Sorry for the somewhat late response here. I started this and then had to go do stuff.
Perhaps, but I've been trying to get at something a step earlier here: where a prior failure is assumed by the scene where there wasn't any roll or opportunity to avoid that failure.
To elaborate: Player states "I'll spend the day discreetly watching the warehouse looking for entrances, guard patterns, shift changes, that sort of thing; all the while trying not to get caught or shot." No dice are rolled.
Thinking it a soft move, the GM says something like: "OK. After a few hours a guard approaches you... <then speaks in character as the guard, asking what I'm doing here> ..."
You... can't do that.
Only GMs make soft moves, at least in DW, and I'm pretty sure in other PbtA games. The distinction has no meaning for player characters. "You have to do it to do it" and "if you do it, you do it" together effectively make all player moves "hard" moves, but again that's not a distinction with any meaning when talking about player moves.
The player has said a very high level overview of what they intend to do. This is nowhere near the adequate level of detail for a DW game. My players do this (less than they used to but still more than I'd like; they are shy and cautious), so I respond with som variation of the following:
- "Okay, how are you doing that? Walk me through your process." (This is probably my most common way of asking.)
- "What kinds of things are you looking for? What's your starting approach?"
- "Where(/how) do you want to begin doing that? How do you prepare, and what precautions are you taking?"
There are many ways to ask the question but it all boils down to "okay, tell me more, and
be specific." Without more specific answers, I don't have the ability to make moves, neither hard nor soft. Hence, your concerns over having been overridden without a chance to do anything are simply impossible; actually running the game the way you're told to forbids doing what you have described.
What the GM just did there was arbitrarily decide my attempt at being discreet has failed (a big part of being discreet is not being noticed or attracting attention, and clearly I've done both)...or, perhaps less charitably, has railroaded me into a situation I-as-character (and thus as player) didn't want as an outcome.
Correct. They used a hard move (guaranteed failure of being discreet) when they should have asked you how you were doing your vaguely-described actions you had declared. That's against the rules of DW: the DM did not "play to find out what happens," and you as the player did not follow the requirement that "you have to do it to do it" (you must actually describe what you are doing, to a reasonable degree of detail, in order to actually
do things.)
Now if I'd been given, say, a roll to maintain my discreet-ness and come up with partial success (on outright failure I assume guards-plural would be coming at me with handcuffs!
) - and-or a roll (which I then fail) to notice the guard's approach in time that I could innocently turn my face away, wander off, and avoid any conversation - all would be cool; and now I gotta talk my way out of this in character and-or make what I can of it. Absent those chances (or similar) to avoid the undesired scene, however, I posit the scene as presented is invalid.
Which you should have gotten. I can't say exactly how you would choose to investigate and try to remain hidden, but once you had specified what you were
doing to case the joint and evade detection, that would absolutely involve two moves: Discern Realities and Defy Danger.
The first is for when you're closely examining something to learn about what it is, how it works, etc.; casing the joint is totally within the remit of Discern Realities. You roll+WIS; on a 10+, choose three questions from the list, on 7-9 choose one. The GM must answer these questions honestly. They are:
- What happened here recently?
- What is about to happen?
- What should I be on the lookout for?
- What here is useful or valuable to me?
- Who’s really in control here?
- What here is not what it appears to be?
Take +1 forward (add one to your next roll) when acting on the answers.
So, most likely, I would have you describe the specific
ways you are trying to case the joint. What are you looking for? How do you approach it? What's the first thing you check or look into? Etc. Once I know that, it sets the stage for both the actual Discern Realities roll (because you have met the requirements, the move
must happen: "if you do it, you do it") and the subsequent Defy Danger move.
Defy Danger is probably the most common move in all of Dungeon World, because it is
very literally, "When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity, say how you deal with it and roll." You add the relevant modifier based on your approach (e.g. "powering through" is the term used for +STR), and then:
- On a 10+, you do what you set out to, the threat doesn’t come to bear.
- On a 7–9, you stumble, hesitate, or flinch: the GM will offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice.
The one and only way the GM can make soft moves (indeed, moves of any kind) against the player
without the player making a move first, is when the player presents the GM with a "golden opportunity." This is described as follows:
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.
As you can see, this is
not just something the DM can toss out when they feel like, even in the form of exploiting an opportunity. The player has to clearly decide
not to do something about an impending threat or problem that they are aware of. Further, the GM is required to actually dig into what the player is saying they do; abstract high-level descriptions like "discreetly watching the warehouse" and "trying not to get caught" are nowhere near specific enough, and thus cannot qualify as the player clearly deciding not to deal with a problem.
A DM
might frame a situation such that there is an
impending threat though. for example, "As you're walking down the alley behind the building, you see a guard approaching, cigarette already dangling lazily from his mouth. Preoccupied with the cares and grumbles of a guard on break, he hasn't noticed you.
Yet. What do you do?" This frames the
potential for a problem, while recognizing that the player values staying hidden just as much as they value getting information, if not moreso. There's multiple possible ways to deal with it (Dex to dive behind nearby boxes; Str to knock the guy out before he can spot you; Cha to spin a story; perhaps Int to predict where the guard will stop and thus where you can stand to avoid being seen; etc.)
Further, this sort of scene, a guard casually walking through where someone is trying to sneak around, is both perfectly naturalistic and exactly the kind of tense "what happens next!?" moment that a story about sneaky people would feature. If it goes wrong (roll 6-), finding ways to respond to that problem becomes the focus of play. If it goes well (10+), the tension passes, and maybe the sneaky person learns something. And if it goes wonky (7-9), the situation gets complicated--tension is heightened and new action is required to resolve things. Every possible result leads to something interesting happening.
