This is an awesome thread.

I want to address a few things.

GM’s don’t have to say yes when no moves are triggered. The moved are designed to guide the fiction to what is interesting. If you have a horror game that does not have a violence move it doesn’t mean that the players can’t try to punch the zombie. It just means that it’s not what’s supposed to be interesting in this fiction. I didn’t write this game for you to go punch zombies. This is a game about fear and I fucking designed it that way. So you go to punch a zombie and the GM might say. It’s head comes off but there’s another one behind it, or the GM might say it is unperturbed by your silly punch and bites your arm now roll to resist THE STRAIN! If the players are doing things that don’t move toward triggers for moves it’s MY job as GM to make things happen that allow them to do so. If my horror game that has no violence move has a Run Away move… then it’s time to use that instead. Make that a priority for the players. Fighting them isn’t working… RUN! It’s not about saying “yes” or ‘no” when things come up with no move. It’s about how I steer the game towards the moves I as GM want to see. If the player wants to negotiate in this game but there’s no negotiate move but there’s a lot of violence and desperate action moves then I’ll have the person he’s trying to negotiate act so that everything goes that way. Maybe he takes offence to your offer of negotiation and starts to beat you with the weapons he took off you when you came to negotiate in peace. Here come the moves. As a game designer of PbtA games the moves should only BE in the game at all if THAT is what you want to see the players doing. The Warren doesn’t really have a do violence move. That’s because I don’t want to see rabbits fighting each other or gearing up to take down the hunters. I want to see them scared. I want to see what happens when they panic.

TL;DR

Moves are what the game is about. When players do things that don’t trigger moves it’s the GM’s job to steer the game toward the moves. The intention of PbtA moves are that THOSE MOVES are what we want to see.