In depth combat: more rolls=more dangerous

And so, yeah, if you zoom out to fewer rolls, then there's less risk, and less chance of taking lots of harm and dying. But, since I think people naturally get more into the details of the stuff they think is important, that seems natural. You shouldn't kill a PC because of a miss over something you abstracted because it's not that important. That's an opportunity to introduce complications that you think ARE important and zoom back in.

And then if you do get killed after one of those long fights where you care about all the details, then at least you died for something meaningful.

This is a good discussion with lots of great examples. Thanks for the lengthy write-ups, Johnstone and noclue, it's cool to see the different ways of handling one situation. It's one of the things that I love about AW. Setting the stakes for each move is super important and it's rad to be able to shift those stakes as necessary.