Cure disease

What can a cleric do to cure disease?  I gave some one a disease and then the cleric was scanning through their spells to see what they could do about it.  Could find it directly mentioned.

Pray.

The repair spell works too. But yeah, I'd start fulfilling my petition.

The best part about being a Cleric is that god is the answer to everything.  Missing a limb?  Pray.  Friends hate you?  Pray.  Can't decide what to do with your life?  Pray.

And then the testing.  The suffering and the hard work to impress your god and the blood and sweat and tears and finally glorious acceptance.

Love me some Clerics.

Mechanically that's largely presented in the Divine Guidance move. Keep in mind that "some useful knowledge or boon related to your deity’s domain" can mean a lot of things.

Is you deity a god of bloody conquest? Then healing the disease of a mighty warrior certainly fits their domain.

Is you deity a god of what lies below? Curing a slime disease probably fits them.

The place where it gets interesting is when your deity is, say, a god of what lies below and you want to cure you tower-dwelling wizard friend of cockatrice flu. Not much of what lies below there, right? So then you have to start praying, bargaining, and trying to look for ways to make your problem fit you deity's interests.

So the only option for a Paladin even one with Cleric spells is to lay on hands then?

So the only option for a Paladin even one with Cleric spells is to lay on hands then?

Mechanically, maybe.  Fictionally, no way.  Remember, even if you don't have a move for something it doesn't mean it's impossible.

In fact, if there is no move for it you have even more room to work out a solution through the fiction.

Go on an adventure!

Could also try bringing in the mage's ritual for another mechanical solution.

I'm hoping that there's a solid explanation of this sort of lateral thinking in the text.  A lot of people will not 'get it' if this isn't called out specifically.

We've tried and tried to make this clear throughout the text, but we'll keep trying. The new (as of the proofing version) sections on the adventuring life and Gming common situations are supposed to lead to this.

Fundamentally, we tell the GM over and over that their job is to present a fantastic world. That means that they show the reasonable fictional outcomes of the players' actions. The moves are a special case of that.

As a GM, when the player says "I cure his disease" the first thing to ask is "how?" If their response makes no sense—if they say "I stare at him real hard"—the GM just portrays the world and nothing happens. If the players take an action that could, maybe, lead to it—like "I pray to my god, chanting and lighting incense"—you respond with a soft move (they're looking at you to find out what happens). Maybe you give them what they want with a cost ("Yur, god of darkness, heals you but you find that you're uncomfortable in the light now"). Maybe you show signs of  impending doom ("The red blotches of infection go away, all except one. You feel better, but the last blotch throbs with potential.").

We've tried to make this really clear: if a move doesn't apply, the GM portrays the world honestly and maybe makes a move.

I probably haven't been able to get through those sections yet then.  I may have been too busy running the game and didn't see it.  I'm wondering though if some call out/sidebar in the section on basic move or something might help new GMs and players.