Isn’t the fighter’s move Through Death’s Eyes far too powerful?
When you go into battle, roll+WIS. ✴On a 10+, name someone who will live and someone who will die. ✴On a 7-9, name someone who will live or someone who will die. Name NPCs, not player characters.
What does qualify as battle?
A battle is open violence, not intimate conflict. Why is it too powerful? They’re just NPCs!
Would a fight between the party and a dragon qualify as battle?
Probably! Likely depends on the size of the dragon and scale of destruction. the NPC doesn’t drop dead, it just tells the GM the NPC doesn’t get out of this if at all possible.
I don’t see why a fight between the PCs and a dragon wouldn’t count as a battle, Ivan Vaghi. Why do you feel this is too powerful? As Alfred Rudzki said, they’re just NPCs.
Well to be fair, saying “the dragon dies” sounds like you’ve just made the battle boring. But no! You know the dragon will die if you can conceivably make it happen… Now the party just fights to survive!
As a GM, if the PCs fail to do any harm at all, I’d have to shrug and let the dragon live… There’s no conceivable way to make it happen, and the fiction is a thing right? But with that move… Maybe the dragon shows off fleshy vulnerabilities more than usual in my descriptions?
I’ve never examined that one before, but I would imagine the way to run it is that as soon as the PC determines who will live, you can feel free to kill EVERYONE ELSE as well as the dragon.
I am not sure I would count a fight with a single opponent a battle, even if the opponent is huge and dangerous as a dragon.
One way to interpret the move is that “monsters” don’t count as NPCs.
Another thing to consider is that this move is begging to be turned against the player on a failed roll. “Oh. A 6-. Too bad. Who were you going to say lives? Uh huh. And who were you going to say dies? Right” GM smiles evily and they write the names down.
Christopher Stone-Bush Two things worth considering there, but they feel like GM fiat.
The move itself has a miss condition:
✴ On a 6- you see your own death and consequently take -1 ongoing throughout the battle.
I’d totally count monsters as NPCs. Monsters (human and otherwise) don’t matter in DW. They’re just obstacles. They’re irrelevant arrows who only matter insofar as PCs have to make interesting choices about them. If the move tells me Xalathar the Elder Wyrm dies? Awesome, let’s team up as GM and Player and figure out (by playing!) how this lizardfucker dies!
You don’t hurt the dragon at all? Then I can’t kill it, but I keep in mind you saw his death for next time y’all fight.
Otherwise? Time to narrate some violent vengeful wrathful dragon death throes!
Ha. That’s what I get for not reading the move. I didn’t realize it had a miss condition. 😛
Well, the fighter should probably decide what qualifies as a battle. And, we all know antagonists are here to die (think dangerous!). What’s important are the changes they will bring to the world; the damage they will cause to what the characters care about!
Saying “the dragon will die” doesn’t make the beast drop dead istantly. Sure, it will be dead when the battle is over. How it ends up dead and what it does before dying isn’t determined by this move.
Reading the move again, it sounds like the fighter has a premonition about who lives and who dies and he doesn’t even have to be the one doing the killing. Or maybe it’s a tactical reading of the battle.. in which case I would read battle as a clash of armies, or at least larger groups, where anything can happen in the mist of war.
I wonder, though, what the real intent of the move is.
Same as in AW because it’s lifted from there, I’d imagine.
Per AW’s excellent chapter breaking down each move’s purpose: “This move is a love letter from the player to you. Be delighted and grateful, and kill, kill, kill.”
Anyway. Making it only work with armies? Sounds boring to me, unless your game is only ever about armies. Why shouldn’t the fighter get to use his moves when he fights? He’s already kind of the least interesting of the classes (compared to Shapeshifting and rituals at least).
It does seem to imply that there must be at least two NPCs fighting for this move to trigger.
^Also.. what if they’re both out to get the PCs, and you’ve had to guarantee that one of them lives.
Well, you could say that a “battle” is something where both sides are risking their lives. If the dragon is strafing the town with slime breath and there’s nothing around that can really hurt it, the fighter can’t point her finger, say “this is a battle! THE DRAGON WILL DIE!”, and have it mean anything – -anymore than she can point her finger, say “this is a battle! THE SUN WILL DIE!” and have it mean anything.
I would say if the Party can’t kill the dragon yeah the dragon dies by other means, but of course those other means might be something even worse for the world…
So do you have any stories of this move in actual play?
The idea behind this move is that it allows the Fighter to determine certain outcomes, but doesn’t explain how. The void there is what makes it interesting. The other cool thing is when you realize all the other folks you didn’t choose to protect and how utterly fucked they might be. The GM is encouraged to Hamlet the shit out of everyone except the fate-protected party.
*basks in the reflected glory of making the same suggestion as Adam Koebel , but earlier in the thread*
Aw, no. Sunburn.
If the party was all “well, the dragon will die no matter what” that is a golden opportunity to make hard moves. Collateral damage, y’all.
HAMLET THAT SHIT, SON. POISON ALL THE BLADES, ALL THE CUPS and holy crap, I am become George R. R. Martin for second. Sorry.
GRRM is just trying to be Shakespeare, cf hamlet Macbeth Titus et al. You’re in the clear! Kill away!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100519/quotes?item=qt0375639
Especially since you’re rolling +WIS, which is probably not your highest stat, there’s a fair chance of your fighter getting clocked in the head with a crossbow bolt while he’s looking through the eyes of death.