Tinkering with Hack & Slash

There's a lot a like about Hack and Slash, but it's always bugged me how utterly mechanical the player side of the move is. You "deal your damage," and maybe evade the enemy's attack, but the move is silent regarding the momentum of the fight itself.

The move relies on the GM "reading the tea leaves" and interpreting a lot of details, such as...

• the PC's damage roll
• the monster's damage roll (if any)
• the armor & remaining HP on each side
• the tags of the weapons/monsters involved
• the PC's fictional action 
• the PC's intent
• GM principles (give every monster life, begin & end with the fiction, be a fan of the PCs, etc.)

...in order to determine what happens during a Hack and Slash and what to do immediately thereafter. Plus, you can deal like crap 3 damage to a foe with 2 armor and 8 HP and it's easy to be like "why did I bother."  Even one of the examples of the move in the game text (Jarl and goblins) is pretty flavorless exchange of numbers with no meaningful change to the fiction. 

I've tinkered with changes to Hack and Slash before (for example, see here).  But I think I might have hit on something I really like:

When you fight in melee or close quarters, roll +STR: On a 7+, you make your attack (deal damage!) and suffer the enemy’s attack; on a 10+, also pick 2; on a 7-9, also pick 1 (but not the first one).

• You evade/counter/prevent the enemy’s attack
• Your attack is powerful/fast/brutal: add +1d6 to your damage
• You hold the initiative or give it to an ally; say what you do next, or who gets to go next

It's largely the same as standard Hack & Slash, but there's a new parameter: initiative.  

If the PC chooses to hold the initiative, then, after the Hack & Slash move (and the monster's attack) are resolved, the PC gets to immediately follow up and say what they do. The GM doesn't get to make another move, not even a soft one.  The Hack & Slasher can either go themselves, or they can pass the spotlight to another PC and let them go, without the GM making a soft move.

So imagine the Fighter just rolled a miss on Volley and my move was for the ogre to smash his cross bow and grab him by the right arm and heave him up! (take something by force). The Cleric is on the ground next to them, reeling from a previous move, so I stay on the Fighter, hanging there by his right arm, the ogre clearly about to use him to bludgeon the Cleric. "What do you do?"  

"I draw one of my many knives with my left hand, heave up, and stab this thing in the wrist before it use me as a club!"  Cool, sounds like fighting in melee, so the Fighter rolls Hack & Slash.

On a 10+, he gets 2 picks.  If he picks:

• Evade attack + extra damage, he'd do d10+d6 and let's say he gets 9. Not enough to drop the ogre, but I think he hacked it's hand off!  "Yeah, not only do you stab it in the hand, you like chop it's hand clean off at the wrist, and it howls and you land in a heap."  But because the Fighter didn't hold the initiative, now I make a GM move.  "Before you can roll to your feet, though, you hear this horrible wood-snapping & crunching noise as it snatches up a sapling and starts swinging it down at you like a club, what do you do?"
  
  Now the Fighter is in reaction mode, right?  He might still pull of a clever Hack & Slash in here, but it's probably a Defy Danger. And regardless, he's reacting to me!
• Evade attack + hold initiative:  Only d10 damage, let's say 4.  "You stab it in the wrist and it drops you." But now the Fighter has the initiative, so he gets to go.  Maybe the Fighter asks "what's it doing," and I'll say it's clutching it's wrist in pain, what do you do?  And then the Fighter gets to decide: charge in? run away? go the Cleric's aid?  It's his call, and while there's still clearly a danger, there's no immediate peril he has to react to.
• Extra damage + hold initiative:  Does d10+d6 damage, let's say 9 again.  Chops the ogre's hand off, drops the ground, but because he's exposed to the ogre's attack. I decide to separate them violently. "...but before you can roll to your feet, it just punts you in the side and sends you flying. Take 1d10+1 damage and you come rolling to a stop maybe 15 feet away."  And now, the Fighter has the initiative, so I'm like "what do you do?" So the Fighter is like "what's the ogre doing?" and I'm like "standing there, doubled over, howling and holding it's bloody stump."  And the Fighter's like "Cleric, you go!"  And we switch to the Cleric, who's not far from the ogre, and now he gets to cast fear or entangle or get up and smash the thing on the head (another Hack & Slash) or get the hell out of there (probably not even triggering Defy Danger).  

On a 7-9, the Fighter picks 1 (and can't pick "evade their attack"). If he picks:

• Extra damage: it's like above (9 damage from the fighter, lops its hand off, gets punted away 15 feet) but instead of me turning to the Fighter and saying "what do you do?" I get to make a move. I've just sent the Fighter a ways away, and the Cleric is still nearby, so I'm like "Cleric, you see the Fighter lop the ogre's hand off and get booted, and the thing howls in rage and starts flailing about and it's beady hate-filled eyes set on you and just stomps toward you with it's good hand, clearly trying to grab you and throttle you, what do you do?"
  
  I took the initiative, and I'm making the Cleric react.  Also, I took the spotlight off the Fighter.
• Hold the initiative:  stabs the wrist (doesn't chop it off), gets booted, and ask the Fighter "what do you do?"  "What's it up to?"  "Grabbing it's wrist in pain. What do you do?"  "Cleric, you go!"  And then the Cleric gets to go!  

I think I like this a lot.  The fact that we have to think about the initiative means we have to imagine the situation and the momentum of it. The GM has explicit guidelines on whether to make a soft move after the Hack & Slash exchange.

It does make H&S a little "better" for the PCs, because you can do the extra d6 damage on a 7-9, or on a 10+, at the cost of ceding the initiative. 

And I guess that there would be some cases where the Fighter or whoever is pretty sure they'll drop the one foe on this one hit, so they go all in for extra damage and gleefully give up the initiative. 

But holding the initiative is really, really powerful, and I think that, once players started to see it in action, it'd be something they thought carefully about giving up.

Biggest concern, really, is spotlight hogging, right?  A player H&S's, keeps getting 7+ and keeps holding the initiative, and keeps saying what they do.  But even that isn't such a big deal, because you as the GM can let them declare what they do (without making a move at them) then put a pin in it and switch over to another player in a different part of the fight, and ask what they do.  I think that'd work, but the spotlight hog is definitely the part that bugs me the most.


EDITED TO ADD:  
here's a pretty substantial write-up of this move being used in an example scenario. So if you want a better idea of how it might play out, give it a read.

click to read all about fighting ghouls