need some help with custom moves

So, I'm about.....4 sessions or so in with MCing. My players have switched out a lot of characters, but we finally have the setup we're going to use for the rest of the campaign, not accounting for party deaths. With that in mind, I have some fronts that I've been setting up and sort of pushing at the players...well, it's been more like nudging, which isn't the point of this post and i apologize for the sidetrack. Anyway, I would really appreciate some help with a custom move for a cult that I've created, but it's not "gloom and doom" or "drink the koolaid" cult, more like a jehova's witness-style cult, and I would really like help creating a custom move for them that's not directly ripping off the hocus playbook, so if you guys could give examples or just spitball, or just help at all, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

Jehovah's Witnesses you say?  tongue-in-cheek custom move: the cult members are persistent.  Getting them to leave you the hell alone requires you to go aggro on them.  :P

But seriously, what are the cult's aims?  What are its teachings?  Who is the leader and how does he or she view the world?  How does that world view color the beliefs of the followers?  How ardent are the followers?  Are they proselytizing in order to "save" people?  If so, from what?  If not, why are they proselytizing?  How does the cult attract new members?  Are there any requirements for membership?  Is there any kind of internal hierarchy, and if so what does that look like?  What does the cult provide to its members and why do ordinary people follow it?  What behaviors set cult members apart from the rest of (what is left of) society? How does the cult handle people trying to leave?

Keep in mind what is at the root of any cult - belief.  And what is belief?  It is the acceptance of some idea, concept, or tenet that is fundamentally incapable of proof or disproof.  That is the definition of faith, to believe in the absence of hard evidence.  So what is it that this cult believes and why?  Of course the beauty of the psychic maelstrom is that no matter how outlandish their beliefs, they might just be right!  But even if they aren't everything should flow from those beliefs with an internal logic, a reason this cult is the way it is.  If you can capture that internal logic, then you can riff on it to make it feel real, throw in a little paradox or cognitive dissonance for spice.  Or don't, and make the players wonder if maybe these cultists are onto something.

And on that note, one of the best ways to make Apocalypse World feel real is to make the institutions and organizations within it intrinsically human.  Which means noble, tragic, flawed, and possessed of logic and order in that way that only the intuitive chaos of human interaction can provide.

Does this help at all?

Maybe this is too mechanical a look at it, but what stat do you want your PC's to roll? Stat substitution moves are easy to make, or a move that makes the PC's roll.

When the cult...

stares at you with a hundred eyes, it's really difficult to think straight. Roll cool to read a sitch.

sings you their songs, you open your brain whether you want to or not.

Do you want moves that are more complicated? If so, why? What does the cult express, and what kind of threat type are they? What would be more interesting: a move for when the players join the cult, or a move for when the cult attacks (directly or indirectly) the PC's?

Answering a question with questions I know, but I don't want to drive you to a place you don't wanna go.

amazingly so actually, i guess i just needed someone to put it down physically for me lol those questions I couldn't quite grasp for whatever reason. thank you ^ munin

No worries.  And when you've answered some of them, let us know.  I suspect you'll be bursting with ideas for custom moves by that point, and we'll want you to share.  ;)

So I've got a few of those there questions answered, and I'm working on the others as we speak. Anyway:

The name of the cult is "The Lost" and they believe in the god Elsewhere, and they believe that Elsewhere shall Find them and lead them to the Gathering Place where they shall be forever loved and clean (the apocalypse came about as a result of mass biowarfare btw, which i really need to start working on screwing with the players about). They teach that Elsewhere shall Find all who are Lost and lead them to the Gathering Place, but they must prove to Elsewhere that they truly are sorry for what they did to become Lost or else he casts them out to be forever Disappeared (read: lobotomized), which makes the followers quite zealous.  The leader is Saint Richard and he believes that all are Lost and must be Found in order for the apocalypse to end and for everyone to be forgiven for their transgressions, for the reason all are Lost is because of all that they have done that has angered Elsewhere. There isn't any real hierarchy however, for all are equal in Elsewhere's eyes, and the only ones that aren't are those that forsake him and choose to be an enemy of Elsewhere. As far as attraction, it's not anything more than preaching and persistance....but Mr. Saint Richard has a certain "gift from Elsewhere" (otherwise known as one of those drugs I was talking about earlier) in order to "attract" those he deems dangerous to his cult.

That's as far as I've gotten, but I think it's a decent start. Suggestions are good though

oh and in reply to yarrum, i think i want them to roll weird in relation to them

OK, so at its base this is a cult preaching hope.  In a world that offers none (or very little), that in and of itself can be a positive draw.  A few more questions: is Saint Richard a true believer, or is he a scam artist?  If he is a true believer (which is the sense I get), what gives his teachings merit?  In other words, do people follow him because of his charisma or the force of his will, or do they follow him because he has on occasion done "miraculous" things, and if so what were they?  It's one thing to get people to listen to what you say and parrot your ideas, it's entirely another to turn loaves into fishes.  Is Saint Richard messianic?  Does he preach that there is a timeline, or is it basically "when all who are Lost have been Found" that he's after?  How does one go from Lost to Found?  Who does the lobotomizing and how?

It sounds like atonement is a big part of proving to Elsewhere that you have been found (i.e. being truly sorry for what you have done).  So maybe:

When a member of the cult offers you absolution and you take it, roll+Weird.  On a 10+, pick two.  On a 7-9, pick one.
* you catch a glimpse of Elsewhere.  Treat this as a 10+ hit on open your brain, but it can be about anything (not  just your current situation - your past is good, your relationship to other people is better, your relationship to the universe is great).
* you feel as though some burden has been lifted from you, at least for a little while - take +1 forward
* you look upon your past and the people in it with fresh eyes - take +1 Hx with a character of your choice.
On a miss, they've gotten in your head and made you doubt yourself - take -1 ongoing for the rest of the session or until you get your mojo back (i.e. you score your next 10+ hit), whichever comes first.

man thank you so much munin. anyway a few answers to your questions:
Yes, Saint Richard is a true believer and has done miraculous things using the biodrugs he has found in his travels, believing them to be truly gifts from Elsewhere in order to spread his good word such as heal a man of his schizophrenia, or even regrow a limb for them. Other miraculous things have been such things as regrowing an area of grass that was once grey and dead to become green and invigorated. So he's got some evidence to back up his speech. He is merely a "prophet of Elsewhere" and not a messiah come to save them, and as far as a timeline, well in this apocalypse there isn't so much of a timeline for him as there is "all must be Found or we will all die," which works, i mean the apocalypse has already happened. However a nice wrinkle to throw on a countdown timer would be perhaps a message from Elsewhere saying that the true apocalypse will occur if he doesn't hurry up. And as far as Saint Richard is concerned, one becomes Found once they accept Elsewhere's teachings, go through a ritual where they "cleanse themselves" (still haven't figured that one quite out yet), and repent for their past sins. And he does the lobotimizing or he gets another trusted member to do it. Also, I think I'm gonna take that custom move for right now and give it a whirl, see how it works out.

Lol welllll my cult kind of got blown away last session XD and I'm giving serious consideration to scrapping and restarting. However, I very much appreciate your guys' help

No problem. Thanks for sharing your cult. =D I liked Munin's move too much to have anything to add.

Uh oh!  Blown away how?

lemme put it to you this way munin....there was an angry gunlugger, and assault rifle, and the cult wanted to defend it's new member. My fault, true, but the players were absolutely merciless xD it's mostly bad MCing on my part

Heh.  An angry Gunlugger can be a sight to behold.  Did they kill Saint Richard?  Is there a designated successor within the cult?  Or will there be a power vacuum, causing internal strife within the cult?  Ooooh, will there be a schism?  Schisms rock!  Because now you can have two (or more!) cults, each teaching something slightly (or in some cases radically) different.

This is the beauty of setting up a situation - if the players come in and "wreck" it, make them deal with the messy bloody consequences, as the warring remnants of the cult attempt to assert their primacy and the violence spills over into arenas that the PCs actually care about.  And in this case your PCs are the agents opposing the status quo rather than trying to preserve it.  Fun fun fun!

hahaha i will keep this in mind for my future campaign. lol we all decided it would be best to start over, but this has all been very enlightening