I’ve been known to do my custom moves more or less on the fly, for weird edge cases where a bit of unpredictability is required but none of the core moves quite fit. What I like about them is that they take that “just right-ness” of the common move set and allows the MC to drift the setting to match their expectations.

You can tailor them to environments (most of my draft custom moves in Borealis Wood for The Warren were weather-related, and the best ones stayed in) or specific locations (I used a custom weird move that triggered when people entered a weird hallucinogenic cave in the first game of AW I ever ran) or characters (to highlight a distinct style, or a special power).

Sometimes they are terrible! But as long as they convey the thematic or mood element they are designed for, it’s easy enough to tweak them between sessions, or maybe they just never come up again.