Disarming and other stunts

It's a good debate! I claim no special authority, I'm just a player like everyone.

This is really interesting to me, I had never considered that a player could refuse the 7-9. I always read "the GM will offer' to mean just that it's the GM's responsibility to come up with the choices.

You can use H&S if it works for the situation, I guess. What does it mean to attack in melee? Maybe it means a disarming manuevers as well. My only issue is that H&S uses strictly STR, and if the character is using pure finesse it seems an odd fit. In my mind, you're attempting a dangerous manuevers, and the danger is being hurt by the enemy's weapon. On a strong hit, H&S deals damage. But if the player is only trying to disarm them...

Anyway, like most moves in DW, it all depends on the fictional circumstance. Personally, I turn yo Defy quite often and just wanna stress that you can definitely deal damage on a weak hit or miss, as part of your cofferdams "worse outcome." As long as you remember that a 7-9 is fundamentally a success, but with a cost.

Whether its boring entirely depends a bunch on the GM's offer. I generally find it interesting to find out what players are willing to endure for success. What I find really interesting is the GM move after the offer is declined. Everyone's turned to the GM now to find out what happens next, right?

Scrape, I think many GMs just tell the player a worse outcome and move on, but that isn't really how it seems that the move reads.

Maybe this is just one of those things that will differ, table to table. At my table, when the dice are rolled the situation always changes. Thinking back, I have definitely been like you can do this if you're willing to let this other thing happen." And if they're not willing to do it, that's like hesitating or flinching and the enemy reacts to that. Something always changes, that's how I use the dice.

To answer your question, in my example choice of "to disarm her, you must drop your weapon or damage it," I wasn't thinking that backing down was an option. They have attempted the manuevers and they're at a crucial moment where they hang on and damage their weapon, or else let go and lose it. Those are their two options. No matter what, they succeeded on their disarm roll and the enemy will be disarmed: it's a question of which less-desirable side effect takes place.

That's how I do it! Your method may vary!

I'm with you Scrape. When the dice hit the table consequences occur.

I like for the players to always feel that their dice roll causes something to happen, even if it's something bad. I try to avoid a dice roll that results in "nothing happened". For me that's what every other RPG out there does, but Dungeon World is constantly "pushing" things forward. Characters act, dice may be rolled, cool stuff happens!

At our table no one makes a dice roll without a little thought beforehand because there is no "opting out", something is definitely going to happen! Are you prepared for the consequences of your action? If so, roll those bones! If not, you may want to consider a different action.

I'm mulling this over. It's sort of a question of narrative authority and the role that the dice play. For me, the attempted action is set in stone before any dice are rolled: the player is trying to disarm their foe. Now reality is hanging for a second, waiting for the fate of the dice roll, yeah?  (Fortune in the middle-style);There's no going back on it. If they fail, then their enemy has blocked the attempt and I narrate what happened. If they succeed, then it's done and I have to narrate the enemy's reaction to the success of that move. But the 7-9 is different in the timeliness. Often, I stop in the middle of the action, pinpointing a split-second where something can go wrong. I'll often give the player a choice of how it goes wrong, but the action is mid-progress. There's no ret-conning out of the situation, we're stuck firmly in the moment. When the player makes a choice, time continues and we play it out. But it's like a little frozen moment within the frozen moment, where the dice have something to say but so does the player or character.

7-9 results are usually more interesting than hits or misses to me, and this is just another reason why.

When I first read through Dungeon World I thought that the 7-9 results were going to be the most interesting but I also asked myself "How often are those 3 numbers going to come up?" I was pleasantly surprised to discover that those numbers come up way more than half of the time. Awesome!

When I first read through Dungeon World I thought that the 7-9 results were going to be the most interesting but I also asked myself "How often are those 3 numbers going to come up?" I was pleasantly surprised to discover that those numbers come up way more than half of the time. Awesome!

Almost like they were statistically more probable... dun dun DUN

Okay, so this intrigued me. I spent some more time with the Apocalypse World move that Defy Danger is drawn from, Act Under Fire (Page 190-192). Here's the GM's offer of a hard bargain:

Roark’s hit, and Marie tries to
drag him to cover. (On a 7–9, maybe I give her a hard bargain:
she can get him to safety, but only if she takes a bullet herself.)

So that's clearly an offer that the player can opt out of, abandon Roark or take a bullet. But, clearly also not boring if the player chooses to opt out, cause there's poor Roark lying out there. Here's an ugly choice:

Keeler the gunlugger’s taken off her shoes and she’s sneaking
into Dremmer’s camp, armed as they say to the upper teeth. If
they hear her, she’s fucked. (On a 7–9, maybe I give her an ugly
choice between alerting the camp and murdering an innocent
teenage sentry.) She hits the roll with an 8, so the ugly choice
it is. “There’s some kid out here, huddled under this flimsy tin
roof with a mug of who-knows-what. You think you’re past him
but he startles and looks right at you. You can kill him before
he makes a noise, but you’ll have to do it right this second. Do
you?”

Here, the player can't really opt out of the choice. She's acting. She's under fire. To put it in Dungeon World terms, they can opt out of the Defying part, but then they have to deal with the Danger. Here's a worse outcome:

B

ran the savvyhead’s got less than a minute to get Frankie’s
car started again before Balls and friends are on them. (On a
7–9, maybe I give him a worse outcome: he gets the car started,
but Balls’ first couple of people are there already. I picture him
tearing away with Poor Skimla clinging to the boot.) ”

Interestingly, the word used above isn't offer, it's give, which seems fitting. Again, here's a situation where opting out is essentially meaningless, right? I mean, I guess you could decline this worse outcome and take a much worse outcome.

The thing that's clear in the above choices is that none of them is a choice between Defying Danger and nothing happening. Let's look at the example in Dungeon World.

GM: Hmm, well, I think the only way you can gain any traction, tough guy, is if you use your dagger to pull yourself up the last few feet. It’s going to be lodged in there until you have some time to pull it loose and there’s an angry spellcaster nearby.
Emory: I can always get a new dagger when I get home. Time to finish this climb and that cultist.

It's arguably not as strong as the Apocalypse world choices. But, what happens if Emory says "I can't lose this dagger!" and opts out? Umm....angry spellcaster, nearby...Emory's exposed on the side of a frost covered ravine with a dangerous sorcerer nearby. The GM can just deal damage at this point.
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And, yes. I like to overthink things.

That's interesting, noclue. I came to DW with a background in ApocWorld, so maybe that's why I considered the language differently.

Anyway, there will def be some situations like "do you press on or give up?" But I think those are exceptional. My default is to assume that the player is following through (that's how we got to the move, by doing something), and that now the 7-9 means they don't quite get what they want. But they're gonna get something. I mean, it's a success, right? Just not a full success.

So I make my ugly choices about which thing you sacrifice to do it, not whether you sacrifice something at all.

Interesting comparison between AW and DW.  While I had a little bit of AW exposure, DW play rapidly eclipsed it. Scrape, if I had had enough AW background I probably would have never gotten hung up on the "offer" thing.

Quote

GM: Hmm, well, I think the only way you can gain any traction, tough guy, is if you use your dagger to pull yourself up the last few feet. It’s going to be lodged in there until you have some time to pull it loose and there’s an angry spellcaster nearby.
Emory: I can always get a new dagger when I get home. Time to finish this climb and that cultist.

It's arguably not as strong as the Apocalypse world choices. But, what happens if Emory says "I can't lose this dagger!" and opts out? Umm....angry spellcaster, nearby...Emory's exposed on the side of a frost covered ravine with a dangerous sorcerer nearby. The GM can just deal damage at this point.

This is starting to gel for me. Even though Emory would be able to opt out of the specific danger that was being defied (climbing upward even though the cliff was now covered in ice) if the bargain wasn't to their liking, backing down from the Defy Danger that was started could be seen as tantamount to looking to the GM to see what happens next.  The angry spellcaster was a present danger, so mojo-to-the-face.

Quote from: RenoGM on September 15, 2013, 02:25:55 PM

When I first read through Dungeon World I thought that the 7-9 results were going to be the most interesting but I also asked myself "How often are those 3 numbers going to come up?" I was pleasantly surprised to discover that those numbers come up way more than half of the time. Awesome!

Almost like they were statistically more probable... dun dun DUN

Math was never my strong suit!

Ultimately I think it is this kind of flexibility that makes Dungeon World so appealing and enjoyable to run.

Yeah, the bargain doesn't have to be "if you want to succeed, X happens." It can (maybe should? be "you succeed, but X or Y will happen. Choose one."

In the example I quoted above, if Emory doesn't want to leave their dagger behind for whatever reason, what happens? Do they fall, or just remain there until it's time for them to Defy Danger Con to just hang on, or are they compelled to use the dagger because that's the "offer that cannot be refused" that the GM has given them?

If Emory doesn't want to leave the dagger behind, it's not that he can decide not to start climbing once the dice have hit the table. He's started up the icy cliff - that's the acting despite an imminent threat that he had to do to be able to for roll the move in the first  If he doesn't want to leave the dagger behind, he's partway up the cliff, not falling off, but exposed for whatever happens to him.

At this point I'd probably move the spotlight onto some other party member, give them a chance to create an opening for Emory to get up -- or else, when the spotlight goes back on Emory, he's got another Defy Danger against whatever else gets dumped down on him.