Apocalypes (Engine) Now!

The Do Harm move in the GM's arsenal is straight forward and yet, to me, its subtle usage is key to a good adventure.  If you choose the Do Harm move too often, characters simply die, but more than that, you're missing out on the interesting nuances of PbtA combat.  Do it too little, and the game is overly complicated without any real danger.  So, it's obvious that what's needed is a balance between the two extremes. Generally speaking, the Do Harm move comes up in combat, and often as a result of a player move like Hack and Slash or Kick Some Ass.  Depending on your variation of the Player Attack move, you either take damage no matter what, or you take damage on an intermediate success.  I am, by the way, interpreting the "take damage" as a Do Harm move, and I think it's valuable to do so.  First, it keeps the situation in the language of the game (the 3 points the goblin does is the result of a Move), and second, because it suggests you could do a differ...

I think the description that is given in the PbtA of how action economy works is simply lacking.  Yes, fiction...right.  But a lot of games deal with something called balance and a lot of players want to know when and if their characters are in danger.  My thinking here is not to go against the basic way that PbtA games work but to at least suggest, for people who are trying to get a hold of this, what action sort of looks like in a PbtA game and how that translates into the action economy described in other games. So, lets begin.  I'm going to say that the basic structure of the PbtA move system comes in the form of problem/solution: here's the problem, what do you do; the player comes up with a move that solves the problem, rolls, and if successful (10+ for all the 2d6 games), the problem is solved. Great, but there's a lot of variation here.  For instance, there's a problem, the character comes up with an action that doesn't solve the problem, and rolls a 10+...

This is a bit of an exercise.  Here's the situation, the dragon has reared back to breathe fire on a character (Show Signs of an Approaching Threat).  The situation is very simple.  If the character doesn't do something, they will be burned to a crisp.  Assuming a character attempts to get out of the way of the fire, and rolls a result such that the GM will be making a move... what move should the GM make?  The goal of this exercise is to think about the options available.  Don't call out the move, obviously, but what can GM have happen in the game in response? Keep in mind, if the character rolls a 6 or below, they're going to get hit with the fire AND the DM makes a move.  If the result is 7-9, the DM makes a move and, one assumes, the player avoids some of that damage.   The point is that the harm is coming... this is in response to whatever happens after the "what do you do?" We're also assuming that what the character wants to do is jump...