Insight in the "3 Insights" sense).

I feel like people are gonna have a huge lightbulb moment when they figure this thing out; me, I still don't have it, yet.

Your mention of tiers makes me think... what about a stat strata, something like:

1 - Personal, immediate level
2 - Within a small-section of a house
3 - A single house
4 - Between houses
5 - The whole world

And your influence and such can move up and down this somehow? Just shooting out an idea here.