Introducing the Your Move Jam - a chance for mechanical minimalism and accessible design. The idea is to create a game where your only mechanic is one, single move as loosely defined by Apocalypse World and other Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games. There are resources and information about moves, Apocalypse World, and PbtA below, in case you are unfamiliar with those concepts.

If you already know what we're talking about, then you know what to do from here. One move is all you've got, though feel free to add in as much fictional information as you'd like. Other common PbtA elements, like character archetypes, principles, experience, and countdown clocks are, well... some people would absolutely consider those mechanics, others would consider them world building. Feel free to include those if you don't consider them mechanics. Or include them if you do consider them mechanics. Or maybe even tie them in to be part of your move. As Apocalypse World shows us, there is no status quo.

I'd also like to encourage everyone that submits to put a price tag on their game, be it $1 or $100. Gotta get that barter to sustain your lifestyle.

Games promoting racism, sexism, homophobia, colorism, ableism, fascism, transphobia, islamophobia, anti-semitism, or other bigotry will be removed from the jam.

A Brief and Probably Inaccurate History of Moves:

The year 2010 saw the release of Apocalypse World, written by D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker. One of the core mechanics of the games was moves. Moves were generally built around how in-game events would trigger mechanical actions, such as rolling dice or spending resources. There were moves available to everyone, the Basic Moves, and Playbook moves, available only to certain players. Depending on who you ask, Apocalypse World may not have been the first to use this particular framework to tie fiction and mechanics together, but it was the first (I think) to call them moves, a name/framework that has persisted in the likely hundreds or games that have been created under the umbrella of Powered by the Apocalypse, or PbtA, in the nine years since then, as well as a number of games whose designers have credited Apocalypse World as an influence but do not consider their games PbtA.

Resources:

Here is an example move from Apocalypse World:

Fingers in every pie: put out the word that you want a thing—could be a person, could be somethin somethin, could even be just a thing—and roll+hot. On a 10+, it shows up in your establishment for you, like magic. On a 7-9, well, your people make an effort and everybody wants to please you and close is close, right? On a miss, it shows up in your establishment for you with strings wicked attached.

There are many different things a move might include. Some, but not all, of the possible defining characteristics are:

• A player rolls two six sided dice and adds them together.
• A player rolls dice and adds a stat or other bonus/penalty to the roll.
• There are three tiers of results:  failure, partial success (either you don't get everything you wanted, or you get it but there are strings attached), and total success. 
• There are three tiers of results based on the dice rolled - usually 6 or less, 7-9 or 10 and above.
• A move starts with a fictional position and gives mechanical tools to resolve the specifics of that position. i.e
• To do it, do it: if you want to engage the mechanics of a move, you have to satisfy the fictional trigger. If you enact the fictional trigger, you must engage with the mechanics.
• Failure on a roll doesn't necessarily mean the thing doesn't happen, it just means things get complicated.

Here you can find all of the Basic moves and Playbooks from Apocalypse World for free. Here are some forums where there are discussions of many games by the Bakers and of other PbtA games that people are working on. Here is a link to a Twitter thread about some different ways moves can be structured. Here is a thread about the math of rolling two six-sided dice, and the different ways to affect the players' outcomes.

If you have more questions about moves or this jam, or if you would live to report a game, please reach out to @transistence on Twitter.