How do folks deal with making moves (and the failures and qualified succeses) during “downtime”, ie, in a situation without implicit narrative pressure (combat, negotiation, escape, etc.).
I’ve tried it a few different ways and none are entirely satisfying. The prototypical situation is healing between encounters but the same applies for strategically spouting lore or the like. The problem mostly occurs with repeated failure.
– Make Dungeon/Front/Other moves. This works OK sometimes, but it creates a sense of urgency that feels narratively wrong. The threats are all indirect, distant, or the like, but a failure shouldn’t be just free XP, and similarly a 7-9 should have some effect. This is especially problematic when the cleric tries to heal everyone in the party, which yields 2 failures, 3 partial successes and a success. Narrating 5 consequences/moves ends up feeling odd. I want the players to feel “relaxed” enough to search the rooms or consult their books. So…
– Make Moves in these narrative contexts be roll free; just let the cleric cast as many heals as they want, as much Spout Lore as they want, etc. This actually mostly works, except it still feels a little weird with the “special” abilities like healing and other spellcasting. So, I might…
– Make moves be roll free, but have it be explicit that this takes time, which causes DM moves (not spoken, but understood), but there’s no risk of failure (and no risk of XP) either. I haven’t tried this so it might work, but it still feels like it’s a little off thematically.
Thoughts? Other suggestions?