Question on 7-9 results.

9 thoughts on “Question on 7-9 results.”

1. If they Give You a Golden Opportunity, then sure.

2. My feeling is that the move already includes the soft move – this is no different from Defy Danger telling you what kind of soft move to make.

3. What about a move like Volley, where the 7-9 is a choice. Do you ever also make a soft move after something like this? I had a player shoot something three times in a row and mark ammo each time. Sure, now he’s out of ammo, but I felt like I was stuck unable to progress the story in that situation without forcing something to happen or letting him continue to puncture his target. It felt obvious that I was trying to make it difficult, rather than reacting in an interesting way.

4. Sometimes the move tells you what the GM move should be. The Blood God move and Volley are both “Take Away Their Stuff”

5. Don’t forget that you get to make a move whenever the players “look to you to see what happens.” Which is pretty much all the time.

6. I guess I think of it more like this… 

   After the player rolls and makes any choices (and rolls damage), they’re looking to you to see what happens.  So your job is to make a move that follows, incorporating:

    – The fictional positioning

    – The choice they made (or that the move told you, the GM to make)

    – Any extra inputs (such as a damage roll, armor, remaining HPs, weapon tags, etc.)

   – Your GM principles

   So on the Volley >> 7-9 >> use up ammo scenario, yeah, you are definitely making a move.  At least you can, and probably should. It just might not be very hard.

   “Oh, a goblin?  I shoot it!” Volley >> 7-9 >> marks ammo >> rolls 8 damage vs 3 hp & 0 armor >> GM says: “It’s still staring at you like a deer in headlights as the first arrow goes by, but the second one catches it in the throat and drops it.”  (That’s not really a move, though, that’s just describing the situation.)  “As it drops, something shiny rolls from it’s hand and into the brush… but you hear voices coming from over the rise. Sounds like more goblins, and they’re on their way. What do you do?”  (offer an opportunity with a cost).

   The fighter goes forward and digs around, looking for the shiny thing while the rogue stays back and covers the fighter with her bow.  They look to the GM to see what happens, so the GM makes a move: “Fighter, you’ll need to find it quickly if you want to get out of here before the goblins show up. I think that’s Defying Danger with INT. Yeah?”  (telling the requirements and asking).  

   Fighter agrees, gets a 7-9.  GM picks a hard bargain and makes his move to reflect that:  “it’s really in there, and takes longer than you hoped to grope around for it; you can grab it but let the goblins spot you, or leave now unseen. what do you do?”  (unsurprisingly, the GM move here is tell them the consequences & ask)

   Fighter wants that bauble, so he grabs it (it’s a crystal vial of… something) and starts to retreat.  But now I get to make a pretty hard move, because the fighter just took my bargain.  GM:  “As you slink back into the woods, you hear a yell from the behind you. Goblins, lots of them!  They’ve spotted you. They’re howling and about to charge. What do you do?”  (*Reveal an unwelcome truth*, in this case that there are a lot of goblins”)

   Rogue asks if she can get some shots off at the goblins before they charge. Of course! I offer an opportunity with a cost: “if you spend 1 ammo, I’ll let you take a few shots with a single roll.”  She agrees, rolls 7-9 to Volley, and chooses to loose even more ammo (so she’s used 3 ammo now! fortunately for her, she has two bundles, so still has 3 left… she thinks she’s invincible!).  She rolls 5 damage, which is enough to kill a typical goblin.  But everyone’s looking at the GM to see what happens.

   It’s the GM’s turn to make a move. What’s been established?

   1) We’ve established there are a lot of goblins (like a LOT), howling for blood

   2) The rogue choose to spend extra ammo to fire off a bunch of shots

   3) The rogue rolled enough damage to kill any goblin she hit

   4) The GM needs to follow their principles

   Well… yeah, the rogue didn’t choose to “move to a spot that put them in danger,” but she also didn’t do anything to really address the fact that there are bunch of goblins about to charge them.  So as the GM, I’d feel perfectly comfortable with “yeah, you start letting arrows fly and they start dropping, but here come the rest of them!  there’s so like 20 more at least, that you can see and they’re howling for blood and almost on you, what do you do?”  (*use a monster move*, in this case “CHARGE!”)

   Now, all of that could have easily changed with some more fictional inputs.  Have we already decided that goblins are afraid of elves?  Is the rogue an elf?  Well, shit, in that case the very same roll (spend an extra ammo, roll 7-9, roll 5 damage) could have sent those goblins running in a panic.  And for a GM move: “The goblins see an elf raining arrows at them and they panic and scatter. But you know goblins… they’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers, unless you really put the fear into them. What do you do?”  (present a challenge to one of the characters)

   So, yeah… on a 7-9, you’re usually making a move that incorporates the choices made on the 7-9 result. But describing the results of the 7-9 isn’t the extent of your GM move.  

   (Related observation #1:  I think there’s an unspoken GM move of give them what they worked for which is basically “cool, yeah, it works and this happens, what do you do?”)

   (Related observation #2: many times, what you say as the GM could be labelled as many different GM moves, and that’s just fine. Knocking the cleric into a ghoul-infested pit could be dealing damage and putting them in a spot and introducing a new type of creature and challenging one of the characters all at once.)

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8. Jeremy Strandberg​ to the rescue!

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