To quote a well-known Prime Minister of ours from 50 years ago: "Just watch me."
So does this mean the wizard can't even try to hide? 'Cause that's exactly the sort of thing I mean: I'd be trying to do reasonable things that aren't on my list of moves if doing so made sense in the fiction. Being me, I'd almost certainly at some point try gonzo or irrational things as well, 'cause that's just how I roll.
Obviously, if what I'm trying requires some special skill and I don't have it my attempts are much more likely to fail. I'm referring to things I - as a real person and not a skilled adventurer - can try (which by default means my character in the fiction can try, assuming my character isn't disabled in some way), such as hiding when someone's looking for me.
This has already received several responses, but since I'm an active DW DM right now (Wednesday nights), I thought I could give my two coppers.
Firstly: though our group can be a little sloppy about this, formally speaking, you aren't supposed to invoke mechanics until they are clearly triggered and necessary. Everything starts and ends in the fiction, the fictional situation surrounding the characters. So, if you as the Wizard want to hide...you do that! Because, as you said, that's a thing you can conceive of and describe without reaching or the like.
The question becomes: why are you hiding? What are you trying to accomplish by hiding? In general, hiding is to avoid being seen by someone, which means you probably consider being found by someone a threat to you or your interests. Once you articulate the method or process of your hiding, we must then invoke a roll because we aren't certain that you will succeed or fail at this, and because the consequences of either result will be interesting.
That is, the former consideration there is that sometimes success and failure aren't uncertain and therefore no mechanics are needed. If you were already invisible, I might not make you roll to hide because you'll just succeed; conversely, if you try to hide in a smooth lava tube from a creature that hunts by smell, I'm just going to tell you it won't or didn't work, depending on whether the character would know that that wouldn't work. The latter consideration--interesting consequences--is a way to avoid mechanics that are simply annoying bookkeeping rather than contributing to interesting play. Stuff like how you don't roll to walk across an ordinary room or to speak normal language when talking to someone else under ordinary circumstances. If you were drunk at the Duchess' masquerade ball, then a Defy Danger (CHA) might be warranted to cross the dance floor without making an ass of yourself, because that has interesting consequences. But if success just means "you do the expected thing" and failure just means "nothing happens," DW generally recommends skipping mechanics entirely and just operating with the fiction.
Going back to hiding: Defy Danger is a rare move that allows any ability modifier to be used, based on what your chosen method is. Going through the list in order (though some of these are more fae-fetched/situation-dependent than others): STR might let you shift a huge rock fast enough to hide behind it and conceal that there is even a place to hide; CON to dive into a nearby pond and hold your breath long enough to avoid detection; DEX to quickly hide behind some crates; WIS to exploit the Spanish moss and other natural camouflage in the wild; CHA to blend into a crowd and look like you belong (like when DCAU Wonder Woman and Batman in civilian clothes pretended to be diners at a restaurant and she
savagely kissed him to conceal both their faces.) And INT to...say, estimate the movements if the person you're hiding from and thus always keep at least one opaque large object between them and you. These are all just random examples, but I try to keep a very open mind about player ideas on how to address a problem.
So! You've picked your method, let's use the old standby of DEX to quickly leap to a hiding spot. Then you roll, 2d6+DEX. On a total 10 or more, you hide exactly as intended--no wrinkles. On a total 7-9, it's harder than expected, aka "you stumble, hesitate, or flinch;" the rules say that I as DM must "offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice." On a 6 or less, you missed. This means I get to make a "hard" move against you--do damage, use up resources, reveal an unwelcome truth, etc., in a way that has immediate bad consequences. So maybe I decide you still succeeded on that hiding after all...but you thus see that the Duchess, whom you have trusted as an ally up to this point, is HELPING the wicked Baron hunting you! (This is a bit extreme in the "not strictly related to the action taken" sense and thus not something I would do very often, I'm just giving an example of what COULD be done.)
Through four of its basic moves (Defy Danger = avoid some kind of threat; Defend = protect something other than yourself; Spout Lore = use character knowledge; Discern Realities = learn more about the situation at hand), DW covers the vast, vast majority of off-the-wall things one might want to do. (There are also moves for parley, carousing, shopping, dangerous journeys, making camp, and a few more.) Perhaps it would be useful to give a list of example actions/situations you expect to break most games? I don't mean to pull you into a "death by a thousand cuts" kind of situation here, I genuinely see this as a fun challenge to my ability to improvise and respond to unexpected player choices.
coughskill challengescough
Inorite? It's always funny when people speak in universals about what D&D has never done, simply because a third of the time 4e actually did it.
I think there is a fairly substantial difference between reads well in the sense of being instructive and clear sense and reads well in the sense of being either fun to think about or entertaining to read.
I think being evocative and pleasant to read can be important, but certainly less important than actual clarity.
Completely agreed.
Clarity, as in succinct and effective words, is not the same as being
satisfying, as in text enjoyable to read in and of itself. A dry technical manual or precise but bland textbook, each of which nonetheless quickly and effectively educates the reader on its subject matter, has clarity but will not be very satisfying to read. A well-written mystery novel where all the clues were artfully displayed such that the reader
could have pieced together the mystery, but got hoodwinked by the culprit as much as the hapless police inspector, is an excellent example of something that intentionally avoids total clarity (though not avoiding ALL clarity, mind) while keeping satisfaction the ultimate goal.
Role-playing game manuals are not, properly speaking, technical manuals or textbooks, but they are a lot more like a technical manual than they are like a mystery novel. (I mean, we literally call two of them that: Monster
Manual and Player's
Handbook.) It is much more of a risk for a manual to sacrifice clarity for reader satisfaction than it is for a mystery novel to do so. This does not mean that clarity is unequivocally more important than reader satisfaction, nor that reader satisfaction is of low importance.
