Grade the Forged in the Dark System

[Kannik]

Got a chance to update the Grade... it dropped slightly in its grade but remains quite top heavy in its results while also having great 'brand recognition' and a pretty good played score as well.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I cast my vote ("I've never played BitD/FitD") in order to join this discussion about Fronts.

I don't claim to have a good handle on Fronts in DW - I would need to re-read closely to fully get what is going on with Campaign and Adventure fronts.

In AW, though (and here I'm referring to the original version, which is what I own), the function of fronts seems fairly clear: the GM establishes some binding relationship between and among certain NPCs and places, and also binding goals and motivations for those NPCs. This then gets systematised with some clocks, stakes questions, custom moves, and GM moves.

So @Campbell, when you talk about "executive function" I think you're understating the point of AW fronts at least.

I personally find the whole "Fronts in DW are described like crap" meme to be odd.

DW's description of fronts begins on P 185 describing what a front's core purpose is "They sort and gather your dangers into easy-to-use clusters." It then immediately describes 2 types of front exist, campaign and adventure. It then succinctly describes what adventure fronts do and how they can be used: "Think of them as episodic content:..."

The next paragraph then describes the campaign front as "tying your adventure fronts together" and gives a very brief example. It then states plainly that this front will unify all your sessions and is slower burning, weightier, and 'scarier'.

All of this seems quite plain to me. I agree that up to this point we're not in any kind of really new territory. HOWEVER, I would note that you need to take all the above in context (I mean this in the editorial you, as @pemerton surely has a good grasp on this stuff). This is not simply advice about prepping an AP or a Sandbox, because DW doesn't fit either of those paradigms at all! This gets more clear in the next part.

There is then a detailed description of how to create fronts. It is in the form of a kind of recipe-like procedure with 6 steps. Each step is pretty straightforward, and the instructions proceed directly into fleshing them out.

First up are dangers, each is given a name and an impulse. There follows a considerable chunk of detailed text explicating the possible natures of dangers, why they exist, and how you might create them. This all seems like useful and straightforward advice tuned pretty carefully to the context. An example front and some of its dangers forms a running example.

Finally we are introduced to a systematic list of types of dangers, which we can pick from. These are first categorized into general types like "Planar Forces" and then more specific types like "misguided good" are suggested, with a possible impulse suggested to go with it. Again, this all seems fairly solid. A list of possible GM moves for each danger category is also given.

Finally some other descriptive elements of dangers is discussed, a cast of characters and danger description, custom moves, and then grim portents. All of these get several paragraphs. Finally dooms are discussed, the actual manifestation of badness from a danger in the world, with examples given and a discussion of how they take place and their nature.

Finally there's a bit on describing the stakes. Each front has some stakes questions, these describe the sorts of things that make good stakes and how to describe them.

Then there's a section on 'Resolving a Front' which simply tells us how to wrap up a front and what that entails. Lastly there's a bit of a discussion about the dynamics of multiple adventure fronts being in play at the same time. This last part is just kind of basic common sense, but it does give us some interesting ideas/advice.

Honestly, the whole thing seems fairly solid to me, and I had few substantive questions when I implemented it. Its a couple thousand words, maybe, covering 10 pages. I have basically no clue why it would be either confusing nor hard to use. Rarely do RPGs get more plain than this, really.

EDIT: looking at the final writeup of the primary example campaign front, I do find it rather wanting in some respects. Some of the information is contradictory, and it is super unclear what would make a good ordering of grim portents and thus dooms between the 3 dangers presented. Partly I think this is the fault of the example itself, but it does illustrate the one area where I think fronts can be obtuse, and that's in terms of these portents.

So, each danger provides certain portents, and a doom, but it would probably be better, IME, if the dooms and portents were associated with the front as a whole, so that the front becomes a script. This is especially true of campaign fronts, where things may take a long time to unfold. Fronts with a smaller scope, the adventure fronts, IME are less subject to this, but it could still be a problem. I'd simply provide an overall script that orders when the dooms should be triggered WRT the entire front, and/or insure that the front description is coherent enough to explain the causal relations and interactions between the various elements of each danger, especially when the dangers seem actually be in opposition to each other, as in the example.

 

[pemerton]

a front's core purpose is "They sort and gather your dangers into easy-to-use clusters."

<snip>

There is then a detailed description of how to create fronts. It is in the form of a kind of recipe-like procedure with 6 steps. Each step is pretty straightforward, and the instructions proceed directly into fleshing them out.

First up are dangers, each is given a name and an impulse. There follows a considerable chunk of detailed text explicating the possible natures of dangers, why they exist, and how you might create them. This all seems like useful and straightforward advice tuned pretty carefully to the context. An example front and some of its dangers forms a running example.

Finally we are introduced to a systematic list of types of dangers, which we can pick from. These are first categorized into general types like "Planar Forces" and then more specific types like "misguided good" are suggested, with a possible impulse suggested to go with it. Again, this all seems fairly solid. A list of possible GM moves for each danger category is also given.

Finally some other descriptive elements of dangers is discussed, a cast of characters and danger description, custom moves, and then grim portents. All of these get several paragraphs. Finally dooms are discussed, the actual manifestation of badness from a danger in the world, with examples given and a discussion of how they take place and their nature.

Finally there's a bit on describing the stakes. Each front has some stakes questions, these describe the sorts of things that make good stakes and how to describe them.

This all seems quite similar to AW, though I haven't gone back to actually re-read and compare.

But dangers grouped by general types and sub-types, seem like AW threats that are similarly grouped (eg Warlord (general type) Dictator (sub-type)), each with its sub-type specific impulse. An AW front similarly groups threats into easy-to-use clusters.

The list of moves by type of danger appears to correspond to the AW list of moves by type of threat (eg Warlords include, as a move, to make a show of force).

The cast of characters and custom moves are similarly part of AW fronts. The grim portents and final dooms seem to be similar to the AW countdowns and agendas/dark futures. And stakes questions I assume are the same in each case.

Lastly there's a bit of a discussion about the dynamics of multiple adventure fronts being in play at the same time. This last part is just kind of basic common sense, but it does give us some interesting ideas/advice.

AW (p 146) has a one-sentence discussion of "overall countdowns": "Use these clocks to coordinate threats and events across your fronts." Although the example of "overall countdowns" an the next page are confined to a single front.

It then succinctly describes what adventure fronts do and how they can be used: "Think of them as episodic content:..."

<snip>

Then there's a section on 'Resolving a Front' which simply tells us how to wrap up a front and what that entails.

Again with the caveat of relying on your presentation rather than a close reading, these are the bits that seem to differ from AW and that I've not tried, on my own, to really make sense of. Maybe some DW GMs find there to be a tension between the idea of a front as "episodic content" that is to be "resolved", while at the same time avoiding planned scenarios?

I don't know, that's just conjecture.

DW also seems to be missing the "home front".

looking at the final writeup of the primary example campaign front, I do find it rather wanting in some respects. Some of the information is contradictory, and it is super unclear what would make a good ordering of grim portents and thus dooms between the 3 dangers presented. Partly I think this is the fault of the example itself, but it does illustrate the one area where I think fronts can be obtuse, and that's in terms of these portents.

OK, I finally went and had a look at those pages (pp 202-3 in my book).

Is the contradictory information "The College sends an expedition to the Gate" and "It was recently uncovered by the College of Arcanists"? Or the tension between an impulse "to disgorge demons" and those demons apparently being tyrannical angels?

Otherwise, the interplay seems OK to me - you would advance through the Grim Portents as makes sense in response to resolved actions and the need to make soft moves, I think.

 

[Manbearcat]

I've got a few minutes here, so let me try to throw a few words at the things I've been tagged on:

ON DUNGEON WORLD FRONTS

* I've said it multiple times before, but I don't understand the various complaints about DW's organization or implementation of bog standard AW tech/ethos. I know the words people use, I've read the testimonials...but it still doesn't land with me. But that is neither here-nor-there at this point. "It is what it is" to just put that to bed.

* Yes, I've run a ton of DW games (and derivative like Stonetop) either fully 1-10 or several sessions worth of play which is either tutorial-ey for people or just kind of three/four-shot play.

* Dungeon World Fronts are Baker's layers 2 (the superstructure/purpose) and 3 (the particulars/details/implementation) in his concentric design of Apocalypse World. You don't need them to run the game (anything after layer 1 is opt-in and can be modular/detachable, but you're often losing something, possibly something essential, if you opt-out of things layer 2 or 3). I've run only one game where I've fully organized Adventure Fronts and then nested them into one or two Campaign Fronts. I've run games where I've fully disregarded Campaign Fronts and just used stray Adventure Fronts. I've run games where I've used zero Fronts whatsoever.

Here is the pivot point:

Fronts let you (a) build out a roster of danger/opposition early so you don't have to do it in-situ while (b) they give you immediately accessible, thematically-relevant & compelling dangers to point to/trigger when you want to go offscreen. This (a) and (b) are their overwhelming use. The reduce cognitive load on GMs and ease mental bandwidth concerns. Now if you're someone who doesn't have an issue so much with (a) or (b) (you're able to manage them improvisationally and/or you've got good shorthand notes/memory to cue you so you can deploy the primordial ooze of what is in your head) and the cognitive concerns don't register so much? You can either disregard them or just use chunks of them (like a constellation of tags for danger archetypes and attendant impulses).

So, if you don't intend to "think (and go) offscreen" much for your moves (likely because either your players don't love that or you don't know your players well enough yet to know how "in-bounds" offscreen stuff feels for them), then the utility of them decreases a fair bit.

 

[Manbearcat]

(Cont)

ON BLADES IN THE DARK

* @AbdulAlhazred , I'm pretty sure the scene you're depicting was in some hedge maze park right off Charterhall University (or right across the canal in haunted Six Towers) that I either made up or was on the districts map that I quickly referenced? Key to this (from memory) was that I'm fairly confident that was session 1. The thing with Blades in the Dark session 1 (which is derivative of AW and handles this the same way) is you're trying to get a feel for both (a) the characters themselves and (b) the players of those characters (even though I had run TB2 for you guys, I still need to know how you guys are approaching BitD play generally, how you guys have internalized the Best Practices, and how acquainted you guys are with the emergent meta of play for the game). So, just like in AW, the opening Free Play is to (i) get that (a) and (b) done above and, in the course of that, establish, develop, mature the milieu both in the micro for this character/player combo and in the macro for our game-at-large (setting and situations we're interested in engaging with).

Some of the below is a little bit of Blades in the Dark inside baseball as a GM that has run an eff-ton of this game specifically and the family of games its nested within generally. So bear with me.

* Blades in the Dark has a pretty transparent play meta. But it becomes damn clear once you get some seasoning under your belt. If you get yourself beat up (resource-ablation and/or Setting/Faction Clock generation) during Free Play/Info Gathering phase...you're effectively bleeding yourself dry before the main exsanguination (Score/Crime Boss/Heat/Wanted Level/Entanglements) has even started. Don't_do_that...if you can. If you do though, make sure its a hill your character is willing to die on...that it says something important about your character if you take that risk...that it engages intimately and intensely with your thematic portfolio/triggers. These sorts of decision-spaces are what GMs should be implementing now and again in Free Play/Info Gathering phase of Blades...especially session 1 (where we need to get to know the characters). Key here is "now and again." It shouldn't be much. Just a bit of conflict-charged scene framing here...a smidge there...but not much...that is because conflict is not what Info Gathering/Free Play is about (more on that below).

However, when there is conflict during that phase, it absolutely goes from Fortune Roll (Information Gathering) to Action Roll (which means you're establishing Position: Effect matrix and there will be Consequences and they may cascade if you don't resolve things or extricate yourself/fold your hand). Again, circle back to the play meta; don't get into trouble in Info Gathering/Free Play unless you have to make a stand/fight for what is important to you/express your character viscerally in a way that will establish important premise for subsequent play.

* What is Free Play/Info Gathering phase of Blades for? Its for rostering/budgeting/building out the constituent parts of the Score and contextualizing it/anchoring it within the present conflagration (and play better be just that or something has gone awry...either the GM isn't putting enough/the right kind of pressure on the Crew/PCs or the players aren't deploying their Best Practices). What is it not? Free Form effery/rudderless exploration. Its not Grand Theft Auto where players should be just wonking around without purpose and incidental or starting side-tracking (session pacing/time and play meta) trouble. "Cut to the Action" is about The Score. A principled, structured conversation by all parties (including the GM who is leading the conversation) should be about getting to The Score. What do you need for a Score (the anatomy of)?

• A goal (definitely)
• A specific target entity/faction/thing and the assets/roster dynamics in play (definitely)
• A type of plan and detail (definitely)
• Contextualization within the game's emerging milieu (definitely)
• Some idea of what Crew constituents (including satellites like Allies/Friends/Contacts/Rivals) are involved/available/unavailable (definitely)
• Engagement Roll buffs for intel garnered and advantages gained (definitely to maybe)
• Claim Map dynamics (maybe)
• A client or specific negotiated Payoff (maybe)
• Bonus DTAs or Coin spent as flashbacks for an extra DTA to Acquire an Asset or whatever (maybe)

Those asterisks with a "definitely" above? That is where the conversation of Info Gathering/Free Play should be focused pretty damn near exclusively. The players need to be focused on and responsible for that. The GM needs to be focused on and responsible for that. No wanking around. If you want to just wank around in Free Play, then Blades in the Dark is not the game for you. It is structured the way it is for a reason.

* On "Ok guys, you have this many Info Gathering/Free Play moves/scenes available to you...use them wisely." This is a table conceit that I use to do my job. This is me deploying the entirety of the game's agenda and principles and Playing Goal-Forward, Cut to the Action-Forward, Leading an Interesting Conversation, Telling Them the Consequences and Asking, Asking Questions/Using Answers, Telegraphing Trouble, and Bringing Duskvol to Life.

"Lets build out the Score folks."

"Duskvol is a dangerous place and your profile is already too high (existing at all in that danger-stricken, predatory world...but especially with your Wanted Level and Heat!). If you snoop around, stick your neck out, and do too much stuff (beyond that x # of Info Gathering/Free Play moves/scenes I've conveyed), its going to generate Duskvolian danger/trouble. That means Action Rolls, Position: Effect, possibly Consequences (and follow-on). You've been informed. Choose your moves accordingly."

---

Alright, I'm on vacay so that is my last post on these subjects

 

[thefutilist]

My problem with fronts (or getting rid of them), is that how you organize and keep track of the situation tends to be fairly idiosyncratic. Fronts are one way of doing it but they’re not going to work for everyone. Which is admittedly, a fairly mild objection.

The same could be said for clocks. If you have an idea of what the NPC is going to do, do you need clock? Maybe, maybe not. I personally think it’s good to write down what they’re going to do because it keeps me honest. I wouldn't ever change what they’re going to do behind the scenes but my memory might play tricks on me. So I need to organize that stuff and clocks are a fairly cool representation. They also serve as a reminder that the NPC's 'must' have trajectory.

Although my general method is write illegible notes that I can’t make head nor tail of. Write down the names of npc’s without anything else so I forget who they are. Have a big relationship map that doesn’t order stuff well but helps jog my memory if I need it. Not really the type of stuff you’d put in a rules text.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is fair.

I think if I hadn't DM'd for like 20+ years before I even got to DW, and had been taught from the beginning to adopt a scenario-type mindset (I didn't really understand the "railroad" mindset or how common it was until later), I might have felt more positively about fronts - when someone explained them to me properly, at least.

That's presumably why the designers themselves abandoned it too - not because it doesn't provide value, but because they'd internalized operating like that.

Some similar-but-different concepts in other RPGs have indeed been useful. So consider my criticism of Fronts, such that it was, retracted. I don't think they're strictly necessary, and I don't think the book does a remotely good job of explaining (and the examples border on actively unhelpful), but the concept can have value, and I did see it explained much, much better a couple of years ago in a document on how to run DW.

Well, as I responded to @pemerton, going back and reading the chapter, I actually LIKE most of the presentation. It seemed pretty clear to me. The one area where it might feel problematic is in terms of the overall flow of grim portents when looking at it from the back end, that is while in play. The example front (which I assume is intended to be a campaign front, though it oddly doesn't really explicitly say that) has three dangers, but it is pretty unclear from the writeup how the thing is intended to work in play. Do all the portents of danger 1 happen, and then the danger 2 ones, etc.? It SEEMS like they should proceed roughly in parallel, but we don't know. If so, it would be nice to have some more established process there, like that all the portents are organized front-wide instead of simply attached to dangers. This may not be so much of an issue though for less strategic fronts. Also I can see where leaving this up to the GM is a looser kind of development where you can pick and choose between several (in this case 3) portents at any given time. Otherwise the example does leave some important points dangling, like it describes the gate as leading to the realm of pure light, but then the gate danger implies that it is actually a demon gate! Which is it? I mean, sure, 'leave holes', but I feel like a hole this big is a bit much for a campaign front!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Again with the caveat of relying on your presentation rather than a close reading, these are the bits that seem to differ from AW and that I've not tried, on my own, to really make sense of. Maybe some DW GMs find there to be a tension between the idea of a front as "episodic content" that is to be "resolved", while at the same time avoiding planned scenarios?

I don't know, that's just conjecture.

DW also seems to be missing the "home front".

Well, fronts seem like something that could easily morph into a GM authored plotline that dominates play. There are a couple traits and techniques that would guard against that. So, one is that a front is pretty 'sketchy', it isn't some sort of hard series of locations or anything like that, at least as the one worked example goes. Secondly, the GM only gets to introduce grim portents and manifest dooms within the move structure, and according to the agenda and principles. Thus if a GM is playing as intended, the front can't be forced on anyone, especially if the idea of asking questions and playing to the character's bonds and whatnot is taken seriously, because those things should trump fronts. I mean, you don't even get XP for dealing with front stuff, except incidentally in the same was as you do handling any other situations that come up in play. Nothing in the incentive structure of DW really says "you have to deal with this."

OK, I finally went and had a look at those pages (pp 202-3 in my book).

Is the contradictory information "The College sends an expedition to the Gate" and "It was recently uncovered by the College of Arcanists"? Or the tension between an impulse "to disgorge demons" and those demons apparently being tyrannical angels?

I just don't know how to interpret the nature of the gate itself. Is it a gate to hell or a gate to 'heaven'? Or, as you may be implying, are the two things synonymous? I mean, it isn't necessarily a PROBLEM in the sense that if I was drawing up a front like this for my own use, hey I haven't sorted this in my brain, and maybe I didn't even want to! Perhaps if danger 2 fully manifests its doom then it turns into a hellgate and if danger 3 fully manifests it turns into a 'heckgate'. Maybe then the logical course of action is to make sure doom 1 happens! Or maybe clever players will help the arcanists and then supplant them? Play to Find Out! I think the example can WORK. Maybe the deficiency is more in terms of looking at it as a written example produced by someone else, vs a real campaign front will be notes to yourself.

Otherwise, the interplay seems OK to me - you would advance through the Grim Portents as makes sense in response to resolved actions and the need to make soft moves, I think.

Yeah, I have slightly mixed feelings here. I think if I'd written this thing myself, for myself, and then went right out and ran it, it would just be like "Oh, yeah, this will just work, I'll decide on the fly which portents come up." So, maybe it isn't so much weak as a front, but weak as an EXAMPLE of a front written by someone else. Like, another few paragraphs at the end might have been useful to say basically what you're saying here. I still think the actual structure of fronts and how the rules are written is fine though.

 

[niklinna]

My problem with fronts (or getting rid of them), is that how you organize and keep track of the situation tends to be fairly idiosyncratic. Fronts are one way of doing it but they’re not going to work for everyone. Which is admittedly, a fairly mild objection.

The same could be said for clocks. If you have an idea of what the NPC is going to do, do you need clock? Maybe, maybe not. I personally think it’s good to write down what they’re going to do because it keeps me honest. I wouldn't ever change what they’re going to do behind the scenes but my memory might play tricks on me. So I need to organize that stuff and clocks are a fairly cool representation. They also serve as a reminder that the NPC's 'must' have trajectory.

Although my general method is write illegible notes that I can’t make head nor tail of. Write down the names of npc’s without anything else so I forget who they are. Have a big relationship map that doesn’t order stuff well but helps jog my memory if I need it. Not really the type of stuff you’d put in a rules text.

Well, yes, in these particular games, you do need a clock, because what the NPC is going to do must be known to the players—it's a key part of the play style. If the NPC just does something, that's a soft move or hard move or consequence of whatever severity. And of course even a soft move or light consequence is often a telegraphing of what the NPC is going to do. Now there's a fairly broad field from the prototype that stretches right out to the Oort Cloud of "You know they're up to something but you don't know what, you'll have to investigate," but usually there's something concrete that suggests at least one course of action for the players—which of course can include "ignore it and see how it shakes out."

Edit: Typo

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As for Sage talking about wiping all 'trappings of D&D' from the game... Eh. I think there are some people who are frustrated with the way many people have simply skipped actually reading much of the game and just tried to play B/X D&D with it, treating 2d6 as if it was a d20 and missing the whole point.

That's literally something the book suggests as a viable possibility and that was part of the Kickstarter campaign! Saying people doing that are "missing the whole point" is thus supporting my point re: the general (perhaps subconscious) hostility of PtbA/FitD players to anyone not using every single rule in an extremely prescriptive way, despite you just saying "Well you don't have to use all the rules, obviously!" (and seemingly believing it!). I don't think they are missing the "whole point" at all - in fact, I think people who can only see utilizing every rule prescriptively aren't really comprehending how DW was constructed or how flexibly it can be used, and are stuck in outdated mindset where PtbA/FitD are to be defend from hostile hordes of rules-skimming barbarians. Even using D&D adventures and the like, It's still a fundamentally different approach to B/X or similar, too, the mindset has to be very different to use Moves and so on. A viable and non-hostile rephrasing of a similar sentiment might be that they're "missing out of some of the most interesting and exciting things DW can do" - but when you dismiss such people as "missing the whole point", well, you make my point for me.

And also no, that's not at all what he was saying re: a Dungeon World 2. He was specifically attacking D&D's colonialist undertones/subtext (something I've noted before but pretty much everyone seems uncomfortable discussing) and basically saying D&D (including 5E) was very nasty game that he no longer felt like was worth emulating. Stuff like killing things and taking their loot? He wanted no more of that - that was one of his specific examples of a thing he'd drop.

I can't find the original detailed discussion where he laid out his ideas but he does say in a still-available Tweet:


"DW is at best a reflection of where I was as an ally 10 years ago, and even then it has a lot of things that are entirely racist, sexist, or ableist and which I did not notice."

Which like, not really sure that's true buddy re: "entirely racist, sexist or ableist" - I'm struggling to even thing of anything even arguably sexist in DW - maybe some kind of of monster? I tried to see if anyone had any examples but they didn't - not even LaTorra himself. The racism seems to boil down to "the game has 'evil races' in it", which like, sure but I think when you stretch that to "entirely racist", rather than say "unfortunately reflective of frequently-racist tropes or something" you're perhaps getting a little self-indulgent in a strange way.

Also this:

"The thing that I had honestly never even considered from my privileged POV: why is DW still in my profile? Or up for sale? When I think of it I think of the good stuff, but there's entirely too much bad stuff."

I mean, I consider myself pretty far out there on the social left in most ways, and absolutely can criticise D&D and really most fantasy games (video, TT or otherwise) for some recurrent tropes which are not great (and are indeed reflective of arguably colonialist attitudes), but goddamn son. Hoooooooo. It seems reading between the lines of a few posts LaTorra has made, the only reason DW hasn't been pulled is that Adam Koebel wouldn't agree to it (perhaps not unreasonably!).