Twin discussion topics :
1 – Defy Danger is only called for after a Soft Move, whether mechanically or fictionally produced. A request to Defy Danger (however phrased, but with dice picked up from the table) barring the presence of a soft move means someone has misinterpreted the situation. Filling the character’s lives with danger means assuming a Soft Move has been made, whether the GM intended it at the time, and they should ‘roll with it’ and start thinking in terms of imminent costs for a failed Defy.
2 – I hate, hate, HATE Wisdom” / Intelligence. Ten plus years of roleplaying off and on and I still can’t keep straight which is which. Is there a reason not to use Discernment / Knowledge instead?
1) Agree mostly, but it can also (a)be used to try to mitigate a hard move. It is important that a hard move should not stop the narrative – so DD may be used as a method to keep it going. (b) It can also follow naturally on a character move, for instance, “I jump across the 20 foot chasm using my pool cue as a vaulting pole”
2) Go tell that to Gary Gygax. 😊
1 – Defy Danger doesn’t require a Soft GM Move beforehand (also, it could be a Hard Move) but can also trigger when a PC does something inherently dangerous. Like the example in the DW Guide where the Cleric wants to smash a door.
2 – For historical reasons, I suppose… I always handle INT as knowledge learned through study (hence, Spout Lore) or for general logic based stuff. WIS is for intuition and basic understanding of how things work (Hausverstand in German), as well as mental fortitude.
High Intelligence, low Wisdom: that’s most of the Tricksters of mythology.
Think Loki (Norse myths), Odysseus/Ulysses (Iliad, Odyssey), Monkey (Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en).
They all know plenty of stuff, but don’t know when to stop, walk away, or shut the hell up!
Alternatively, Intelligence is knowledge of external things, Wisdom is knowledge of the internal truths of humanity.
That’s how I see it.
1- When my players start saying “I Defy Danger with DEX” then I know I’ve goofed and I need to start asking questions. “How are you using your DEX to not take an arrow to the knee?”
“I move.”
“To where?”
“Over”
“Sigh…Tell me, without using the words Dexterity, defy, or danger, what your character does.”
“Oh I head to the balcony to get closer to the archer.”
“There you go. Now roll +DEX.”
2- To my INT is something you learn by reading. WIS is something you learn by doing.
INT is your book smarts, WIS is your street smarts.
I can give you an example of a preemptive Defy Danger. I played in a forum-based (which can be somewhat different to run than a face to face or via video/voice type situation) DW game as a satyr wizard.
In one scene my character and the group he was traveling with came across the site of a strange summoning ritual that was birthing a giant corrupted boar creature that also happened to be oozing fluids that was killing the grass under and immediately around it.
On my turn to post, I had my satyr wizard roll a preemptive Defy Danger using Intellect. The success was on the high end if I recall, and what my character did was observe the surroundings and calculate angles of approach before he cast Magic Missiles which ricocheted along the lines of his calculations to hit and destroy the beast (it wasn’t fully formed and was helpless, so the hit outright killed it) in such a way to reduce or eliminate any spread of its corruptive ooze.
I hate, hate, HATE Wisdom” / Intelligence. Ten plus years of roleplaying off and on and I still can’t keep straight which is which. Is there a reason not to use Discernment / Knowledge instead?
Ugh, yes. I would rather use two stats to cover mental instead of three – Brains and Guts. But DW isn’t designed for that.
Maybe this is a nitpick, but Defy Danger can definitely be called for as the result of a HARD move. It’s right there in the trigger: _When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity, say how you deal with it and roll._
That sort of makes point 1 a tautology. Every threat and calamity present in the fiction is the result of a GM move (even if it wasn’t a consciously-made one). The trigger action for defy danger explicitly involves threats or calamities. Ergo, defy danger will always and only be triggered after a GM’s soft move or hard move.
GM Principle #4: Make a move that follows _Your move should always follow from the fiction.
GM Principle #11: Begin and End with the Fiction
Saying that one move can only follow another move is a very mechanical way to run Dungeon World. DW flows better when you go with what makes sense in the fiction at that moment. If rolling Defy Danger is the best fit for the character’s action, regardless of what lead to/caused their action (GM move, their own move, or otherwise), then they roll Defy Danger.
I think of INT as knowledge/processing power, and WIS as judgement/intuition.
– High INT, low WIS = knows a lot but makes poor judgement calls
– High WIS, low INT = doesn’t know much but has better intuition
So, yes, WIS = discernment. INT is not just knowledge, it also covers analysis of information.
Michael D what else then a move would a move follow?
Tim Franzke The more I’ve thought about that, the more subtle I realize the point in question is. To open this up to wider discussion I’ve put my answer up in a separate post:
https://plus.google.com/106207499701502364297/posts/EBWfH6j3ETr
Apart from perception, Wis comes up quite often, where mental fortitude is needed…resisting evil spirits , daemons or (non-)magical manipulations and the like.