My recipe for starting adventures

I've got a little process that I use whenever I start a game of Dungeon World or Homebrew World. It's similar to the first session procedure that's described in the book, but different in some key ways. I've found that this approach reliably kicks off a new game quickly and with a lot of energy, in a way that makes it pretty darn easy to run and improvise.  

Here's the recipe:

1. Establish the adventure's premise with the group
     > Premise = a fantastic location + a grabby activity
     > Do this before anyone picks playbooks or makes characters
   
   
2. Players create characters, GM writes/updates hook questions, which should establish:
     > Motive: why are they here, doing this?
     > Stakes: what's on the line, why is this important?
     > Urgency: why shouldn't they dawdle?
     > Dangers: what do they expect to face? what do they know about them?
     > Detail: what specifically are they hunting/seeking/fleeing/fighting/etc.?
     > Complications: what's getting in the way? making it harder? constraining them?
   
   
3. Do introductions (by name, pronouns, class, and look).
     > Do not do bonds (or in Homebrew World, background questions) just yet. 
     > You're just establishing who the characters are.
     > Yes, you can ask questions, but keep it light for now.
   
   
4. Ask a few of your hook questions
     > Usually 1-3
     > Pick questions that elaborate on or clarify the premise
     > Address specific PCs, not the group at large
     > Ask follow-up questions; encourage the players to do so, too!
   
   
5. Do bonds (or in Homebrew World, background questions)
     > Ask follow-up questions; encourage the players to do so, too!
     > Use this to establish how they know each other, why they're working together
   
   
6. Finish asking your hook questions
     > Doing bonds/background questions often rolls naturally into this
     > Ask follow-up questions; encourage the players to do so, too!
     > Ask additional questions as they occur to you
   
   
7. Frame the initial scene, tightly
     > Start in media res or at least right on the verge of action
     > Who, where, when, doing what?
     > Give up to 3 strong impressions, ideally from different senses
     > Make a soft GM move
     > "What do you do?"

That's the recipe!  More about the background, details, and suggested prep after the jump break.

I keep hearing good things about Delicious in Dungeon,
but haven't read it; just seemed appropriate, y'know? Cuz recipes.

"Discern Realities" in Stonetop & Homebrew World

Discern Realities is a move that is near and dear to my heart. It's one of my favorite moves, and I've written about it at length:

• In Defense of Discern Realities
• Discern Realities vs. Spout Lore vs. Just Describing Stuff
• Discern Realities: make the question part of the trigger?
• Many, many discussions on G+ (have fun)

I tried using that "make the question part of the trigger" approach to the move a couple times, but didn't really like how it worked in practice. Either the players had to keep the questions constantly in mind and intentionally ask them, or as the GM I had to keep them constantly in mind and watch for the players asking them. Also, a lot of my playbook moves add questions you can ask to Discern Realities "for free, even on a miss" and those don't jive well with the "ask first" approach.  

So, for Stonetop and Homebrew World, I use Discern Realities as follows. It's quite similar to the original, the key differences being:

• the trigger specifically includes "looking to the GM for insight"
• both games use advantage/disadvantage instead of +1/-1 forward
• "Who is control here?" has become "Who or what is in control here?" (with "their fear" or the like being legit answers)

The accompanying text is the first draft of what I plan to put in the Stonetop book. It'll probably get cut down a little to fit on one spread, but this is the text that I wish I had when I first started learning to run Dungeon World. I hope you find it useful, too. 

----------------------------------- 

Discern Realities 

When you study a situation or person, looking to the GM for insight, roll +WIS: on a 10+, ask the GM 3 questions from the list below; on a 7-9, ask 1; either way, take advantage on your next move that acts on the answers.

•   What happened here recently?
•   What is about to happen?
•   What should I be on the lookout for?
•   What here is useful or valuable to me?
•   Who or what is really in control here?
•   What here is not what it appears to be?

Player: "Uh... what should I be on the lookout for?"
GM: "Well, funny you should ask..."
(image by Jakub Rozalski)

"Parley" in Stonetop and Homebrew World

In both Stonetop and Homebrew World, I've rewritten the Parley move to be at least as much of a "gather info" move as a "convince them" move. What follows is the text of the revised move and a draft of the "discussion" write-up for Stonetop.  

The evolution of this move was... involved. It started with a post from Johnstone Metzger (a very sharp dude whose stuff I strongly recommend), which was sadly lost to the Google+ vortex. If you're interested, you can read through the various drafts (and surrounding discussion) here:

• Initial draft (discussion here and here)
• Second draft (discussion here and here)
• Third draft (discussion here and here)
• Fourth draft (discussion here), leading version 4.5
• More-or-less final version discussed here

My gripes with the standard version of Parley boil down to:

• The trigger ("When you have leverage on an NPC and manipulate them...") requires too much processing and too many decisions. By the time we've figured out whether or not the PC's action counts as leverage, the roll feels superfluous or (worse) contradictory.
• The 10+ result and the 7-9 result often just don't work in the kinds of situations that adventurers find themselves.  At least, not without elaborate mental gymnastics.

Ultimately, what I like about the Stonetop/HBW version is that:

1. It's easy to recognize when a PC is pressing or enticing someone, and from there whether a roll is necessary.  You don't have to consider "is this leverage?" You just consider "are they resisting?" 
2. The question posed by the move isn't usually "will they do what you want?" but rather "what will it take to convince them?" The move is basically an opportunity for you to tell them the requirements, and in so doing, reveal the NPC's personality and motivations.  
3. The 7-9 results are quite easy to work with. I'm particularly fond of the "distasteful" option.
4. It's very flexible, and works in a wide variety of situations. 

Also, these revisions led to a PC-v-PC approach that I think works pretty well.  

Parley (vs. NPCs)

When you press or entice an NPC, say what you want them to do (or not do). If they have reason to resist, roll +CHA: on a 10+, they either do as you want or reveal the easiest way to convince them; on a 7-9, they reveal something you can do to convince them, though it’ll likely be costly, tricky, or distasteful.

My Framework for GMing Dungeon World

I've been working on the GMing chapters for Stonetop, and it's made me think about how the conversation really flows. I've also been thinking about GM moves, and Principles and Agenda, and how they all work together. I thought I'd talk about them a little here. 

I don't think that what follows is fundamentally different than what the game text tells you to do. Like, if you read the DW text and the DW Guide, and GM the game enough, I think you end up doing what I describe below. This is just how I conceptualize it, with 8+ years of experience running, playing, and talking about DW and similar games. (This is also pretty similar to what I describe here.)

Maybe you'll find it useful? Maybe a new GM will find this and something will click for them. Regardless, I'm going to be posting some excerpts from the Stonetop GMing chapters over the next couple weeks, and I think this will help set the stage. 

As always, feedback and questions are appreciated!

The Game is a Conversation

You say something. The players say something. You say something in response. You ask questions of each other, clarify, interrupt, talk over each other. To quote Vincent Baker: "you take turns, but it’s not like taking turns, right?"

The whole point of this conversation is to create the fiction, the shared imaginary space that we're all talking about, where the PCs and NPCs and monsters all exist and act. The game's rules mediate the conversation, and help us figure out what happens when there's uncertainty, and help introduce unexpected and challenging elements into the game.   

Dungeon World is (despite what some folks will tell you) a rather traditional RPG. It structures the conversation and assigns responsibilities and authority in a very familiar way: 

• The players are responsible for portraying their characters (who they are, their actions, their thoughts and opinions, their experiences and backstory). 
• The GM is responsible for portraying everything else: the world, the NPCs, the monsters, etc. 

Dungeon World is different than a lot of RPGs because it explicitly encourages (and arguably requires) the GM to ask the players for input on the world, particularly during the first session and about areas where their characters have experience or expertise. But that's not that different than how lots of folks play D&D. (Ever done a session 0 where you make characters, talk about backstory and the kind of setting you want to play in? It's like that, but it's done during play.)

Different groups take this collaborative spirit to different degrees. Some DW GMs are very cognizant of The Line (I know I am) and avoid asking the players to make up details about what their characters are experiencing on the spot. Other GMs will actively ask the players to make up details about the room they've just entered, or the NPC they've just met, or what happens next. Some groups collaborate on where the story should go, and what kinds of scenes they want to have. None of these are wrong. They're just a matter of taste.

More noodling on Stonetop's gear & inventory system

We've now gone through about a dozen sessions with the current version of Stonetop's inventory system, and I'm... dissatisfied.

I'm leaning strongly towards something more like what I'm using in Homebrew World, something like this:

Some background... how'd we get here?

The gear lists (and how PCs acquire gear) have always been an important part of the game. The core conceit of Stonetop is that you're the heroes of a small, isolated, fantasy iron-age village. "Adventures" usually mean going out into the world to do something on the town's behalf. 

As such, I've always had three important goals for Stonetop's gear (and related systems):

Online Version of Homebrew World

I just finished creating an online character keeper for Homebrew World. Check it out!

Current online version

You'll need to save your own copy in order to use it. Instructions on the first tab (GM Stuff). 

The main action happens on the PCs tab: there are columns for each class playbook, with the intention that you'd collapse the unused classes and have everyone's character sheet visible on one widescreen monitor.  Or, close to everyone's sheets... if you're doing 3 PCs it'll probably work. 4+ and you'll have to do some horizontal scrolling. 

Lots of vertical scrolling will be involved no matter what. I have my doubts about how usable this would be for folks on a mobile device, but for a laptop or desktop with a widescreen monitor available, I think it'll be a pretty solid solution. 

I've tried to preserve most of the "functionality" of the printed playbooks, including pick-lists and the layout of the Gear sections. Aside from collapsing/expanding groups, I'd advise against making any changes that trigger the "You’re trying to edit part of this sheet that shouldn’t be changed accidentally" warning.  Don't insert rows or columns, don't copy/paste anything.  It's fairly brittle, unfortunately. 

If you use these, please drop a line in the comments and let me know how they work for you and your group!

Defy Danger, Restated

For Homebrew World v1.5, I've rewritten Defy Danger as follows:

I've been thinking about this move a lot the past few weeks, inspired largely by this post on the Gauntlet Forums, but also this old post from the PbtA G+ Community. 

I think the salient points of those conversations boil down to:

• Defy Danger's trigger is incredibly broad and thus can arguably be triggered by just about any action with a modicum or risk
• The move itself doesn't necessarily prompt players to say or do interesting things. It just serves as a fallback task resolution mechanic.
• It sort of gives license to players to try ridiculous things, with the presumption that on a 10+ it'll work with no consequence. 
• The 10+ result doesn't really do much to change the situation. It more deflates tensions ("phew") than pushes the game in a new direction. 
• It'd arguably be more interesting if the move wasn't there at all, and when a character did something risky or dangerous that otherwise wasn't covered by another basic move, the GM presented a hard bargain or ugly choice, or just say what happened and follow up with another soft move, escalating until move is triggered.

I can see where a lot of where this is coming from. I do think it's easy (especially for newer GMs) to over-invoke Defy Danger, calling for a roll when the stakes aren't very interesting (I know I've done it).  I think it might be nice if the move somehow encouraged more dynamic or surprising outcomes (the way that Keep Your Cool does in Monsterhearts 2e) or at least more interesting actions (e.g. if "I dodge out of the way" wouldn't trigger it, but "I duck under his blade and dart inside his guard!" would).  

This revision doesn't get all the way, but I'm not entirely certain that any revision could get there without significantly restructuring the game. The move is simply doing to much. Instead, I'm going for: 

• A clearer trigger
• Better descriptions of when to use each stat
• A more reasonable 10+ description
• A 7-9 result that provides better guidance
  

The trigger

So, here's the original trigger for Defy Danger:

When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity, say how you deal with it and roll.

And here's mine:

When the stakes are high, danger looms, and you act anyway, roll...

This is basically just rephrasing "when you act despite an imminent threat," but I think it's better because it clarifies that the stakes need to be high before the danger matters. If I'm walking a tightrope, there's an imminent threat that I fall off it. But if it's only 5 feet off the ground and no one's chasing me and I'm not trying to impress anyone and I can just try again... well, whatever? Don't roll. Right?

For experienced players and GMs, I don't think this would change how or when Defy Danger gets triggered. But for newer players and GMs, I hope it will at least push play in the right direction, towards high stakes and danger looming and awesome characters acting anyway, rather than toward... skill checks, I guess. 

You will notice that this version of the move doesn't have anything like the "suffer a calamity" clause that the original version does. Mostly, it's because I don't think it's necessary.  If you suffer a calamity (your arm is cut off, you fall down a slope, your caught in a gout of dragonfire, you're poisoned, whatever), then whatever you do next, the stakes are almost certainly high and danger is almost certainly looming.  I.e. you're going to Defy Danger anyhow, unless you just lay down and die.  So why do we need this move?

A couple folks I talked to suggested that the "suffer a calamity" cause is there to determine just how bad an injury or other calamity is.  Like, if you get stabbed by a poison dagger, Defy Danger with CON to see how badly the poison affects you. 

To which I respond: meh. I guess if your GM move was Deal Damage and you knew the enemy had a poison dagger, that maybe would make sense and work?  But Deal Damage is a Crap Move, and in HBW it's replaced with "Hurt Them."  If my move was "Hurt Them" with a poisoned dagger, I'm going to hurt them:  "That cut on you arm is burning, way worse than it should, and you start to feel your muscles seize up, your vision is going blurry... you've been poisoned, you're sure! What do you do?"  And then whatever they do next, the stakes are high and danger looms, so Defy Danger, yeah?

That stat descriptions

In the original Defy Danger: 

...say how you deal with it. If you do it...

• ...by powering through, +Str
• ...by getting out of the way or acting fast, +Dex
• ...by enduring, +Con
• ...with quick thinking, +Int
• ...through mental fortitude, +Wis
• ...using charm and social grace, +Cha

In this version, it's:

...and you act anyway, roll...

• +STR to power through or test your might 
• +DEX to employ speed, agility, or finesse
• +CON to endure or hold steady
• +INT to apply expertise or enact a clever plan
• +WIS to exert willpower or rely on your senses
• +CHA to charm, bluff, impress, or fit in 

It's mostly just a rephrasing, but I think these do a better job of reflecting how the stats actually get used. For example, every GM I've ever played with has called for DEX to Defy Danger by moving silently or hiding in shadows... even though it isn't covered by "getting out of the way or acting fast."  It would be covered by agility or finesse.

On a 10+...

In the original Defy Danger, the 10+ clause is:

On a 10+, you do what you set out to, the threat doesn’t come to bear.

I think the wording is pretty weird, but the real problem, I think, is that implies that a 10+ is consequence-free: "the threat doesn't come to bear."  I haven't seen it much myself, but I can easily imagine that leading to declarations like "He swings the club at me?  I just grit my teeth and take it!" with the assumption that a 10+ means he'll be fine and shrug off the blow.

Now, obviously, this is the sort of place for player-level conversation and GM moves like tell them the consequences and ask.  "You're just gonna take the hit?  I mean, okay, but you'll be Defying Danger with CON and it's gonna be like d8+3 damage even if you get a 10+. You sure?" 

But it'd be better if the move itself tempered expectations. Hence:

On a 10+, you pull it off as well as one could hope.

I guess you could get into some annoying conversations like "well, I can hope for quite a lot!" But at the very least, it's setting an expectation of "within reasonable limits."

On a 7-9...

In the original Defy Danger, the 7-9 clause is:

On a 7–9, you stumble, hesitate, or flinch: the GM will offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice.

Oof.

Okay, first of all:  "stumble, hesitate, or flinch" has always been my least favorite line in any of the basic moves. It describes a fictional outcome, and then implies that said fictional outcome leads directly into the worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice. Well, first of all: stumbling, hesitating, or flinching doesn't make sense as a fictional outcome in many of the cases that involve Defying Danger.  I mean, yeah, you can make it fit, if you really try to. But it's work. And in my experience, when I've tried to keep stumble/hesitate/flinch in mind, it's actively made it harder to come up with good, interesting results that are still fundamentally a success.

The "stumble, hesitate, or flinch" clause makes a lot more sense in Apocalypse World's Act Under Fire move. But that move is all about keeping your cool, as opposed powering through/acting quickly/all the other ways to Defy Danger. And even in AW, the example 7-9 results ignore the "stumble, hesitate, or flinch" part and just go straight to worse outcome/hard bargain/ugly choice.

So: gone. It's actually been gone from both Homebrew World and Stonetop from almost the beginning. 

More importantly:  the "worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice" part of the move has never felt like it offered particularly good guidance to GMs.  The number of G+ conversations, Reddit posts, conversations on the old Barf Forth forums, etc. that have stemmed from that phrasing are numerous. 

My take on it has always been:

• Worse outcome: you do the thing, but the outcome isn't as good as you'd hoped. 
• Hard bargain:  "You can do it, but..."  Basically, tell them the cost or the consequences and give them a chance to back off.
• Ugly choice:  They do it, but it doing it, they have to pick between two or more consequences or costs.  

The distinction between "hard bargain" and "ugly choice" is fuzzy, and not necessarily helpful to the GM.   Also: it's easy for a new GM or player to read "worse outcome" as "worse than you when you started" and not "worse than what you were hoping for" and that's not right at all. It's important to remember that a 7-9 is still fundamentally successful. 


Both the hard bargain and the ugly choice involve costs or consequences, or maybe a lesser successes.  So... why not just say that? But there's still value in those "you can do it, if" and "well, you can do it, but either __ or __."  That led me to this:

On a 7-9, you can do it, but the GM will present a lesser success, a cost, or a consequence (and maybe a choice between them, or a chance to back down).

This wording:

1. Establishes that they can do the thing (fundamentally a success, right?)
2. Replaces "worse outcome" with "lesser success" (clearer, reinforces that that it's still fundamentally a success)
3. Puts the cost or consequence right in there, in plain language
4. Keeps the possibility of a hard bargain or ugly choice. 
   
   

In summary

I don't think this really changes Defy Danger significantly. I hope that it makes it clearer, and easier to use, and helps set appropriate expectations.  

Homebrew World v1.5 (gear & inventory updates, Defy Danger rewrite)

I just posted version 1.5 of Homebrew World.  You can find it here:

Current version

If you aren't familiar with this project:

• It's a revised version of Dungeon World that's pared down for one-shots and short-run (2-4 session) games. 
• It features a lot of changes that would I'd include in a 2nd edition of Dungeon World were I the one in charge of it:  advantage/disadvantage (instead of +1/-2 etc), tweaks or straight-up rewrites to many of the basic moves and classes, backgrounds & drives instead of racial moves & alignment, and some significant changes to gear. The document itself has a more comprehensive list.

New (Final?) Gear & Inventory System

The original gear & inventory system was okay, but a little unintuitive. It had a lot of hidden features, and didn't actually generate as much scarcity as I wanted it to. 

So I replaced it with this version. Some feedback on Reddit and conversations on the DW Discord server confirmed some fears I had with that system. Mainly: the v1.4 system was trying to combine both an encumbrance system with the "producing gear" system and when characters started dropping things or moving items between them, it got weird. You could mark up to (e.g.) 4 diamonds, but it wasn't clear what happened if you marked an item to produce a thing and then dropped it.

Here's what the new version looks like:

from the Thief

from the Cleric

At the start of play, you can assign a number of diamonds to specific items or to "Undefined."

During play, you can Have What You Need:

So as the Cleric, I might chose to start with a cudgel and Supplies (two diamonds), and mark 3 diamonds in Undefined. 

During play, when a fight breaks out, I might declare that I'm wearing a chain shirt (and move a diamond from Undefined to the "Leather cuirass or chain shirt" item). 

Later, I decide to produce a lantern, so I clear an Undefined diamond, mark one under Other items, and write in "Lantern."  I could then spend a use of Supplies to produce a tinderbox (a small item). 

After a few hours of exploring, the lantern's oil burns low and I replenish it with a use of Supplies (to produce lamp oil, which I don't bother writing down because whatever). 

I've got one Undefined diamond and one use of Supplies remaining.  

Every class also has a Max Load (the same as the max number of diamonds you can start with). This should be fairly obvious, but to be clear:

• If you pick up a new item in play (by looting it, buying it, another character giving it to you, etc.) then it gets added to your inventory. Unless it's small, it counts against your Max Load.  
• If you drop an item during play, or use it up, or it's destroyed, then you erase it--it no longer counts against your Max Load.  
• If you give something to another player (even an Undefined diamond), erase it from your inventory and add it to theirs--it no longer counts against your Max Load, but does count against theirs. 
• Undefined diamonds count against your Max Load.

Doesn't this encourage players to put everything in Undefined and then have exactly what they need in play?  Yup! That's largely the point.  In practice, it seems that players assign enough gear to get a clear picture of their character, and leave the rest undefined.

So what changed?

The biggest differences between this version of the gear system and version 1.4 are:  

• There's no more choice between "Light" vs. "Normal" vs. "Heavy" Load. Each class has a set number of diamonds they can mark at character creation or during play. 
• There's a specific place to track "Undefined" diamonds, distinct from the total number of diamonds you can carry (Max Load).
• As a result, there's no need for the Loot or Manage Inventory moves, or any other detailed explanation of how specified gear interacts with quantum, undefined gear. 

In my initial playtesting, this system has worked very well. Players grocked the "Undefined" thing immediately. The only real confusion stemmed from players Having What They Need, and whether they needed to assign an Undefined diamond or expend supplies. I found they were more likely to burn up their diamonds, even on things I thought was pretty obviously small.  

I also added a couple class moves that played in this design space. A few classes have moves that increase their Max Load and starting diamonds. The Fighter (Veteran of the Wars) gets +1 diamond (7 total) and an extra use from Supplies.  The Barbarian has a Max Load of 3 by default, but Musclebound increases it to 5. And the Ranger has a Max Load of 3 by default but an advance that can give them +2 diamonds. 

Other changes

The other big change is in the wording of Defy Danger:

My hope is that this wording makes it clearer when to trigger the move (high stakes + danger + action) and that the 7-9 result provides GMs with more useful guidance.  It's still fundamentally the same move, though.

There are also some minor tweaks here and there:

• The Bard >> Wandering Folk: previously, it basically gave three times the Bard could take advantage on a roll, with the relatively simple requirement of making it relevant to their People's traits.  Now, they can do that once, and then their heritage needs to cause trouble before they can use it again. 
• The Cleric: fixed a mistake in their inventory. Replaced the wizard's spell book (ha!) with a Sacred Text ([][] uses, slow, cast a spell that's not prepared).
• Some minor tweaking of the I Know a Guy optional move and the Thief >> Operative's background move, so that the Thief move is definitely better.
• Also some tweaking to the Run Away optional move; I didn't quite like the results or modifiers, and I had to rethink it anyway to deal with the new gear system.   

Homebrew World Updates (v1.4, new gear & load system)

I just posted version 1.4 of Homebrew World.  You can find it here:

Current version

If you aren't familiar with this project: it's a revised version of Dungeon World that's pared down for one-shots and short-run (2-4 session) games. It features a lot of changes that would I'd include in a 2nd edition of Dungeon World were I the one in charge of it:  advantage/disadvantage (instead of +1/-2 etc), tweaks or straight-up rewrites to many of the basic moves and classes, backgrounds & drives instead of racial moves & alignment, and some significant changes to gear. The document itself has a more comprehensive list.

What's changed in 1.4?  Starting with little things:

• I rearranged the Basic Moves, Violence & Recovery Moves, and Optional Moves. Instead of using 1/2 page inserts for the Basic & Violence moves, they now use a full-page, double-sided sheet. I found the inserts involved too much flipping around, and they tended to get lost/forgotten in play.  
• I added some more optional moves, largely cribbing from work I'd done for Drowning & Falling. Also borrowed heavily from Addrymar Palinor's "Narrate a Fight" move. Also added some lists of example mundane, common items that one can produce with Have What You Need.  
• Significantly updated The Wielder. Previously, it was just the Fighter but with a signature weapon instead of weapon specializations. Now, it's got it's own Backgrounds, names, looks, moves, advances... and I added another weapon, an homage to Stormbringer and Blackrazor, because duh.  
• Added a "player's guide" to the back page of each playbook, and expanded the space for notes. I don't expect the player's guide to referenced all that much, but I like having it there as something to reference, or read during breaks or "downtime."
• Redid the approach to gear (including the moves surrounding it).

That last one is the biggest update. Here's how the gear system used to work. It wasn't bad, but it was a little less intuitive than I wanted.  There were a lot of hidden features, and this tries to remove those and make everything more transparent. (If you find yourself thinking "this is lifted almost straight from Blades in the Dark," you aren't wrong.)

The New "Load" System

Each playbook has a "Load" section that looks like this:

The Figher's Load section (not filled out)

The Fighter's Load section

The only decision you need to make at the start of play is whether you're carrying a Light, Normal, or Heavy Load. The descriptions under each ("quick and quiet" or "weighed down, not quiet" or "noisy, slow hot, quick to tire") don't have any specific mechanical impact, but they describe the fiction. A character with a Light Load might not even need to Defy Danger to move quietly or to carefully pick their way up an unstable slope, but someone with a Normal or Heavy Load might. 

Your chosen Load determines how many "diamonds" worth of gear you can be carrying. A "diamond" is basically a gear slot. 

• Most "significant" items (a sword, light armor, a coil of rope) takes up one diamond (slot)
• Each "big" item (heavy armor, a shield, a polearm, a 10-ft pole) takes up two diamonds (slots)
• Small items (a knife, a purse of coins, etc.) don't take up diamonds (slots), but the unwritten rule is "they have to fit in the box" and the official rule is "be reasonable."

At the start of play, you can choose to define as many or as few of your diamonds as you want. During play, you can use the Have What You Need Move:

In practice, I assume that most players will take a Normal Load and then assign 2 or 3 of their diamonds, leaving 1 or 2 undefined. That's what I'd do. 

Each class also starts with a knife/dagger, maybe another small item (like a holy symbol), and gets a choice of 1 special small item (a healing elixir, a pouch of coins, etc.).  You can produce more small items by using Have What You Need and expending 1 use of Supplies (see below).

Loot

A big reason for adventure games like Dungeon World (and Homebrew World) to track inventory at all is because it forces decisions. As you use up your gear and supplies, you become more prone to disaster and have to start thinking about turning back. Inventory systems also force decisions when it comes to looting treasure: how much can you take with you, and what are you willing to give up in order to do so?

Here's how loot interacts with the Load system:

Basically: loot counts against your diamonds (gear slots). 

• If you add loot to a slot and you're still under your Load, it's assumed that you've taken something out of your inventory in order to make room for the loot.  
• If the looted item pushes you over your current Load, that's fine--but you don't have any undefined diamonds anymore. For example, if the Fighter has a Normal Load and 5 diamonds already defined, and then she picks up a stone idol (1 diamond), she suffers from the fictional positioning of having a Heavy Load but she doesn't get to later Have What She Needs and produce a 7th item. 

You can use Loot to carry around more diamonds than permitted by a Heavy Load, but assume that you're basically giving the GM carte blanche to show you the downside of your gear.  

Oh, and: yes, it's totally viable (and smart) to Have What You Need, give that item to another PC with empty slots, and then Loot.

Supplies

"Supplies" are a 1-diamond item that come with 3 uses. They combine most of the expendable resources that you find in Dungeon World: rations, bandages, adventuring gear, etc. (In the previous versions of Homebrew World, Supplies also included ammo. That's changed now! See below.)

You can expend a use of Supplies to:

• Have What You Need and produce a small, common and mundane item (like some chalk, a ball of twine, etc.)  
• Use the Recover move and regain 5 HP (and, potentially, deal with a troublesome injury or debility). 
• Feed the party when you Make Camp, and/or get an extra benefit from making camp.

Many of the class Backgrounds also have special things that you can do with Supplies. For example, a Gladiator (Fighter) can expend 1 use of Supplies to have their gear take a blow and halve the effects. An Assassin (Thief) can expend 1 use of Supplies to produce a vial of poison. A Courtesan (Bard) can expend 1 use of Supplies to produce a suitable gift for a notable figure they just met, gaining advantage on their next roll against them. 

(The biggest differences for Supplies in this version and earlier versions of Homebrew World are that ammo is no longer subsumed by Supplies and that you don't have to expend Supplies to produce "slot" items. That's now handled by the Load system.)

Ammo

In Dungeon World, "Ammo 3" is an abstraction that means you can choose "reduce your Ammo" 3 times when you Volley (or otherwise have the GM use up your resources). However, I've found that you almost always have to explain that to a new player--"no, that's not how many individual shots you have, it's an abstraction... take a look at the Volley move...").

In earlier versions of HBW, I just lumped ammo in with Supplies, and you could expend Supplies or mark "Out of ammo" on a 7-9 to Volley. 

With this version, ranged weapons have a pair of "statuses" after each one, like this...

• Bow and arrows ([] low ammo   [] out of ammo)
• Extra arrows ([] plenty left  [] running low  [] all out)

...and the 7-9 option on Volley says "Deplete your ammunition; mark the next status next to your weapon/ammo)."  I think that's a lot clearer. And if a player wants to haggle and be like "can I expend a use of Supplies to clear one of these?" then I think that's fine.

Shields

Shields are big, yo. And kind of a pain to lug around. And, frankly, they have a pretty significant impact on your effectiveness in a fight. I always found it odd that DW had them weigh as much as a sword (2 weight) and give +1 Armor. 

Yes, yes, you also have a shield and that fiction is pretty damn important. But I wanted to ramp up both the "cost" of carrying a shield and their effectiveness.  

Cost was easy and obvious: they're 2-diamond items. But for effectiveness... I didn't want to increase the Armor bonus (because too much Armor can easily become an issue).  So instead: they now give +1 Readiness (my term for "hold") when you Defend and get a 7+. I think that's a fair trade for taking up an extra inventory slot.

"Out of..." is Gone

The old inventory system for Homebrew World used an "Out of..." mechanic, where you had a section for indicating what things you were out of (ammo, food, healing supplies, a few blanks) and therefore couldn't produce with Supplies.  You could also mark "Out of __" to produce a small item without having to expend Supplies.  And most things that required you to expend Supplies also let you mark "out of __" instead.

Basically, the "Out of..." mechanic gave everyone like 5 or 6 "free" uses of Supplies, but that wasn't obvious at all.  Which actually undermined the scarcity equation of the system pretty significantly.  It also required mechanisms for clearing those "Out of __" conditions.  

So... it's gone.  The GM is still well within their rights to say "you land hard and hear something break in your pack... take a d6 damage, mark off 1 use of Supplies, and you can't Have What You Need to produce anything breakable or fragile."

Scarcity

This system intentionally puts some pretty significant limits on how much crap the PCs can be carrying around. If you have a Normal Load, you probably have a weapon, some armor, maybe 3 or 6 uses of Supplies, and like 1 undefined slot.  And those Supplies can get used up pretty darn quickly. Lantern?  That's a diamond (inventory slot).  Tinderbox?  That's a use of Supplies?  Need to Recover?  That's one more use of Supplies.  Rope?  That's your last diamond.  Now what?

This scarcity is intentional.

Remember: Homebrew World is intended to be used with one-shots or short-run games. There isn't time to slowly chip away at the party's resources. If this system is going to be meaningful, the scarcity has to become relevant quickly.  

I'm honestly not 100% sure that I've hit the right balance. I think that maybe 3-uses of Supplies per diamond is too much.  But I've also tried to include an array of tempting other items in each class's Load, so that not everyone is running around with 6 Supplies.  We'll see how it goes in play.

Deal Damage is a Crap GM Move

I posted this essay on the G+ back in June of 2017. I still feel this way, and in Stonetop and Homebrew world, have replaced the GM move "Deal damage" with "Hurt them." It's not much of a difference, but I find that it better matches how I play. Fair warning: if you ever play DW (or a variation of it) with me running it, expect to be losing HP very often.

obligatory "wounded man" image

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When I've played DW with less-experienced GMs—and certainly when I started GMing DW myself—I've seen this sort of thing happen a fair deal:

"Okay, you got a 7-9 to Hack & Slash the orc? Deal your damage. 3? Okay, he's still up. But he stabs you back. Take 1d8+1 damage.  You still up?  Okay, what do you do?"

The strawman GM in my example is making the GM move deal damage, but they aren't following the principle of begin and end with the fiction.  As a result, the whole thing is flat. The player reduces their character's HP total. We vaguely know that the PC landed their blow, and the orc landed one back. But we've got no sense of the actual fiction, the details, the momentum. Who hit whom how? When? And Where?  Is the PC's axe still stuck in the orc's shoulder? Does the orc up close and personal, stab-stab-stabbing you with his rusty knife?  What the hell is going on?

Now, you can blame that on the GM (obviously: they aren't following their principles).  But you've got literally a dozen principles always competing for your attention, and it can be tough to keep them all straight.

You can also lay a lot of blame at the feat of the Damage and HP and "down at 0 HP" system that DW inherited from D&D.  But if you start tinkering with any of those things, you end up changing basic moves, and class moves, and how you make monsters, and equipment, and spells, and pretty much the whole mechanical economy of the game.

So what about the GM move itself:  Deal Damage.  I'd like to argue that this move—its name, its description, the fact that it exists at all—is part of the problem. And maybe an easier one to fix.

Of all the GM moves, it's the only one that maps most directly to a purely mechanical outcome. "Take 1d8+1 damage."  The GM must evaluate the fiction a little to determine how much damage you should take, but not much… you can just look at the orc's damage die and say "you're fighting an orc, take 1d8+1 damage."  And because the result of move (the roll, losing HP) is so mechanical and abstract, it's easy to forget to return to the fiction and describe what that damage actually looks like.

(You don't see this issue nearly as much in Apocalypse World, even though it basically has HP and has basically the same move: inflict harm as established. I think there are two reasons. First, the way NPCs suffer harm is much more handwavy than in DW… each level of harm corresponds to a rough description of trauma, and it's GM fiat to determine if the NPC is still standing. Thus, the GM has to decide on the specific trauma, in the fiction, in order determine if the NPC is still a threat. It's pretty brilliant.  Second, against PCs, there's the Suffer Harm move, which can generate all sorts of interesting fiction.)

Compare deal damage to use up their resources. When the GM uses up resources, they must decide which resources to use up. If they decide to "use up" your shield, then the natural thing to say isn't "you lose your shield, reduce your Armor by 1" but rather "it smashes through your shield!" or "you feel the strap on your shield snap and the thing goes flying, what do you do?"  Even if the GM uses up an abstract resource (like adventuring gear or rations), it's pretty easy and natural for everyone to visual your pack getting smashed or torn open or whatever.  HP are such an abstraction that it's easy to just decrement them and move on.

Every now and then, the conversation crops up that you just shouldn't use the Deal Damage move, or that you shouldn't use it very much.  Other GM moves are more interesting, etc. etc.

Another relevant detail:  on page 165, there's this gem that often gets forgotten:

Note that “deal damage” is a move, but other moves may include damage as well. When an ogre flings you against a wall you take damage as surely as if he had smashed you with his fists.

With a sidebar of:

If a move causes damage not related to a monster, like a collapsing tunnel or fall into a pit, use the damage rules on page 21.

So… could we just remove "Deal Damage" from the GM's list of moves?  If it just flat-out wasn't a choice, and instead you always had to make a different GM move (or monster move), one that might also happen to deal damage, would that help GMs begin and end with the fiction?

Or would it just confuse things? Or not make a difference?  After all, you'd still have the GM move Use up their resources, and you HP are really nothing more than a resource.

It's entirely possible that I'm just overthinking this, and the "solution" to this "problem" is just learning to "begin and end with the fiction."

Discuss!

Now, for some selected comments from the post:
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Aaron Griffin:  I like the idea of removing it, but you'd need to have some more coaching about "on the fly"/improv monster moves.

In your orc example, I doubt the orc has "hit with sword" as a move. A novice GM with a strict reading of the rules might not understand that the orc can swing that sword even if it doesn't say it.


Me:  I'm actually thinking you would NOT replace it with "attack" moves for monsters.  But rather, any time the monster attacked, it'd be a different GM move that happened to also inflict damage.

E.g. when the orc "makes an attack against you," if I don't have "deal damage," I'd be forced to pick do something like this instead:

Use a monster move >> the orc's Fight with abandon : "So, you like run it through, but it doesn't seem to notice. It just pushes itself onto your blade, hacking at you and your shield over and over with that vicious meat cleaver thing, scoring a number of blows before it expires. Take d6+2 damage and your blade is stuck right in the thing's gut. What do you do?"

Reveal an unwelcome truth:  "You gut the orc, but he scores a scratch on your arm, not a big deal but holy shit does it burn, take a d6+2 damage. And you're like, uh oh, what's that greenish oil coating this dead orc's blade?"

Use up their resources: "You slash it across the chest, and it reels back, then follows up with just this reign of blow after blow. Take a d6+2 damage and your shield is just in splinters, it hauls back for another chop, what do you do?"

Separate them:  "So, yeah, you run the orc through as it leaps at you but its momentum carries it into you, knocking you down the ravine in a tumble. Take d6+2 damage and you land in a heap, a dead orc on you, the fight up top.  Ovid, you see the Hawke and the orc go tumbling off the cliff and another one comes swinging at you, what do you do?"

Put someone in a spot: "Oh, yeah, you totally slice this orc's throat open and goes down in a gurgle, but the other two rush in on you and hack away, take d6+3 damage (+1 cuz of the extra one, right?). And they keep reigning blows on you, herding you back toward the pit, it's just a few feet away, what do you do?"

Etc. etc.

I.e. there's no replacement for the "Deal Damage" move, no general monster moves like "stab them."  So whenever a foe makes an attack, the GM must make a different GM move, one that makes no sense unless you begin and end with the fiction.

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Greg Soper:  I really like this. I think that there should still be references to damage, but just push it through the general-Damage dice lens (scrapes and bruises = 1d4, etc). So GMs can still be liberal with dealing damage, but just as a result of other moves, and never just as an automatic response to a 7-9 Hack & Slash or a missed Defy Danger.

Me:  oh, I still think there's a lot of value in having distinct Damage values for monsters. It's part of what establishes the "difficulty" of fighting (e.g.) orc bloodwarrior (d6+2) vs. an orc berserker (d10+5!!!).  

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Wright Johnson:  I think the problem with deal damage is actually the name.  As you said, the move itself is the only one written purely in the language of game mechanics.  Inflict harm as established is not a phrase which rolls off the tongue outside the context of Apocalypse World, but it's also consistent with the mannered way the rest of the AW game text is written.  DW is written in natural, conversational English, so the shift into purely mechanical jargon stands out.  If the move was called something like hurt them, I think it might be less jarring.

Asbjørn H Flø:  That was my first instinct too​, with that exact wording. Making hacks and rule changes strikes me as too much work, but rewording it to hurt them opens it up sufficiently to remind you to consider the fiction and your options.

Jason “Hyathin” Shea:  Aside from removing the option entirely (a valid solution, IMO) hurt them is a great option. As I've been reading comments that phrase has been rattling around my head, and it leads me to say, "okay, so how am I going to hurt them?" I don't think that way when I read "deal damage."

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There were also a number of comments around the idea of introducing versions of AW's Suffer Harm player move, discussion of Paul Taliesen's A Descriptive Damage Hack for Dungeon World, and so forth.

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In the end, I've replaced Deal Damage with Hurt Them in my Dungeon World hacks, along with these instructions to the GM: 

When you make a GM move that involves someone getting banged up, knocked around, hurt, or injured, then deal damage as part of that move. If the damage is caused by an established danger, deal damage per its stats. Otherwise, what would it do to a normal person?

• Bruises & scrapes; pain; light burns d4  
• Nasty flesh wounds/bruises/burns d6  
• Broken bones; deep/wide burns d8  
• Death or dismemberment d10

Debilities are ongoing states reflecting the tolls the characters have taken. Inflict them as (or as part of) a GM move. They are:

• Weakened: fatigued, tired, sluggish, shaky (disadvantage to STR and DEX)
• Dazed: out of it, befuddled, not thinking clearly (disadvantage to INT and WIS)
• Miserable: distressed, grumpy, unwell, in pain (disadvantage to CON and CHA)

Debilities might also cause someone to Defy Danger to do things that are otherwise safe.

Yes, those are different debilities than core Dungeon World. That's a post for another time.

Rewriting Defend

I've been thinking about the Defend basic move a lot lately. I posted a number of polls about the move to tease out public opinions, and I've spent a fair amount of time discussing the issues that those polls brought up.

For Stonetop and Homebrew World, I'm rewriting the move as follows:

DEFEND

When you take up a defensive stance or jump in to protect others, roll +CON: on a 10+, hold 3 Readiness; on a 7-9, hold 1 Readiness. You can spend Readiness 1-for-1 to:
• Suffer an attack's damage/effects instead of your ward
• Halve an attack’s damage/effects
• Draw all attention from your ward to yourself
• Strike back at an attacker (deal damage, with disadvantage) 

When you go on the offense, cease to focus on defense, or the danger passes, lose any Readiness that you hold.

Compare that to the original text and discussion, available here.

I think this leaves the move in the same basic design space as the original, but cleans up a lot of the potential ambiguity and traps that original text introduces. This is pretty close to how I've always used Defend in play anyhow, even though I know it's not how everyone else uses it.

a defensive stance?

The Trigger

 The first change is the trigger. This...

"When you take up a defensive stance or jump in to protect others, roll +CON"

...instead of this...

"When you stand in defense of a person, item, or location under attack, roll +CON"

My goals here are to:

• Make it clear that you don't have to be defending someone (or something) else to make the move
• Make it clear that the move can be either proactive (taking up a defensive stance) or reactive (jumping in to protect others)
• Remove the reference to being "under attack," because "attack" gets used inconsistently throughout the rest of the game and I've had... let's say lively discussions... about what exactly that means and how it applies to the trigger. 

I think this revised wording does all of that.

There's still going to be ambiguity, times when you have to ask the player what they're really trying to accomplish and you all discuss whether this is Defend or Hack & Slash or Defy Danger or whatever. But I think that the intent of the move's trigger is much clearer this way.  

Readiness

The next change is to name the hold. So you get this...

"On a 10+, hold 3 Readiness; on a 7-9, hold 1 Readiness."

...instead of this...

"On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 1."  

It's a pretty minor change, but it's something I try to do whenever I write a hold-and-spend move. I find that players understand "hold 3 <Currency>" much more quickly and intuitively than just "hold 3."  Of course they do. It's more natural language.

For a long time, I used "hold 3 Defense" instead of "hold 3 Readiness." But I like Readiness better, because of what it implies a state of preparation, being ready to jump in and intervene.  I think it communicates the ongoing, stance-like nature of the move better.

"Readiness" is a little off when you use Defend reactively, jumping in to protect another. But if you roll a 10+, hold 3 Readiness, and spend only 1 or 2... you still hold Readiness. And I think that correctly communicates that, yeah, you're still ready.

Spending Hold

In this version... 

"You can spend Readiness 1-for-1 to
• Suffer an attack's damage/effects instead of your ward
• Halve an attack’s damage/effects
• Draw all attention from your ward to yourself
• Strike back at an attacker (deal damage, with disadvantage) 

 Compared to the original:

"As long as you stand in defense, when you or the thing you defend is attacked you may spend hold, 1 for 1, to choose an option
• Redirect an attack from the thing you defend to yourself
• Halve the attack’s effect or damage
• Open up the attacker to an ally giving that ally +1 forward against the attacker
• Deal damage to the attacker equal to your level"

Obviously, I changed the options themselves, but what I want to focus on right here is: there's no more trigger ("when you or the thing you defend is attacked") limiting when you can spend hold. Instead, 3 of the 4 options are rephrased to only make sense when an attack has already been established (using an instead of the).

This is a pretty minor difference, but I think it makes the move simpler to process. You hold Readiness. You spend Readiness to do one of these things.  Oh, there's an attack?  I spend Readiness and halve its effects.  Oh, I got attacked?  I spend Readiness and hit the attacker back. It's fewer words, fewer when-then conditions. It's also more in line with how other hold-and-spend moves work. You spend the hold, you do the thing.

This rephrasing also means that I can have an option ("Draw all attention from your ward to yourself") that isn't in direct response to an attack. And that opens up design space; class moves/advanced moves/etc. can add other such options.

(Note that "As long as you stand in defense" is also gone, but I'll address that later.)

Taking the Hit and Drawing Aggro

In the original Defend, one of the options is this:

• Redirect an attack from the thing you defend to yourself

Seems straight-forward. Except... it could arguably be used in either of these two circumstances:

1) The GM makes a hard move, dealing damage or otherwise inflicting badness on the Defending player's ward.  The Defending player spends 1 hold and goes "nope! it hits me instead!"  This is awesome and heroic. It might also be a very sound tactical decision, especially if the Defending player has more hold to spend and/or good armor.

2) The GM makes a soft move announcing an attack at a character.  The Defending player spends 1 hold to become the target of that attack.

#1 is awesome.  #2... well, I'm just made of questions about #2:

• Why does the Defending player need to spend 1 hold to become the target of the attack? The GM made a soft move, setting up badness but giving the player(s) a chance to react. Why can't the defending player just say "I step in and take blow!" If the fiction would just justify the spending of 1 hold to do this, the fiction would also justify just doing it. 
• What happens after the Defending player redirects the attack to themselves? Based on the examples given in the Dungeon World text, the GM escalates the soft move into a hard move when one character Defends another. (That also appears to be the opinion of about 1 in 4 people on this poll.)
• But why should the Defending player take damage?  Why should the GM escalate to a hard move when one player spends hold to redirect an attack towards themselves? If the Defend move didn't exist, the player could say "I step between the horde of zombies and Avon, and lash out with my hammer at the nearest one!" and he'd be triggering Hack & Slash... which could result in him not taking any damage at all!  Or he could say "I pull Rath behind me and put my shield up, deflecting the arrows" and he'd be triggering Defy Danger.  Why should the character definitely take damage because he rolled a success on Defend and chose to spend hold?

I think that the presence of this option (and the examples in the game text) lead players to think that they have to spend 1 hold to redirect a soft-move attack, even though they only really should need to spend it if the GM's already made a hard move (or a hard move is definitely coming) and they want to interrupt up the action and take the hit themselves. 

My solution is to rephrase the first option to this:

• Suffer an attack's damage/effects instead of your ward

So now, the hold is useful when damage or attacks's other effects are already on the table. You can suffer it instead of your ward, implying that the ward was already suffering it. No reason to spend Readiness to redirect an attack that's still in motion, that hasn't yet connected--just say that you do so.  

Of course, the vagueness of the original option ("Redirect an attack from the thing you defend to yourself") also meant it worked (more-or-less) for "pulling aggro."  In this poll, for instance, a full 50% of the respondents voted that spending the hold would ensure that the fighter held the orcs' attention so that the ranger was in the clear, while the fighter got to then Hack & Slash at the orcs.  And in this poll, there's a bit of talk about Defending/spending hold to buy time for the paladin's allies to escape.  I've seen that in play in my own games, too.

I think that there's value to this. I big tough character should be able to pull aggro and "tank" for the other party members, giving them an opportunity to act freely. That led me to add this option:

• Draw all attention from your ward to yourself

That seemed to overlap quite a bit with the original option of "Open up the attacker to an ally, giving them +1 forward against the attacker."  It's not a 100% line-up, but if you draw all attention from your ward to yourself, you're basically giving them (and probably other PCs) a fictional opportunity or opening that's at least as good as a +1 forward.  (Also, I don't think that I've ever seen a player choose the "Open up the attacker to an ally" option. So... screw it.)

Hitting Back

The 4th option for spending hold is now...

• Strike back at an attacker (deal damage, with disadvantage) 

...instead of...

• Deal damage to the attacker equal to your level"

I've always found the idea of dealing damage "equal to your level" very, very strange. No other move directly references "your level" like that, except for Commune and Spellbook and Prepare Spells, and then it's in reference to something else that also has levels, so it makes more sense there. Dealing damage equal to your level is a pretty terrible choice at levels 1 and 2 (because the weakest foe has 3 HP), and at higher levels it becomes terrifyingly effective.  Given how often folks play DW as a one-shot or short-run series, an option that is nigh-useless at 1st level seems like a bad idea.  

The "ramping up" of this option also makes a pretty weird fictional assertion: that high-level adventurers are more effective/deadly when attacked than they are on the offense. Which, while kind of a cool idea, isn't really in line with like anything else in the game. 

So: let's continue using the damage die but make it not-as-good as what you'd get with a dedicated attack move (Hack & Slash or Volley). Disadvantage means "roll the damage die twice, take the lower result." It doesn't (inherently) ramp up with your level, and it means that a fighter or paladin on the defensive is more dangerous than a wizard on the defensive.  It also means that tags and other damage modifiers more clearly apply.  

Losing Readiness (Hold)

The final clause in the revised move is:

When you go on the offense, cease to focus on defense, or the danger passes, lose any Readiness that you hold. 

If anything, this replaces this clause in the original move:

"As long as you stand in defense..."

Which implies (but doesn't outright state) that you can't spend your hold if you cease to "stand in defense." The explanation of the Defend move says "When you’re no longer nearby or you stop devoting your attention to incoming attacks then you lose any hold you might have had." But that's not exactly clear from the move text itself.  

So, I wanted to just come out and say "this is when you you lose Readiness" right in the move's text.  

I also wanted to make it clear that you can still do "defensive" moves and keep your hold.  Like, I think you should totally be able to Defy Danger against an attack and spend hold to mitigate the results of a 7-9 or a miss... and/or to strike back a the attacker.  

It's still a bit unclear whether you can Hack & Slash and continue to focus on defense (and thus hold readiness). Given the way that I've revised Hack & Slash for Stonetop and Homebrew World, I think you can Hack & Slash on the defensive and still keep your Readiness, but it'd be very contextual. Basically, if you fight reactively (cutting them down as they approach rather than closing on them or chasing them down), I think it's okay.  

But I also wouldn't say someone was wrong if they thought "nah, if you Hack & Slash, you're by definition going on the offense."  

Discern Realities: make the question part of the trigger?

I'm thinking about making this change to Discern Realities in Stonetop and Homebrew World.

DISCERN REALITIES
When you closely study a situation or person, you can ask the GM one of the following:

• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What (else) should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is (most) useful or valuable to me?
• Who or what is really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?

If the answer isn't obvious, roll +WIS: on a 7+, the GM will answer honestly; on a 10+, you can also ask two more questions and get honest answers; either way, you gain advantage on the next move you make while acting on the GM's answer(s).  

Basically: 

• Asking one of the questions becomes part of the trigger
• The GM has an "out" to skip the roll if they think the answer is obvious

Asking a Question Before Rolling

The idea of "make the player ask before rolling" has been in the back of my mind for a long time. I haven't really done anything with it because I've never really felt like there was a problem with how the move triggered in actual play.   

But in response to my last post on Discern Realities, about triggering the move vs. just asking for details, Hobbes (who was a player in my Stonetop game for like 2 years) commented:

I'll be honest, as a player the line between "just describing stuff" and Discern Realities always seemed a little fuzzy. I can't come up with any specific examples off the top of my head, but there were definitely some times where I *felt* like a question I'd asked should have triggered DR but I got an answer "for free" (no roll). ...

I'm still not quite sure where the line is for DR. "Anything valuable?" sounds like literally one of the DR questions, and if the trigger is "player takes an action" then the "I drop a coin into the hole, do I hear it hit" would be a DR move. I'M BEING PEDANTIC AND I KNOW IT but honestly this is an interesting distinction.

And, in the G+ comments, Dirk Detweiler Leichty said something smart:

As much as possible I like to stick to telling them whatever is available to their senses, and if they have further questions, telling them the requirements ("you can't tell from here, you'd have to reach in and feel around," or maybe, "you remember something about this from your training but you'd have to spout lore.") 

This is the central loop of exploration play for me lately. ... 

Discern realities interrupts this loop and asks you to work backwards from the answer to decide what happened in the fiction. 

Discern realities gets triggered mainly when the players give up on exploring the space and want to skip to the answer. That's fine with me, I'm not here to enforce some particular level of difficulty, but it is essentially a cheat on what I consider to be the main game here (you get what you want by exploring and interacting with an imagined space.) Sometimes its fun to play with cheats, it lets you focus on other parts of play, like story, etc. 

By default though, I'm going to try to keep to the basic loop, and encourage players to find the answers by interacting with the fiction, not with the answer-button on their character sheet. I let the players be in charge of when they want to skip to the answer. If I wanted to skip to the answer, I'd just tell them.

(emphasis mine)

I don't know that I'd go so far as to call Discern Realities a "cheat," but I totally get what he's talking about it. If you and your players are interested in exploring the fictional space, especially one that has tangibility (i.e. you've prepped it out and committed to it, with maps and notes, or at least a clear mental image), then there's a lot of fun in that core exploratory loop that Dirk describes. OSR-style play is largely based on it.

The core insight of Dirk's comment, I think, is that the players should ultimately be in charge of when they engage Discern Realities, of when they skip the exploration loop and jump straight to insight.  Not every player enjoys the exploratory loop, or is good at it, or just wants to do it right now.

So, a good way to distinguish between "just asking for more details" and "exploring your environment" and "triggering Discern Realities" would simply be to make the player ask one of the questions in order to trigger the move. If they closely study the situation but opt not to ask one of those questions, then the move doesn't fire. They're just looking to the GM to see what happens, so the GM describes the situation and makes a move. If they do ask a question, the move proceeds.

This does make the trigger a little meta-level, because it involves the player doing something instead of the character. But it's something that represents the character's internal monologue, right? You're just announcing to the table what the character is trying to figure out. So I don't think it's too jarring.

There are other benefits of making the player ask a question before rolling, beyond making the trigger clear:

• It can help inform the fiction that goes into the trigger, and whether you should tell them the requirements to answer their question. "I'm looking carefully at these jars and such on the shelves... what here is useful or valuable to me?"  "Well, they're a bunch of unlabeled clay jars. You'll have to open them up and investigate if you want to figure that out."
• It can give you something more to work with when they roll a 6-. Like, if I know you were trying to figure out who is in charge here, I might use that as a prompt me to answer the question by having them captured and taken before Prince Jagoff! Or if they study the floor and ask what they should be on the lookout for, and I know there are pressure plate traps, I might answer their question by putting them in a spot. "Well, you know you need to be on the lookout for pressure plates, because you just stepped on one, there's a click underfoot what do you do?"

"If the answer isn't obvious..."

The second part of the change ("If the answer isn't obvious...") was prompted by this conversation with Ben M. He's asking:

GMs, a player triggers Discern Realities and rolls a 7+ when examining a location (say) which in your mind was unimportant or incidental. How do you tend to answer their questions?  Turn the location into an interesting or significant one through your answers, or give answers like "nothing much is about to happen"?

The latter puts less pressure on you but risks devaluing the risk the player took of making the move in the first place (they may have missed the roll and allowed you to make a hard move). So I often feel pressure to do the former. 

And then later, after a number of people suggest that he just say "it's not interesting" before the player rolls, he (correctly, I think) says:

[T]he trigger for DR is explicitly "closely study a situation or person" and honouring the trigger text precisely has served me well on other moves. So I wouldn't want to decide that it didn't in a situation.

And later:

I get what people are saying but "someone examined it, therefore it's significant" doesn't sit well with me.  My players aren't always (or often!) asking because they wish or think that, say, the pigpen should be significant - they're just making sure they didn't miss something.

And finally:

DW teaches us to be very particular about the wording of moves.  DR is triggered "when you closely study a situation or person" which means that a player deciding to closely examine something makes it a thing, even if they don't want it to be.  If the trigger wording wasn't totally under their control (they just say "I'm examining X") then it would be possible for the GM to justify why the move didn't trigger (say the trigger included some allusion to the significance of the thing).   

Compare this with Defy Danger ("when you act despite an imminent threat").  The player performs some action and the GM has input into whether this triggers DD because they can rule that there is "no imminent threat".  In the case of DR it doesn't seem to me, written the way it is, that the GM can't rule at all.  And once the move is triggered the player is risking a hard move, so it's hardly fair for the GM to make a habit of saying "yeah you hit your DR but there's really nothing to tell".

Which got me thinking about the revision I've made to Parley, which goes "When you press or entice an NPC, say what you want them to do (or not do). If they have reason to resist, roll +CHA..."

I've found that little check ("if they have reason to resist") to be useful in play.  When the Would-be Hero goes up to the NPC she previously wronged and, hat in hand, asks humbly for his advice, I don't need her to roll. I don't see any reason why he wouldn't take that opportunity to give her an earful. But when the Heavy tries to convince the pompous, privileged town marshal to work together with Hillfolk refugees and their leader, that check makes me go "yeah, his ego and stubbornness are going to make him resist," and that informs the results of the roll.

So... same thing should work here, right?  If a player studies a situation closely, asks a question, and I think the answer is obvious (or I want the answer to be obvious), then I just answer it. Otherwise, we clarify how they're doing it (if necessary) and roll.

What would this look like in play?

(This is all done using mechanics from Homebrew World.)

The wizard, ranger, and fighter are at the entrance to the Secret Crypts of the Titch. I've got this map, but haven't keyed it or anything. It's the first session; I'm winging it.  

By Dyson Logos. Original here.

I've asked the ranger what sort of beasts they need to watch out of in these vast woods, and he's like "razor bats." I was like "cool" and looking at that map, the first room totally looks like a place that a bunch of bats would nest in. 

So they've climbed up the side of a bluff and are standing on this small platform, looking at the vine-covered entrance to this tomb.  The wizard just told me that she had discovered the location of this ancient and secret crypt in her studies, and put this expedition together to stake her claim on the site and finish her thesis. The Titch, she says, were known for their clockwork automatons and similar artifice, now largely lost to the world.  

Looking at that map, the first room seems like an obvious place for bats to lair in, so I describe how the entrance is mostly obscured by vines and brush, but there are plenty of openings they can look through. The can vaguely make out a stairway leading into darkness and catch a faint whiff of... ammonia?  

"Does it look like anyone's been here recently? Like, any tracks or anything?" asks the ranger. So he's studying the area, right? Looking for tracks. And asking, basically, "what happened here recently?" But the answer is obvious, I decide: no one's been up for hundreds up years. Except razor bats.   

Because the answer is obvious, I just make a GM move: introduce a danger. "There certainly weren't any tracks, and based on the state of foliage when you got up here, no one's been on this ledge in a long, long time. But that ammonia smell is a sure sign that razor bats are lairing down there. What do yo do?"  

The wzard says that she starts pushing the vines aside, looking for any writing or a plaque or anything like that. She's closely studying the entrance, sure, but didn't ask one of the Discern Realities questions, or really anything close. So I just offer an opportunity, and say "Yeah, you do find some old markings, carved into the rock face itself. They're like little pictographs, maybe? Definitely Titch-era."  

"Can I tell what they say?" she asks. That sounds like she's consulting her accumulated knowledge, so she Spouts Lore. Rolls a miss and I think about having the bats come flying out, but instead I build some tension and reveal and unwelcome truth. "Sorta. It's not like anyone knows how speak the Titch tongue anymore, but you're pretty sure these pictographs are a warning of some sort? Something like DO NOT DISTURB... THAT WHICH HAS NO NAME... LOST TO THE WORLD...  Funny that those books you found didn't mention any of that, huh? What do you do?"

The fighter and ranger start cutting the vines and brush aside, opening the entrance, and I decide to show signs of approaching trouble. "Ranger, fighter... you hear hissing and squeaking coming from down below, like the bats are agitated.  Like lots of bats are agitated. What do you do?"  

The fighter wants to keep hacking away. But the ranger is like "Wait. I stop and listen.  Does it sound like they're going to swarm or attack or anything?"  

"Sounds like you're studying the situation closely? You want to Discern Realities? If so, ask a question from the list."  

The ranger's like "sure" and asks "What is about to happen?" I'm thinking they're getting agitated, maybe about to swarm, but I don't think that's obvious, so I tell him to roll +WIS. A miss!  TEE-HEE.  

I'm like "you hear the hissing and squeaking, like I said, and it seems kind of steady, and then, like holy crap FLUTTER SQUEAK FLUTTER HISS SQUEAK! They burst out of the entrance and start swarming you all in broad daylight, what do you do?"

There's a fight. They manage to kill many, many bats and then drive off the rest of the swarm. We learn that the wizard's magic missile is a small blast of lightning, complete with thunder-clap, very loud and potentially dangerous. (I've made a note that the draw attention of the lightning eaters that the fighter mentioned offhand earlier on.) 

After the fight, they finish opening the entrance and peer down the stairs.  Dark, narrow, steep, slick with bat guano. The wizard casts light and sends it dancing down the stairs. I tell them that the stairs go down a bit and then a tunnel heads off to the right. I offer an opportunity and say that they don't hear any more squeaking or anything... if there are still bats down there, there aren't many and they aren't likely to be a threat. Do you head down?

The wizard brings the light back up into the stairwell itself and says "I'm moving the light around, studying the passage closely. What should I be on the lookout for?" 

I don't think there's anything in the stairwell, and I've already established that the bats are no longer a threat down there, but there's only so much the wizard could learn from outside the tunnel. So I tell them the requirements and ask and say "The stairs are pretty steep and they're going to be slick with bat guano, but beyond that you can't really tell from up here. You'd have to enter the stairwell itself and poke around if you want to learn more."  

They decide to just descend cautiously, the fighter going first, tapping each stair with the butt of his ax, staying alert. They ammonia smell is stronger down here, almost overpowering, but they get to the bottom of the stairs, no problem. That turns into a landing, and another set of stairs, and then I change the environment and describe the square room with the four columns.  There are hints of a mural on the wall, long faded, but no obvious exits or sarcophagi or anything like that. There's a thick carpet of guano down here, like almost up to your knees. It's super gross, you're all kind of retching.

The wizard spends some adventuring gear to produce kerchiefs for everyone, soaked in some lemon-scented water. They put them over their noses and mouths and enter the room. 

"I'll take a closer look at the pillars," says the wizard. They're smooth stone, marble, but each one has a metal ring inset around it, maybe six inches tall, flush with the stone. And each of those rings has a series of pictograms on them, going around each ring. Maybe a dozen pictograms on each one. I'm hinting at more than meets the eye. None of this was in my notes, but the map shows four pillars and a secret door in the floor, and the wizard's detail about clockwork & artifice made this room spring to life for me. I pretty much know exactly what's going on in here. 

I ask the fighter "what do you do?" and he says "I'm using the haft of my ax to poke around in the bat guano, looking for stuff that might be buried in there." "I'll do the same thing," says the ranger, "but with my bow."  

"Sounds to me like you're studying the situation closely, yeah? If you want to Discern Realities, ask a question from the list."

"Can we just poke around and see what we find?" the ranger asks.

"You can," I say, "but it's a big room and the guano's like a couple feet thick. You pretty quickly become sure that there's nothing really buried in it."  Then I stop, and think about it, and I decide to point to a looming danger. "Wait... no, you know what?  You do find something. Fighter, your feet kick something hard in there, but, y'know, not big. You fish it out?"  They do.  "It's a chunk of a human skull," I say. "Blackened and charred. You find more bones, too.  Scorch marks on them, but also small little bite marks all over, like razor bats gnawed on them.

"Do razor bats burn things?" asks the fighter. "Not that you know," I tell the ranger. I'm hinting at more than meets the eye now, not even waiting for the ranger trigger Spout Lore.  

I ask the wizard what she does, and she asks if she knows what's up with these rings on the pillars and the icons.  "Sounds like you're Spouting Lore? Roll it." She agrees and rolls a 7-9 so I reveal that they're a combination lock. The pictograms appear to be kind of nonsense, maybe the equivalent of "A, B, C, etc." But the rings spin around the pillars, and if you put the four rings in the right position, a lock opens. Sure enough, each pillar has a little triangular notch on it, right above the metal rings; that must be where you put the "right" symbol. I ask how she knows this and she talks about the ancient books that she found.

I jump back to the ranger and fighter, and ask what they do. "We just find the one skeleton?" asks the ranger. "Two, actually.  Well, bits of two skulls, and a whole bunch of other bones. Plus, maybe like a super-corroded bronze knife and helm?  You can't really be sure, but yeah, looks like two people died in here."

"Is there anything else in all this guano?" asks the Fighter. "Like a hidden door or anything?"

"Sounds like you're Discerning Realities, asking 'What here is not what it seems? If so, how are you trying to figure that out?"

"Same as I said before... going around, tapping on the floor with my ax head, listening for different sounds."

Now, I know that there's a secret trap door, right? And it's certainly not obvious... it was concealed before  the floor was covered in guano. But I start by telling him the requirements and asking. "It'll take a few minutes at least, and you'll have to roll +WIS, you do it?"  Sure, he says.

I ask the others what they're doing. The ranger says he helps the fighter (that'll be Aid to Discern Realities).

The wizard leaves the pillars alone for a moment and goes to study the murals. "Can I make these out at all?" I say they're pretty faded, you can barely make any shapes at all. "Huh. Well, I'll give a really close inspection. Like, I'm looking for a clue. Oh! Discern Realities, right?  What here is useful to me?"  That answer is not obvious at all, so I tell him to roll +WIS.  He gets a 7-9, so I tell him that the shape and pattern of the mural looks really familiar to him, and he thinks he's got a reproduction of that in one of his books, maybe? One you brought with you, maybe, if you expend Supplies to have it.

"Yeah, totally.  I'll get the book, carefully in this mess, and find the mural."

Meanwhile, I have the fighter roll to Discern Realities (with the ranger's help) to determine what isn't what it seems. They get a 10+, so, yeah, the fighter finds the secret door in the center of the floor, because it felt more metallic than like stone. The fighter expends 1 supplies to produce a shovel, and then starts clearing it.

Meanwhile, I have the ranger ask the next question. I then turn to the ranger and say "you got a 10+, and you were Aiding, so why don't you ask the next question." He asks "What here is most useful or valuable to me?" and I'm like not bloody much.

So I answer:"Well, I guess the bat guano itself is kind of valuable? You've heard of farmers using it as fertilizer, and sometimes wizards or alchemists have use for it, but it'd be a pain in the ass to get it all home, y'know?"

"Okay, well... what should I be on the lookout for?"

Ah!  There's a trap here, the thing that set those previous corpses on fire.  "You know, along the walls, almost buried under the guano but not quite, you find some... nozzles? Little metal nozzles coming out of the walls. They just sort of feel sinister to you. What do you do?"  He Has What He Needs to produce some beeswax (a small item, so he marks "out of beeswax" and then starts plugging the nozzles.  Smart! 

"Wizard, you get the book out and find the page. Sure enough, you find the engraving you were looking for, in the notes that led you to this place. I think maybe you found an old engraving plate engraving plate and had a print made, and it was definitely this mural. Like 4 separate pictures... a dude's portrait, a mountain, a sword, and a ship. They're laid out in a 2x2 grid."

"Oh, like the pillars?  I check the pillar on the far left corner. Are there any glyphs on it that would match up with the picture on the top left corner of the mural?"

Clever. "Are you like walking around it, or spinning the cylinder around, or what?"

"Huh? Oh, I'll spin it."

The thing is, I had decided that spinning those metal circles more than one "notch" would set off the trap. I decided these maybe ten minutes ago, but whatevs. The wizard just gave me a golden opportunity.

"Okay, well, as soon as you spin it more than like one or two icons, WHOOMP a big metal door slams shut over the entrance, it's super loud. And as you recover your hearing, ranger, you notice a... hissing sound? Coming from the nozzle you're just about to plug up. And then a sort of light gray, almost sparkly gas starts to mist out of it. What do you do?"

From there, it plays out like an action scene. The ranger tries to finish stopping up the nozzles. The fighter Bends Bars/Lifts Grates to get that big heavy door open, and the wizard Defies Danger with INT to figure out which symbols reflect the pictures from the murals, while the fighter then defies danger with CON to keep the door open while he figures that out, and they all succeed before the room fills with phlogiston and a sparker sets the whole thing ablaze.

Other considerations

If I make this change, I'll need to look at all the other moves that tweak Discern Realities.  In particular, I'm not sure how this will work with moves that let you always as a specific question for free, even on miss.  I'm thinking maybe if that's your trigger question, you get advantage on it?  

The other thing rolling around my head is an even bigger variation on the move:

DISCERN REALITIES  

When you closely study a situation or person, you can ask the GM one of the following:

• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What (else) should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is (most) useful or valuable to me?
• Who or what is really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?

If the answer isn't obvious, roll +WIS: on a 7+, the GM will answer honestly; on a 10+, also hold 2 Insight. You can spend Insight 1-for-1 to:

• Ask another question about the situation from the list above, and get an honest answer
• Gain advantage on a roll you make to act on the GM's answer(s) 

This means you would not get advantage to act on the answer on a 7-9, and that you only might get one a 10+.  It also means that asking each subsequent/additional question on the 10+ is a more active thing, and it doesn't have to immediately come after the first question or even flow from the initial act of studying the situation.  Finally, it makes the "get a bonus for acting on the answer" thing much more intentional, and less likely to be overlooked.