Going to introduce to you a small conversation piece: in fiction, do you manage “long term” consequences of an attack suffered by a character?
Example given: during a frantic struggle, the creature X bites deep into the pg arm holding the weapon inflicting Y damage. If a wound like that in fiction would prevent the PG to hold the weapon, do you apply it? And after the battle you “play” the dressing?
Of course if you have any material related to, link as always 😀
I find it useful fodder for helping to explain what happens in future 6- rolls. Given your example, if that character later blows a roll I can say something like “you are pretty sure there isn’t a trap here, but In the time it took you to look, some hungry creatures caught the scent of your festering wound. From down the dark hallway you hear the scuffling of nails on stone and the slavering of something large.”
We always REINCORPORATE like crazy. Whether it’s wounds or NPCs or fictional details or monsters or magic or long lost prophecies: rather than make up something new, we first look to see if we can build on what we have already introduced to the fiction until it doesn’t interest us anymore. We also get into the habit of asking each other questions about the reincorporated detail – often in character.
‘Hey Torsten, remember when you took that arrow to the knee last adventure? Is that still giving you grief? You seem to be limping and I’ve noticed blood stains on your trews!’
/sub
Fictional constraints, for the most part, maybe with a debility to reflect the pain/weakness/discomfort.
For example, in Daniel Lugo’s DW game, my paladin got a nasty burrowing insect drilling through his right arm and up into my chest. The thief missed on his Defy Danger roll to cut it out of there, and as a result my paladin’s arm and bicep were a cut-up bloody mess. They applied bandages to stem the bleeding, but my arm was in a sling and basically worthless and immobile until we found a healing potion (and all agreed that it would heal up my arm as a result).
While the arm was injured, I marked the Weakened the debility and couldn’t use that arm. No shield for me, and was wielding my sword with my left hand. But it didn’t stop me from fighting, or thinking straight, or whatever… it was just limiting what was reasonable for me to do and it was (as Ray Otus points out) fodder for GM moves.
Similarly… in my home game, the rogue type got his left leg mauled by a boar. We had him mark Shaky, but mostly: he couldn’t walk! After the priest tended to his wounds (and applied a little magic) we said he could walk again but that the leg was still weak. The debility persists (they’re still out in the woods) and I intend to have his leg give out from under him if he rolls a miss or a 7-9.
There are some times that an injury like that can give you a great setup for story. Like when the wizard got her hand chopped off retrieving a book for a Lich in my game. She would have had to learn to cast spells one handed or find a replacement, but I found it more interesting to have the Lich reattach it for her as thanks. It was pale, cold and obviously had no blood flow to it, but it could move and function as normal. It also let the Lich keep track of her and would have turned on her if she had used it on the Lich, but they never found that out. No one attempted to investigate it and she had it replaced by a living wood hand before they fought the Lich.