It isn't OK. I don't mean in the sense of “oh no everything is broken now!”, but in the sense of “yeah, Dungeon World is way less fun, and it will fail to be awesome in ways you wouldn't even know could have been awesome.” That sense of the game being ‘off’ is what Dungeon World feels like when its heart and guts are missing because some core rules aren't being followed.
Put another way, the game fails to live up to its promises when played that way. It can be played that way though — you just get a pale imitation of Dungeon World instead of the real deal.
How to fix it and make Dungeon World sessions gently unfold like a spring flower of awesome
This is something the players are doing, but the fix is super effective and entirely within the GM's control. It's easy to miss, but the rules say literally what the GM must say when the conversation takes this kind of turn, and the GM must say it in order for the GM to be actually following the GM's rules.
Here is it (p. 180):
When a player just says “I hack and slash him” be quick to ask, “so what are you actually doing?” Ask “How?” or “With what?”
It's that simple, but the GM has to be consistent for it to work.
Doing it in practice
Remember that Dungeon World's rules are all based on dictating legal conversation subjects. Weird, I know, but it works and it's important to remember so that the GM can see where and to what the rules apply during a session. This is one of those situation, because the players are attempting to skip steps. It would be like if the player of a 1st-level single-class fighter in D&D 3.5e says that they cast a fireball at the villain and start rolling 10d6. If that D&D 3.5e DM is all like “uh, okay, I guess they die” instead of “what, no, you're not a spellcaster” then D&D 3.5e isn't going to really work properly, right? Same thing here: when players just call out the moves and the GM acquiesces, Dungeon World doesn't work properly.
So in practice, when a player names a move and you say “OK, what does that look like?”, there are a few ways they might respond.
The best case is they pull up short mentally, think for a moment, and then start describing what their character is doing instead of what move the player hopes to trigger. This is awesome and lets the game roll on pretty quickly.
The middling case is where they're confused by the question and you have to elaborate. So you say something like “I mean just that: when you cast a spell, what does that look like for you, Cleric?” and “Well, you're hoping to spout lore, so what does consulting your accumulated knowledge about something look like for the Wizard?”
The key here is that you, the GM, are not allowed to contribute the results of what they do to the conversation yet. You keep asking question, talking about the fictional situation and what they are or would do, possibly resulting in events progressing in-game with no moves triggering yet, until a move (player or GM) is triggered and you have to follow its rules. If the player in question keeps trying to skip ahead and execute a move without triggering it, they're going to keep looking at you for the result and you're going to keep not conversing about the move, 'cause it hasn't triggered yet. Keep bringing it back to asking them to describe what they're doing, and watch for move triggers in the description.
Be prepared for the description to actually trigger a different move, because moves matching the fiction regardless of what move a player wanted to have happen is a powerful and core part of the feedback loop the whole game is designed to create.
The worst situation is where they argue, especially if they pull out a half-baked understanding of the game and claim that Dungeon World lets them do anything and the GM has to go along with it.
You're still the GM, and the world is basically in stasis until the GM converses about it changing, so misguided, arguing players can't really force the game forward without your cooperation. That means: Don't Panic. It's fine, the game is fine, and you just need to chat reasonably with them and rest confident that the game reality will wait patiently for you. There's no rush, so you've got time to correct the misunderstanding without actually getting into a heated argument.
In practice argument is actually unlikely, but it's good to have some ideas for keeping the game from being sucked into the Argument Black Hole. So there are a few ways to handle an argumentative player.
- Get back to game basics. Remind them that to do a move, they have to trigger it, and just saying the name isn't a move trigger. This backs everyone up a step away from playing the game to discussing the rules of the game, which some people might have misunderstood. Then ask them, “So what do you do?” to nudge everyone quickly back into playing mode.
- Switch to another PC. Smile kindly and say “OK, we'll get back to the Fighter in a sec. Ranger, you see [situation summary], what do you do about that?” This keeps the game moving the way it's designed to, and as a bonus gives you a chance for you and another player to demonstrate how it's done.
But all this is a long-winded way of saying that the GM's job when someone just declares a move's name without actually describing their character doing anything is to somehow get someone — anyone — at the table to tell you what they're actually doing in fictional terms. If it's the player who just named the move, that's great, but there's no initiative and you can flip over to someone else who'll help you keep the conversation about the fictional events moving instead of stalled.
Get people saying what they do in game, and only call moves that match after they match the triggers, and Dungeon World will deliver the subtle awesomenesses it promises.
Mind Your Follow-Through
Note that Defy Danger starts out with:
When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity
Getting rushed by screaming kobold fanatics who've set themselves on lightning* is pretty calamitous, and if you hit on a 10+, that's great! But what it means is that the threat doesn't come to bear right now, not that it vanishes forever - "defy" doesn't mean "eliminate".
Yes, you are encouraged to start setting up the scene with softer moves, but all of these moves are things that are actually happening in the fiction. The players aren't trying to, like, counter and eliminate your moves or anything, they're also taking actions in the fiction and accomplishing their own things. They can manage to be both momentarily safe and still very much in danger.
So, you hit on a 10+. The screaming kobold fanatics haven't gone away. It's just that when the first one rushes into the innocuous-looking jar/carefully positioned Leyden mine and they both go up in a cloud of electroclasm and smoke, you're not right there with them.
Awful lot of jars in here, aren't there?
* no one ever said the path of the blue dragon fanatic would be easy
Mind Your Setup
Tell them the requirements or consequences and then ask is often underestimated, but it's an excellent way to extend the results of moves without having to write entirely new ones.
So if, for example, Stringfellow surveys the upcoming holosparkst, decides it's time for the better part of valor, and says he's diving out the nearest doorway, that does sound like Defy Danger too, doesn't it? But you can always say:
Sure, but things in here are ramping up rapidly. If you make it out, getting back in to help everyone else won't be nearly as easy.
Or:
Sure, but whatever that just kicked off is already cascading around the exits. You'll be taking 1d6 damage through armor just to try.
Or even:
Sure, but, gosh, there's all this smoke in here and your ears are still ringing from the blast. You can get out somewhere safely, but it's not entirely clear to you where that's going to be.
And then end with:
Is that alright?
And if it's not, then Stringfellow isn't going to dive out the door in the first place. His turn in the spotlight will be spent doing something else. And if it is, then even a 10+ on a Defy Danger will still leave Stringfellow in a bad position. It doesn't violate the spirit of the move to do this - accepting those known bad outcomes is just the cost of making the move in the first place.
Mind Your Prep
And, of course, if you knew all along that there'd be kobolds in these ruins and they laid traps like the dickens, you can sit down and craft custom moves to deal with this and take Defy Danger off the table as an initial reaction. Something like:
When Lightning's Claw springs their ambush on you, say who was the most cautious among you and have them roll +WIS. On a 10+, they pick 1. On a 7-9, the GM also picks 1. On a 6-, all 3:
- You're right where they want you. Everyone takes -1 ongoing to all rolls to dodge or escape, until you're out.
- You didn't see this coming. Pick someone else in the party to take the brunt of the first attack; the GM will make a move against them.
- They timed this one perfectly. All their damage is best of 2 rolls, and when they gang up it adds +2 damage instead of +1.
But you don't need to haul something like that out all the time, just for when you want it to be a sufficiently big deal that a regular Defy Danger doesn't seem like it should be able to resolve things satisfyingly on its own.
Best Answer
An important aspect of most Powered by the Apocalypse games, including Dungeon World, is that the game is a conversation between the players and the GM with interjections as rules are triggered.
Because of how the conversation and moves interact, it's extraordinarily important that everyone agrees that a move is triggered so that everyone can respond appropriately, as fiction or the moves demand.
If you disagree or have a question about whether a situation triggers a move, or how the move was handled, you are empowered to bring it up with the group. You are already doing this and appear to be having some success.
My concern is with your question's premise about having “a GM who doesn't really like following Dungeon World's rules.” This is highly open-ended and depends on how familiar you are with the GM and why your GM is acting this way. Depending on your comfort level—if, for example, the GM is a close friend—this could be a one-on-one discussion between game sessions with them about the rules of Dungeon World and their desire to run it as written, or confusion about how it works, or how they want to improve their GMing. If they're less familiar, you may want to discuss it with the other players first, and broach the topic as a group after a session. For a hostile GM, you could decide to walk away.