How often do you find places of power for the wizard's rituals?

I mean, last night the wizard complained that in 4 sessions, we never found a place of power for him to use; we argued a bit, some other players joined us, then we concluded that, since they were in a forgotten underground metropolis, it would have made sense that, searching well enough, they could find a suitable place of power. However, I felt like that in this way, the players just had an easy way to prevent a couple impending dooms doing that ritual. Also they didn't seem too much worried when I said that they risked to permanently taint their own souls doing a ritual in such a fiendish place of power. I'm too much of a long time planner when comes about antagonising the heroes :P

So, to recap my question: how often do you find places of power in your games? Of what kind are your average places of power? Like, can you rent one in every major town, or are they incredibly rare places found only in the most forgotten corners of the world?

Seems like a question to turn back own the player, what does make somewhere a place of power?  Ten be a fan.

Yeah, I'm with Marshall. Tonks usually 'spouted lore' about a place of power and lo, it was so (or something quite different than expected on a miss).

I didn't bother 'prepping' these places of power, just let them organically develop into the story as needed. Making moves where called for.

It helped define our dungeon world through the eyes of a level 9 wizard that needed these places of power, some of which became places of high adventure. I'm sure if we had no wizard they probably would not have come up much at all. My most memorable was the rift under Phoniex Mountain, where the untapped raw ether leaked out warping everything nearby.

Honestly, my group finds or creates a place of power almost every session. My Wizard loves Ritual (and I love what he does with it), so we've kinda decided that the place of power is not that important to the move, we handwave it.

I mean, how do you think they'll prevent an impending doom this way? You get to set the requirements of the ritual. My group uses it as a catch-all "I can do magic" ability, not for world-shaking arcane tornadoes. Wanna bind a demon? Ritual! Wanna reach into The Great Beyond? Ritual!

It's such a great source of player-driven adventures (remember, you set the requirements), I literally can't imagine why you wouldn't want that wizard to use it all the damn time. They're doing your prep for you when they use that move.

"You want to close The Black Gate? Sure! First, you'll need the Orb of Death, last seen in the faraway mountains of..."

In the last game I played, the Wizard and the Druid were Best Friends FOREVAR because of this very thing.  The Druid would help the Wizard sniff out places of power and the Wizard would wield that power in the name of the Goddess.  It was bad ass Wiccan crimefighting action.

to answer your question, I turn it back on the Wizard or the party to answer unless I know already.

"Why is this empty room a place of power?" because power always, ALWAYS comes with complications.

I have a player whose Wizard used Ritual to bind a demon into his service and got a 7-9, which bound him to the demon as well. Since then, the demon functions as his "place of power," effectively tapping Hell's energy, so he uses Ritual to wrestle flavors from the demon while bargaining bits of his soul in the process, or like performing unsavory deeds.

Basically what I'm saying is that Ritual rules and you should let them use it every chance they get.

well thank you all for the replies! Next game I'm going to put your advices in action.

By the way, that's what I'm already doing-more or less. Because actually, the wizard never asked for a place of power during this campaign, he just started complaining out of nowhere. And while I'm a fan of the characters all the way, it happened before that this player (and this group in general) view the ritual as the easy way to resolve problem; that is:

player: "hey I just do a ritual that solves the problem!"
gm: "yeah, the requirements are this and this, what a fun adventure expects you!"
player: "oh I forgot there is always this drawback, never mind the ritual."

and I most often pass as the horrible, horrible GM that doesn't let the players use their cool moves.

Man, that's so weird. For my players, the requirements of the Ritual are the most fun part, the requirements can be like an adventure by themselves. Are yours after a big "I Win" button or something?

Try offering up opportunities to use Ritual, but lay out the costs and tie them into the adventure, explicitly.

"Yes, you can close the portal, but you'll need the blood of two mortal enemies. Does one of you have a mortal enemy? Great, where is he? Okay, so you're going to hunt him down..."

Like, some real obvious THIS IS AN ADVENTURE type shit.

Yeah totally Scrape! Build apoc world style triangles, so that the requirements for the ritual are adverse to one PC's bonds or alignment moves and complementary to another's. Loop that into the XP reward cycle too.

Always, always tie the costs and consequences to the flags on the player's sheets.  Reincorporate like crazy! Make it like you offer them an opportunity with a definitive cost. Then make the cost for not doing the ritual worse.

player: "hey I just do a ritual that solves the problem!"
gm: "yeah, the requirements are this and this, what a fun adventure expects you!"
player: "oh I forgot there is always this drawback, never mind the ritual."
GM: "You aren't going through with it? Really? Well then [this dastardly impending doom] is about to make your (and all of your companion's) lives an absolute misery. What do you do?"

 For added fun, make one of the Ritual's requirements totally in line with what they had planned ("you need the staff of the evil warlock you were gonna kill") and another opposed/I] to the PCs' alignments ("...and you'll need to cut a branch from the Druid's sacred grove.") See what they do! Spark a debate!

Ritual splits the power of the move in a cool way. The GM is specifically not given the power to say "no," instead they can only name the cost. I think that rules.