Tales from the Darkness: More Darkness Moves

Originally published July 7, 2014

A year ago, I played in an Apocalypse World game that tested out Jamil Vallis-Walkers's Darkness rules. The game world suffered from a psychic darkness that crept into people's minds with only a brief respite each day. It was an evocative setting but my character died in an unsatisfying way. In the interest of getting past that bad experience, I used the Mythic Game Master Emulator to run a short game for myself. The process was pretty therapeutic and I created some interesting new material.

New Darkness Moves

These are moves I gave some of the Threats from my second game as well as an option for a character advancement. All show the intrusion of the darkness into one's mind and how it corrupts everything it touches.

Darkness Mad: when opening one’s brain to someone who is darkness mad, you are Entering the Darkness. Roll +light source.

The darkness mad are people who have ventured into the darkness and mostly been taken by it. Their eyes become covered in pale cataracts that don't seem to affect their vision. This move build's on Jamil's rules to make even interacting with someone tinged by the darkness dangerous.

Eyes of Darkness: when looking into the half cataract covered eyes of the Queen of the Oz, roll as if Entering the Darkness. Use +cool as your light source.

The queen of the cannibal tribe called the Oz, takes this power another step. Even meeting her gaze, in broad daylight, exposes you to the Darkness.

As an advancement a character for whom the Darkness has 1 or more hold over can take the following. This removes all of the Darkness's hold:

Whispers of Darkness: you speak with the voice of Darkness. When in a location with at least some shadows or Darkness, you can use the Darkness as a weapon. It deals ψ-harm and you use weird instead of hard on moves involving it.

This is a pretty potent move but indicates your character has pretty much gone over the dark side. ψ-harm was introduced with the Limited Edition playbooks. You can find it here. It won't kill someone but it will mess them up pretty bad.

Darkness Gear

Devices to manipulate the darkness are a natural concept. The Dark Room was one example. Here is another:

DarkTech Goggles (worn hitech)

This strange night vision goggles allow one to "safely" interact with the darkness. Unlike normal night vision (which rapidly lead to madness or worse), these offer a measure of protection while allow one to see in the gloom. In addition to allow one to see in low light conditions, their custom move is:

Use +cool instead of +light when in Entering the Darkness (see Jamil's Darkness rules).