Manbearcat
Legend
@Manbearcat I am not talking about the setting as much as structure of scores. In your experience is it usual that the scores themselves are some sort of developing dynamic situations in midst the characters arrive, as opposed to static ones like guards guarding the thing the PCs want to steal, and the situation only developing from static by PC intervention? Because in our game they have been mostly the latter.
This isn't even criticism of my GM, nor the game. It has been fun regardless. I was just pondering whether the structure of the the game somehow leads to these sort of setups or whether it was just the style of my GM. I kinda suspected that as the difficulties are supposed to mainly arise from complications caused by rolls gone badly, this sort of nudges the GM to set up situations where there are not many moving parts unless the PCs put them into motion.
I'm not tremendously clear on what you mean by "developing dynamic situations (in midst)" vs static here. Let me just throw some words at how the fundamentals of Scores and how they work in play:
Scores are informed by multiple things working in concert
* The imagined space and gamestate that predates the Score. Duskvol-at-large (and the Deathlands and the Imperium) has locales, factions, situation, momentum. The Crew has motivations, alliances, enemies, relationships, a Claim Map, and momentum. Also, nested within that is the individual PCs who have their own motivations, relationships, and momentum. All of this stuff clashes together to create opportunities and (both looming and immediate) threats for prospective Scores, for Faction/Setting Clocks to be underway and/or about to "go off", for Entanglements or Arrests to perturb things.
* Now we have Info Gathering/Free Play. Players (and Crew) should NOT be approaching this as rudderless wandering and exploration. This should be goal-directed and focused. You're looking at all the factors of the present situation in the first bullet point above. You're looking for (a) a target (an opportunity or a fire to put out or a setup for the future), (b) all the surrounding dynamics of that (Tier/Scale/Magnitude relationships, Faction fallout, if Setting/Faction clocks need to be resolved, rewards/risks), (c) vectors for Payoff (be it a client or a cache or accrued asset etc), (d) Score type and detail and enemy assets they can bring to bear (which obviously includes answering locale and personnel questions for the target), and, finally, (e) they should be thinking "Engagement Roll amplification" with all the prior mentioned things (see all the constituents of Engagement Roll dice pool for that). Now, when its a PCs turn to be spotlighted, they need to have something to say and investigate...something to look into...some content to generate for the coming Score; a location or a person or intel/research or a relationship or some kind of dynamic. They either have a very defined Info Gathering move that they're going to make > we resolve > fold that into our unfolding situation.
* Once all of that is resolved, the GM should have all that info and basically "roster out" their Score based on the target information. This will be a confluence of the statistics of the Faction/Location/Entity (if its something like an Electroplasmic Horror in the Ghost Field or a swarm of Hollows or whatever) and what goes down in Free Play/Info Gathering.
* Once all of that is done, we roll the Engagement Roll to determine Position, reference the Detail and Score archetype and all the other important particulars fleshed out during Info Gathering/Free Play and frame the initial obstacle based on the convergence of all of this. The typical play loop is carried out at this point. The players declare an Action Roll/Setup/Ask for Devil's Bargain, etc. Effect is sorted out. Off we go through the situations/obstacles/Clocks for this Score, with the momentum of snowballing action resolution, until all matters of the Score have been resolved and "we are where we are" (with setting/factions/crew perturbed and strategic gamestate in a rather different place than it was before we started).
I feel like that is the most thorough answer to your question I can give, but I don't know if it answers what you're asking because I'm not terribly clear on what is happening at your table. Situation/Scores are informed by play-to-date + Info Gathering/Free Play (pre-Score) + present gamestate dynamics + target roster/assets/tags/stats + system archetecture.
No situation/obstacle should be conflict-neutral. It should all be "charged" to use Baker's language. Every one of them and that starts from the first moment of play. Crap is going down. Constantly. When you resolve the Engagement Roll, there is a spectrum of danger/threat pending whether you land on Controlled/Risky/Desperate. From there, the play loop should pretty much take care of itself (obviously with aggressive, deft GMing and playing)?