"Discern Realities" in Stonetop & Homebrew World

Discern Realities is a move that is near and dear to my heart. It's one of my favorite moves, and I've written about it at length:

• In Defense of Discern Realities
• Discern Realities vs. Spout Lore vs. Just Describing Stuff
• Discern Realities: make the question part of the trigger?
• Many, many discussions on G+ (have fun)

I tried using that "make the question part of the trigger" approach to the move a couple times, but didn't really like how it worked in practice. Either the players had to keep the questions constantly in mind and intentionally ask them, or as the GM I had to keep them constantly in mind and watch for the players asking them. Also, a lot of my playbook moves add questions you can ask to Discern Realities "for free, even on a miss" and those don't jive well with the "ask first" approach.  

So, for Stonetop and Homebrew World, I use Discern Realities as follows. It's quite similar to the original, the key differences being:

• the trigger specifically includes "looking to the GM for insight"
• both games use advantage/disadvantage instead of +1/-1 forward
• "Who is control here?" has become "Who or what is in control here?" (with "their fear" or the like being legit answers)

The accompanying text is the first draft of what I plan to put in the Stonetop book. It'll probably get cut down a little to fit on one spread, but this is the text that I wish I had when I first started learning to run Dungeon World. I hope you find it useful, too. 

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Discern Realities 

When you study a situation or person, looking to the GM for insight, roll +WIS: on a 10+, ask the GM 3 questions from the list below; on a 7-9, ask 1; either way, take advantage on your next move that acts on the answers.

•   What happened here recently?
•   What is about to happen?
•   What should I be on the lookout for?
•   What here is useful or valuable to me?
•   Who or what is really in control here?
•   What here is not what it appears to be?

Player: "Uh... what should I be on the lookout for?"
GM: "Well, funny you should ask..."
(image by Jakub Rozalski)

Defying Danger, the RPG

Here's a thing I made, as a bit of a distraction from working on Stonetop. It's a light-weight RPG, in the vein of World of Dungeons.

click for current version

 The highlights:

• There's only one "basic" move, Defying Danger. The usual 10+, 7-9, 6- framework. 
• No stats (like, no STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA).  Instead, you choose 2-3 ways of Defying Danger where you roll 3d6 and keep the best 2 dice. Any other time, you roll straight 2d6.  
• Each class has an additional move, that indicates a thing they're generally better at.
• A warrior gets Hack & Slash
• A rogue gets Manipulate
• The wizard can Get Answers 
• Each class has a spendable resource (Mettle, Cunning, or Power) that lets them boost rolls or do cool stuff. Wizards, in particular, use this to cast spells. 
• PCs don't have HP, per se. Harm is closer to Apocalypse World, but the players have a little more control over how, exactly, they get messed up.  
• Gear is very similar to the system in Homebrew World, but even more simplified. 

As of this posting, Defying Danger is a completely un-playtested game. I don't know if any of this actually works!  It's basically an idea that spawned from a conversation on the DW Discord--an idea that got lodged in my brain and now, a week later, here's a game. Enjoy!

If you play this, please let me know how it goes. In the comments below, over in the DW Discord, or at jack underscore blackfoot at yahoo.

EDIT to add: 

• Francesco Catenacci translated this into Italian!
• Frederico Fiori translated it into Brazilian Portuguese!
• Alexey Dikevich translated it into Russian!