With six sessions of Silverline written, and a seventh eventually on the way (I promise!), I want to talk about this move from that perspective. I’ll also say up front that it’s different from a live game in that I’m both the GM and all the players, so I can perfectly divine my own intent. 
But it’s not all that different from a live game in that I write the skeleton of each session in about the same length of time a real session takes, so there’s no pausing for long moments to decide on the ‘perfect’ outcome.
I keep the “Core GM Reference” PDF from Magpie Games open in a tab. On a miss, even in combat, my go-to list for moves is the general GM moves list from that reference, and then the specific moves for each playbook. I’ll add the villain’s moves list if a combat is going on. I don’t have a priority order, but I’ll tend to look at playbook and villain moves first just because those lists are more succinct and specific.
Here’s some specific examples:
- Session 3: Sabine and Ghost fail an Assess and a Provoke move in succession, and later on, Pelagos rolls a playbook move. All three get playbook moves that cause trouble for them, either then or down the road.
- Session 4: Astralis fails to Provoke someone, and gets a Doomed move that escalates her particular crisis.
- Session 6: Astralis fails a Pierce the Mask roll to figure out what to do about a teammate’s crush that she just noticed. I make a move from the Doomed list, which ends up turning into a Powerful Blow for someone else.
I’m not going to play backseat GM and say “here’s how it should have gone”. Instead, I want to talk about how it could have gone, with the hope that this inspires future ideas.
- The roof comes in, Joe and Mette take a powerful blow. The GM move here, “Put innocents in danger”, could have come into play, letting either of them roll to Defend or Unleash their Powers to keep themselves or other kids (or a museum guide?) safe.
- Joe defends Mette, but exposes himself to danger. The Bull has a playbook move, “swarm with mundane forces”. Who has mundane forces? Rubble Rouser, who can conjure concrete minions. As Joe takes the plasma hit, maybe he’s now surrounded and has to fight his way out.
- Mette fails 21st Century Studies/Assess the Situation. The Harbinger move “reveal clear future paths” was effectively what we ended up with.
Take a Powerful Blow is neat, but it doesn’t have the unique ability to make things snowball. Any move in the game, by design, should have that. There’s a lot of opportunity for the GM to channel bad outcomes in ways that specifically match up to a particular playbook, and not just be “take a hit”.