There is another advantage to getting input from others in creating the world: the way we see the world (our world, not the campaign world) tends to have a disproportionate weight on what “seems” normal, even if it isn’t the case. Allowing another’s input can counterbalance the perspective and make the world more real overall.
PuffinForest has a funny video of a campaign he DMed in which for three adventures in a row, the questgiver stabs the party in the back. The DM was the only person who didn’t realize that he was reproducing a pattern.
And here we have a
beautiful demonstration of exactly the kind of problem I have with absolute, unilateral power in anyone's hands at the table. (I
would put quotes, because those exact words were used repeatedly and intentionally, but that was apparently scare quotes, so I'll stop.)
This DM is well-meaning. The players are happy to come to the game. The relationship between them is not
inherently dysfunctional. They share common interests on many things, and everyone genuinely wants everyone else to have a good time (knowing that for that to happen, they must sometimes have delayed gratification, suffer setback/failure, or make sacrifices.) But the unilateral DM, purely by being unilateral, cannot account for or benefit from anyone's perspective but her own. The absolute DM cannot take advantage of criticism: as was explicitly said by Bloodtide earlier in the thread, even to let (say) your SO pick the restaurant tonight and agree thar you can pick next time is an unacceptable abrogation of autonomy. To adjust even
that little for another is preposterous.
The DM above was only able to realize what they were doing, and that what they were doing is a problem, because they were able to listen to feedback, accept criticism as real and valid and (in some sense) binding, and adjust to the interests and needs of others. Only by talking could this problem be sighted, spoken, and solved. Yet as we have spoken with the OP, we've seen that talking was never an option here, rejected from time zero.
Good rules—prudent, instructive, guiding, specific enough to be applicable but general enough to apply widely, and other properties that are difficult to obtain but
well worth the effort of seeking them—are extremely useful for addressing this kind of issue. Are they a perfect panacea? No. But like many treatments, we should not let a lack of perfection get in the way of
helping in the many cases where it can help. Rules are tools. To discard them or treat them as mostly-useless garbage to chuck out whenever and wherever you feel like is
wasteful. There are better ways than absolute and unilateral.
______________________
@Oofta I have personally felt that I answered your questions about the nature of hard and soft moves previously, but evidently I have not. So here's some text from the game, and then some text from me. I don't claim to be the best DW GM. Far from it, really. My players have fun and I honestly kind of hound them for feedback (they're mostly pretty laid back so "good session" is often the most I get without poking!), but whether I'm totally true to the spirit, I don't know. Anyway, from DW itself (bold in original; italics used to identify sidebars.) First, a few of the Principles most relevant to your question, then some info about moves themselves and how to make them.
Be a fan of the characters
Think of the players' characters as protagonists in a story you might see on TV. Cheer for their victories and lament their defeats. You’re not here to push them in any particular direction, merely to participate in fiction that features them and their action.
Think dangerous
Everything in the world is a target. You’re thinking like an evil overlord: no single life is worth anything and there is nothing sacrosanct. Everything can be put in danger, everything can be destroyed. Nothing you create is ever protected. Whenever your eye falls on something you’ve created, think how it can be put in danger, fall apart or crumble. The world changes. Without the characters’ intervention, it changes for the worse.
Begin and end with the fiction
Everything you and the players do in Dungeon World comes from and leads to fictional events. When the players make a move, they take a fictional action to trigger it, apply the rules, and get a fictional effect. When you make a move it always comes from the fiction.
Think offscreen too
Just because you’re a fan of the characters doesn’t mean everything happens right in front of them. Sometimes your best move is in the next room, or another part of the dungeon, or even back in town. Make your move elsewhere and show its effects when they come into the spotlight.
Some of these are empowering, e.g. Think Offscreen Too is an explicit instruction to include dangers, problems, and events which will only be revealed when the players discover them. Some are limits, like Begin And End With The Fiction, and I would say that that is a strong limit against various things mentioned in this thread and other threads. Folks have mentioned here, for example, that the alternate copies of the PCs were rather hard to swallow as a response to their situation, and that the NPC helping them was kind of hard to make sense of (e.g., the players felt they
needed to kill the guard who freed them—why? That's suspicious, and implies some conflicts over the fiction grounding the actions taken, on both sides of the screen.)
When To Make A Move
You make a move:
- When everyone looks to you to find out what happens
- When the players give you a golden opportunity
- When they roll a 6-
[Sidebar:
When a player describes their action and says “did it work?” or “what does he do when I say that?” are examples of the players looking to you to see what happens. When it’s your turn to describe the effects the players are having on the world, you can make a move.]
Generally when the players are just looking at you to find out what happens you make a soft move, otherwise you make a hard move.
A soft move is one without immediate, irrevocable consequences. That usually means it’s something not all that bad, like revealing that there’s more treasure if they can just find a way past the golem (offer an opportunity with cost). It can also mean that it’s something bad, but they have time to avoid it, like having the goblin archers loose their arrows (show signs of an approaching threat) with a chance for them to dodge out of danger.
A soft move ignored becomes a golden opportunity for a hard move. If the players do nothing about the hail of arrows flying towards them it’s a golden opportunity to use the deal damage move.
Hard moves, on the other hand, have immediate consequences. Dealing damage is almost always a hard move, since it means a loss of HP that won’t be recovered without some action from the players. When you have a chance to make a hard move you can opt for a soft one instead if it better fits the situation.
Sometimes things just work out for the best.
Choosing a Move
To choose a move, start by looking at the obvious consequences of the action that triggered it. If you already have an idea, think on it for a second to make sure it fits your agenda and principles and then do it.
Let your moves snowball. Build on the success or failure of the characters’ moves and on your own previous moves.
If your first instinct is that this won’t hurt them now, but it’ll come back to bite them later, great! That’s part of your principles (think offscreen too). Make a note of and reveal it when the time is right.
Making Your Move
When making a move, keep your principles in mind. In particular, never speak the name of your move and address the characters, not the players. Your moves are not mechanical actions happening around the table. They are concrete events happening to the characters in the fictional world you are describing.
Note that “deal damage” is a move, but other moves may include damage as well. When an ogre flings you against a wall you take damage as surely as if he had smashed you with his fists.
After every move you make, always ask “What do you do?”
From there, it goes on to talk about various specific moves, such as "offer an opportunity with cost," "deal damage," "show a downside to their class, race, or equipment," and "reveal an unwelcome truth," among others. It's too much text to quote directly, several pages' worth of discussion. These more specific descriptions give guidance for how to use the various moves, including monster and dungeon moves, which are things the GM must create for each locale/creature contextually (e.g., the aforementioned ogre flinging someone away? It probably has a "fling puny enemies away" move, or something like that. Its attacks might also do that, if it has the Forceful tag, which it probably should, given the expected size, strength, and violence of ogres.)
As for my own words...
Some of the player moves in DW explicitly limit my behavior. I must truthfully answer any question asked with Discern Realities (which is why it has a defined, narrow list of questions!) If someone rolls Spout Lore (essentially, a "knowledge check"), then I
must give an answer that is both interesting
and useful when they roll 10+ full success, but I only need to make it interesting ("it's on [the PCs] to make it useful") for a 7-9 partial success. Some of the player moves explicitly empower me, e.g. to continue with Spout Lore, I am empowered to then ask how the character came to know whatever answer I just gave them, and the player must now answer truthfully as well. Obeying these moves, without just deciding not to because I feel like it, is thus openly and explicitly part of play; the players can see that my behavior as GM is bounded too.
As for hard and soft moves, soft is the default state, and something must
happen for a hard move to apply: the players fail a roll, make a decision that ignores a threat, or take a risk knowing that there may be costs, or something similar. I no longer remember your specific intended example of a move that is "too hard," but the Principles and Agendas guide here. Always, with
everything you do, you must Play To Find Out What Happens. "Rocks fall, everyone dies" is not playing to find out what happens; it is simply fiat declaring what happens. This is thus forbidden by that Agenda. Likewise, most other forms of doing something fundamentally and permanently ending something (a life, a story, a goal, an item, whatever) are "too hard" to be casually dropped whenever you feel like it: doing so runs afoul of the Agenda mentioned, as well as a few of the Principles (certainly "begin and end with the fiction" and "make a move that follows," among others.)
Likewise, moves that are too
soft will fail to actually drive the story forward. Things will just sit in ambiguous "something is about to happen" land. The impending threats need to be
actual threats, the opportunities-with-cost equally real in both what they make possible and what cost they will exact if taken. There is certainly a curve of learning how to provide exciting and open-ended challenges. I myself only recently realized that I've been handling monster
attacks poorly, making it basically "an attack is incoming that you obviously have to dodge! What do you do?" And of course the players' answer is "I dodge." I'm having to train myself to start thinking
before the attack actually rolls out, making soft moves
earlier in the process so there is greater tension and more opportunity for difficult decisions and open-ended outcomes. But I realized this...by going back and rereading the book! Turns out it had had the guidance I needed all along, I just
forgot it.
Something I keep coming back to here is that "begin and end with the fiction" is a pretty strong guideline, especially when paired with "draw maps, leave blanks." That is, the former says (more or less) "only do things that are well-rooted in the world and understandable through said world." The latter says (more or less), "don't prepare more of the world than you need, and
intentionally leave parts of it undefined so they can be discovered later." Together, they actually put some limits on the GM's ability to just enter whatever they want into fhe fiction. There will always be
some things the players don't know, that's why you are reminded to "think offscreen too," but that Principle has a shadow in how it is phrased* that must be remembered too: you should
usually be thinking
on-screen, but sometimes supplement that by thinking offscreen.
Most moves that would be "too hard" run aground on one of those issues. Either they aren't playing to find out what happens, or they're not beginning and ending with the fiction, or they're failing to leave necessary blanks. When the Agendas and Principles are understood and applied, and the text of individual player moves obeyed, it becomes very difficult to
accidentally fall into bad GMing, and usually really easy to spot
intentionally bad GMing. By making it easy to spot and call out, even if someone is tempted toward such behavior, actually
doing it becomes less likely, as people will usually realize they will ger caught (or, being more charitable, they will realize there is or could be a problem and self-correct before it flowers.)
*E.g. the "Bend Bars, Lift Gates" move format has you choose from a list of descriptions, most of which are in the negative: it doesn't make an ordinate amount of noise, it won't be difficult to fix, etc. By NOT choosing any given option, the player is thus signalling that the reverse is true: it DOES make a lot of noise or it IS going to he difficult to fix, etc. Much of Dungeon World relies both on what the rules
directly say, and on what must be (pretty straightforwardly and directly) true because of what is said.
