Continuing to tinker with Hack & Slash
Here’s what I’m thinking. Explanation in the blog post.
HACK & SLASH
When you fight in melee, roll +STR. On a 7+, you attack your foe (deal damage!) and suffer the enemy’s attack; on a 10+, also pick 2; on a 7-9, also pick 1 (but not the first one).
● You evade/counter/prevent the enemy’s attack
● Your attack is powerful/fast/brutal: add +1d6 to your damage
● You hold the initiative or give it to an ally; say what you do next, or who gets to go next
Thoughts?
(edit: slightly reworded; it used to say “By default” instead of “On a 7+;” changed because I want a miss to still be completely undefined. I know I’ve had H&S misses where I brought in something out of left field, like a grim portent, instead of the enemy attacking. I also rephrased it to say “you attack your foe (deal damage) and suffer…” because I intend to have “Deal Damage” be it’s own basic move when I’m done.
Tinkering with Hack & Slash
There’s a lot a like about Hack and Slash, but it’s always bugged me how utterly mechanical the player side of the move is. You “deal your damage,” and maybe evade the enemy’s attack, but the move is silent regarding the momentum of the fight itself.
This seems like a strange mechanic to attach to just a single move. I’m not sure how I feel about it.
So until you roll a 6- you can just hang on unto initiative until you die? Not sure I like that. Also seems a little convoluted.
I like the description of how it would work, and how the concept of initiative is brought into effect. But the move reads pretty clunky, and I’m not sure about denying all GM moves on a 7-9.
Might it make sense to only be able to hold initiative yourself on a 10+, and on a 7-9 the choice is only to pass the initiative to an ally?
I’m not sure you need to have the “not the first one” qualification on the 7-9 “pick 1” result. Sure, it’s effectively a “nothing happens” option, but in combat you never really get nothing happening – while you spend your time cautiously defending yourself, the other party members are still engaged in their own struggles and things will be changing around you.
I can totally imagine a PC who’s low on health and who keeps rolling 7-9s desperately deflecting the monster’s attacks over and over as it continues to hold the initiative and press its attack (probably slowly forcing them backwards in the process).
Having tried ironsworn and the initiative mechanic it uses, it felt great. I think I like the premise of your h&s variant although it lacks the polishing we’re used to from a Strandberg move. It’s certainly a step in the right way.
https://plus.google.com/112321100855601084365/posts/aJaiPgtkBcD
plus.google.com – In my previous games, I always used Ironsworn in combination with some kind o…
If you stick with the original idea, I’d go with a wording more like this:
When you fight in melee, deal your damage and roll +STR. On a 7-9, pick one and suffer the enemy’s attack.
● Your attack is powerful/fast/brutal: add +1d6 to your damage.
● You hold the initiative or give it to an ally; say what you do next, or who gets to go next.
On a 10+, pick 2, and you may also choose from the following:
● You evade/counter/prevent the enemy’s attack.
I do have concerns over “hold the initiative” phrasing; it definitely has different meanings for different people. I think you mean, “hold the upper hand if you had it”, as someone in a duel would think of initiative. However, it could be interpreted as giving them the option to hog the spotlight.
I also think it’s odd to let the player make a brutal attack on a 7-9, as it feels like the 10+ option from the original hack-and-slash but easier to achieve. Am I misunderstanding?
Better wording, but I think removing the option to not get attacked will increase the chances of a player hogging the spotlight by choosing to gain initiative.
Having to choose between making another move right now vs not getting hurt is a lot more interesting choice. By opposition, I’d very rarely take +1d6 dmg vs make another move now, which technically has better chances to do more damage.
Alas, we onboarded a new player yesterday, and in the chaos I totally forgot to try this out. Maybe next time!
Here’s a run through on a full scenario.
docs.google.com – “Initiative” Hack & Slash in action
Julien Villeneuve, Will D, Matthew DeKrey, Addramyr Palinor…
I’m genuinely curious what you find clunky about the wording. Like, I’m finding Matthew’s rewrite a lot harder to process.
(I did just make some slight adjustments, but I’ve got a feeling it’s not addressing y’all’s concerns).
Jeremy Strandberg, I like the rewording. I’ll try to find a chance to try it out during next week’s game, if the players are down.
My concern before was only due to the fact that it was lacking the elegance of what we re accustomed to from a Strandberg move. Victim of your own success, I’d say, hehe.
I especially didn’t like the “by default” wording.
It’s better worded now.
I think I have a small hitch with the “except the first option”. Mechanically wise, like I mentioned before, I think it’s more interesting to have to choose between keeping initiative but getting hurt vs evading the attack but loosing initiative than choosing between get hurt and do +1d6 or do another move now.
Linguistic wise, I guess I find it a bit silly to say “here’s 3 options, choose between the 2 last”.
Jeremy Strandberg What Addramyr Palinor said. I’m also worried about lucky players hoarding initiative.
“by default” was one awkward part. Another is having the emphasizing ‘also’ when sometimes it’s not appropriate, as in “you suffer the enemy’s attack and ALSO you evade/counter/prevent the enemy’s attack”. The way that “(but not the first one)” leads you right to the first one that you are forbidden from.
Something like this is easier for me to parse:
HACK & SLASH
When you fight in melee, roll +STR. On a 7+, you attack your foe (deal damage!) and suffer the enemy’s attack; on a 10+, pick 2; on a 7-9, pick 1
● Your attack is powerful/fast/brutal: add +1d6 to your damage
● You hold the initiative or give it to an ally; say what you do next, or who gets to go next
On a 10+, you also have the following option:
● You evade/counter/prevent the enemy’s attack
But that’s not perfect either, maybe having “on a 10+” twice is confusing to some.
I just was rewording to be more similar to other DW moves from the core book. Excluding options is confusing to players in my experience, so adding an extra bonus when rolling well seems better. To build on what Will has, remove the 10+ from the first sentence, change 7-9 to 7+, and make the second mention of 10+ mention the extra option.
When you fight in melee, roll +STR. On a 7+, you attack your foe (deal damage!) and suffer the enemy’s attack; on a 7+, pick 1:
● Your attack is powerful/fast/brutal: add +1d6 to your damage
● You hold the initiative or give it to an ally; say what you do next, or who gets to go next
On a 10+, pick an additional option, and you also may choose from:
● You evade/counter/prevent the enemy’s attack
This allows for advanced moves similar to Discern Realities, “You may also choose from the following list.”
To be fair, I usually find Jeremy’s move wording clearer than RAW DW. I do like the way you phrased this though. I agree that adding an option instead of excluding one sounds better.
Although, I seem to prefer moves that describe stuff from 10+ then descending.
On a 10+, this
On a 7-9, that
I’m not huge fan of stuff that goes on 7+ this, on 7-9 that, on 10+ this.
Probably personal taste.
There’s a definite balance to strike between between consistency, usefulness at the table, and clarity when first reading & understanding the move. Brevity and conciseness is also a factor. So is flavor/color. And space in the final product.
Like, I’m generally in favor of the 10+ >> 7-9 structure, where each entry fully fleshes out the results. It’s consistent, and it means that at the table, in play, you can just read the result and ignore almost everything else.
But that approach can also make it hard to process the move when first reading it, because the differences between the two might get lost in the similarities. It can also make the move a lot longer, which again makes it more impenetrable when first encountering it. (That’s especially important in playbook moves, where the player has to choose X to start with.) Also, longer = harder to fit into a playbook or other layout.
I personally find “7+ this general thing happens and then on 10+ pick x, 7-9 pick y” to be very easy to understand, but I’ve seen it be an issue at the table. (like, that’s how Backstab / Ambush are written and cannot count the times that I’ve had to tell the Thief/Fox “_would you just please read the damn move!?!“).
On the other hand, I’ve also had experience with moves that say “On a 10+, pick X from this list” and “on a 7-9, pick Y from the list above OR these” and _holy crap to players struggle with those as well.
So on the whole, I’m favoring brevity and conciseness with this particular phrasing, and using “but not the first one” to do that. I personally think it’s a pretty elegant solution, but I also see how it’s potentially confusing. I’d probably try to avoid it for a playbook move, but for a basic move that gets used over and over again (and thus will likely get memorized by the GM and players pretty quickly), I don’t think it’s that bad.
Ultimately, I think the bigger issue is whether it’s right. And by “it,” I mean: explicitly handling initiative and spotlight control in this one move, while not in any others.
All those thoughts make sense, and in that light I would prefer an inline caveat like
● (10+ only) You evade/counter/prevent the enemy’s attack
Regardless, it would be less jarring if it wasn’t the first item. 7-9 will be the most common result, so leading with an unavailable option will be noise in most cases. So:
● Your attack is powerful/fast/brutal: add +1d6 to your damage
● You hold the initiative or give it to an ally; say what you do next, or who gets to go next
● (10+ only) You evade/counter/prevent the enemy’s attack
Also the rulebook should have a more in-depth explanation of the concept of initiative you are using readily available when someone is presented with this move for the first time, since most people will think of D&D’s initiative when they first see the word, I’m guessing. I’m imagining the conclusions people would jump to if I posted to reddit “Initiative hacked into DW combat” — they probably wouldn’t read past the title before commenting WRONG.
Anyway, thanks for putting all this effort into making DW a better game, Jeremy Strandberg, your work is continually improving the games I play.
” Ultimately, I think the bigger issue is whether it’s right. And by “it,” I mean: explicitly handling initiative and spotlight control in this one move, while not in any others. “
I think initiative has its place. In Ironsworn it works great (for what I’ve tested so far).
I think the point of “spotlight hogging” is not valid as what mentioned before, the GM still has control over it and could easily go “ok, hold that though” then move the camera to another player. As long as the GM doesn’t make a move against the player who has initiative, it’s all fair and game.
Will D wrote:
> I’m imagining the conclusions people would jump to if I posted to reddit “Initiative hacked into DW combat” — they probably wouldn’t read past the title before commenting WRONG.
For some reason, my head is reeling with deja vu. 😉 And you were there, Jeremy Strandberg, and so was Ray Bolger, and Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr!
John at Deep Six Delver that was a good discussion, though. Here at least…