Custom Moves for Declining or Corrupted Resources

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Custom Moves for Declining or Corrupted Resources
« on: June 21, 2011, 04:02:34 PM »
One thing I'm having a hard time remembering, in my current game, is to keep track of the declining resources that the PCs have.  They're in space, so it's really easy to run out of oxygen or water or food that hasn't been poisoned by the Lovecraftian "colour out of space" (i.e. radiation).

Yeah, countdown clocks are good, but I'm thinking about some custom moves -- probably session moves, done at the beginning of play -- along the lines of: If you've eaten in the last 24 hours, spend 1 barter worth of non-poisoned foodstuffs. If you choose to save your good stuff and eat irradiated food, your stomach rebels and it takes a fair bit of work just to keep it down: take 1 harm AP and psi-harm.  You cannot begin to heal this harm until you've spent 24 hours eating real food and getting some of the poisons out of your system.

I'm also pondering an Inception + Push inspired hack where you play psychic mercenaries hacking into people's brains for the $$$$ they need to stay one step ahead of the government spooks that are after them. Rather than barter, your financial resources would be measured in "grands."  So you might have a move that's like: When you attempt to put some distance between yourselves and the spooks after you, roll+grands spent on diversions, false trails, informants, safehouses, etc.

Anybody else written custom moves for resources? Has there already been a thread about this that I missed?

Re: Custom Moves for Declining or Corrupted Resources
« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2011, 02:22:12 PM »
You could always try...

--Every day/week/etc. you spend in space, roll +barter spent.  On a 10+, choose 3.  On a 7-9, choose 2.

--You've gotten ahold of enough irradiated food
--You've scrounged together enough irradiated water
--The supplies you've scrounged aren't irradiated

If you eat or drink something irradiated, take 1-harm (ap).  If you don't have enough food, take -1 ongoing until you get enough.  If you don't have enough water, take s-harm until you get enough.

Switch the penalties around as you see fit, or don't.  That's how I see it- you're still spending barter to secure quality supplies, just not on a 1 per day basis.  That would drive PCs to the poorhouse until standard AW rules, and why hack the barter rule to fit your custom move when you can make one custom move and call it a day?  I'm lazy!

Re: Custom Moves for Declining or Corrupted Resources
« Reply #2 on: June 27, 2011, 02:44:57 PM »
Hmm, that's a good call, just invoking the normal barter rules, more or less.  I definitely should have considered that, huh? :)

Sometimes this game make me feel so smart, and then other times I feel so dumb, when I miss the obvious things.