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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9001866" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, that's a very interesting question, and basically the point of the most substantive rules, the statements of agenda and principles, and GM move descriptions, are meant to answer that. The GM in DW is actually VERY powerful, they present all the dangers to the PCs, as well as describe all the scenes. It is these explicit statements of what the GM's goals are, and acceptable techniques, that tell us what the GM should do (and obviously real-world GMs will or will not adhere to that, etc.). In terms of 'rocks fall', the GM DOES have the power to make a hard move, but generally it wouldn't serve any valid purpose to make it out of the blue. So, a more realistic situation might be &quot;A huge rockslide is headed right for you, what do you do?&quot; The GM has now posed the clear threat &quot;do something or die&quot; as any reasonable interpretation of 'crushed by a rockslide' is going to involve character death. Basically, unless a player just describes her character giving up, a Defy Danger move of some sort will be triggered. I mean, this is a HARSH move! However, it could reasonably arise as the final step in a rising series of the players upping the risk level (IE they have been told rockslides here are dangerous, they climbed up here anyway), as such climbing must have been pretty urgent! Maybe the GM gave a choice, slower path with lower risk, or faster path with higher risk. When you stack a few of these sorts of things, maybe with a failure on a DR to fully note the specific instance of danger, a lethal hard move COULD be reasonable. As for assessing whether or not this WAS justified, that's hard. I mean the rules leave it up to the table to work out any issues of this kind, ultimately. I would hope that the GM has sufficiently conveyed the risk and created enough tension to make it clear that this move is warranted, but if they haven't, well, I guess it will get turned into a soft move, perhaps!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 9001866, member: 82106"] Well, that's a very interesting question, and basically the point of the most substantive rules, the statements of agenda and principles, and GM move descriptions, are meant to answer that. The GM in DW is actually VERY powerful, they present all the dangers to the PCs, as well as describe all the scenes. It is these explicit statements of what the GM's goals are, and acceptable techniques, that tell us what the GM should do (and obviously real-world GMs will or will not adhere to that, etc.). In terms of 'rocks fall', the GM DOES have the power to make a hard move, but generally it wouldn't serve any valid purpose to make it out of the blue. So, a more realistic situation might be "A huge rockslide is headed right for you, what do you do?" The GM has now posed the clear threat "do something or die" as any reasonable interpretation of 'crushed by a rockslide' is going to involve character death. Basically, unless a player just describes her character giving up, a Defy Danger move of some sort will be triggered. I mean, this is a HARSH move! However, it could reasonably arise as the final step in a rising series of the players upping the risk level (IE they have been told rockslides here are dangerous, they climbed up here anyway), as such climbing must have been pretty urgent! Maybe the GM gave a choice, slower path with lower risk, or faster path with higher risk. When you stack a few of these sorts of things, maybe with a failure on a DR to fully note the specific instance of danger, a lethal hard move COULD be reasonable. As for assessing whether or not this WAS justified, that's hard. I mean the rules leave it up to the table to work out any issues of this kind, ultimately. I would hope that the GM has sufficiently conveyed the risk and created enough tension to make it clear that this move is warranted, but if they haven't, well, I guess it will get turned into a soft move, perhaps! [/QUOTE]

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