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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6783199" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Play example (sblocked for space).  I believe I've used it before so it may be familiar to some folks.[sblock][/sblock]This is, of course, Dungeon World. There are lots and lots of dangers that the player is aware of when setting out on this harrowing excursion for the dog:1)  Waning daylight.2)  Frozen wasteland.3)  Looming blizzard on the periphery that could change direction at a moment's notice.4)  A quiver (though recently modestly refreshed) that isn't rich enough in arrows for a protracted skirmish.5)  Saerie is without her injured bear companion.6)  Saerie is down some HPs.7)  A land filled with dangerous creatures that are inexplicably going mad with murderous bloodlust.8)  The dog is terrified and starving...an unpredictable and desperate creatures makes for a dangerous creature.9)  We're already aware of creatures morphing and the PCs have just had an encounter where the ruined town they were seeking is bereft of all life but one dog.  The common house was a house of horrors akin to the final scene in Aliens; a gestating abomination hatchery where many/most (?) of the former inhabitants were in pods and changing into something unfathomable...connected to each other and guarded by a sentient mass of tentacles and teeth.  They've seen signs of this before in the open tundra (a burst cocoon suspended in a glacial moraine, gore leading off into the wilderness).  Abominations obviously lurk in this place.But the PC in question (Saerie) feels bound (literally - by 2 of her 4 bonds) to track down this terrified, starving, old dog that sprinted out of the common (horror) house when Otthor and Rawr (the other PC and the bear companion) approached and the tentacle mass smashed the front doors into splinters and attacked them.  The formerly trapped, now free, dog ran straight out of the settlement.  The PCs knew (a) that deranged, psyche-assailing sounds and images flooded this place, (b) every living thing here is gone or changed...save for this lone dog.  So, bound by her duties and yearning for clues, the PC decides to defy all of these potential dangers and set off headlong into the arctic tundra in search of the dog.Getting into the nuts and bolts of the above sblocked instance of play, there is a specific moment where the conflict is escalated.  From there stems a snowballing situation that turns into impactful decision-points.  The PC's Parley move with the dog is an outright failure (which, of course, earns her xp).  There are many dangers I could have made manifest from this.  I could have had the starving dog attack her (Turn the Move Back on Them).  I could have had the blizzard suddenly and violently change course, cutting her off from the settlement so that she must find shelter or likely perish from exposure in this frozen wasteland (Reveal an Unwelcome Truth).  I could have had a monster (perhaps a hidden tundra yeti) ambush her or a false snow floor swallow her up into a crevasse (Use a Monster, Danger, or Location Move).  I could have done any number of things that made sense given all the dangers that lurk in this place.I chose to introduce the ominous thundering of the maddened reindeer herd (Show Signs of An Approaching Threat).  Why?  Because it escalates things dramatically and creates an interesting decision-point for the character.  Things could snowball very, very badly for the player from this point depending on what they do and how they roll.  It also realizes the foreshadowing a did in a prior encounter with a Winter Wolf and his Dire Wolf pack when I made this threat a latent one.  It fails the situation forward.  Her intent in this scene is to befriend the dog, get it back to safety, confirm her suspicions (the dog is deaf therefore invulnerable to the psyche-assailing affect happening at World's End Bluff), and attempt to communicate with the dog to find out what happened in the now-ruined settlement (she can speak with animals).  If I just kill the dog with a monster or if I make the dog unreachable (either because it fights her to the death because it wants to eat her), then that is a hard failure that makes her intent unrealizable.  So I complicate the realization of her intentions with major problems that can quickly turn into mortal ones.How badly does she want to rescue this dog?  She could have made an action declaration that she frightens the dog off in the direction of the herd (creating interference with a death sentence for the dog) and melted into her surroundings (she has a Camouflage move that would have made this trivial for her), evading the oncoming threat of the maddened herd.  Nope, she looks for sufficient cover for she and the terrified animal, grabs it, and takes cover in a nearby snow drift.  In the desperate scramble, the protesting dog upends her quiver, spilling 2 of her 3 Ammo onto the snow.  Another choice.  How much does she want that 2 Ammo?  An archer Ranger transiting a deadly frozen wilderness with only 1 Ammo (with no confirmed means nearby to Resupply) is a recipe for disaster in Dungeon World.  She can save the arrows but face the herd (and whatever shakes out of that...which would almost surely be a chase scene...with an old, starving dog as a liability...).  Or...she can secure the dog and her safety and just deal with the unfortunate ammo deficiency.- There is no railroad here.- The player has agency going in to the conflict (awareness of the dangers and the stakes) and agency during the conflict to affect the trajectory of the scene.  Increased specificity in action declarations (or my own increased demands for specificity on those action declarations) and intensified, discrete resolution of micro-component-parts of each action declaration (requiring several more rolls rather than effectively abstracting things by saying "yes" because we aren't focusing on non-thematic, conflict-neutral, minor actions whose resolution might lead to tedium and pace-atrophy), and process-sim rendering of fallout by the GM (the dog hates/attacks you is the only possible outcome of a failed Parley with Leverage as food for the starving canine) wouldn't have increased player agency.  - Narrative momentum never stalls and a dynamic scene which could have borne itself in any number of ways depending on differing Player Moves, resolution of those Moves, and corresponding GM Moves.  This scene could have ended with:a)  PC deathb)  dog death or at least the resource/asset being lost to the PCc)  player getting lost in the frozen wilderness with or without the dogd)  player being stuck out in the blizzard with or without the doge)  player's resources (HPs, Ammo, Adventuring Gear, Rations, general gear/weapons including her cold weather gear which protects her from having to Defy Danger from the elements) becoming utterly diminished (instead of just partially) for the future adventure/journeyf)  discovering something interesting or terrible about the highlands setting/mysteries.The dog could have met an unceremonious end out on the frozen tundra.  Or it could have become Rations for the PCs in a barren wilderness where foraging is an impossibility.  Or it could have been just another dog (not a point of interest for the PCs).  Instead, this dog became a dear, hobbit-like companion for the PCs and a linchpin for the game's future.  That is how proficient use of the Fail Forward technique and (coherent, high-utility but low complexity) system work together to achieve their intended result - snowballing, "play to find out what happens" emergent story and player agency dynamically affecting the trajectory.</blockquote>

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