Just wanted to share a fun moment when I believe I saw a player’s “adversarial GM brain damage” fizzle away.
We had an event where a itty bitty imp ripped a hole in reality to summon a shadowy tentacle monster from the shadow realm (I used Dirk Detweiler Leichty’s chromatic tentacula almost as is for this). Well the imp got scared, shut the magic down, and the tentacles grabbed hold of the tear and began pulling it apart to fit it’s bulk into our reality.
The first great turnaround here was that my players officially went from “guys trying to save their own skin” to “big damned heroes” who tried to save the locals and the small town.
Secondly, the big pivotal moment, was when the punchy Fighter who tried to make a min-maxed combat character realized he wasn’t going to be able to last for long and made some fantastically creative choices – grabbing a stinger on the end of a tentacle to stab it into another tentacle, tying them up and letting him get closer and closer to the tear. I was interested to see what he intended to do. And he did what he did best – he punched. And punched. The tentacles ripping open the tear were stomped on in the way a villain stomps on the fingers of the hero hanging off a ledge. And when all was said and done, the magical forces of the cleric and bard where no match for simply punching a portal closed.
The fighter changed after this. He became inventive and creative, no longer content to just punch things to death when there was trouble. He even managed to convince the imp, that the tattoos on his body were magic runes and he was a great wizard able to banish him to the realm that creature came from in order to Parley with the thing.
🙂
That guy wasn’t playing a fighter, that’s a good old fashioned Muscle Wizard. Beware when he casts Fist.
http://i.imgur.com/2rAQj.jpg
Haha, when I ran that monster we also had a character (the barbarian) grab the stinger tentacle and use it as a weapon. She took it with her when the fight was over.
Preach!
Oh I forgot, one of his ways to defend against an attack from the “gaping maw” tentacle that had a bit of a sarlac pit description was to take the attack and stick his arms out to shove his fists down its throat. He accepted the damage and then pulled outward to rip the tentacle mouth apart from the inside. Defy Danger with Strength and it was shredded.
That’s fantastic! Stuff like that is why I love Dungeon World; it may be tricky to determine what or if a move triggers sometimes, but the game can handle all sorts of creative character actions. 🙂