Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8309135" data-attributes="member: 82106">Eh, I think the overall conclusion I come to from this and what [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] said on the subject is it is pretty fuzzy and arbitrary. For example, "You see a wall of flames approaching your (wooden) castle! If you don't do something it looks grim." Is this a hard move? Well, maybe. I mean, you could consider it to be "an unpleasant truth." The PCs must act NOW in order to fix it, but they have not taken a loss yet. If they just stand and watch, their castle will burn down, and THAT would be a hard move, no doubt about it! If they DO act, well, they will certainly be subjected to hard danger before its over, but the move itself isn't "Defy Danger or else, right now."The question is really kind of technical. If I tell you 'an orc is charging you' is that a hard move? Certainly if the next sentence is 'and you take 4 damage as he spits you with his spear!' that is very hard. What if the player gets to respond with Defy Danger? I'd say this is a pretty hard move, but it could arise as a GM soft move, nobody has actually been harmed. Still, I think if you are asking the player to DD or H&S right now or else take damage, that is pretty hard, it is appropriate as a hard move, though possibly one where you are giving the players a bit of room to shape things. In any case, even in the first case, if one of the players jumped in right there and interrupted the GM to interpose her PC (Defend Another) I think she gets a chance to do so. So it is hard to say that the existence of a player move response definitely makes a move soft.I don't think it is all that critical a distinction anyway. GMs should really think about pacing. I mean DW literally states that the GM moves are basically "what a GM would be doing anyway." The distinction is USEFUL, but it should not be dominating your thinking in play. If you have been making a bunch of quite soft moves, hinting at danger, building tension, then at some point you will make a harder move. The tension will suddenly condense as the shadowy hidden threat materializes into an attack! (or something).</blockquote>

Verification