Move to give interesting in-game rewards for donating to charity

Hi,

I'll probably MC two one-shots of Apocalypse World at the UK Student Nationals, which is a Gaming Convention×Competition.

One of the things traditionally happening there is that people can buy event-themed d6s, with the money going to charity, and GMs are encouraged to give stuff like skill check rerolls or similar to encourage this buying.

I'm therefore looking for a custom move for when you buy a charity die, but it should tie in with the Principles. Since failure is awesome in AW, spending a charity dice to reroll a failed Move roll is definitely not appropriate. On the other hand, there should be a reward for players using that move.

Currently I'm thinking of something like

When you buy a charity die, gain 1 hold.
You can spend hold 1 on 1 in order to roll the charity die to replace another die you just rolled, but the MC gets to make a move immediately.

But I'd prefer like to give myself less options for the “but” I may come up with, and since I love the maelstrom, but haven't yet found a reliable way to get it interacted with interestingly, I'd really love to have this move somehow explicitly tie into that. (This is of course made more difficult by the fact that I don't know what the MS will look like in those sessions, but I wouldn't mind cheating a bit and having some ideas about the maelstrom before the games starts.)

Any suggestions?

What about if you gave some special bonus, like:

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When you buy a charity die, highlight a basic move and hold 1 with that move. Whenever you roll a highlighted basic move, you can spend your hold to roll 3d6 instead of 2d6 (you can choose to add the bonus die after rolling the 1st two). In addition, whenever you roll a 12+ on a highlighted move, you can use the advanced version.

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(This serves two purposes; it helps to highlight the cool 12+ bonuses in a game without advancement, and it gives something cool and unique besides just a bonus. The extra die is a nice bonus, once, but it's really there to help the player *hit* that 12+ required so they get the coolness of using that ability.)

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Another option is to sketch out some additional special moves that can be bought, or fictional positioning bonuses.
Or let players purchase advancements using the charity dice.

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- Alex

Allowing them to use the advanced version of the basic moves sounds cool! I must admit nobody has taken them in my home campaign yet, so there is also an incentive for me to see dice used for that :-) [Although someone might pick them up before the Nationals, my players' current curiosity is more in the direction of trying different playbooks. Kinda everybody has either taken moves from a second play book, cast eyes on making a second character or replaced their starting character…] I also like that that gives a function to the physical dice they bought.

Some way of giving access to other moves players don't have yet sounds fine.
If I remember correctly, I read a report of someone GMing Dungeon World at a con, allowing players to spend XP for using advanced moves. So a one-off use of a Playbook move you don't have, similar to the suggestion for using Advanced Basic Boves, sounds good. Also I probably should come up with some setting-flexible advanced moves or move templates anyway, to show off what the system can do.

I'm a bit skeptical about buying advancements, that sounds quite cheap. But seeing the DW example in comparison again, maybe buying XP (i.e. 5£ per advancement, somewhat less cheap) might be appropriate. What do people think?

It really depends on what the scale is on the price of the dice as well as the pocket-depth of the players. If each die is, for example, $20, then buying five may be unreasonable for some or all players (enough for an advancement). Conversely, if the dice are .10 each, then it will be easy to max out advancement...

- Alex

It really depends on what the scale is on the price of the dice […]

buying XP (i.e. 5£ per advancement, somewhat less cheap)

Yep, sure, that's why I mentioned the 5£ in my post: In the past it has usually been a pound per dice, so about 1.60$ for comparison. On special occasions, people have apparently spent up to 20£ on them (or so I heard), but the average probably lies somewhere around 3.

Aha, this is what happens when I read things on the go!

My apologies on missing that.

- AD

When you try to make the world a better place, roll +Charity. On a 10+, you do it: pick one thing that improves and stays safe for the rest of the session. On a 7-9, the same, but disrupting the order of things will cause problems for you. On a 6-, you know what they say about good intentions...