Development of a Move

Let’s look at how one move developed over time. Hack and slash was one of the earliest Dungeon World moves, originally written by Tony Dowler. The first version looked like this (this version has been reformatted and edited for grammar only):

When you wade into combat, attacking your enemies, deal damage to the enemy you’re attacking, take that enemy’s damage, and roll+Str. On a 10+, choose 2. On a 7–9 choose 1.

• Prevent one ally from taking damage this round
• Kill one enemy of lower level than you or deal max damage to otherwise
• Put an enemy right where you want them (drive them off, prevent them from fleeing, etc.)
• Divide your damage amongst any number of targets you can reach with your weapon

The first problem with this move is that one of the options, preventing damage, is far less useful than the others. Being able to outright kill an enemy is nearly always better than preventing that enemy from doing damage. The first major revision was to drop that option:

When you wade into combat, attacking your enemies, deal damage to the enemy you’re attacking, take that enemy’s damage, and roll+Str. On a 10+ choose 2. On a 7–9 choose 1.

• Kill one enemy of lower level than you or deal max damage to otherwise
• Put an enemy right where you want them (drive them off, prevent them from fleeing, etc.)
• Divide your damage amongst any number of targets you can reach with your weapon

This left only three options which is a great number of options to have when a 10+ lets you pick two. The player making the move always had to not choose one option. All of the options are also clearly useful. But there’s still an issue, easily the biggest issue with this move: the fictional action doesn’t tightly relate to the outcome.

Consider this situation: Gregor attacks an eagle lord with his mighty axe. He describes his fictional action: “I swing my axe right down on his wing with a big overhead chop.” Then he rolls the move, gets a 10, and makes his choices. Max damage is a clear choice and comes right from the fiction. The other options, however, don’t make much sense. If he chooses to divide his damage, how does that flow from his one fictional attack? How did that one chop also hit the treant behind him?

Scoping down the fictional effect of the move lead to this version:

When you attack an enemy who can defend themselves, roll+Str. On a 10+, you deal your damage but your enemy does not get to deal theirs to you. If you choose, you can take your enemy’s damage and deal double damage to the enemy. On a 7–9, you take the enemy’s damage and deal your damage.

Here the move now has only the effects that could clearly follow from a single attack. Any action that couldn’t reasonably lead to a counterattack isn’t hack and slash, so now the trigger matches the effects. Unfortunately double damage was a bit much, so we changed it to this:

When you attack an enemy in melee, roll+Str. On a 7–9, you deal your damage to the enemy and take their damage. On a 10+ you deal your damage to the enemy. You can choose to also take the enemy’s damage to deal +2 damage.

+2 damage is a clear advantage, but not a game breaker. The only problem here is that it reduced the effects of an attack to taking damage. Monsters do so much more than just take away your HP; monsters hurl you about the room and destroy the ground you stand on, why can’t they do that in response?

When you attack an enemy in melee, roll+Str. On a 10+, you deal your damage to the enemy and avoid their attack. At your option, you may choose to do +1d6 damage but expose yourself to the enemy’s attack. On a 7–9, you deal your damage to the enemy and the enemy makes an attack against you.

This version (the final one) allows a monster to “attack” not just deal damage. That opens up a whole host of interesting monster moves to be used. +1d6 damage instead of +2 makes the choice more exciting (and slightly more powerful). The rewording adds clarity.