​151. Single Combat

When you do single combat with someone, no quarters, exchange harm, but first roll+hard. On a 10+, both. On a 7–9, choose 1. On a miss, your opponent chooses 1 against you:
• You inflict terrible harm (+1harm).
• You suffer little harm (-1harm).
 
After you exchange harm, do you prefer to end the fight now, or fight on? If both of you prefer to end the fight now, it ends. If both of you prefer to fight on, it continues, and you must make the move again. If one of you prefers to end the fight, though, and the other prefers to fight on, then the former must choose: flee, submit to the latter’s mercy, or fight on after all.
 
Single combat is strictly for times when two enemies meet head-on on neutral ground, with no purpose other than to harm one another, with no acceptable outcome other than injuries and death. If either enemy has any other objective, or any advantage of terrain, use seize by force or the other battle moves instead.
 
Single combat is an interesting addition to Apocalypse World’s moves.  Before, there was no clear way to simply fight someone.  You would need to phrase it in terms of seizing something by force if both participants were ready for a fight, with “their life” or some equivalent as the thing being seized.  As it is, single combat has some pretty restrictive conditions, as that first explanatory paragraph makes clear.  And it’s neat to see how those limited parameters shape this variation of the seize by force move.
 
Obviously gaining definite control of the things is out of the question because there is no objective other than injury or death.  The removal of “impress, dismay, or frighten your enemy” is the interesting choice to me.  It tells us that this battle will end under no other conditions than death or mutual agreement.  If I want to kill you, you can’t soften my anger and determination by frightening me.  We’re way past that by the time this move is triggered.
 
So with only two options, how do you maintain the 3, 2, 1 progress of the strong hit, weak hit, and miss?  By making it a 2,1, -1 progression instead.  It’s a simple solution that makes the miss meaningful without letting the MC barge into the conflict with a hard move.
 
I feel like this move is a capitulation to player demand, one that is occasionally useful, rarely necessary, and totally uninteresting to the designers.  I conclude this by the accompanying example passage:
 
Anika the maestro d’ conducts cage fights in her establishment, and Bran’s challenged Plover, an NPC, to meet him there. The terms are: no armor, crowbar vs crowbar. Bran hits the move with an 11, which, well done Bran.
 
In the exchange of harm, Bran inflicts 2-harm for his crowbar, plus 1 for inflicting terrible harm, minus 0 for no armor, for a total of 3-harm. He suffers 2-harm for Plover’s crowbar, minus 1 for suffering little harm, minus 0 for no armor, for a total of 1-harm.
 
3-harm is enough to take Plover out. There’s no continuing the fight.
 
Do you see what’s missing?  Yeah, there’s no dialogue.  The move and its explanation are all mechanics. There’s no reincorporating here of the die results back into the fiction for us readers.  Bran and Plover have fight.  Bran rolls.  Ban wins.  Cut and dry.  And utterly unsexy.  Since NPCs can only take 2-3 harm, and since you the MC need to look at them through the crosshairs, a straight fight will likely end in an NPC’s death, and a rather inglorious and dramatically uninteresting death at that. There is nothing in the presentation of the move to inspire the reader to bring this move into their game if any other solution is possible.
 
(As an afterthought, I’ll add this.  Since the exchange of harm is entirely a mathematical issue, and since the outcome is known to the players involved in the fight, there is no real need for them to turn to the MC for a fictional explanation of the results. If they don’t, there is no trigger or need for the MC to make a move.  This could be part of the reason that there is no reincorporating of the mathematical results into the fiction.)