Do (some) Harm

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 different move instead, which is a key concept to what I'm saying here.

Perhaps part of the reason that I think it's important to talk about this is because the first scenario I ran with PbtA was the Monster of the Week adventure "Arachnegenesis" from the The Tome of Mysteries.  So, spoilers, sort of, but the minions in that adventure do A LOT of damage.  I believe it's 4 points and it's got the Messy tag.  They can take a lot of damage too, and they have armor.  Going toe-to-toe with one means almost certain death, and yet the adventure seems to indicate that there are hordes of these things running around at some point.  The chance that the characters are going to run into them is high.

The lesson that the scenario taught me have proven useful in all other PbtA fight scenes, especially in games with more combat than MotW, like Dungonworld.  Here's what I learned.  When running a combat, save the big damage for big failures.  When the characters start fighting, let them get seperated, let stuff break, put them in tight spots, give them choices and ask.  Make it interesting.  In an earlier post, I suggested that PbtA is a game where failures stack up faster than successes; use that to your advantage.  When the players are in the hole, so to speak, that's when you start bringing out the big damage.  Basically, Dealing Damage as a hard move is a bit harsh.  I don't do a lot of Hard Moves, generally, until the players have got about 3 or 4 problems they're dealing with because of failed rolls.  I don't know why combat would be so different.

Another alternative to Do Harm are the monster or location moves.  Those are the places where you really get to make the feel of the encounter shine.  In "Arachnegenesis," the minions had a web attack.  Rather than do harm, hit the character with webbing.  It makes the monster more real as a spider thing, rather than 4 damage Messy thing.  Plus, it presents a non-lethal problem for the characters to deal with that is exciting, and potentially disastrous if they don't take action

You miss the roll and you see that the Goblin's blade is drenched in green goo or that the alien's psychic tendrils are in your brain making it ready for your next attack.  The point is, damage is damage, and PbtA isn't particularly forgiving, so use it sparingly, and by doing so make your encounters more interesting.

Lastly, in PbtA games, where there's a lot of combat implied, thinking about alternatives to Do Harm is absolutely necessary, and yet, seemingly counter-intuitive.  Because of lots of D&D, it just kind of goes without saying that the goblin is going to swing back, but consider, seriously, what that means. If each character takes 3 points of damage, say, two out of three times they attack, and a combat lasts 2 or 3 "rounds," they're really only going to be able to survive 3, maybe 4 of these encounters, and that's if they get lucky... and that's just Goblins!  

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