So would you recommend letting them shift into monsters? The idea of letting the 1st level druid shift into a dragon seems counterintuative, but I'm trying to let go of all my preconceived notions of traditional RPGs, so maybe it would be ok. Most of the time she's only going to get 2 moves, and while those moves are pretty powerful, there's still only two of them. (three if she gets a really good roll).
As I said upthread, I'm not any sort of expert. And I've never seen a druid in play. So I'm proceeding from the rulebook plus intuition.
Here's the text on p 107 (including the sidebar):
When you call upon the spirits to change your shape, roll+Wis. *On a 10+ hold 3. *On a 7–9 hold 2. *On a miss hold 1 in addition to whatever the GM says.
You may take on the physical form of any species whose essence you have studied or who lives in your land: you and your possessions meld into a perfect copy of the species’ form. You have any innate abilities and weaknesses of the form: claws, wings, gills, breathing water instead of air. You still use your normal stats but some moves may be harder to trigger - a housecat will find it hard to do battle with an ogre. The GM will also tell you one or more moves associated with your new form. Spend 1 hold to make that move. Once you’re out of hold, you return to your natural form. At any time, you may spend all your hold and revert to your natural form.
Animal moves just say what the animal naturally does, like "call the pack," "trample them," or "escape to the air." When you spend your hold your natural instinct kicks in and that move happens. If you spend hold to escape to the air, that’s it - you’re away and on the wing.
(The bolding is not in my copy of the rules. I assume that its absence is a layout error.)
There are references in this to other druid abilities and moves. From p 106:
You learned your magic in a place whose spirits are strong and ancient and they’ve marked you as one of their own. No matter where you go, they live within you and allow you to take their shape. Choose one of the following. It is the land to which you are attuned—when shapeshifting you may take the shape of any animal who might live in your Land.
And on p 107:
When you spend time in contemplation of an animal spirit, you may add its species to those you can assume using shapeshifting.
So it is pretty clear that shapeshifting is into animal forms. Whether dragons count as animals seems like a group-specific, campaign-specific thing. If you're worried about it, because you're not sure how to handle it as a GM, then my default would be to say that it's not, unless it is really central to the player's conception of what his/her druid can do. (And I'd be upfront about this - "I'm not sure how to handle a dragon properly, so can we just agree it's not an animal whose spirit you are attuned to?")
As far as animal moves are concerned, they are triggered by spending Hold. Page 21 tells us that "Hold is currency that allows you to make some choices later on by spending the hold as the move describes." And the example of Hold provided by the Defend move (p 64) are all of automatic effects. This is similar to what the sidebar on p 107 suggests when it says that your instinct kicks in and the move happens. So I don't see any roll being required - the roll was already made in Shapeshifting.
What the animal moves are is up to the GM to tell the player, following the logic of the fiction. The sidebar gives examples, and I'd extrapolate from there. If the druid turns into an elephant and
tramples them, that sounds like dealing damage and knocking prone. If the druid turns into a shark and
rends their flesh, that sounds like dealing damage messily. If the druid turns into a gibbon and
escapes through the trees, that sounds like a way of succesfully defying some danger, or perhaps bringing some sorts of situations to an end. Etc.
So again (and forgive me for being dense, but I really want to get this game), are the bold font texts generally considered moves?
<snip>
does a move only require a roll if it specifically states that it does?
I've always assumed that the answer to your first question is
yes. And this is what is implied by the example towards the top of p 18 of the rulebook.
As for your second question: p 15 says "a move [is] something that’ll cause everyone to stop and say 'time to roll the dice to see what happens.'" But p 18 says "When a player describes their character doing something that triggers a move, that move happens and its rules apply. If the move requires a roll, its description will tell you what dice to roll and how to read their results." So that implies that not all moves require a dice roll, but that a roll is probably the default.
This goes back to my clerical Divine Guidance question. It's listed under the cleric's basic moves, so I assume it is a move
<snip>
If not, and Divine Guidance is just a gimmie, does that mean that the cleric just gets a auto boon every day? It does say that the info or boon will be related to the deity's domain, so that narrows it a bit. Still, that seems like a headache.
In my copy of the rules (p 93), Divine Guidance reads:
When you petition your deity according to the precept of your religion, you are granted some useful knowledge or boon related to your deity’s domain. The GM will tell you what.
It is not confined to oncer per day. But it does require petioning the deity in accordance with the precepts of the cleric's religion. To quote from p 18 again, "A move depends on a fictional action and always has some fictional effect." So the cleric has to actually petition his/her deity in the appropriate manner. This is a constraint, but I don't think it's best seen as a constraint against overuse or "abuse". It's a constraint that helps establish the shared fiction in a certain way: clerics receive divine guidance, but only when, and because, they petition their deities appropriately.
Actually providing the cleric with the information or boon, as GM, shouldn't be a headache. It's another chance to drive the fiction onwards.
real consequences. This is where the MC earns their keep, innovating and improvising, adding a new layer of consequences over the player's actions.
I wanted to pick up on this - especially the bit that I bolded.
In the "what is worldbuildingfor?" thread that [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] referenced, [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] referred to something that is similar (I think):
following the fiction wherever it might lead.
In my experience this is very demanding. Maybe I'm more sentimental than most, but I find it hard to follow the fiction when it means that the PCs are going to suffer. I don't like it when bad things happen to the characters that I sympathise with.
But that is what this sort of game calls upon you to do.
