Suppose a character rolls a 10 on a move and two other characters successfully interfere, dropping it to a 6. Do I treat this as a miss and make a (possibly hard) GM move?
More concretely, I have someone trying to start a fight and the others trying to hold him back. A miss could easily escalate the situation into armed conflict, but that’s exactly the outcome they’re trying to prevent by interfering. I still get the sense that something dangerous should happen, but I want to make sure it respects the successful interference. Plus they were partial interfere successes and the instigator has a Barbarian appetites complication due too. I’m glad it happened at end of session so I can try to make sense of this. 🙂
If they’re trying to prevent armed conflict and two out of three of the characters have succeeded towards prevention, I would make a different hard move.
Just because a character fails a specific move doesn’t mean the hard move needs to relate to the specific move.
Have a lizard beast crash through the door, or maybe there’s a random explosion, or a mutual enemy shows up…
The NPC starts picking a fight with one of the peacemakers.
What Aaron Griffin said, Think of who really succeeded here: The peacekeepers. They succeeded at restraining him 2:1, so the move (i won’t specify hard or soft) should be against the one who is restrained: • The enemy laughs at his apperent bloodlust, and keeps an eye on him the entire encounter.
*OR* you treat it as simply a failed roll, no move involved:
• “They succeed in holding you back, and you swing your sword wildly, screaming ‘Lemme at ’em! Lemme at ’em'”
From the text:
” No matter how many people aid or interfere with a given roll, the target only gets the +1 or -2 once. Even if a whole party of adventurers aid in attacking an ogre, the one who makes the final attack only gets +1. “
So the 6- is out of the question in this case.
Matt Horam
Ah, I missed that. Interesting…
What was the fictional setup? i.e. What was player A doing that triggered their roll (with the 10+)? What move was triggered? What did players B and C do to interfere?
Jeremy Strandberg The town’s chief constable was demanding an ‘adventuring tax’ with a few armed guards in tow. Things got a bit tense and the Druid pretended to be casting some sort of spell, which put the guards on edge. They put their hands on their sword hilts, which was enough to get the Barbarian to say “I punch the nearest guard.” The Mage really didn’t want to get kicked out of another town, so he tried to cast a stasis spell on the Barbarian, but kinda overdid it and froze the entire town square.
The Barbarian conveyed that he still wanted to punch the guard once the stasis ended and the Mage and Puppeteer both stated their intention to interfere. Things got a bit confusing and I didn’t do a good job of clarifying exactly how they were interfering prior to rolls happening (Barbarian rolled H&S to engage with the armed guard; incidentally he did this with Fame & Glory appetites, with visions of being the conquering hero and taking down the corrupt government.) I ended the session there, in freeze frame (the timing worked out well) so I can ask more questions at the start of next session to figure out what’s actually happening in the fiction.
It’s especially interesting in light of the above rules clarification, since that suggests to me his punch will land. I was expecting they might get in some sort of conflict with the front starring the constable, but I wasn’t expecting it to turn into a fight in the middle of the town square, two minutes after they got back. 😀
Don’t forget that the H&S is still reduced to the 7-9 range so you can make a soft move, perhaps use “Tell them the consequences and ask.” Maybe attacking the guard will carry the Mage and Puppeteer into melee leaving them exposed or perhaps the Barbariam notices the guard is poised for action with hand on sword hilt and the punch will not take the guard by surprise – does he still want to go through with his strike?
Dan Bryant I think you identified the root problem, which is that you “didn’t do a good job of clarifying exactly how they were interfering prior to rolls happening.” It’s tough, though! I find that Aid/Interfere is the move where I most frequently fail to clarify “what does that look like?” and then have to scramble to figure it out after the rolls.
In this case, the fact that only one Interfere can affect the roll is also a little weird.
If one of the two PCs describes their interference as getting between the guard and the barbarian, I’d recommend that you reframe it as a Defend roll rather than an Interfere. Keep the roll, though. Even if their CON is lower than their BOND, they’d still (probably) get a 7-9 and at least 1 hold.
Then, if the other PC is (for example) trying to hold the barbarian back, and got a 7-9 (exposing himself to danger or retribution)… and that made the barbarian’s H&S a 7-9 (deal damage but open self to attack), it could look like…
The barbarian hauls back to deck the guard, and player A grabs at the barbarians arm and tries to hold him back, but (exposed to danger) gets smashed in the face by the barbarian’s elbow (1d4 damage?). That gives time for player B to jump between the barbarian and the guard and take the blow from the barbarian. The barbarian is exposed to attack, which gives Player A a “free shot” at him, to tackle him or suckerpunch him or whatnot.
(And if the barbarian’s d6 rolled higher than the d8, maybe the barbarian’s savage bellowing during this terrifies the guards and raises the alarm and everyone’s drawing swords and circling the PCs and calling for reinforcements, even though the PCs are basically just fighting among themselves.)