Loving it it not grokking it all

Just read the Dungeon World Guide.. Very helpful and very informative.. still struggling with a few concepts, mainly with monster moves...

Say a deep elf assassin, in response to a character's action, poisons the character. Or say a basilisk turns a character to stone. How are these things overcome?

I'm not sure I understand. The player's already been turned to stone?

So much of the action and flow in DW relies on context.  How did such a thing happen?  What's the situation?

Hmmmm, that's something I wish I had covered. I think it helps to think of the monster moves as more like the GM moves than player moves: things that you use to set up danger for the players.

I never took monster "moves" to be literal Moves that you'd just lay out, like "BOOM you're suddenly dead from poison, better luck next time." They just tell you how the monster acts and what sort of things it does. Like, the deep elf attempts to poison someone. The basilisk attempts to turn you into stone, you gotta Defy Danger maybe, or figure out a way to avoid its gaze. Things like that aren't just said without a setup: you first describe the deep elf applying a sticky black goo to his blade, that sort of thing.

I always run monsters in Dungeon World like any other game. They show up, they act according to their description, and the players try to kill them. It's not like their moves give them special crazy powers; the moves just tell you what sort of creature you're dealing with: is it sneaky? brutish? conniving? That sort of thing.

So it might work like this:

Darnnath swings his war axe at his mortal enemy with the cry of his ancestors upon his lips (rolls a 5 on hack and slash). In response, the deep elf assassin ducks underneath the wild swing and stabs Drannath in the ribs with a poison-laden blade (poison them).

What do you do?

(But what do they do? What can stop the poison? I'm stuck in the world of DnD since 1977 :)

So it might work like this:

Darnnath swings his war axe at his mortal enemy with the cry of his ancestors upon his lips (rolls a 5 on hack and slash). In response, the deep elf assassin ducks underneath the wild swing and stabs Drannath in the ribs with a poison-laden blade (poison them).

What do you do?

(But what do they do? What can stop the poison? I'm stuck in the world of DnD since 1977 :)

Well, if the GM is making a softer version of the move they might say "The poison courses through your veins, you feel yourself growing dizzy and the room is spinning.  What do you do?" and you could quaff a potion or just grit your teeth and Defy that Danger.  Or maybe it's time for someone to Spout Lore to see if they know anything about poison or deep elves that might help?  Or maybe this was a hard move, set up in advance (you know they have poison, you know this one has poison, you knew the risks going in) and it's time to take your Last Breath.

"So Darrnath, you can feel the poison coursing through your veins. What's it feel like? What's it doing to you?"

"So Darrnath, that poison is making you awful slow. Mark weak. What do you do?"

"Darrnath, I hate to break it to you, but if you don't overcome this poison quick, you're gonna be facing the Black Gates pretty quick. Think your body can overcome it?"

So it might work like this:

Darnnath swings his war axe at his mortal enemy with the cry of his ancestors upon his lips (rolls a 5 on hack and slash). In response, the deep elf assassin ducks underneath the wild swing and stabs Drannath in the ribs with a poison-laden blade (poison them).

What do you do?

(But what do they do? What can stop the poison? I'm stuck in the world of DnD since 1977 :)

Well, what stops poison in your world?

Yeah, "poison them" doesn't mean "instantly kill them." Exactly what the poison does is totally up for grabs.

Turning to stone, that's obviously harsher. But you're not throwing that basilisk out of nowhere, right? You've used signs of impending doom to foreshadow it, a basilisk is a Big Deal and your players are probably gonna prepare for it.

Really, think of the monster moves as "this is how the monster might deal its damage," not "this some automatic thing I say when they meet the monster."