Jason Pitre​ can you walk me through an example of Foster Harm? Because I’m having a very hard time reconciling what you’re describing here with how the move is described in the text.

One part of that is that harm =/= stress. I mean I get that they’re both very broadly kinds of “damage.”

Another part is tied into my internalization of how “moves” talk back and forth. So, for example: a bad apple whips out a pistol and points it at your head. Am I Threatening Violence or am I Fostering Fear? And because of the/my underlying assumptions about the tick-tock of moves, it can’t be both of those because each demands a different reaction.

If they react emotionally to the gun (ie they read me as Fostering an Emotion), they have not reacted practically to the threat, and I do harm to them.

If they react practically to the harm (ie they read me as Threatening Violence), then they have not reacted emotionally, and I tick up their Fear by one.

I mean if that’s the correct read, cool, no worries. It’s kind of a can’t win situation and I’d imagine it would come up a lot. Having guns pointed at you isn’t an edge case in the genre or anything. 😛

If they can react to both I guess that’s better? Like “my eyes grow wide and my mouth goes dry as I Parkour the hell out of the way.”

EDIT: Or is the Foster necessarily going to come before the gun getting whipped out? Is the Foster announcing a future announcement of future badness? (Ex: bad apple walks in angry at getting screwed out of your payment (foster, with stress consequence) -> bad apple whips out gun (threaten, with harm consequence)).

I think it’s the GM move/intent overlap that is procedurally novel here. It could totally be PbtA damage keeping me from evaluating the game-state along several parallel tracks. Or from understanding that I’m inflicting multiple moves at once.

EDIT: Or the real novelty lies in GM moves that have built-in consequences. Since “inflict harm” isn’t a move, rather built into the Threaten move, there’s more packed into a move than typical PbtA?

(I suspect this is the key to the whole thing, and it is so small yet so hugely consequential in evaluating the action.)