Great post, but I feel like something is missing here. Are you just talking about a 7-9 outcome of an “act under fire”? Because I’m not seeing it as obviously for other moves.

I know you said you didn’t like to speak of particulars, but I think this is the kind of thing where a specific example is almost entirely necessarily. Else everyone just reads what they want to hear into an abstract example and we all go home none the wiser.

Also related: I think what you’re describing can often (maybe even always) done on a miss. Give them what they thought they wanted, and then twist the knife. “You get to her, after all… to find her bleeding in the dust” sounds like a great Hard Move to me. You can always do this kind of thing on a miss.

Or am I missing the point here?

What I’m taking away from your post is: use the fiction, play, and provocative questions to find those meaningful points where the right resolution will really have weight, and then wait for the appropriate die outcome to deliver that move/moment/outcome.

I’m not sure that has anything to do with 7-9, though, right? In some circumstances – and depending on the move – it could be a miss, or sometimes even a hit. (A classic example being a success on a “Reading” move or an “open your brain” which reveals to you something you wanted to know, but, unfortunately, which is also terrible news. If the MC has just invented that on the spot, it could be seen as cheating, or against the spirit of the rules, but often you’ll find that the situation has already been set up – the bad thing has happened off-screen, perhaps – and revealing it even on a success feels entirely right.)