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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nagol" data-source="post: 7405387" data-attributes="member: 23935">You are correct and its is one of my relatively few issues with DW.  DW provides a lot of latitude to the DM with respect to how the world reacts to failure (not to get too far into the weeds there are hard moves that cause the PC to suffer losses of resources whilst changing the situation and soft moves that simply change the situation and the GM chooses what move and repercussions to inflict whenever a partial success or failure result occurs).  I counter my issue by assigning some simple guidelines to myself so that while I hope the players succeed, I run the game fairly and with consistency.  The primary guideline I use for myself is "failures deserve a hard move".You are incorrect in that DW combat is neither war not sport, really.  It's more performance art.  What I am going to write next may seem pejorative.  It is not meant that way; I like DW.  Adventuring in DW most resembles reading a choose-your-own-adventure book.  Open the book, read a page describing the initial situation, make a choice, and flip to a page telling you the resolution and asking for your next choice.  Instead of a book, insert DM narration.  Remove the list of predefined choices and replace it with DM reaction.  Add a die roll to indicate if the player's gambit was wholly successful, partially successful, or a failure.  The DM resolves the gambit and presents the new situation and asks for the next choice. There's DW in a nutshell. I don't think of the player-DM relationship as inherently adversarial.  I think you'll agree that a DM's role cannot support full competitive play during encounter design; the power disparity is too great.  I can imagine every session starting "Rocks fall.  You all die. I win again!"  at least until the session (likely the second) where the DM looks around the empty room and asks where his players went.  I think of the D&D DM as a neutral arbiter attempting to have situations play out according the nature of the non-PCs and die rolls.  Some of the non-PCs will almost certainly be adversarial and they should be played appropriately, but the players should never see the DM as the adversary, unlike chess.  Once the encounter begins, I'll play the non-PCs with as much capability as I can muster and is plausible for the actors to display. Part of the GM's job in DW and similar games is to keep the pressure on and momentum going.  A DW after-action report should sound like a Dresden novel (if you are familiar with Jim Butcher's modern fantasy series).  The protagonists careen from situation to situation always under pressure to act -- to save themselves, to save others, to prevent a calamity, to stop the BBEG.  If the PCs attempt to evade the scene, that's fine but there will be consequences as telegraphed in the situation.  The game system is designed to support this type of action in ways D&D simply is not.  Every player gambit is expected to change the situation for better or worse.  Choices are typically less tactical.  The PCs will end up much more reactive than proactive.</blockquote>

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