Playing Stonetop (and Other PbtA Games)

Work continues on Stonetop, my "hearth-fantasy" adaptation of Dungeon World set in an iron age that never was, in which you portray the local heroes of a small, isolated village near the edge of the known world. It's going more slowly than I'd like, but we just added the "Playing Stonetop" chapter to the main book, and I'm quite pleased with it. 

This is a chapter that's addressed to the players, including:

• The Conversation
• Your Agenda (as a player)
• The Flow of Play
• Dice and Moves 
• Your Principles (as a player) 
• Other Things to Do (and not do) 

A few of the Stonetop Kickstarter backers commented that the chapter is a good, overall introduction to and solid advice for playing PbtA games in general. Hence me reposting them here. 

I'm not about to claim that this advice is universally applicable to all PbtA games. For example, I don't think that the "Flow of Play" is the same in Stonetop as it is in games like Monsterhearts or Cartel or even Apocalypse World, which feature a lot more PC-PC drama. 

But for PbtA games where the PCs mostly work together against adversity presented by the GM (like, Monster of the Week or the Sprawl or Impulse Drive, to name a few), I do think this stuff is largely relevant. 

If you're a new player in a game like that, or a GM trying to help new players "get it," maybe this will help?  

© 2022 Lucie Arnoux, used with permission (click here for more)

Anyway, here's "Playing Stonetop".

Stonetop Kickstarter: March 1st, 2021

We're finally doing it:

click me for the prelaunch page

Here's the teaser text:

The Stone has always been here, in the center of the village. It’s larger than life, older than anything, etched with runes. When storms roll up from the south, as they often do, the Stone pulls lightning from the sky and the village shakes with thunder. Visitors cower. The locals? They barely even notice.

You are one such local, someone who calls Stonetop home. You’re one of a handful of notables—admired, or respected, or maybe even reviled. When there’s trouble, people look to you for the solution. Or as the cause. Or both.

And right now, as the first wildflowers appear beyond the Old Wall? Trouble is brewing. The world itself is darkening, like the sky before a summer storm. Folks can feel it. They’re afraid.

These are good people, here, in Stonetop. Your kith and kin.

If you don’t step up to protect them, who will?

I've been working on Stonetop since, criminy, 2013? It started as a "playset" for Dungeon World with beefed up rules for managing the steading's prosperity. Then it became a whole slew of custom classes with a unique structure, and a bunch of creepy artifacts. And then I started tweaking basic moves, and eventually acknowledged that this was going to be a standalone game.

I've run over 75 sessions with 5 different groups. I've played in over 30 sessions myself. We've had something like 60 different playtest groups. 

And now, finally, the end is in sight. We'll be launching the Kickstarter on March 1, 2021, closing on March 31. Target fulfillment is October 2021.  

Jason Lutes of Lampblack & Brimstone will be running the Kickstarter and publishing the game. You might know Jason/L&B from The Perilous Wilds, which is where we first collaborated. Jason is also doing layout, editing, and art direction.

Illustrations will be done by Lucie Arnoux, a UK-based artist whose work includes reportage, children's books, set design, and comics. That's her work up above. Here's some more:

(details, including a sample chapter and a more art, after the break)

Major Arcana: The Nhing Codex

Over on the Dungeon World Discord, Razorkiss asked this interesting question:

Imagine you're trying to model scary Mythos tomes in DungeonWorld. Y'know, we're talking about The Necronomicon here. You want to create a custom move that represents the dangers of reading it, the dangers of gaining knowledge at the expense of sanity. I feel like the first instinct would be that this is a +WIS move, because, y'know, the Will save and all of its attendant baggage. But... is that the way you'd really want to go? It's basically saying, "Y'know, Wizard, you'd think you'd be the person who would be all over this custom move, but it turns out your buddies the Ranger, Druid, and Cleric are better-suited for this job..."

When you read the obviously evil book, roll +???

Queue discussion about whether it'd be an INT roll or CHA roll or whatever.

And my first instinct was to treat it the way I treat major arcana in Stonetop. 

(discussion after the break)

Running Fights in Dungeon World & Stonetop

I've been working on the GMing chapters for Stonetop, and recently finished the "Dangers" chapter. Part of that chapter is a section on "Using Monsters and Running Fights." It's a distillation of procedures, advice, and wisdom that you'll find floating around the Dungeon World community, but that isn't really specifically laid out in the DW text. 

If you've been GMing Dungeon World (or any of its hacks) for a while, you probably know all of this already. I'm mostly posting this for newer GMs, or those who've been running the game but still feel uncertain when fights break out.  

Some caveats:

• It assumes that you're using my changes to Hack & Slash, Defend, Defy Danger, Parley, and Aid--but most of what follows applies with the original moves, too. 

•  The Multiple Combatants and Abstracting Groups sections assume that you're using an updated version of the Follower rules originally presented in the Perilous Wilds. In Stonetop, Followers can make the same moves that PCs do (like Defy Danger or H&S), but the roll either +0, +1, or +2 depending on their tags and you might have to Order Followers to get them to do things.  Expect a future blog post on that!

• You'll see references to GM principles, moves, and agenda items that are slightly different from those of core Dungeon World. I trust you can see the parallels. It definitely assumes that the GM move "Deal Damage" has been replaced with "Hurt Them" 

Okay, let's do this. As always, questions and feedback are appreciated!

Introducing Monsters

Whenever it’s time to make a GM move, you can introduce a danger and put a monster in the scene.

Don’t worry about your monsters being “fair fights” or “balanced encounters” or something that the PCs can even defeat. Worry about your monsters making sense. Portray a rich and mysterious world, right? If it makes sense for the PCs to stumble across a pair of (extremely dangerous) thunder drakes, go for it. Then play to find out what happens.

Exactly how you introduce a monster will depend on the situation, the monster’s tags and qualities and moves, and the actions of the PCs. “Obvious” monsters encountered in a wide-open space will give the PCs plenty of opportunity to plan and react. Stealthy monsters in a dark, cluttered space while the PCs stumble around in torchlight? Not so much.

------------------ 

The PCs are up in Gordin’s Delve trying to trade off some valuables they found in the Green Lord’s tomb. Rhianna’s off talking to a contact. Vahid, Caradoc, and Blodwen are at a pub. Caradoc and Blodwen get up to leave, and Vahid sees a couple of unsavory types get up and follow.

Now, if these guys are just a pair of local miners that Caradoc managed to tick off, then I’ll introduce a danger and let the PCs see them coming. “About halfway back to your hostel, you realize that you’re being followed. It’s those guys from the pub and they look pissed. What do you do?” The PCs have all sorts of options—they might try to lose them, or set an ambush, or talk, or whatever. 

But if these bad guys are stealthy cutthroats who regularly murder unwary travelers in alleys and loot their corpses, then I’ll be much more aggressive about it. I’ll start by hinting at more than meets the eye. “You find yourselves in a dark, empty little trash-strewn square, and everything’s quiet. Too quiet. You feel like you’re being watched. What do you do?” 

Let’s say they Discern Realities, roll a 7-9, and ask, “What should I be on the lookout for?” I’d say “You’re pretty sure someone’s following you, or maybe circling ahead. And these alleys are a filled with good spots for an ambush. What do you do?” Whatever it is, they’ll be on guard. My next move will probably be to introduce a danger, but softly and with a chance to react. “As you pass a dark side-alley, two thugs rush out towards you, what do you do?” 

But suppose they Discern Realities and get a 6-, or just ignore my veiled threat and blunder on. In that case, I’ll introduce a danger hard and painfully. “Caradoc, this guy comes out of a dark side-alley and snags your right arm, twists, and shoves you face-first into a wall. Take 1d8 damage. Blodwen, you see a second guy step forward, sneering, a glint of metal in his hand. What do you do?”

------------------

These two guys follow you into an alley...
(more after the jump-break)

"Discern Realities" in Stonetop & Homebrew World

Discern Realities is a move that is near and dear to my heart. It's one of my favorite moves, and I've written about it at length:

• In Defense of Discern Realities
• Discern Realities vs. Spout Lore vs. Just Describing Stuff
• Discern Realities: make the question part of the trigger?
• Many, many discussions on G+ (have fun)

I tried using that "make the question part of the trigger" approach to the move a couple times, but didn't really like how it worked in practice. Either the players had to keep the questions constantly in mind and intentionally ask them, or as the GM I had to keep them constantly in mind and watch for the players asking them. Also, a lot of my playbook moves add questions you can ask to Discern Realities "for free, even on a miss" and those don't jive well with the "ask first" approach.  

So, for Stonetop and Homebrew World, I use Discern Realities as follows. It's quite similar to the original, the key differences being:

• the trigger specifically includes "looking to the GM for insight"
• both games use advantage/disadvantage instead of +1/-1 forward
• "Who is control here?" has become "Who or what is in control here?" (with "their fear" or the like being legit answers)

The accompanying text is the first draft of what I plan to put in the Stonetop book. It'll probably get cut down a little to fit on one spread, but this is the text that I wish I had when I first started learning to run Dungeon World. I hope you find it useful, too. 

----------------------------------- 

Discern Realities 

When you study a situation or person, looking to the GM for insight, roll +WIS: on a 10+, ask the GM 3 questions from the list below; on a 7-9, ask 1; either way, take advantage on your next move that acts on the answers.

•   What happened here recently?
•   What is about to happen?
•   What should I be on the lookout for?
•   What here is useful or valuable to me?
•   Who or what is really in control here?
•   What here is not what it appears to be?

Player: "Uh... what should I be on the lookout for?"
GM: "Well, funny you should ask..."
(image by Jakub Rozalski)

"Parley" in Stonetop and Homebrew World

In both Stonetop and Homebrew World, I've rewritten the Parley move to be at least as much of a "gather info" move as a "convince them" move. What follows is the text of the revised move and a draft of the "discussion" write-up for Stonetop.  

The evolution of this move was... involved. It started with a post from Johnstone Metzger (a very sharp dude whose stuff I strongly recommend), which was sadly lost to the Google+ vortex. If you're interested, you can read through the various drafts (and surrounding discussion) here:

• Initial draft (discussion here and here)
• Second draft (discussion here and here)
• Third draft (discussion here and here)
• Fourth draft (discussion here), leading version 4.5
• More-or-less final version discussed here

My gripes with the standard version of Parley boil down to:

• The trigger ("When you have leverage on an NPC and manipulate them...") requires too much processing and too many decisions. By the time we've figured out whether or not the PC's action counts as leverage, the roll feels superfluous or (worse) contradictory.
• The 10+ result and the 7-9 result often just don't work in the kinds of situations that adventurers find themselves.  At least, not without elaborate mental gymnastics.

Ultimately, what I like about the Stonetop/HBW version is that:

1. It's easy to recognize when a PC is pressing or enticing someone, and from there whether a roll is necessary.  You don't have to consider "is this leverage?" You just consider "are they resisting?" 
2. The question posed by the move isn't usually "will they do what you want?" but rather "what will it take to convince them?" The move is basically an opportunity for you to tell them the requirements, and in so doing, reveal the NPC's personality and motivations.  
3. The 7-9 results are quite easy to work with. I'm particularly fond of the "distasteful" option.
4. It's very flexible, and works in a wide variety of situations. 

Also, these revisions led to a PC-v-PC approach that I think works pretty well.  

Parley (vs. NPCs)

When you press or entice an NPC, say what you want them to do (or not do). If they have reason to resist, roll +CHA: on a 10+, they either do as you want or reveal the easiest way to convince them; on a 7-9, they reveal something you can do to convince them, though it’ll likely be costly, tricky, or distasteful.

My Framework for GMing Dungeon World

I've been working on the GMing chapters for Stonetop, and it's made me think about how the conversation really flows. I've also been thinking about GM moves, and Principles and Agenda, and how they all work together. I thought I'd talk about them a little here. 

I don't think that what follows is fundamentally different than what the game text tells you to do. Like, if you read the DW text and the DW Guide, and GM the game enough, I think you end up doing what I describe below. This is just how I conceptualize it, with 8+ years of experience running, playing, and talking about DW and similar games. (This is also pretty similar to what I describe here.)

Maybe you'll find it useful? Maybe a new GM will find this and something will click for them. Regardless, I'm going to be posting some excerpts from the Stonetop GMing chapters over the next couple weeks, and I think this will help set the stage. 

As always, feedback and questions are appreciated!

The Game is a Conversation

You say something. The players say something. You say something in response. You ask questions of each other, clarify, interrupt, talk over each other. To quote Vincent Baker: "you take turns, but it’s not like taking turns, right?"

The whole point of this conversation is to create the fiction, the shared imaginary space that we're all talking about, where the PCs and NPCs and monsters all exist and act. The game's rules mediate the conversation, and help us figure out what happens when there's uncertainty, and help introduce unexpected and challenging elements into the game.   

Dungeon World is (despite what some folks will tell you) a rather traditional RPG. It structures the conversation and assigns responsibilities and authority in a very familiar way: 

• The players are responsible for portraying their characters (who they are, their actions, their thoughts and opinions, their experiences and backstory). 
• The GM is responsible for portraying everything else: the world, the NPCs, the monsters, etc. 

Dungeon World is different than a lot of RPGs because it explicitly encourages (and arguably requires) the GM to ask the players for input on the world, particularly during the first session and about areas where their characters have experience or expertise. But that's not that different than how lots of folks play D&D. (Ever done a session 0 where you make characters, talk about backstory and the kind of setting you want to play in? It's like that, but it's done during play.)

Different groups take this collaborative spirit to different degrees. Some DW GMs are very cognizant of The Line (I know I am) and avoid asking the players to make up details about what their characters are experiencing on the spot. Other GMs will actively ask the players to make up details about the room they've just entered, or the NPC they've just met, or what happens next. Some groups collaborate on where the story should go, and what kinds of scenes they want to have. None of these are wrong. They're just a matter of taste.

More noodling on Stonetop's gear & inventory system

We've now gone through about a dozen sessions with the current version of Stonetop's inventory system, and I'm... dissatisfied.

I'm leaning strongly towards something more like what I'm using in Homebrew World, something like this:

Some background... how'd we get here?

The gear lists (and how PCs acquire gear) have always been an important part of the game. The core conceit of Stonetop is that you're the heroes of a small, isolated, fantasy iron-age village. "Adventures" usually mean going out into the world to do something on the town's behalf. 

As such, I've always had three important goals for Stonetop's gear (and related systems):

Defy Danger, Restated

For Homebrew World v1.5, I've rewritten Defy Danger as follows:

I've been thinking about this move a lot the past few weeks, inspired largely by this post on the Gauntlet Forums, but also this old post from the PbtA G+ Community. 

I think the salient points of those conversations boil down to:

• Defy Danger's trigger is incredibly broad and thus can arguably be triggered by just about any action with a modicum or risk
• The move itself doesn't necessarily prompt players to say or do interesting things. It just serves as a fallback task resolution mechanic.
• It sort of gives license to players to try ridiculous things, with the presumption that on a 10+ it'll work with no consequence. 
• The 10+ result doesn't really do much to change the situation. It more deflates tensions ("phew") than pushes the game in a new direction. 
• It'd arguably be more interesting if the move wasn't there at all, and when a character did something risky or dangerous that otherwise wasn't covered by another basic move, the GM presented a hard bargain or ugly choice, or just say what happened and follow up with another soft move, escalating until move is triggered.

I can see where a lot of where this is coming from. I do think it's easy (especially for newer GMs) to over-invoke Defy Danger, calling for a roll when the stakes aren't very interesting (I know I've done it).  I think it might be nice if the move somehow encouraged more dynamic or surprising outcomes (the way that Keep Your Cool does in Monsterhearts 2e) or at least more interesting actions (e.g. if "I dodge out of the way" wouldn't trigger it, but "I duck under his blade and dart inside his guard!" would).  

This revision doesn't get all the way, but I'm not entirely certain that any revision could get there without significantly restructuring the game. The move is simply doing to much. Instead, I'm going for: 

• A clearer trigger
• Better descriptions of when to use each stat
• A more reasonable 10+ description
• A 7-9 result that provides better guidance
  

The trigger

So, here's the original trigger for Defy Danger:

When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity, say how you deal with it and roll.

And here's mine:

When the stakes are high, danger looms, and you act anyway, roll...

This is basically just rephrasing "when you act despite an imminent threat," but I think it's better because it clarifies that the stakes need to be high before the danger matters. If I'm walking a tightrope, there's an imminent threat that I fall off it. But if it's only 5 feet off the ground and no one's chasing me and I'm not trying to impress anyone and I can just try again... well, whatever? Don't roll. Right?

For experienced players and GMs, I don't think this would change how or when Defy Danger gets triggered. But for newer players and GMs, I hope it will at least push play in the right direction, towards high stakes and danger looming and awesome characters acting anyway, rather than toward... skill checks, I guess. 

You will notice that this version of the move doesn't have anything like the "suffer a calamity" clause that the original version does. Mostly, it's because I don't think it's necessary.  If you suffer a calamity (your arm is cut off, you fall down a slope, your caught in a gout of dragonfire, you're poisoned, whatever), then whatever you do next, the stakes are almost certainly high and danger is almost certainly looming.  I.e. you're going to Defy Danger anyhow, unless you just lay down and die.  So why do we need this move?

A couple folks I talked to suggested that the "suffer a calamity" cause is there to determine just how bad an injury or other calamity is.  Like, if you get stabbed by a poison dagger, Defy Danger with CON to see how badly the poison affects you. 

To which I respond: meh. I guess if your GM move was Deal Damage and you knew the enemy had a poison dagger, that maybe would make sense and work?  But Deal Damage is a Crap Move, and in HBW it's replaced with "Hurt Them."  If my move was "Hurt Them" with a poisoned dagger, I'm going to hurt them:  "That cut on you arm is burning, way worse than it should, and you start to feel your muscles seize up, your vision is going blurry... you've been poisoned, you're sure! What do you do?"  And then whatever they do next, the stakes are high and danger looms, so Defy Danger, yeah?

That stat descriptions

In the original Defy Danger: 

...say how you deal with it. If you do it...

• ...by powering through, +Str
• ...by getting out of the way or acting fast, +Dex
• ...by enduring, +Con
• ...with quick thinking, +Int
• ...through mental fortitude, +Wis
• ...using charm and social grace, +Cha

In this version, it's:

...and you act anyway, roll...

• +STR to power through or test your might 
• +DEX to employ speed, agility, or finesse
• +CON to endure or hold steady
• +INT to apply expertise or enact a clever plan
• +WIS to exert willpower or rely on your senses
• +CHA to charm, bluff, impress, or fit in 

It's mostly just a rephrasing, but I think these do a better job of reflecting how the stats actually get used. For example, every GM I've ever played with has called for DEX to Defy Danger by moving silently or hiding in shadows... even though it isn't covered by "getting out of the way or acting fast."  It would be covered by agility or finesse.

On a 10+...

In the original Defy Danger, the 10+ clause is:

On a 10+, you do what you set out to, the threat doesn’t come to bear.

I think the wording is pretty weird, but the real problem, I think, is that implies that a 10+ is consequence-free: "the threat doesn't come to bear."  I haven't seen it much myself, but I can easily imagine that leading to declarations like "He swings the club at me?  I just grit my teeth and take it!" with the assumption that a 10+ means he'll be fine and shrug off the blow.

Now, obviously, this is the sort of place for player-level conversation and GM moves like tell them the consequences and ask.  "You're just gonna take the hit?  I mean, okay, but you'll be Defying Danger with CON and it's gonna be like d8+3 damage even if you get a 10+. You sure?" 

But it'd be better if the move itself tempered expectations. Hence:

On a 10+, you pull it off as well as one could hope.

I guess you could get into some annoying conversations like "well, I can hope for quite a lot!" But at the very least, it's setting an expectation of "within reasonable limits."

On a 7-9...

In the original Defy Danger, the 7-9 clause is:

On a 7–9, you stumble, hesitate, or flinch: the GM will offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice.

Oof.

Okay, first of all:  "stumble, hesitate, or flinch" has always been my least favorite line in any of the basic moves. It describes a fictional outcome, and then implies that said fictional outcome leads directly into the worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice. Well, first of all: stumbling, hesitating, or flinching doesn't make sense as a fictional outcome in many of the cases that involve Defying Danger.  I mean, yeah, you can make it fit, if you really try to. But it's work. And in my experience, when I've tried to keep stumble/hesitate/flinch in mind, it's actively made it harder to come up with good, interesting results that are still fundamentally a success.

The "stumble, hesitate, or flinch" clause makes a lot more sense in Apocalypse World's Act Under Fire move. But that move is all about keeping your cool, as opposed powering through/acting quickly/all the other ways to Defy Danger. And even in AW, the example 7-9 results ignore the "stumble, hesitate, or flinch" part and just go straight to worse outcome/hard bargain/ugly choice.

So: gone. It's actually been gone from both Homebrew World and Stonetop from almost the beginning. 

More importantly:  the "worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice" part of the move has never felt like it offered particularly good guidance to GMs.  The number of G+ conversations, Reddit posts, conversations on the old Barf Forth forums, etc. that have stemmed from that phrasing are numerous. 

My take on it has always been:

• Worse outcome: you do the thing, but the outcome isn't as good as you'd hoped. 
• Hard bargain:  "You can do it, but..."  Basically, tell them the cost or the consequences and give them a chance to back off.
• Ugly choice:  They do it, but it doing it, they have to pick between two or more consequences or costs.  

The distinction between "hard bargain" and "ugly choice" is fuzzy, and not necessarily helpful to the GM.   Also: it's easy for a new GM or player to read "worse outcome" as "worse than you when you started" and not "worse than what you were hoping for" and that's not right at all. It's important to remember that a 7-9 is still fundamentally successful. 


Both the hard bargain and the ugly choice involve costs or consequences, or maybe a lesser successes.  So... why not just say that? But there's still value in those "you can do it, if" and "well, you can do it, but either __ or __."  That led me to this:

On a 7-9, you can do it, but the GM will present a lesser success, a cost, or a consequence (and maybe a choice between them, or a chance to back down).

This wording:

1. Establishes that they can do the thing (fundamentally a success, right?)
2. Replaces "worse outcome" with "lesser success" (clearer, reinforces that that it's still fundamentally a success)
3. Puts the cost or consequence right in there, in plain language
4. Keeps the possibility of a hard bargain or ugly choice. 
   
   

In summary

I don't think this really changes Defy Danger significantly. I hope that it makes it clearer, and easier to use, and helps set appropriate expectations.  

Rewriting Defend

I've been thinking about the Defend basic move a lot lately. I posted a number of polls about the move to tease out public opinions, and I've spent a fair amount of time discussing the issues that those polls brought up.

For Stonetop and Homebrew World, I'm rewriting the move as follows:

DEFEND

When you take up a defensive stance or jump in to protect others, roll +CON: on a 10+, hold 3 Readiness; on a 7-9, hold 1 Readiness. You can spend Readiness 1-for-1 to:
• Suffer an attack's damage/effects instead of your ward
• Halve an attack’s damage/effects
• Draw all attention from your ward to yourself
• Strike back at an attacker (deal damage, with disadvantage) 

When you go on the offense, cease to focus on defense, or the danger passes, lose any Readiness that you hold.

Compare that to the original text and discussion, available here.

I think this leaves the move in the same basic design space as the original, but cleans up a lot of the potential ambiguity and traps that original text introduces. This is pretty close to how I've always used Defend in play anyhow, even though I know it's not how everyone else uses it.

a defensive stance?

The Trigger

 The first change is the trigger. This...

"When you take up a defensive stance or jump in to protect others, roll +CON"

...instead of this...

"When you stand in defense of a person, item, or location under attack, roll +CON"

My goals here are to:

• Make it clear that you don't have to be defending someone (or something) else to make the move
• Make it clear that the move can be either proactive (taking up a defensive stance) or reactive (jumping in to protect others)
• Remove the reference to being "under attack," because "attack" gets used inconsistently throughout the rest of the game and I've had... let's say lively discussions... about what exactly that means and how it applies to the trigger. 

I think this revised wording does all of that.

There's still going to be ambiguity, times when you have to ask the player what they're really trying to accomplish and you all discuss whether this is Defend or Hack & Slash or Defy Danger or whatever. But I think that the intent of the move's trigger is much clearer this way.  

Readiness

The next change is to name the hold. So you get this...

"On a 10+, hold 3 Readiness; on a 7-9, hold 1 Readiness."

...instead of this...

"On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 1."  

It's a pretty minor change, but it's something I try to do whenever I write a hold-and-spend move. I find that players understand "hold 3 <Currency>" much more quickly and intuitively than just "hold 3."  Of course they do. It's more natural language.

For a long time, I used "hold 3 Defense" instead of "hold 3 Readiness." But I like Readiness better, because of what it implies a state of preparation, being ready to jump in and intervene.  I think it communicates the ongoing, stance-like nature of the move better.

"Readiness" is a little off when you use Defend reactively, jumping in to protect another. But if you roll a 10+, hold 3 Readiness, and spend only 1 or 2... you still hold Readiness. And I think that correctly communicates that, yeah, you're still ready.

Spending Hold

In this version... 

"You can spend Readiness 1-for-1 to
• Suffer an attack's damage/effects instead of your ward
• Halve an attack’s damage/effects
• Draw all attention from your ward to yourself
• Strike back at an attacker (deal damage, with disadvantage) 

 Compared to the original:

"As long as you stand in defense, when you or the thing you defend is attacked you may spend hold, 1 for 1, to choose an option
• Redirect an attack from the thing you defend to yourself
• Halve the attack’s effect or damage
• Open up the attacker to an ally giving that ally +1 forward against the attacker
• Deal damage to the attacker equal to your level"

Obviously, I changed the options themselves, but what I want to focus on right here is: there's no more trigger ("when you or the thing you defend is attacked") limiting when you can spend hold. Instead, 3 of the 4 options are rephrased to only make sense when an attack has already been established (using an instead of the).

This is a pretty minor difference, but I think it makes the move simpler to process. You hold Readiness. You spend Readiness to do one of these things.  Oh, there's an attack?  I spend Readiness and halve its effects.  Oh, I got attacked?  I spend Readiness and hit the attacker back. It's fewer words, fewer when-then conditions. It's also more in line with how other hold-and-spend moves work. You spend the hold, you do the thing.

This rephrasing also means that I can have an option ("Draw all attention from your ward to yourself") that isn't in direct response to an attack. And that opens up design space; class moves/advanced moves/etc. can add other such options.

(Note that "As long as you stand in defense" is also gone, but I'll address that later.)

Taking the Hit and Drawing Aggro

In the original Defend, one of the options is this:

• Redirect an attack from the thing you defend to yourself

Seems straight-forward. Except... it could arguably be used in either of these two circumstances:

1) The GM makes a hard move, dealing damage or otherwise inflicting badness on the Defending player's ward.  The Defending player spends 1 hold and goes "nope! it hits me instead!"  This is awesome and heroic. It might also be a very sound tactical decision, especially if the Defending player has more hold to spend and/or good armor.

2) The GM makes a soft move announcing an attack at a character.  The Defending player spends 1 hold to become the target of that attack.

#1 is awesome.  #2... well, I'm just made of questions about #2:

• Why does the Defending player need to spend 1 hold to become the target of the attack? The GM made a soft move, setting up badness but giving the player(s) a chance to react. Why can't the defending player just say "I step in and take blow!" If the fiction would just justify the spending of 1 hold to do this, the fiction would also justify just doing it. 
• What happens after the Defending player redirects the attack to themselves? Based on the examples given in the Dungeon World text, the GM escalates the soft move into a hard move when one character Defends another. (That also appears to be the opinion of about 1 in 4 people on this poll.)
• But why should the Defending player take damage?  Why should the GM escalate to a hard move when one player spends hold to redirect an attack towards themselves? If the Defend move didn't exist, the player could say "I step between the horde of zombies and Avon, and lash out with my hammer at the nearest one!" and he'd be triggering Hack & Slash... which could result in him not taking any damage at all!  Or he could say "I pull Rath behind me and put my shield up, deflecting the arrows" and he'd be triggering Defy Danger.  Why should the character definitely take damage because he rolled a success on Defend and chose to spend hold?

I think that the presence of this option (and the examples in the game text) lead players to think that they have to spend 1 hold to redirect a soft-move attack, even though they only really should need to spend it if the GM's already made a hard move (or a hard move is definitely coming) and they want to interrupt up the action and take the hit themselves. 

My solution is to rephrase the first option to this:

• Suffer an attack's damage/effects instead of your ward

So now, the hold is useful when damage or attacks's other effects are already on the table. You can suffer it instead of your ward, implying that the ward was already suffering it. No reason to spend Readiness to redirect an attack that's still in motion, that hasn't yet connected--just say that you do so.  

Of course, the vagueness of the original option ("Redirect an attack from the thing you defend to yourself") also meant it worked (more-or-less) for "pulling aggro."  In this poll, for instance, a full 50% of the respondents voted that spending the hold would ensure that the fighter held the orcs' attention so that the ranger was in the clear, while the fighter got to then Hack & Slash at the orcs.  And in this poll, there's a bit of talk about Defending/spending hold to buy time for the paladin's allies to escape.  I've seen that in play in my own games, too.

I think that there's value to this. I big tough character should be able to pull aggro and "tank" for the other party members, giving them an opportunity to act freely. That led me to add this option:

• Draw all attention from your ward to yourself

That seemed to overlap quite a bit with the original option of "Open up the attacker to an ally, giving them +1 forward against the attacker."  It's not a 100% line-up, but if you draw all attention from your ward to yourself, you're basically giving them (and probably other PCs) a fictional opportunity or opening that's at least as good as a +1 forward.  (Also, I don't think that I've ever seen a player choose the "Open up the attacker to an ally" option. So... screw it.)

Hitting Back

The 4th option for spending hold is now...

• Strike back at an attacker (deal damage, with disadvantage) 

...instead of...

• Deal damage to the attacker equal to your level"

I've always found the idea of dealing damage "equal to your level" very, very strange. No other move directly references "your level" like that, except for Commune and Spellbook and Prepare Spells, and then it's in reference to something else that also has levels, so it makes more sense there. Dealing damage equal to your level is a pretty terrible choice at levels 1 and 2 (because the weakest foe has 3 HP), and at higher levels it becomes terrifyingly effective.  Given how often folks play DW as a one-shot or short-run series, an option that is nigh-useless at 1st level seems like a bad idea.  

The "ramping up" of this option also makes a pretty weird fictional assertion: that high-level adventurers are more effective/deadly when attacked than they are on the offense. Which, while kind of a cool idea, isn't really in line with like anything else in the game. 

So: let's continue using the damage die but make it not-as-good as what you'd get with a dedicated attack move (Hack & Slash or Volley). Disadvantage means "roll the damage die twice, take the lower result." It doesn't (inherently) ramp up with your level, and it means that a fighter or paladin on the defensive is more dangerous than a wizard on the defensive.  It also means that tags and other damage modifiers more clearly apply.  

Losing Readiness (Hold)

The final clause in the revised move is:

When you go on the offense, cease to focus on defense, or the danger passes, lose any Readiness that you hold. 

If anything, this replaces this clause in the original move:

"As long as you stand in defense..."

Which implies (but doesn't outright state) that you can't spend your hold if you cease to "stand in defense." The explanation of the Defend move says "When you’re no longer nearby or you stop devoting your attention to incoming attacks then you lose any hold you might have had." But that's not exactly clear from the move text itself.  

So, I wanted to just come out and say "this is when you you lose Readiness" right in the move's text.  

I also wanted to make it clear that you can still do "defensive" moves and keep your hold.  Like, I think you should totally be able to Defy Danger against an attack and spend hold to mitigate the results of a 7-9 or a miss... and/or to strike back a the attacker.  

It's still a bit unclear whether you can Hack & Slash and continue to focus on defense (and thus hold readiness). Given the way that I've revised Hack & Slash for Stonetop and Homebrew World, I think you can Hack & Slash on the defensive and still keep your Readiness, but it'd be very contextual. Basically, if you fight reactively (cutting them down as they approach rather than closing on them or chasing them down), I think it's okay.  

But I also wouldn't say someone was wrong if they thought "nah, if you Hack & Slash, you're by definition going on the offense."  

Stonetop at Gauntlet Con 2018

I had the absolute privilege to run three sessions of Stonetop as a "long con" at Gauntlet Con 2018 last weekend.  The players (David LaFreniere, Greg Gelder, Tyler Lominack, and Horst Wurst) were amazing: creative and engaged, giving and attentive... pretty much everything a GM or fellow player could ask for.

Session 1

We did character-creation during the first session (took maybe 30 minutes, not in the video for obvious reasons). The Marshal and Fox playbooks each have some "backstory" questions in which they establish something of their character's and the community's past.  I asked the Marshal (David) to make his "War Stories" about the recent nighttime raid by the crinwin, and that was really all the nudging I needed to do in order to make everything line up with my plans.  

We did a very abbreviated version of Introductions. Normally, you can spend the whole first session doing intros, asking and answering questions and establishing NPCs. Because of our time constraints, and because I wanted to dive into play fairly quickly, I just decided on a couple important NPCs in advance and then set the scene with Saraid the Fox already interacting with them.

Most Dungeon World games, especially con games or one-shots, start in media res, with the players in a fight or at the door to the dungeon or otherwise already on the adventure. Stonetop, by contrast, starts with a little slice-of-life and lets the town breathe a bit, then drops a crisis or opportunity in the PC's laps and says "what do you do?"  There's a whole procedure for it: The First Adventure.

This session also let us see some of the Steading Moves in play: David rolled Deploy ("When you send the steading's people into danger or rally them against an attack...") to establish how things went a few weeks back when the crinwin raided the village, and he rolled Muster ("When you press every able body into the defense of a steading...") when the PCs headed out and left the town in a state of readiness. 

We also got to see some of the procedures for Expeditions in play: Charting a Course, making some preparations (though they didn't Outfit), and actually heading out into the Great Wood. Stonetop doesn't use the Undertake a Perilous Journey move from Dungeon World, instead making the journey itself a significant part of the adventure—and ending with an ambush from darkness-infused crinwin!

Session 2

This session gives us a lot of action, and a lot of missed rolls.  We see a lot of the Marshal's crew in action, a fair amount of mindfuckery used against the PCs, and a lot of fumbling around in darkness.

I particularly liked how the backstories of Ameer and Saraid emerged in play, as the Darkness kept seeping into their brains and drawing forth unpleasant memories.  

Of note, Greg had Saraid revealing a Marshedge that's quite a bit different from the notes I've written up for it, where Brennan and his Claws (before coming to power) weren't bandits preying on traveling merchants but rather a criminal syndicate inside the township itself. I really enjoy when players introduce that kind of twist to the "established" world. 

This part of the adventure played out a lot more slowly than I expected, largely because of the recurring misses but also because I just didn't keep an eye on pacing. At the end, I offered them the chance to abandon Saraid and just flee with the child, but the other PCs refused and left on a cliffhanger.  

Session 3

The scene in the Maw concludes, and (almost) everyone gets away, but not without cost.  

There were some great moments in there: Macsen clearly banking on his Shell Game of the Souls ability to stand against the Darkness... the whole desperate struggle being illuminated by flashes as Macsen repeatedly smashes a hunk of unnatural black obsidian with the Mindgem... White Tree binding the blind crinwin with roots and vines while it tried to kill the baby...  Heledd not quite making out of the hole... so much fun!

We got to use the Keep Company move on the road home, which worked exactly as intended and prompted a bit of reflection and interaction.

We only had a couple hours left, but we got to experience a number of elements of the longer-term play that Stonetop is really built for. 

They leveled up, and I really liked how David tied the improvement of his crew's armaments to their improved fictional standing in the community. I also really liked how Horst immediately had White Tree make an amulet for Saraid, to help protect him against the evil influence he picked.  Sadly, I accidentally stopped recording right as that scene played out, so the recording is missing some great roleplaying between them.  

From there, we got to see the Seasons Change and how it influences long-term play. David rolled boxcars for the town's fortunes, so summer saw blessings and bounty, both of which are numeric/mechanical improvements to the steading. That meant they weren't reacting to anything, so they got to set the agenda. After looking at the possible steading improvements, they decided to try and capture and tame wild horses from the Flats, and that led to White Tree spouting lore, Saraid calling on one of his old contacts among the Hillfolk, a fun little bit of worldbuilding, and finally a short little scene where they fended off hunting drakes out in the tallgrass prairies of the Flats.  

We were out of time, so we wrapped up with a quick epilogue from everyone, including White Tree bargaining with the horse spirits, a hilarious new "pet" for Ameer, a rather grim future established for Saraid, and Macsen ending us off by getting up to his old tricks. 

It left us all wanting more, and I think that's a good sign.  

Marshedge

Marshedge is about 10 days' travel from Stonetop, via the Highway through the Steplands. It's a relatively safe trip, as long as you stick to the safety of the roads.  

The town overlooks Ferrier's Fen, a vast, mist-shrouded wetland between the Great Wood, the Steplands, and the Manmarch. Maker-ruins can be seen poking out of the fens, as well as huge, ancient willow trees. The drums of ganagoeg (savage, scaly beast-men) beat through the night, and horrors ripple beneath the murky waters.

Many would call the Marshedgers insane to live so close to such a dangerous place, and maybe they are. But long ago, some of them learned the ways of the fen, and of bendis root, which (dried and aged and burned) keeps unclean things at bay.

map by Jason Lutes

Stats

Size +1 (Town, ~700-750 people), Population +1 (Growing), Prosperity +0 (Moderate), Defenses +1 (Guard)

Trade:  Lygos (fine goods, spices, etc.); Gordin's Delve (metal, tools); Northern Manmarchers (timber, fur, amber); Stonetop (whisky, fur); Hillfolk (horses, fur, meat)

Resources:  Farming (wheat, hemp, wild rice, herbs); foraging (herbs, peat, clay); trades (textiles, pottery, rope); marketplace, windmill

Parts of Town

Not quite like this, but, y'know

Marshedge is built on two hills overlooking Ferrier's Fen. A river (slow, shallow, wide) flows past the town's west edge. The Highway (one of the Maker's ancient roads) runs through the town. A second hill, to the east, boasts a windmill. 

Older, more established buildings are half-timber constructions in-filled with wattle and daub, sometimes brick. Newer, poorer buildings are stacked timber or wooden planks, possibly on a brick foundation. 

A wooden palisade runs around the Mire. Another runs around Low Town and Dropoff. A third runs around High Town. 

The Bridge: Where the Highway crosses the river, one would expect there to be a bridge made by the Makers. One would be wrong. There's a bridge, but it was built early in the town's history, only a few hundred years ago. Before that, the tales say, the Highway just dropped away into the reeds. The current bridge is mostly wood, just wide enough for a single wagon, built up on feet of crudely-stacked pavestones and mud. It often requires repairs. A guard station sits on the town-side of the bridge and collects tolls from any who would cross. 

High Town: Top of the main hill, "center" of town. Old Maker-ruins dot the hill; homes, the council hall, and garrison are all built on or into them. Surrounded by a well-made, fortified palisade.  Where the oldest, wealthiest, most established families live. There's a nice (but small) inn up there.

Dropoff:  West side of the hill, dropping down to the wide, slow river that flows into the fen. A number of old, established trades are based here, plus some aspiring merchants. The "middle class" section of town.

The Mire:  Lowest part of town, extending into the marshlands on the river's edge, and stretching around to the north of the hill. Wooden walkways (slick and wet) between shallow bogs of wild rice. A palisade against the marsh, dotted with constantly burning braziers of bendis root. Smell of mud and rot and human refuse. Constant buzz and bite of insects. Squalid homes on the slope down.

Low Town: On the far side of the hill from the fen, east and south along the Highway. The marketplace is here. Cramped, wooden homes for working stiffs. Trades, shops, storehouses.

Marketplace: built on and around a wayside on the Highway (one of the big circular sections of paving stones that dot the Maker's roads). The center of the market is build on (and protected by) the road's magic, but aside from a statue to Old Shane Ferrier that's been erected in the middle, no one builds permanent structures on the pavestones. A couple inns and stables are built right around the edge, as well a handful of pubs and permanent stores. Market day is every 10 days, and always a big to-do.

Millers Hill:  A way's east of the main hill, overlooking the fields. Boasts an old, low Maker "tower" that was long ago converted into a windmill. The whole thing makes people very uneasy, irrationally so. The miller's children meet farmers or merchants and base of the hill and haul grain and flour back and forth. Everyone thinks the miller's family is strange and unsettling.

The Fields:  sprawling out to the west of town, fields of wheat dotted with homes nestled up against the Highway and the occasional wooden shed holding tools out amidst the crop. Mostly tenant farmers; the lands are owned by the old families.

People

Brennan: until just a few years ago, Brennan and his Claws were bandits preying on caravans coming up from the South without the protection of the roads.  Eventually, the Marshedge council decided it'd be cheaper to pay the bandits to guard the town than to pay the blood and treasure to fight them off. Brennan's cagey enough to see the angles, and is now probably the single most powerful man in Marshedge. (Instinct: to maintain or improve his hold on the town)

The Guard: about 20 strong. A dozen used to be Brennan's old gang, the Claws. They're a mixed lot of Marshedge misfits, northern Manmarchers, and southern scum (instinct: to lord over others). The rest of the Guard is split between new recruits (instinct: to avoid trouble & danger) and loyalists (instinct: to protect the town from all threats). There are... tensions.

• One of the Claws, originally from the Manmarch. Quiet, tough, and dangerous. Not a bad guy by nature, but utterly loyal to Brennan and perfectly willing to do his dirty work
• Another one of the Claws. Grew up an orphaned waif in Marshedge. Weaselly and mean; clever, but lazy. Uses big words incorrectly. 
• A young new recruit. Couldn't get an apprenticeship and lacks the patience for farming. Just wanted to earn some coin and start a family (which he did; a wife and two young daughters). 
• A member of the old guard, quiet and unassuming. Fought against Brennan and the Claws back before they took charge. Has a two sons, two daughters, and two grand kids. (Lost his wife a few years back.) Bristles at the "scum" in the guard these days. 

The Old Families: Four old families (around 30 people total) who trace their roots back to of the earliest days of the town. All claim some relationship to Old Shane Ferrier. They own most of the fields (and rent them out to tenant farmers), have investment stakes in many of the bigger trades. Basically, they own this town. (Instinct: to enrich themselves.)  Another 30 or so servants and aids dote on them (instinct: to please their masters.)

• Matriarch of the Ferrier family; genuinely concerned with the well-being of her children and grandchildren; genuinely callous and uncaring about what that means for anyone else. 
• A minor scion of one of the old families, bored but brilliant. Has been dabbling in arcana. Pays a fen-walker handsomely to guide them out in the mists and explore old Maker ruins. 
• The young heir-apparent of one of the Old Families. Ambitious yet kind. Dislikes Brennan greatly. Wants to greatly improve the lot of the farmers, despite the costs to her family.
• A house servant, much abused by their master, plotting murder. 

The Council: Marshedge's governing body (instinct; to bicker, infight, and accomplish nothing). Formed of the heads of the Four Families, the miller (if they bother to show), and a representative from each guild (including the fenwalkers but excluding the farmers, obviously). Brennan doesn't have a vote but attends meetings and mostly bullies them around. 

The Guilds: Each of the major trades (weavers, potters, glassblowers, and herbalists) has a guild that serves to arrange for apprenticeships, resolve disputes, protect each other, and represent the trade on the council. They also try to keep new competition out of town. Around 150 individuals work in the guild trades, including family, apprentices, and assistants. (Instinct: to continue business as usual.) 

• An herbalist who grows and sells narcotics, secretly, against the guild's rules
• A young glassblower, talented and innovative, chaffing against tradition
• A weaver, deeply in debt and plagued with misfortune, blaming their woes on an unnamed sorcerer
• A spurned apprentice, dabbling in dark arts and sending spirits against their old master

The Fen-walkers: Around 20 individuals who ply the fen: gathering herbs, hunting game, cutting peat, harvesting clay. Most have developed strange behaviors, obsessions, or tics. Some bear strange mutations, which they try to hide. Fen-walkers rarely marry; they pick apprentices from unwanted or orphaned children. Attrition rate is high. (Instinct: to do what needs doing.)

The Fen-walkers have a guild, and thus a seat on the council, and technically they are a privileged class, following in the footsteps of Old Shane Ferrier. They can demand the assistance of any resident of the town, though they rarely do. Fen-walkers rarely come up from the Mire, and their Guild-head almost never attends council meetings. 

There's a little-known clause in the town charter that gives fen-walkers the right and responsibility to execute anyone found to be "corrupted by vyle spirits, or congressing with such." In truth, they most often exercise this duty upon their own numbers, quietly and without fanfare. A corrupted fen-walker simply doesn't return from an outing. 

• A veteran fen-walker, hiding the corruption of his flesh and soul
• A young orphan, family dead of flux, recently apprenticed to a fen-walker and utterly terrified. 
• A young fen-walker who's stumbled on a Maker-ruin, filled with danger and treasure
• The rare spouse of a fen-walker, constantly fretting, and their young child

Lesser trades: Maybe 50 or so individuals (artisans, family, assistants, or apprentices) are involved in the "lesser" trades: milling, carpentry, smithing, cobbling, baking, midwifery, hostlery, tanning, etc. These are the trades that keep Marshedge running, but not the ones that generate its wealth. Almost all of these trades have some financial backing from the old families, and thus are somewhat in their pockets. Except for the miller, none of them have seats on the council. (Instinct: to look out for themselves.)  

• The miller and his family, who everyone says must be mad, and who in fact keep a troubling secret locked beneath the mill
• A midwife, at least as herb-wise as any herbalist in the guild, but denied membership; knows secrets that they don't
• A smith, who apprenticed in Gordin's Delve and then came back scarred and bitter
• A publican and brewer, once a scholar from Lygos, on a peg leg, eager for news of the wider world

Merchants: Around 25 individuals (including their families and hired help) are involved in mercantile pursuits—buying, selling, storing, and transporting goods. Some of them are quite wealthy and have homes in High Town, but all of them are beholden to the old families who finance much of their trade. Most of these merchants are natives of Marshedge, but a significant minority (maybe 10 or so?) hail from the Manmarch or Lygos or even Stonetop to set up shop.

The merchants maintain shops, organize trips to and from other steadings, and buy, store, and sell trade goods throughout town. (Instinct: to seize opportunity.) 

• A shopkeep and grocer, his store abutting the market, bitterly hateful of anyone from Stonetop.
• A big, scarred Manmarcher, settled in town some 20 years back. The only merchant other Manmarchers will trade with, but someone from their past is still looking for blood.
• A wealthy merchant, who has something the PCs desperately want, willing to trade it for exclusive rights to the buy Stonetop's whisky

Farmers & Laborers: The rest of the townsfolk (400 or so) are tenant farmers, laborers, and their families. They work the fields and the Mire, keep livestock, help with buildings, etc. Some are hired as muscle for merchants, the guilds, and the old families. (Instinct: to get by.)

A handful of tenant farmers recently formed a "Farmer's Guild" (instinct: to improve their lot) but no one takes them seriously, not even the other farmers. If there was any real risk of them unifying the farmers, the old families would first try to bribe the leaders, and then would have any holdouts violently eliminated. 

• An idealistic organizer of the Farmer's Guild
• An old, respected farmer who isn't having any of that "organizing" nonsense
• One of the Hillfolk, accursed by an encounter at Three-Coven lake, trying to get by as a laborer
• A farmer's child, bright and wise beyond their years, who sees and can speak to spirits
• An older farmer, who's children all died fighting Brennan and his Claws back when they were bandits, now bitter and dreaming of bloody vengeance, no matter who gets hurt

Dangers

Some problems that the town might need to deal with.

Fire, flood, and earthquake: Much of the town is prone to fire (wood, thatch), and the Low Town in particular has suffered serious fires as recently as 20 years ago. The Mire and the Bridge are vulnerable to flooding, which can happen in spring after a winter of heavy snowfalls or just an exceptionally wet summer.  Earthquakes plague the entire region, and while they rarely cause major  problems by themselves, they've been known to cause mudslides that ruin parts of the Mire and damage buildings in Dropoff.  (The worst part of about earthquakes is the shifting that happens in Ferrier's Fen, making the fen-walkers relearn routes; and sometimes, new ruins emerge from the mud and draw the ganagoeg to them.)

Ganagoeg: the scaly beast-men of Ferrier's Fen are the bane of the fen-walkers and the terror that the town tries to forget. According to the fen-walkers, they congregate around certain Maker-ruins, and will try to take captives alive. What they do with the captives is unclear—some say they are eaten alive, others that they are fed to some monstrous thing deep in the fen, and others say that they are kept alive and drugged and constantly bled to feed their darksome gods. But everyone agrees that they have no interest in a dead human, only a living one they can drag off.  

There have been times in the town's history when the ganagoeg grew so bold as to raid the Mire, despite the bendis root braziers. No one living remembers such a raid, but everyone knows that it's happened, and that it could happen again.  

The Willow Witches:  Ferrier's Fen is dotted with willow trees, some of which are truly ancient and massive. The fen-walkers know many uses for the bark, leaves, and seeds of these trees, but they always approach them cautiously because of the Willow Witches.  

Willow Witches appear near these trees, especially the most ancient ones. They might appear as beautiful maidens, hideous crones, or anything in between. They can see through the eyes of any bird in the fen. They desire human infants, though it's unclear why (some say to eat, others say to plant as new willow trees.) They revel in crudity, crassness, and disgust, and love to inflict cruel, body-warping curses on mortals. But, as any fen-walker will insist, they cannot harm one who treats them with unfailing courtesy, manners, and respect. 

One always encounters either one Willow Witch or three. Its not clear how many Willow Witches there actually are. Some say there are dozens, as many as one per willow tree in the fen. Others say there are only three, and they might appear at any willow tree they wish. Still others say that there is one such witch, and she sometimes appears as three, and don't think about it overmuch.

In truth, the Willow Witches (however many they are) are fae beings closely associated with the fen. They despise the ganagoeg but do little about them. They are amused by humanity, and enjoy their discomfort and even their suffering, but respect the rules of hospitality and etiquette and thus can be bargained with. They know much about what happens in and around the fen, and many of its sunken secrets, too. 

Manmarchers: The people of the northern Manmarch are warlike and prone to blood feud among themselves, but if they wanted to, they could unite and overrun Marshedge with little difficulty.  Fortunately, the Manmarchers have the healthy fear of water that all sane folk should, and have little interest in occupying a town so close to the water's edge. But if someone united them, they might think little of pillaging the town and razing it...

Curses: Ferrier's Fen is dotted with Maker-ruins, and a sprawling ruined city lies on the shore of the Dread River only 3 days to the east by the Highway. It s not uncommon for scholars and "adventurers" explore these ruins and come back to Marshedge with cursed artifacts (or just curses). These items might just get passed on some to some unwitting merchant, or they be carried away by whatever fool dug them up. But, often, they cause misery, terror, and horror until a fen-walker takes notice and quietly deals with the problem.

Discern Realities: make the question part of the trigger?

I'm thinking about making this change to Discern Realities in Stonetop and Homebrew World.

DISCERN REALITIES
When you closely study a situation or person, you can ask the GM one of the following:

• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What (else) should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is (most) useful or valuable to me?
• Who or what is really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?

If the answer isn't obvious, roll +WIS: on a 7+, the GM will answer honestly; on a 10+, you can also ask two more questions and get honest answers; either way, you gain advantage on the next move you make while acting on the GM's answer(s).  

Basically: 

• Asking one of the questions becomes part of the trigger
• The GM has an "out" to skip the roll if they think the answer is obvious

Asking a Question Before Rolling

The idea of "make the player ask before rolling" has been in the back of my mind for a long time. I haven't really done anything with it because I've never really felt like there was a problem with how the move triggered in actual play.   

But in response to my last post on Discern Realities, about triggering the move vs. just asking for details, Hobbes (who was a player in my Stonetop game for like 2 years) commented:

I'll be honest, as a player the line between "just describing stuff" and Discern Realities always seemed a little fuzzy. I can't come up with any specific examples off the top of my head, but there were definitely some times where I *felt* like a question I'd asked should have triggered DR but I got an answer "for free" (no roll). ...

I'm still not quite sure where the line is for DR. "Anything valuable?" sounds like literally one of the DR questions, and if the trigger is "player takes an action" then the "I drop a coin into the hole, do I hear it hit" would be a DR move. I'M BEING PEDANTIC AND I KNOW IT but honestly this is an interesting distinction.

And, in the G+ comments, Dirk Detweiler Leichty said something smart:

As much as possible I like to stick to telling them whatever is available to their senses, and if they have further questions, telling them the requirements ("you can't tell from here, you'd have to reach in and feel around," or maybe, "you remember something about this from your training but you'd have to spout lore.") 

This is the central loop of exploration play for me lately. ... 

Discern realities interrupts this loop and asks you to work backwards from the answer to decide what happened in the fiction. 

Discern realities gets triggered mainly when the players give up on exploring the space and want to skip to the answer. That's fine with me, I'm not here to enforce some particular level of difficulty, but it is essentially a cheat on what I consider to be the main game here (you get what you want by exploring and interacting with an imagined space.) Sometimes its fun to play with cheats, it lets you focus on other parts of play, like story, etc. 

By default though, I'm going to try to keep to the basic loop, and encourage players to find the answers by interacting with the fiction, not with the answer-button on their character sheet. I let the players be in charge of when they want to skip to the answer. If I wanted to skip to the answer, I'd just tell them.

(emphasis mine)

I don't know that I'd go so far as to call Discern Realities a "cheat," but I totally get what he's talking about it. If you and your players are interested in exploring the fictional space, especially one that has tangibility (i.e. you've prepped it out and committed to it, with maps and notes, or at least a clear mental image), then there's a lot of fun in that core exploratory loop that Dirk describes. OSR-style play is largely based on it.

The core insight of Dirk's comment, I think, is that the players should ultimately be in charge of when they engage Discern Realities, of when they skip the exploration loop and jump straight to insight.  Not every player enjoys the exploratory loop, or is good at it, or just wants to do it right now.

So, a good way to distinguish between "just asking for more details" and "exploring your environment" and "triggering Discern Realities" would simply be to make the player ask one of the questions in order to trigger the move. If they closely study the situation but opt not to ask one of those questions, then the move doesn't fire. They're just looking to the GM to see what happens, so the GM describes the situation and makes a move. If they do ask a question, the move proceeds.

This does make the trigger a little meta-level, because it involves the player doing something instead of the character. But it's something that represents the character's internal monologue, right? You're just announcing to the table what the character is trying to figure out. So I don't think it's too jarring.

There are other benefits of making the player ask a question before rolling, beyond making the trigger clear:

• It can help inform the fiction that goes into the trigger, and whether you should tell them the requirements to answer their question. "I'm looking carefully at these jars and such on the shelves... what here is useful or valuable to me?"  "Well, they're a bunch of unlabeled clay jars. You'll have to open them up and investigate if you want to figure that out."
• It can give you something more to work with when they roll a 6-. Like, if I know you were trying to figure out who is in charge here, I might use that as a prompt me to answer the question by having them captured and taken before Prince Jagoff! Or if they study the floor and ask what they should be on the lookout for, and I know there are pressure plate traps, I might answer their question by putting them in a spot. "Well, you know you need to be on the lookout for pressure plates, because you just stepped on one, there's a click underfoot what do you do?"

"If the answer isn't obvious..."

The second part of the change ("If the answer isn't obvious...") was prompted by this conversation with Ben M. He's asking:

GMs, a player triggers Discern Realities and rolls a 7+ when examining a location (say) which in your mind was unimportant or incidental. How do you tend to answer their questions?  Turn the location into an interesting or significant one through your answers, or give answers like "nothing much is about to happen"?

The latter puts less pressure on you but risks devaluing the risk the player took of making the move in the first place (they may have missed the roll and allowed you to make a hard move). So I often feel pressure to do the former. 

And then later, after a number of people suggest that he just say "it's not interesting" before the player rolls, he (correctly, I think) says:

[T]he trigger for DR is explicitly "closely study a situation or person" and honouring the trigger text precisely has served me well on other moves. So I wouldn't want to decide that it didn't in a situation.

And later:

I get what people are saying but "someone examined it, therefore it's significant" doesn't sit well with me.  My players aren't always (or often!) asking because they wish or think that, say, the pigpen should be significant - they're just making sure they didn't miss something.

And finally:

DW teaches us to be very particular about the wording of moves.  DR is triggered "when you closely study a situation or person" which means that a player deciding to closely examine something makes it a thing, even if they don't want it to be.  If the trigger wording wasn't totally under their control (they just say "I'm examining X") then it would be possible for the GM to justify why the move didn't trigger (say the trigger included some allusion to the significance of the thing).   

Compare this with Defy Danger ("when you act despite an imminent threat").  The player performs some action and the GM has input into whether this triggers DD because they can rule that there is "no imminent threat".  In the case of DR it doesn't seem to me, written the way it is, that the GM can't rule at all.  And once the move is triggered the player is risking a hard move, so it's hardly fair for the GM to make a habit of saying "yeah you hit your DR but there's really nothing to tell".

Which got me thinking about the revision I've made to Parley, which goes "When you press or entice an NPC, say what you want them to do (or not do). If they have reason to resist, roll +CHA..."

I've found that little check ("if they have reason to resist") to be useful in play.  When the Would-be Hero goes up to the NPC she previously wronged and, hat in hand, asks humbly for his advice, I don't need her to roll. I don't see any reason why he wouldn't take that opportunity to give her an earful. But when the Heavy tries to convince the pompous, privileged town marshal to work together with Hillfolk refugees and their leader, that check makes me go "yeah, his ego and stubbornness are going to make him resist," and that informs the results of the roll.

So... same thing should work here, right?  If a player studies a situation closely, asks a question, and I think the answer is obvious (or I want the answer to be obvious), then I just answer it. Otherwise, we clarify how they're doing it (if necessary) and roll.

What would this look like in play?

(This is all done using mechanics from Homebrew World.)

The wizard, ranger, and fighter are at the entrance to the Secret Crypts of the Titch. I've got this map, but haven't keyed it or anything. It's the first session; I'm winging it.  

By Dyson Logos. Original here.

I've asked the ranger what sort of beasts they need to watch out of in these vast woods, and he's like "razor bats." I was like "cool" and looking at that map, the first room totally looks like a place that a bunch of bats would nest in. 

So they've climbed up the side of a bluff and are standing on this small platform, looking at the vine-covered entrance to this tomb.  The wizard just told me that she had discovered the location of this ancient and secret crypt in her studies, and put this expedition together to stake her claim on the site and finish her thesis. The Titch, she says, were known for their clockwork automatons and similar artifice, now largely lost to the world.  

Looking at that map, the first room seems like an obvious place for bats to lair in, so I describe how the entrance is mostly obscured by vines and brush, but there are plenty of openings they can look through. The can vaguely make out a stairway leading into darkness and catch a faint whiff of... ammonia?  

"Does it look like anyone's been here recently? Like, any tracks or anything?" asks the ranger. So he's studying the area, right? Looking for tracks. And asking, basically, "what happened here recently?" But the answer is obvious, I decide: no one's been up for hundreds up years. Except razor bats.   

Because the answer is obvious, I just make a GM move: introduce a danger. "There certainly weren't any tracks, and based on the state of foliage when you got up here, no one's been on this ledge in a long, long time. But that ammonia smell is a sure sign that razor bats are lairing down there. What do yo do?"  

The wzard says that she starts pushing the vines aside, looking for any writing or a plaque or anything like that. She's closely studying the entrance, sure, but didn't ask one of the Discern Realities questions, or really anything close. So I just offer an opportunity, and say "Yeah, you do find some old markings, carved into the rock face itself. They're like little pictographs, maybe? Definitely Titch-era."  

"Can I tell what they say?" she asks. That sounds like she's consulting her accumulated knowledge, so she Spouts Lore. Rolls a miss and I think about having the bats come flying out, but instead I build some tension and reveal and unwelcome truth. "Sorta. It's not like anyone knows how speak the Titch tongue anymore, but you're pretty sure these pictographs are a warning of some sort? Something like DO NOT DISTURB... THAT WHICH HAS NO NAME... LOST TO THE WORLD...  Funny that those books you found didn't mention any of that, huh? What do you do?"

The fighter and ranger start cutting the vines and brush aside, opening the entrance, and I decide to show signs of approaching trouble. "Ranger, fighter... you hear hissing and squeaking coming from down below, like the bats are agitated.  Like lots of bats are agitated. What do you do?"  

The fighter wants to keep hacking away. But the ranger is like "Wait. I stop and listen.  Does it sound like they're going to swarm or attack or anything?"  

"Sounds like you're studying the situation closely? You want to Discern Realities? If so, ask a question from the list."  

The ranger's like "sure" and asks "What is about to happen?" I'm thinking they're getting agitated, maybe about to swarm, but I don't think that's obvious, so I tell him to roll +WIS. A miss!  TEE-HEE.  

I'm like "you hear the hissing and squeaking, like I said, and it seems kind of steady, and then, like holy crap FLUTTER SQUEAK FLUTTER HISS SQUEAK! They burst out of the entrance and start swarming you all in broad daylight, what do you do?"

There's a fight. They manage to kill many, many bats and then drive off the rest of the swarm. We learn that the wizard's magic missile is a small blast of lightning, complete with thunder-clap, very loud and potentially dangerous. (I've made a note that the draw attention of the lightning eaters that the fighter mentioned offhand earlier on.) 

After the fight, they finish opening the entrance and peer down the stairs.  Dark, narrow, steep, slick with bat guano. The wizard casts light and sends it dancing down the stairs. I tell them that the stairs go down a bit and then a tunnel heads off to the right. I offer an opportunity and say that they don't hear any more squeaking or anything... if there are still bats down there, there aren't many and they aren't likely to be a threat. Do you head down?

The wizard brings the light back up into the stairwell itself and says "I'm moving the light around, studying the passage closely. What should I be on the lookout for?" 

I don't think there's anything in the stairwell, and I've already established that the bats are no longer a threat down there, but there's only so much the wizard could learn from outside the tunnel. So I tell them the requirements and ask and say "The stairs are pretty steep and they're going to be slick with bat guano, but beyond that you can't really tell from up here. You'd have to enter the stairwell itself and poke around if you want to learn more."  

They decide to just descend cautiously, the fighter going first, tapping each stair with the butt of his ax, staying alert. They ammonia smell is stronger down here, almost overpowering, but they get to the bottom of the stairs, no problem. That turns into a landing, and another set of stairs, and then I change the environment and describe the square room with the four columns.  There are hints of a mural on the wall, long faded, but no obvious exits or sarcophagi or anything like that. There's a thick carpet of guano down here, like almost up to your knees. It's super gross, you're all kind of retching.

The wizard spends some adventuring gear to produce kerchiefs for everyone, soaked in some lemon-scented water. They put them over their noses and mouths and enter the room. 

"I'll take a closer look at the pillars," says the wizard. They're smooth stone, marble, but each one has a metal ring inset around it, maybe six inches tall, flush with the stone. And each of those rings has a series of pictograms on them, going around each ring. Maybe a dozen pictograms on each one. I'm hinting at more than meets the eye. None of this was in my notes, but the map shows four pillars and a secret door in the floor, and the wizard's detail about clockwork & artifice made this room spring to life for me. I pretty much know exactly what's going on in here. 

I ask the fighter "what do you do?" and he says "I'm using the haft of my ax to poke around in the bat guano, looking for stuff that might be buried in there." "I'll do the same thing," says the ranger, "but with my bow."  

"Sounds to me like you're studying the situation closely, yeah? If you want to Discern Realities, ask a question from the list."

"Can we just poke around and see what we find?" the ranger asks.

"You can," I say, "but it's a big room and the guano's like a couple feet thick. You pretty quickly become sure that there's nothing really buried in it."  Then I stop, and think about it, and I decide to point to a looming danger. "Wait... no, you know what?  You do find something. Fighter, your feet kick something hard in there, but, y'know, not big. You fish it out?"  They do.  "It's a chunk of a human skull," I say. "Blackened and charred. You find more bones, too.  Scorch marks on them, but also small little bite marks all over, like razor bats gnawed on them.

"Do razor bats burn things?" asks the fighter. "Not that you know," I tell the ranger. I'm hinting at more than meets the eye now, not even waiting for the ranger trigger Spout Lore.  

I ask the wizard what she does, and she asks if she knows what's up with these rings on the pillars and the icons.  "Sounds like you're Spouting Lore? Roll it." She agrees and rolls a 7-9 so I reveal that they're a combination lock. The pictograms appear to be kind of nonsense, maybe the equivalent of "A, B, C, etc." But the rings spin around the pillars, and if you put the four rings in the right position, a lock opens. Sure enough, each pillar has a little triangular notch on it, right above the metal rings; that must be where you put the "right" symbol. I ask how she knows this and she talks about the ancient books that she found.

I jump back to the ranger and fighter, and ask what they do. "We just find the one skeleton?" asks the ranger. "Two, actually.  Well, bits of two skulls, and a whole bunch of other bones. Plus, maybe like a super-corroded bronze knife and helm?  You can't really be sure, but yeah, looks like two people died in here."

"Is there anything else in all this guano?" asks the Fighter. "Like a hidden door or anything?"

"Sounds like you're Discerning Realities, asking 'What here is not what it seems? If so, how are you trying to figure that out?"

"Same as I said before... going around, tapping on the floor with my ax head, listening for different sounds."

Now, I know that there's a secret trap door, right? And it's certainly not obvious... it was concealed before  the floor was covered in guano. But I start by telling him the requirements and asking. "It'll take a few minutes at least, and you'll have to roll +WIS, you do it?"  Sure, he says.

I ask the others what they're doing. The ranger says he helps the fighter (that'll be Aid to Discern Realities).

The wizard leaves the pillars alone for a moment and goes to study the murals. "Can I make these out at all?" I say they're pretty faded, you can barely make any shapes at all. "Huh. Well, I'll give a really close inspection. Like, I'm looking for a clue. Oh! Discern Realities, right?  What here is useful to me?"  That answer is not obvious at all, so I tell him to roll +WIS.  He gets a 7-9, so I tell him that the shape and pattern of the mural looks really familiar to him, and he thinks he's got a reproduction of that in one of his books, maybe? One you brought with you, maybe, if you expend Supplies to have it.

"Yeah, totally.  I'll get the book, carefully in this mess, and find the mural."

Meanwhile, I have the fighter roll to Discern Realities (with the ranger's help) to determine what isn't what it seems. They get a 10+, so, yeah, the fighter finds the secret door in the center of the floor, because it felt more metallic than like stone. The fighter expends 1 supplies to produce a shovel, and then starts clearing it.

Meanwhile, I have the ranger ask the next question. I then turn to the ranger and say "you got a 10+, and you were Aiding, so why don't you ask the next question." He asks "What here is most useful or valuable to me?" and I'm like not bloody much.

So I answer:"Well, I guess the bat guano itself is kind of valuable? You've heard of farmers using it as fertilizer, and sometimes wizards or alchemists have use for it, but it'd be a pain in the ass to get it all home, y'know?"

"Okay, well... what should I be on the lookout for?"

Ah!  There's a trap here, the thing that set those previous corpses on fire.  "You know, along the walls, almost buried under the guano but not quite, you find some... nozzles? Little metal nozzles coming out of the walls. They just sort of feel sinister to you. What do you do?"  He Has What He Needs to produce some beeswax (a small item, so he marks "out of beeswax" and then starts plugging the nozzles.  Smart! 

"Wizard, you get the book out and find the page. Sure enough, you find the engraving you were looking for, in the notes that led you to this place. I think maybe you found an old engraving plate engraving plate and had a print made, and it was definitely this mural. Like 4 separate pictures... a dude's portrait, a mountain, a sword, and a ship. They're laid out in a 2x2 grid."

"Oh, like the pillars?  I check the pillar on the far left corner. Are there any glyphs on it that would match up with the picture on the top left corner of the mural?"

Clever. "Are you like walking around it, or spinning the cylinder around, or what?"

"Huh? Oh, I'll spin it."

The thing is, I had decided that spinning those metal circles more than one "notch" would set off the trap. I decided these maybe ten minutes ago, but whatevs. The wizard just gave me a golden opportunity.

"Okay, well, as soon as you spin it more than like one or two icons, WHOOMP a big metal door slams shut over the entrance, it's super loud. And as you recover your hearing, ranger, you notice a... hissing sound? Coming from the nozzle you're just about to plug up. And then a sort of light gray, almost sparkly gas starts to mist out of it. What do you do?"

From there, it plays out like an action scene. The ranger tries to finish stopping up the nozzles. The fighter Bends Bars/Lifts Grates to get that big heavy door open, and the wizard Defies Danger with INT to figure out which symbols reflect the pictures from the murals, while the fighter then defies danger with CON to keep the door open while he figures that out, and they all succeed before the room fills with phlogiston and a sparker sets the whole thing ablaze.

Other considerations

If I make this change, I'll need to look at all the other moves that tweak Discern Realities.  In particular, I'm not sure how this will work with moves that let you always as a specific question for free, even on miss.  I'm thinking maybe if that's your trigger question, you get advantage on it?  

The other thing rolling around my head is an even bigger variation on the move:

DISCERN REALITIES  

When you closely study a situation or person, you can ask the GM one of the following:

• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What (else) should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is (most) useful or valuable to me?
• Who or what is really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?

If the answer isn't obvious, roll +WIS: on a 7+, the GM will answer honestly; on a 10+, also hold 2 Insight. You can spend Insight 1-for-1 to:

• Ask another question about the situation from the list above, and get an honest answer
• Gain advantage on a roll you make to act on the GM's answer(s) 

This means you would not get advantage to act on the answer on a 7-9, and that you only might get one a 10+.  It also means that asking each subsequent/additional question on the 10+ is a more active thing, and it doesn't have to immediately come after the first question or even flow from the initial act of studying the situation.  Finally, it makes the "get a bonus for acting on the answer" thing much more intentional, and less likely to be overlooked.