Game-wise, a Cozy Move is:
When you have an intimate moment with another Maven while one of you is
engaged in your Cozy Activity, you may each clear an appropriate Condition.
If it’s your Cozy Activity, you can also stumble on a Clue relevant to the
active mystery. Tell the Keeper what it is. The Clue cannot conclusively solve
the mystery by itself.
So, mechanically, the Cozy Move is used to remove Conditions on your character. The game encourages the Keeper to apply Conditions frequently as a <10 result, which both hampers rolls (if a Condition applies to a roll, you roll at Disadvantage) and, if you get more than three Conditions at a time, it chews up a sort of meta-HP called a Crown.
A Cozy Move also nets you a risk-free Clue toward solving the mystery.
A Cozy Activity is something, then, that you could do hanging out with one or more of your Maven peers, maybe over a breakfast table in the evening as you consider how the day went, or hanging out in the parlor, possibly even whilst holding one of your weekly Murder Maven meetings at the bookstore. It’s usually framed as a hobby or passtime – the default list from the rules:
- Antiques & Furniture
- Baking
- Birding
- Charity Events
- Cooking
- Gardening
- Knitting
- Painting
- Pottery
- Quilting
- Scrapbooking
- Collecting (Stamps, Buttons, Pressed Flowers,…)
Now, obviously, you wouldn’t be baking at the book club meeting – but you could be checking out some recipes you want to try from a book you nabbed from downstairs. Cozy Activities – and, thus, Cozy Moves – can also happen even on closed set (you’re trapped in the murder hotel … but maybe critiquing the amateur paintings on the wall could get you some “Painting” Cozy Activity cred).
So for purposes of charity event work – there is probably stuff you can come up with that would create the meditative distraction and collegial intimacy whilst hanging out with your ladies to qualify as a Cozy Activity for a Cozy Move.
(Not all Cozy Activities take place as part of the Cozy Move, and not everyone involved in a Cozy Move needs to be doing their Cozy Activity.)
To use Murder She Wrote, clearly writing is Jessica Fletcher’s Cozy Activity … with the problem that (a) writing is usually solitary and (b) typewriters are kind of disruptive to a quiet afternoon together. But an Activity-inclusive Cozy thing with friends could include her proofreading copy, outlining a new story, even answering fan mail, all of them writing-adjacent and the sort of thing you might do around others.
Just noodling here.
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