Brawler's Arena

At this point one player would tell me their action.

Should I describe the room more? I usually let the players come up with what's in the room if they feel like they need something to be there. Within reason of course.

I can take on one PC. I post more during the week than the weekend though

I'll take on the Fighter, I'll be "Spearmint" Ann, Halfling Fighter wielding a spear several times longer than her, versatile and sharp, ornate with silver and snowy motifs, likely forged by some ice mystic of old that left an ounce of his soul inside of it.

I'm all for making stuff up on the spot.

That sounds like a hack & slash. Go ahead and roll it

rolls for my hack and slash

Take 1d6 damage. (remember that you probably also have armor.)
I think the rules state that the players roll their own damage, but I'll add it to my post to speed that up a bit.

Since my party doesn't roll for initiative but they do like to each have a turn, I usually just pick the person closest to the action that just happened if nobody offers to go first.

Ha! Maybe goblins don't care about their children?
We are in the realm for Aid (as was the fighter's roll above', but we want to see the GM Moves, so let's assume no helping in most cases?

Yes, let's leave "aid" out of it for now, I think.

Because my players like to go in turn, normally I would now ask "Sarah, what are you doing?" and then come back to what's happening to John later. I will do the same here for the sake of consistency.

It's not the way I'd like to do it, to be honest. It makes more sense to me that John gets to react to this now unless another PC has a good idea to help the situation before John reacts. But my PCs felt like each should get an equal amount of actions. (mind you, not because they're selfish but because they are selfless. They would say "hang on, it's not my turn cause .... hasn't done anything yet")

I do get that, cause sometimes actions follow each other up in quick succession and the bad guy is taken care of before the others even had a chance to help. Or the player gets himself in trouble without the others being able to react. They probably could have easily prevented the trouble if everyone got a turn.

/shudder :)
Often a good habit. Especially if 'Sarah' has not acted in a while.

But, also often disruptive. Sometimes a cliffhanger is fun, but constantly interrupting the action to swap to another player can break the flow. In this case I would not swap away from the paladin (not without good cause (like needing to take a moment for the GM to think, for instance:)) as that is where the action is.

I also had Sarah fall prone to put her out of the action since (due to our unique situation here) she does not have a player that will have to wait, and the most obvious would be for her to Aid.
If you insist. :)

Shall I play her, as I offered to do? Do we want to see her do anything specific? That might define what her pet is and dictate her stats (the Pal is highish CON, and tends to Defend, so I don't know if the Ranger will also do that).
It does. And can make things flow smoother.
Yeah, a very DnDesque thought.

But, what is an 'action'? The Paladin just shouted at them, is that the same as actually attacking, or casting a spell?

It might serve you better to think in terms of goals achieved, let the PCs 'do a thing' rather than 'take an action' so we stay with them for a while while they do their thing to completion... within reason.
If the only objective is 'kill the bad guy' then this is could be a problem. But if the situation is more complex, then everyone is just glad that the bad guy is out of the way and they can deal with the more important stuff.

Yes, I feel you :P
It does happen that one player would do 2 or 3 rolls in a single 'turn' to complete what they were trying to do, before switching to someone else. Not sure if that's what you meant.
Yes, please do. Let's have her be the spellcaster. So she can either try to heal Ann, or shoot at the 3 oncoming goblins (or possibly use her pet to the same effect. As long as it's not an elephant, I think anything goes. ;) ).