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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9016615" data-attributes="member: 42582">A &quot;soft move&quot; is the GM introducing new stuff into the fiction that steps up the risk/theat/foreboding/&quot;rising action&quot; but doesn't thwart the aspiration of the player in having their PC do something. A hard move is the GM introducing stuff into the fiction that concretely thwarts, at least to some degree, here-and-now.A slightly boring example, but one that I think can make the point, is this: in Moldvay Basic D&amp;D play, if a player says &quot;I search for secret doors&quot; with the aspiration of finding one, it would be a hard move to say &quot;You don't find any&quot;. It would also be a hard move to say &quot;You find one, but when you open it a thoul leaps out from the hidden cavity and attacks you.&quot; Under the rules of Moldvay Basic, the GM can make those sorts of hard moves regardless of the state of the rising action, and regardless of what the player rolls on their dice, by reference to their notes (eg if the notes say &quot;no secret doors&quot; then none will be found even on a roll of 1 on a d6; if the notes say &quot;a thoul is behind the secret door and attacks anyone who opens it&quot; then the thoul attack is legitimate regardless of what the player rolled).In DW/AW, the GM does not make hard moves based on reference to their notes. The rules that tell them when to make hard moves, and that set out what counts as permissible hard moves (&quot;You don't find any secret doors&quot; isn't, without more, a permissible hard move), take as their inputs not the content of GM notes but the state of the rising action and the result of player dice rolls.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9016615, member: 42582"] A "soft move" is the GM introducing new stuff into the fiction that steps up the risk/theat/foreboding/"rising action" but doesn't thwart the aspiration of the player in having their PC do something. A hard move is the GM introducing stuff into the fiction that concretely thwarts, at least to some degree, here-and-now. A slightly boring example, but one that I think can make the point, is this: in Moldvay Basic D&D play, if a player says "I search for secret doors" with the aspiration of finding one, it would be a hard move to say "You don't find any". It would also be a hard move to say "You find one, but when you open it a thoul leaps out from the hidden cavity and attacks you." Under the rules of Moldvay Basic, the GM can make those sorts of hard moves regardless of the state of the rising action, and regardless of what the player rolls on their dice, by reference to their notes (eg if the notes say "no secret doors" then none will be found even on a roll of 1 on a d6; if the notes say "a thoul is behind the secret door and attacks anyone who opens it" then the thoul attack is legitimate regardless of what the player rolled). In DW/AW, the GM does not make hard moves based on reference to their notes. The rules that tell them when to make hard moves, and that set out what counts as permissible hard moves ("You don't find any secret doors" isn't, without more, a permissible hard move), take as their inputs not [I]the content of GM notes[/I] but [I]the state of the rising action[/I] and [I]the result of player dice rolls[/I]. [/QUOTE]

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