A shapeshifted Druid has monster moves, but they're not a monster. This can get... complicated.
So when you're a GM and you're making a monster, you write down the monster moves as a list of cool things you want the monster to do. Which is in keeping with your GM moves, which are a list of cool things that can happen to the players.
How the monster moves come into play varies. They can inform you about the sort of threats a monster is likely to pose, to get the PCs to make moves in response to it, or they can come into play in response to a PC choice or poor roll, to be a way that you damage or otherwise impact your PCs.
So thinking about, say, a crocodile as the PCs might face it, the game gives its moves as:
- Attack an unsuspecting victim
- Escape into the water
- Hold something tight in its jaws
And these are all pretty reasonable when talking about the roles for this monster to play in the GM's story. But it becomes a completely different concern when the Druid is a swamp druid or studies the crocodile and changes into one!
- Escape into the water seems easy enough to apply, assuming the Druid's got access to water.
- Hold something tight in its jaws is something the Druid can't do, certainly, but how does something get in the Druid's jaws in the first place? A lot of things don't much fancy being in a crocodile's jaws.
- Attack an unsuspecting victim is something the Druid could do without shapeshifting at all! Any PC can just attack someone unaware and deal their damage.
When the Druid spends hold, they will get their moves to happen, but as a GM, one of your roles is to tell them the requirements or consequences and then ask. So you can tell them the requirements to spend hold on a move in the first place, or the consequences of spending hold and having the move made. Most monster moves can be made suitable for use in Shapeshift with one of these methods.
Shift the Consequences: Moves as Novel Capabilities
So when you're looking at a move like attack an unsuspecting victim that doesn't seem all that different from things PCs can normally do, think about the action itself and what new things it will let a PC do, or at least do without rolling.
In the crocodile's case, it's not so much the attack as it is the unsuspecting. What does a crocodile do to get an unsuspecting victim that can transfer to a new thing for a PC to do? You might say something like:
- Hide in water, mud, or weeds
or
- Cross an uncanny distance to ambush
Of course, you're not writing this down immutably for Internet people to read forever in the featureless white room of theorycrafting, you're sitting down with your player, and you can tell them if a given situation will need crocodile hold to hide or to spring from hiding, as appropriate.
Add Requirements: Moves Need Position
As a GM, you can set your monsters up in any kind of position you need them to be in. But as a PC, getting good position on adversaries often requires making moves. So, how do you reconcile a move that seems a lot like the result of a successful attack? Well, there's the obvious:
- Hold something tight in its jaws (after a successful Hack and Slash)
but since the croc is an ambusher, maybe consider
- Hold something tight in its jaws (after dealing damage)
or perhaps
- Hold something tight in its jaws (when you can safely close to Hand range)
Either way, now things are clear what kind of position a PC has to be in to make the move.
