Harsh moves following success

Is making a move as a consequence of success being a dick or should we be only using certain moves?

My inclination is toward "making it real."

For example, if the player says "I want to escape the gang by jumping out a three story window." I'd tell them to do it under fire and roll+cool. If successful I'd describe how she landed hard on the asphalt and takes a harm for the fall.  Or should I only describe the consequences of her actions based on the success of the roll and ignore the possible real life consequences - "You get through the window.  You follow the cascade of broken glass and land safely in a bush with a few bruises and scratches." ?

Yeah, if they succeed, they succeed. No harm cause the move doesn't call for harm. No nasty moves. That's for when they miss.

Be a fan of the characters!

Be a fan and make it interesting and make it real seem to collide here, no?

Always say what the rules demand.

Success doesn't mean that you get to make a hard move, much less a harm one. Additionally, you can only inflict harm as established. It's not established that when you succeed at a endure fire move, the MC may dish out harm if she feels appropriate.

Also: "It’s not, for instance, your agenda to make the players lose, or to deny them what they want, or to punish them, or to control them..." (108).

Good argument.  You still haven't faced the first agenda, "Make the Apocalypse World seem real." (also 108).  So a better estimation of this would be "hint of future badness" and say "You make it out the window and catch the window ledge avoiding a bone crushing landing. What do you do?"

As far as the second agenda, "Make the characters' lives, not boring," the interesting and compelling choice in jumping out the window is "face the gang up here with harmful AND social implications (getting captured and eaten, for instance) OR risking a broken leg in a three story fall."

Also, you are a bit mistaken here.  Success DOES mean I get a move.  All moves lead to moves.  Failure is not the only means to the "Moves Snowball." No?

Thanks for your input Nathan :)
- Don

Right, if you were like, before the roll was made, either it's the gang or maybe broken legs. That's making them choose. Then she jumps, endure fire. Success: by some fluke you make it fine (and the characters are badasses), Partial: Either it's broken bones or you hanging from the window. Miss: Broken leg, 2-harm.

Right, but you don't get to make a harm move. Really, when the PCs make their roll, they actually succeed at whatever they were trying at with out a catch. Give them what they work for and what the rules demand. The catches are for the 7-9 result.

You've already solved your problem: Announce future badness instead of the harm move. MC can only deal harm as established, thus most of the time you're not going to be able to make it without combat or seize.

Now, what you could do is make a Custom Move wherein it says: When you jump out of windows, roll+stories-up. 10+ take 3-harm from broken bones. 7-9: You should probably get that checked-out Miss: it's cool.

If you do that, then you have established the harm.

I like the Endure Fire suggestion.

I will say, though Nathan, it's frustrating because the wacky way I'm reading your post with sentences like "MC can only deal harm as established..." says to me you don't see how it's established. 

Lets take another example:
"I have a front that has to do with a threat where an NPC (call him Dremmer) wants to take revenge on the PCs."  Lets say one of the countdown clocks is called "cornered."  9:00 says if the PCs come to see Dremmer he'll have his gang cover all the doors.  10:00 says if the PCs threaten or provoke Dremmer he'll pull a gun.  11:00 says if the PCs jump from Dremmers office in the third floor they'll take harm and 12:00 says Dremmer sicks the gang on the PC in order to throw them in cells.

Would you (and I hope others participate and give me more than one view of this question) think that's a solid countdown clock?  Maybe not one you'd write but one that gets the job done none-the-less?

Thanks,
- Don

That's not how I make countdown clock for fronts. For me, their things that'll happen if the PC don't get involved or stop them some how.

I don't know how you could come up with that clock during your prep or how one slice follows from the next.

9, 10 and 12 all seem like disconnected responses from Dremmer. I'm not sure you need a clock for that. 11 is a custom move. When you jump from windows, you take x-harm.

You can make as hard and direct a move as you like when the players offer you the opportunity, such as when they miss a roll, or when you've set something up and they haven't interfered. Jumping out a third story window counts. There's a listing for it in the harm chapter, even, or close enough.

Inflicting harm as established isn't necessarily a hard move, it just usually is. That's to your judgment as the MC, within the principles, in service to your agenda.

Personally, most of the time, I'd tell the consequences and ask, first - "you're on the third story, you're really going to jump?" - and if they say yes, I've done my duty by them, as generously as anyone could expect.

Yeah, Nathan, I wouldn't play it like that personally.

You jump out of the window? It's my duty to make Apocalypse World real, and that means that falling out a window is going to hurt.

I'd give them their options, mid-air.

If you were to land on your feet, you'd probably take some harm from the shock, but at least you'd be ready to spring forward and get out of here. On the other hand, if you aimed to crash land in those bushes, you'd be less scratched up, but you'd also be tangled and winded (s-harm). What's it going to be?

Maybe you'd like to try and grab hold of that next ledge, and swing yourself into the second story window instead?

Being a fan of the character means wanting them to succeed at the challenges they face. It doesn't mean eliminating those challenges because they have some momentum behind them.

Yeah, I guess I just don't try to complicate successes on Moves.

If I don't call for a Move, and I do something like Vincent says up-thread, then yeah, they take the harm as a cost of their choice, with due warning.

But if I was like, roll it, the fire is gravity and they succeed, then I let them succeed without complications like harm.

The example you give x-harm vs s-harm would be great on a 7-9 result. It's a hard choice, but a 10+ doesn't call for a hard choice.

It's really depends on the framing of the roll, if one is made. If I say before they roll or jump, "even if you endure, you'll take harm" then sure, they still take harm. But if I say nothing, I haven't offered them a choice and I've broken with the rules of Endure Fire.

But looking at the title of the thread, I don't try and make harsh or hard moves, harm or otherwise, when the PCs get 10+ results.

I mean, otherwise, what's the point of the 10+ result? The results have been reduced to 7+ success with complications and Miss is a failure and a hard move.

Phew. I'm releaved. Lol.  Nathan's answers made a lot of sense but I was finding a disconnect there and I was hoping I wasn't missing the mark.

(I'm going to go ahead and talk about the inner workings of my question and if this thread needs to elsewhere that's cool) :)

Nathan, I don't know what sorts of games you normally play but AW is very different than most of the stuff we play (all solidly in the indie/story games category).  AW is a different animal.  In games i've played in the past five 8 years player authorship is all the rage but in this game the players have a myopic view based on what they experience. Our games had been very top down - scene economy, reward points, story arches, etc.  I don't see any of that in AW and so I don't add it.  We're just exploring these characters fucked up lives as they explore this fucked up world.  I am a big proponent of stakes based play and the big credo there is success shouldn't fuck a player.  Here the stakes are built into the system (brilliant) and there's little to no negotiation.  It still follows Burning Empires logic of "it can't show it's face in the mechanics until it's been seen in the fiction" but in this case you have two pieces of of the fiction that are implicit instead of explicit - what is in the MCs fronts and what will make the world seem real.  Those two things are a HUGE departure for anything we've been playing so it feels really strange to act in them.

Thoughts?
-Don

Personally, it would partly depend on what the player describes his character doing.

If he jumps off the balcony in order to escape, a la Omar in The Wire, well, he's going to take harm. Not because of the move, mind you -- if he hits a 10+, he escapes. But he's still just fallen 3 stories or whatever, so he takes harm regardless of any rolls.

I'd make sure the player is cool with whatever he's doing. If he thinks he's going to get off scott-free just because he rolls a 10+, then he's gonna be pissed when I say he takes harm even though he escapes, right? He also might decide to do something like leap from one balcony to another instead, in which case "harm as established" is something completely different.

But falling 3 stories onto your head is 3-harm, so if he gets a 10+, he's probably prepared for the landing, and takes 2-harm, or maybe 1-harm, depending on what the ground is made of. He lands on concrete? Yeah, 2-harm. He lands in a full dumpster? Okay, 1-harm, lucky bastard.

Personally, I think that a good die roll allows you to narrate specific stuff, but the stuff you narrate still has consequences, whether or not there's a die roll involved.

As a side note, if someone had Fuck This Shit or Eye on the Door, and they said their escape route was "out the window and, poof, gone," and we had already established it was a third-story window, then no harm. The fiction is: "out the window and poof, gone." As long as it's conceivable that this master of escape could get out without breaking a leg on the ground, all good. It's a special move, after all. On a 7-9, though...

So I can see Omar's situation being either a 10+ on acting under fire, or a 7-9 on Fuck This Shit/Eye on the Door (takes harm with him).

Is making a move as a consequence of success being a dick or should we be only using certain moves?

My inclination is toward "making it real."

For example, if the player says "I want to escape the gang by jumping out a three story window." I'd tell them to do it under fire and roll+cool. If successful I'd describe how she landed hard on the asphalt and takes a harm for the fall.  Or should I only describe the consequences of her actions based on the success of the roll and ignore the possible real life consequences - "You get through the window.  You follow the cascade of broken glass and land safely in a bush with a few bruises and scratches." ?

What I'd say to them is:  "Listen, roll under fire to get out of that room without anyone shooting you but the fall is still going to bring its own Harm.  Still wanna jump?"

If they jump, they jump but the success is getting out of the room without being shot, not changing the laws of gravity, nor is it for them to narrate into existence a fluffy pile of mattresses for their landing.

I see lots of custom moves where success is getting stabbed in the face slightly less than they would be if they rolled 7-9 or a miss and hear-tell of successful rolls with face-stabbing included.