A few bits by John Harper on Damage in World of Dungeons and Dungeon World
If it’s a fight, I deal damage on 6- and trade blows on 7-9. It’s not my problem that they only have 3 hp. Don’t think about “challenges.” Don’t make your opponents limp punching bags. Follow through on the fiction (the fiction being super-deadly dungeon delving).
If dealing damage is boring, you’re doing it wrong.
(Definitely use Last Breath if you want a bit less death. That’s much better than toning down damage or making wussy monsters who don’t usually deal damage. But death is part of a classic dungeon crawl game. “Everyone make your first character” I always say when we start.)
Sage LaTorra adds:
HP is, partially, a timer on how long you can fight. Death or Last Breath is what happens when that timer runs out.
Messing with HP or damage messed with the tempo, which may not be what you want to do. It makes fights longer or shorter.
Back to John Harper
I just usually deal HP damage, too (if it’s a fight). You can’t deal damage without saying what happens, anyway — which usually means escalating the situation and placing them in greater danger. You don’t ever just say, “You take 3 damage” (obviously) and when you say, “The Ogre grabs you by the leg and hurls you across the room,” I find it weird to not also say, “You take 3 damage.”
What I try to avoid as GM (this is my style, not the mandate of the game design) is eyeballing PC hit points and then making moves to be sure I don’t kill them. I find that annoying as a player and it runs counter to the gritty dungeon-delve vibe I try to cultivate. (Blake’s method with the kids is perfect for that group, but not what I want in my game.)
Trading damage (in a back-and-forth fight, remember) on a 7-9 is standard Dungeon World hack and slash.
It sucks, agreed. Which is how the PCs learn that you don’t stand toe to toe and fight things that can kill you. If you attack them some other way, of course, the 7-9 result is different. This isn’t a rule (7-9 means damage!) it’s an application of the general rule, given a set of specific circumstances.
You can read the whole thing here.
http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/18549/world-of-dungeons-what-are-you-using-for-monsters
Expect me to do a lot more damage going forward.
Neat callout.
I LOVE to deal damage AND make a monster move. Heh Heh. Then the narrative positioning of the monster move is re-inforced by the inevitable HP countdown to death and madness.
.
Okay for some, I guess. I’m perfectly fine with eyeballing, and find character death to be the most boring consequence to inflict for 99% of all scenarios.
But it is their fault for going for it right? When they know the danger than they can play around that. Get a healer. Get healing potions. It’s not like the GM is actively trying to kill you.
Meh. Say what the fiction demands, sure, but “everyone make your first character”? That might get a pass in World of Dungeons, but in Dungeon World, heck no.
Dungeon World characters, for my money, are high fantasy goddamn superheroes, not slowly-draining hourglasses that come in six-packs.
Damage is fine, it’s tense, but all those other moves on the GM sheet are there for a reason too.
shrug Different strokes.
/sub
.
I’m definitely with James Etheridge here. I don’t subscribe to the “attrition-based, resource-counting fantasy fucking Vietnam” paradigm of play. Some do, and that’s okay – I just think that it comes up as a truism way too often.
Dealing damage is just one of the options on 7-9. Disarm, stun, disable, push, throw of balance, blind… There are so many ways of having fun in a combat than just ticking the countdown.
Why not both?
You mean two DM moves at a time (damage and situational fiction) ?
Monster Move. A lot of them include damage.
Also if something is happening to you in the fiction that implies damage than you should take damage. The fiction is descriptive/prescriptive like that.
Yes I agree.
I disagree – I don´t think that anything that could conceivably do physical damage in the real world (such as it is) should translate as ticks on the countdown counter (ie. lost HP) in DW. I see HP as a specific tool for a specific purpose, not a physics simulation.
I also usually don´t throw in damage as extra to a monster Move unless it is an inseparable part of it – getting lit on fire from the dragon´s magical napalm breath should definitely do it, for one. That I choose to desrcibe a “separate them” as the ogre rushing the Fighter so that they both crash through a wall? Forget about damage there – it just detracts from the drama of the moment by adding some extraneous beancounting.l
“I also usually don´t throw in damage as extra to a monster Move unless it is an inseparable part of it”
That’s what I meant
“I don´t think that anything that could conceivably do physical damage in the real world (such as it is) should translate as ticks on the countdown counter (ie. lost HP) in DW.”
page 23 is clear enough on that: damage removes HP.
… Uh, yes. Damage removes HP, but I do not always choose to deal damage, so… Seems like bit of a non sequiteur.
To requote:
You don’t ever just say, “You take 3 damage” (obviously) and when you say, “The Ogre grabs you by the leg and hurls you across the room,” I find it weird to not also say, “You take 3 damage.”
Okay. I don’t (as a general rule).
So wait, just so I understand (and I’m not sure I do), to use Tim’s example above, you’d have the ogre hurling you across the room deal no damage, and then use the DM “Deal damage” as a separate action, after the player had had an opportunity to react? I’m just getting my head wrapped around GMing DW, but this doesn’t make sense to me. How did the player get thrown across the room without taking any damage? You guys are confusing the heck out of the new guy here!
I just disagree with: “just get healing potions” Fuck healing potions. Especially if you are just using them as a band aid.
Could you elaborate on that?
Basically – healing potions completely suck. They are a tool in a video game, not a sensible part of the world. It does not make any sense to just guzzle potions down mid combat as a way to alleviate difficulty.
Not only are they fictionally shit, they also lower tension and lower the impact of damage.
For me, it´s… well, it varies by context, where context can be the individual game. If people wanted to play something grittier and Dark Dungeon-esque, then being thrown around the room by the ogre would probably deal damage as well as, I dunno, snap your leg.
Mostly, we´re using DW for more adventure fiction-ish games. If the Fighter goes through the wall with the charging ogre (as per above), the important thing there is the separation move – the rest is basically just color, and I see no reason to start to throw in HP damage. Basically, individual Moves should be interesting and dramatic enough without diluting attention by throwing in secondary effects – and “dealing damage” is the most boring Move I know, so it gets used less often.