AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Honestly, the more I think about it, I would just hack Dungeon World with the following:
1) Add Healing Surges, Second Winds, and class moves that trigger the use of surges in combat.
2) Give all monsters stuff that front-loads their payload (eg first damage is either best of 2 dice or +1d6 or something).
* Those two should engender the "Rally Narrative" that is quintessential 4e combat.
3) Deepen and broaden the tags and their usage (the Forceful tag becoming even more rampant than it already is - it is effectively "forced movement") and have synergy with the usage of tags (eg they trigger player moves).
4) Have each player start combat with 1 Prep (basically the encounter power facet of play).
Dungeon World (GMed correctly and deftly) hews so much to 4e's high-octane, push play toward conflict aesthetic and its action/adventure, big-damn-hero genre tropes (PCs start out extremely robust and merely broaden their resource-base as play progresses) that the only thing it is really missing is the "Rally Narrative" and some more depth in "team synergy" (it is already there, but to 4e-ify it, it needs to be amped up).
Yeah, DW is certainly an interesting game. I found more inspiration in the overall framework of narrative design. I mean I LIKE the DW approach to things at the detailed level as well, but at that level it scratches a bit of a different itch. My desire is for a bit more mechanical and tactical approach, so I have powers, turns, actions, and a grid, all basically extracted from 4e with a tweak or two.
I'm still working out some issues too. For instance 4e gives you TOO MANY options, each of which does a small something in combat. I'm trying to tweak the game so that its still equally tactical, but you deploy a smaller range of powers with greater effect, and the choices are more significant. This would also provide a bit more importance to situation, so for instance in my game surprise is more deadly than in 4e. You can employ larger numbers of slightly weaker enemies in more interesting and effective way too, as for instance a bunch of goblins surprising your level 5 party could be real trouble, whereas in 4e they'd pretty much do some trivial damage on a surprise round and then be blenderized and done. It does have a few consequences, making a mistake can be a bit more deadly, but I've been carefully maintaining the lack of arbitrariness in outcomes that I think was a real good thing about 4e. You won't lose due to the luck of the dice, but you may well make a dumb mistake and suffer harshly for it. Its just really a slightly lower level of granularity, but not much.
I'm also really making the rally narrative stay quite at the front and center. It could get fairly obscured in 4e. There are however other possibilities, like a prep narrative where you make a great move against a powerful foe initially due to preparation (surprise, or other means) and then enter a 'beat down race' which requires that edge to win. 4e wasn't great at that one, though it could be pulled off at times.