In a DR podcast I recently listened to, Jason and David discuss using monster moves as an alternative to simply applying damage to a character who has gotten a 6- in combat. If a monster move is such that it probably would cause damage to a character (throwing the character into a wall), I think that I would consider applying a debility rather than damage. Thoughts?
Monster Moves and "non-damage"
Displacing the PC is a move, applying a debility is a move, and damaging them is a move. You can do any or all of them at once, depending on the fictional positioning and how much pressure you’ve decided to apply in the situation.
I play Freebooters on the Frontier quite a bit, and players have relatively little HP in that game. Doing damage all the time would probably result in TPKs (in addition to being boring), so I employ monster moves to worsen the situation or non-HP elements of the PCs quite often. Characters get dragged into the water or up into the air, caught in nets or nastier traps, cursed or poisoned, surrounded, thrown off ledges, drenched in filth, cast into darkness, etc.
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Per Dungeon World’s GM chapter, under Moves >> Making Your Move:
Note that “deal damage” is a move, but other moves may include damage as well. When an ogre flings you against a wall you take damage as surely as if he had smashed you with his fists.
So, strictly reading the rules, throwing the PC into the wall would come with damage.
You can certainly add a debility, or replace damage with it, but the intent of the rules seems to be “if you do a move that hurts them, it deals damage too.” I’m a fan of regularly dealing damage as part of another GM move. Dungeon World PCs often have so many HP (and so much Armor) that it takes quite a few hits before they’re actually in trouble, and the damage system only really gets interesting when players start to fear for their PC’s lives.
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I agree, and this all makes sense. However, while listening to the DR podcast, a character fell victim to a ghoul gnawing his wrist, but didnt lose any HP.
This left me wondering about the aspects of monster moves and thier influence on the story and the role of HP to the story. Obviously, the loss and/or recovery of a character’s HP can impact the story, but it also seems that the tie between story and HP is not as critical as in some other RPG systems.
It is interesting to contemplate the ways that a character might “pay” for thier heroics. I feel it gives me some breathing room to run an adventure for a single player (which is all I have at the moment) without nerfing every danger or feel that the character is leading to an inevitable doom. This is as encouraging as it is intriguing.
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That seems like the opposite of what I see in a lot of places – usually people are trying to steer GMs away from JUST inflicting HP damage, so the advice is like “Don’t just ‘do 10 damage’ – tear their arm off!”
Which, I confess, I’m not really a big fan of, but different styles for different people.
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