Lethality in Combat

Okay, this is something that's come up for me with both Red Box DW and with World of Dungeons:

Combat seems brutally hard. Here's why: in D&D (or most RPGs), during combat you roll to hit (and hit or miss) and then the monster rolls to hit (and hits or misses). In DW, you roll to hit and if you miss the monster capitalizes on your mistake and gains some advantage over you (which is often loss of HP). It also happens to a lesser extent on 7-9. In Apocalypse World, this isn't such a big deal to work around since combat is generally dynamic and often only lasts a gunshot or two, but in a trad dungeon setting where there's hacking back and forth, having it so that you not only miss but take damage/trip/drop your weapon/etc. increases the overall lethality of the situation substantially. I ran the Purple Worm Graveyard and got a TPK in the beetle room (a.k.a Room #1). And that was AFTER I reduced the number of beetles in the room and nerfed their damage.

Is there a way to mitigate the inherent lethality of combat? Am I GMing it wrong?

You are not (I don't think).  Back in the day (way back in the 70's and 80's when dinosaurs battled hairbands across the interstates) when D&D was young, most of the XP was gained for Treasure.  Monsters are scary! I mean in more recent (3/4e) editions encounters are balanced so a PC can with fair confidence charge whatever it is they need to fight.

But this is insanity.  I mean seriously, if you see a 14 foot monster with a club bigger than you that uproots trees which idiot runs straight at him confident he'll survive?  If you were a real person in that story, you'd run away (as they do even in Lord of the Rings until they're cornered in Moria).  So DW lets you do fictional positioning.  I mean hacking and slashing a giant can bring him down, but it might be better to defy the danger of him smashing your puny-bug butt and lead him to a cliff where he falls off, using only 1-2 rolls with some assists from well placed arrows, or friends causing distractions.

This may be a 'gear' switch in the mind.  What are your goals?  If they are to systematically kill everything in the dungeon? Then patience, careful waiting for groups to become separated, several volleys from the dark before engaging certainly seems more logical than 'CHAAAAARGE!'.  If it's to get the secret treasure, you don't have to fight every time.  If you do choose to, well then you're brave and epic (and maybe just a smidge crazy) because you stare death in the teeth every time.  And if you die bards will sing about you (probably).

I personally don't feel this is something you're doing wrong.  I also don't think it's anything your players are doing.  Fighting people with swords who want to kill you shouldn't be a guaranteed success always.  I mean, a shiv to the belly in a barfight will kill even the stoutest person.  Battle-hardened or no.  Taking away the teeth of combat makes it less meaningful, and encourages less diverse thinking.

I've found the players with a certain gaming background don't really know how to gauge threats in DW if they're new to the game. Give it some time and it'll work itself out. Dangerous is awesome (and you're not encouraged to "balance" encounters) because it gives players pause and incentive to think of solutions rather than apply the same tool to the same problem repeatedly, often a sword.

Last Saturday in World of Dungeons, my kids, playing two PCs, encountered two large spiders.  The spiders have 1HD and do 2 points of damage.  The spiders didn't even attack at the same time.  My son's thief had only 2 HP, but a point of armor.  He was taken to 0 HP by the second spider, but my daughter's wizard made a roll to save him with bandages.  The way I set that up (with nearly no advice from the WoD rules) seemed like just the right amount of lethality.

I recently played in a game of Dungeon World run by John Harper, the guy who wrote World of Dungeons. Funny thing: despite knowing in and out that the game can be lethal, and having run games where I killed player characters, I was still a pretty brash player.

In our first (or second? I forget) session my Paladin thought he had the drop on the Flaming Skull, the big bad guy. He confidently charged him from behind. John double checked that he understood me right: "You're charging right in, no caution?" I was brash and wanted the drop on him so I said "Yup! Charging straight in. Death to the Flaming Skull." "Okay, the explosive runes you run over go off and throw you across the room..." A few minutes of play later my Paladin was dead.

Several sessions later, playing my replacement Cleric, we encountered a hobgoblin altar. By then we had learned. John actually kind of taunted us: "So you're not stepping across the profane circle on the floor? Not even a bit? The altar looks really strange..." "Hell no. We ain't no noobs."

We've made some changes since Basic to make death more of a part of play. New characters are easier to create and resurrection is pretty much always an option (though the cost is up to the GM). PCs dying doesn't mean anybody did anything wrong, its a part of play.

I've been saying this for a while about death in all games, but especially in DW: death is like a present to the GM and the player. It creates to many new opportunities—who wants revenge? Who noticed? What bargains will now never be fulfilled? Who can take advantage? There's nothing wrong with a character death.

The other thing to keep in mind if your players are more into the kill everything mode is to Show Signs of Doom. The running joke for me is "The more skulls outside the door the worse it is." Of course those skulls needn't be literal. If an area of a dungeon (or other adventuring site) is empty you'd better start wondering what creature is powerful enough to carve out some privacy...

The other thing to keep in mind if your players are more into the kill everything mode is to Show Signs of Doom. The running joke for me is "The more skulls outside the door the worse it is." Of course those skulls needn't be literal. If an area of a dungeon (or other adventuring site) is empty you'd better start wondering what creature is powerful enough to carve out some privacy...

Nothing, the scariest sign of doom ever.  I love it.

Your Paladin was bitten to death by the swarm of flying skull minions, Sage. The exploding fireballs killed Paul's wizard. That was session two. :) Good times.

This is the best:

PCs dying doesn't mean anybody did anything wrong, its a part of play.

At the first session, I like to say, "Everyone make your first character." In super-lethal games, you don't get to make a character right out of the gate that you know for sure you will be playing over and over again. You make a first character, then play to find out how long they survive. It's not until you have a level 3, or maybe level 5 character that you can start to think about them as an ongoing protagonist.

If you want to skip over the "character death funnel" of early levels, Chris, just start out at higher level. Easy-peasy.

Yeah, but first I stepped on the exploding runes, remember? They blew me across the movie theater (everyone else: long story) and I landed in the skull swarm, which is what did me in.

The other thing to keep in mind if your players are more into the kill everything mode is to Show Signs of Doom. The running joke for me is "The more skulls outside the door the worse it is." Of course those skulls needn't be literal. If an area of a dungeon (or other adventuring site) is empty you'd better start wondering what creature is powerful enough to carve out some privacy...

This! In our long running game, as the map filled in with areas we had heard of (through spout lore or discern reality or some portent of doom), they were marked on the map with a 'skull meter' - to signify its lethality and legendary adventuring status.

Also, for Chris, you have been blessed with excellent advice and examples from Sage and Stras and Iserith and Adam about how to approach death and neuter some of your player's bradaggio for caution. I would just like to say that moves other than Hack and Slash can be your friend. Suggest to the players that they might like to try an alternate course of action (moves) by couching your portents as questions....

'Hey those beetles are just getting angrier and nastier, every time you smash one down more swarm to fill the gap. As another mandible slices perilously close to your groin, your hopes about this course of melee seems like folly. What did your old mentor Darius tell you about giant beetles? Can you remember?'

'Hey those beetles are just getting angrier and nastier, every time you smash one down more swarm to fill the gap. As another mandible slices perilously close to your groin, your hopes about this course of melee seems like folly. What did your old mentor Darius tell you about giant beetles? Can you remember?'

This is golden.