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.
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.)
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.
