Defend is a rather unique move in that it hacks the main game loop / the narrative economy.
A hold-carrying player has to power to hijack MC moves. They can interrupt soft and hard moves and change them in a kind of ¿firm? move.
On a soft move, by spending holds, the defending players ensure that the threatening attack effectively happens, potentially bypassing other player’s agency and – in a way – transforming a soft move into something harder.
On a hard move, the player spending holds is saying “oh no you don’t, not so fast”, they are allowed to react when they normally can’t. With much less liberty then when faced with a soft move, but nonetheless.
Strategically, if playing to win, spending hold on a soft MC move isn’t optimal. Better to address the soft move with a regular move (or no move at all) and keeping one’s hold for a hard move.
I don’t like the agency-robbing and the strategic parts so much.
Sounds like you’re not a fan of your PCs, then. 🙂 They’re heroes! They’re meant to subvert the expectations and do heroic deeds, whether attacking or defending. That’s the basic supposition of the game, they will do the impossible, whether to save each other or achieve other goals. They’re so unusual they can make hard moves soft (and vice versa, when they fail their rolls, for example).
I edited the last line of my post to make things clearer, because obviously I failed to convey what I meant.
By agency-robbing, are you implying it’s robbing the GM of agency?
What is this “playing to win” of which you speak? Is that in your GM Principles somewhere?
Aaron Griffin agency-robbing is probably a bit strong, but both the GM and the other players. The GM knows the defending players has holds, so it’s not a surprise when this happens. It’s a bit different for the other players, which might be a problem, or not, depending on the group. (It’s the old “fix your expectations to match the game, or fix your practice to match your expectations” conundrum.) “So Frodo, the orc stab you in the guts with its spear, with a strike powerful enough to kill a boar” “Oh no, they don’t, I spend a hold to push him out of the way, taking the blow for him, and spend my remaining hold to reduce damages”. Frodo’s player might be glad. Or disappointed if they wanted to put their new mithril armor awesomeness forward.
William Nichols I was writing about the players’ approach. Spending Defend holds against a soft move is a mechanical mistake in the sense that it hardens the soft move. It’s a bit paradoxical that using a success’holds is counterproductive.
But Defend isn’t meant to be used unless the GM says “The one you’re defending is about to take damage or get pushed off the roof, unless you do something. Are you going to spend any of your holds?” That’s what it’s for, which means it’s triggered by a hard move. If there isn’t a hard move in play, what are they defending from? People standing around?
This is my understanding and I really don’t see the problem with it: the players can roll whenever they want to defend something or someone, grab whatever holds they get, but only get to use those holds when there’s a hard move (defined by the consequences, which are always hard – damage, or loss of something/one). If someone at the table doesn’t like someone else taking a defence stand ahead of time, then you discuss it as civilized human beings at the table and there’s no chance of a PC stealing another PC’s thunder.
As the GM, we’re the ones who decide when the defend move gets triggered as well, not the players. So why are you (or your GM) allowing defend to impact things like “the dog starts growling at you, pulling the master’s leash”? You can’t just jump in between the target and a dog and say “I take half of his growl” or whatever, that’s not what a defend hold is for. Give us an example of what you’re saying because I really don’t see it.
Gherhartd Sildoenfein that’s not really how player agency works. Player agency is about freely making choices in the game.
What you’re talking about is a thing that can happen in any game with more than one player. Player B wants to kill this orc, but Player A rolled good damage and it died already. Player B wants to climb the cliff faster but failed their roll and not Player A got there first. Player B wants to woo the guard but Player B used a spell that did it.
What you’re worried about appears to be “what if a player does a thing they want before a different player does a thing they want?” which is like…. life? That’s how everything ever works.
Gherhartd Sildoenfein you’re talking about one of the big concerns I’ve got with Defend-as-written, and the examples presented in the book.
In both the written examples (in the write-up of the Defend move itself, and in the longer Example of Play):
> An ally rolls a 7-9 to Cast a Spell and chooses exposure to danger
> The GM makes a soft move at the caster
> Another PC spends 1 hold to redirect the attack towards themselves
> The soft move against the caster becomes a hard move against the defending PC, with them suffering damage.
That feels wrong to me. For a couple of reasons.
First: why does the defending PC need to spend hold at all to become the target of the attack? Like, the example in the Defend move could easily have gone like this:
“Avon, the zombies are drawn by the magical disturbance, lurching toward you on the attack. Suddenly, you’re swarmed by them, they’re everywhere! What do you do?”
“Not so fast!” says Lux. “I shove Avon aside and last out at the zombies, swing my hammer in an arc!”
“Oh! Cool. Roll Hack and Slash!”
Now, maybe some of the zombies (assuming they survive) keep coming after Avon. But there’s really no need to spend hold to become the object of the initial attack. As long as the fictional positioning is such that Lux could actually put himself between the zombies and squishy Avon, there’s no need for a mechanic to give him permission to do so.
Now, I can see the argument that Lux jumping in and interrupting is maybe a little rude at the conversational, social level. And that having hold and a rule that says “you can spend 1 hold to interrupt and do this” is maybe sort of useful from an “engineering the conversation” standpoint. But in that case, why does spending the 1 hold against a soft move result in Lux taking damage? He should, IMO, still be able to react/deal with the attack normally.
I also think that there are times when it’s tactically advantageous to respond to a GM’s soft move with “I’ll take the hit, and spend 1 hold to halve the damage or effects.” That’s intentionally giving the GM a golden opportunity, and then spending your earned resource (hold) to mitigate it. This is a good strategy when the attacker is fairly weak and your armor is fairly strong. E.g. a goblin attacks a 3rd level Wizard with Arcane Ward (2 armor). The Wizard Defends, gets 3 hold, and lets the goblin hit him. He’ll spend 1 hold to halve the damage (d6/2… less 2 armor… pretty safe bet!) and 1 hold to deal 3 points of damage to goblin (0 armor, 3 HP). If the Wizard’s CON is better than their STR or DEx, it’s a much safer bet than Hacking & Slashing or even dodging (Defying Danger).
But just because I have hold from Defend, I shouldn’t have to spend it in lieu of saying what I do and triggering other moves. Just like when a Druid shapeshifts into a bear… they don’t have to spend 1 hold to “Maul them” if they want to attack… they can just describe smacking their foes around with their great big paws and claws and roll +STR to Hack and Slash.
Jeremy Strandberg, your scenario of “I shove Avon aside and lash out at the zombies” indeed doesn’t involve Defend at all. Instead, when the GM makes a soft move (“zombies threaten, what do you do?”) Lux’s response is “attack”, triggering hack and slash.
Consider two other situations, though:
1) Same set up, but when (“zombies threaten, what do you do?”), Lux says “I’m going to guard Avon and keep the zombies away from him”. That is what triggers Defend. He rolls it. He gets hold. He doesn’t spend a damn thing. When the fiction says “the zombies attack Avon”, then he spends hold.
2) Same set up, but Lux has previously indicated he will defend Avon, and has hold. When “zombies threaten, what do you do?” happens, Lux has choices, but spending hold isn’t one of them. He can a) “attack them”, breaking defend, losing hold, making hack and slash, or b) say “I continue to stand in defense of Avon”, in which case action probably goes to someone else, and if the zombies ever attack Avon, then Lux can spend hold to stop them.
Defense is a basically a statement of “I’m going to hold-off acting for the right to interrupt what is happing later”.
Lester Ward the example in book with Lux and Avon is your #1 (Lux stands in Defense before Avon rolls to cast… Lux has 3 hold… Avon rolls a 7-9 to cast and chooses danger) but the book specifically has Lux spending hold to interpose himself.
GM: Avon, you begin weaving the spell to push the necromancer’s ghost back through the gates but the zombies are bearing down on you.
Lux: Don’t worry, squishy Avon, I will save you. While Avon casts his spell, I swear to protect him—I slam my hammer on my shield and yell “If you want to stop him, you’ll have to come through me.” I’d like to defend Avon.
GM: And with such gusto, too. Roll+Con.
Lux: I get an 11, three hold, right?
Avon: Better get ready to use it, Lux. I got an 8 on my spellcasting roll—I choose to put myself in danger.
GM: Of course you do. The zombies are drawn by the magical disturbance, lurching toward you on the attack. Suddenly, you’re swarmed by them, they’re everywhere! What do you do?
Avon: Squeak helplessly?
Lux: I’m on it. I spend a point of my hold to redirect the attack to me—I shove Avon aside and let the full fury of my goodness spill out in waves, angering the undead. To be safe, I’m going to whip my hammer in an arc and deal my damage. I might as well use it all up and reduce the damage by half. My god protects us!
(The Example of Play one is similar, except that the defender rolls in response to the soft move… arrows coming at the spell caster.)
So based on the examples given in the book, you are supposed to spend hold to step in the way of the GM’s soft move.
And my point is: that’s dumb.
Yeah, that is dumb. “Redirecting an attack to me” doesn’t really work when there is no attack.
It may also help to consider a third situation:
3) Same setup, but when the gm makes the soft “zombies threaten. what do you do?”, Avon, Lux or someone else react in some way other than “look to the GM to see what happens”. In this case, what do the zombies do? Nothing. The GM can’t have them do anything until someone fails a roll or looks to her to see what happens. If the GM really wanted the zombies to attack, she probably should have made a hard move instead.
A more charitable, but cheesier, way to look at that example: the GM made a soft move against Avon, giving Avon a chance to react. But Avon chose to do nothing, thus giving the GM a golden opportunity, which certainly would have triggered a hard move: damage against Avon. You have to ask, what would have happened at the table had Lux done nothing?
So, Lux really is reacting to an implied hard move, though it isn’t stated in the example. The example could use a GM line right before Lux says “I’m on it”, where the GM says something like “OK, they claw at you for X damage” or something.
There is yet another thing to look at here. When Lux spends hold to “redirect an attack from the thing you defend to yourself”, in reaction to a soft move, the spirit of the move would be that he is “redirecting an impending attack from the thing you defend to yourself”, making himself the target of the soft move. In that case, he’s not taking damage, he’s just redirecting a soft move on someone else to himself. That’s not what the move says, of course, but that would seem to follow the premise of the thing.
Lester Ward
A more charitable, but cheesier, way to look at that example: the GM made a soft move against Avon, giving Avon a chance to react. But Avon chose to do nothing, thus giving the GM a golden opportunity, which certainly would have triggered a hard move: damage against Avon. You have to ask, what would have happened at the table had Lux done nothing?
So, Lux really is reacting to an implied hard move, though it isn’t stated in the example. The example could use a GM line right before Lux says “I’m on it”, where the GM says something like “OK, they claw at you for X damage” or something.
I think that’s a pretty strained reading of the scenario. If Lux had done nothing, as the GM I’d have absolutely clarified Avon’s intent to just squeak and get mobbed by zombies. “Ha! No, seriously… are you just standing there and letting them get you, or what?” Going straight to a hard move is pretty lame IMO.
This reading is also somewhat belied by the Example of Play. There’s no equivalent to Avon squeaking helplessly. The wizard chooses a 7-9 to cast a spell. The GM describes the spell’s effects, then makes a soft move at the wizard (yellow highlight). The fighter (or whatever Ben is playing) interjects and fictionally places himself in the way, triggering Defend and rolling 7-9 for 1 hold (green highlight). The GM then escalates to a hard move at the wizard, ignoring the fiction established by Ben and forcing Ben to spend hold to do what he already said he did (second green highlight). And then Ben becomes the target of that hard move (second red highlight), taking it’s full effects (5 damage).
The consistent theme in these two examples is: you do have to spend 1 hold to make yourself the target of a soft move, and doing so “escalates” that soft move to a hard move, and you get smacked with it.
And, again, I think that’s dumb. If Ben had just stepped in front of those crazed goblins and started swinging, “cutting them down before they can reach Rath,” I’d certainly rule that as a Hack and Slash and, fictionally, he’d probably have the goblins’ attention.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/dApbVPTysPh58wUiOJXzGZSSgdbnEOAz_yzp0HejocHTys-uyd2Py5GfBBlptJ3FpC-D70RAIRciIyMG9dqJnT5TfrRkAR8a1EE=s0
Well, it sounds like your objection is to the escalation to the hard move in the examples. Apart from the examples, there is nothing in the move or its discussion that says “escalate to a hard move”. So what should happen in those examples, instead?
Aaron Griffin I choose to call it player agency, it might have been consent or some other term, the precise one depends on the point of view. If I played my character to put them into trouble, wanting to explore that (say I want to show off my new mithril armor, or that I feel that having a brush with death is what the game needs right now, or simply I’d like to deal myself with the trouble I put myself into), I might feel robbed from my agency.
Yes, it is something that might happen with every multiplayer game. But there are rules that will prevent, discourage, be neutral or stimulate that. Defend is the later. Yes, it is lifelike, it happens IRL with disrespectful, unaware, competitive, clumsy or distracted people all the time. But sometimes, for some people, games are interesting in the ways they aren’t like “real life”.
–I am glad that Defend as written works perfectly for some of us, that’s great. But that doesn’t mean it should be a perfect fit for everybody. Simply the amount of discussion about the move shows that it needs at least some clarifications in the wording or in the rules. And even then, it is impossible that it would please everybody, with the variety of play styles, tastes and expectations we collectively represent.