So here's some examples of a threat in AW (from p 139):
*Landscapes
A landscape threat can be natural or constructed, and whatever size you need. The burn flats, the ruins of Las Uncles, a poison’d canal, the holding’s bustling marketplace, the warrens of a grotesque’s den in its depths. Choose which kind of landscape:
• Prison (impulse: to contain, to deny egress)
• Breeding pit (impulse: to generate badness)
• Furnace (impulse: to consume things)
• Mirage (impulse: to entice and betray people)
• Maze (impulse: to trap, to frustrate passage)
• Fortress (impulse: to deny access)
MC Moves for landscapes:
• Reveal something to someone.
• Display something for all to see.
• Hide something.
• Bar the way.
• Open the way.
• Provide another way.
• Shift, move, rearrange.
• Offer a guide.
• Present a guardian.
• Disgorge something.
• Take something away: lost, used up, destroyed.
A front is a collection of threats: a given front may include different threats (eg a place, some people, etc) and need not include any particular sort of threat (eg a given front may not include a location
as a threat at all). What unites the threats in a front (other than the home front) is that they are all part of the same overall "dark future" that threatens the PCs' position (the rulebook describes this as a "fundamental scarcity" that underlies every front: p 137). Part of the point of the 1st session is to form a picture of the PCs' position, and to start to discover what threatens it, so that then the GM is in a position to create a front.
The following is from pp 146-7:
New Fronts & The Home Front
As you play, you’ll leap forward with all kinds of named NPCs, right? Many of them won’t amount to anything, they’ll be just names, quick characterizations, simple motivations. That’s fine.
Whenever an NPC develops agency, though, list her as a threat. There are 3 possibilities.
Possibility 1: She represents an entire new fundamental scarcity-expressing threatening situation, and implies other individual threats. In this case, create a new front, listing this particular NPC as one of its threats.
Possibility 2: She fits perfectly well into a front that you’ve already created. In this case, list her as a new threat in that front.
Possibility 3: She doesn’t do either. In this case, list her as a threat on the home front - the home front is a place for otherwise homeless threats.
The home front is just a front with:
• No fundamental scarcity.
• No agenda / dark future.
• No overall countdowns.
• Otherwise front-less NPCs listed as threats.
• Stakes questions as you need them.
• Custom moves that aren’t attached to any particular threat.
Suppose, during the first session, it is established that the Hardholder has a rival who was banished years ago; who also happens to be the Chopper's brother. We could imagine the GM building this into a front which has, as its underlying fundamental scarcity,
ambition (I take this from the list on p 137). The Agenda/Dark Future for this front is an overwhelming assault on the hardhold, razing it to the ground.
The GM prepares threats - the rival is a Warlord (Dictator - impulse: to control - see p 138). There is a location threat, namely, the warlord's base established in what was once a bunker carved into a mountain-side (Fortress - impulse: to deny access). Perhaps the warlord's gang is a Brute (Mob - impulse: to riot, burn, kill scapegoats - see p 141). Part of the countdown for the front might be the warlord rival taking control of the mob, forging them into a powerful, coordinated fighting force. Maybe (and thinking of Dune, especially the 80s film) this idea even suggests another threat a Grotesque (Mindf***** - impulse: craves mastery - see p 139), who the rival is relying on to train and transform the mob.
We can see the lists of Threats, and threat types (like Dictator as a type of Warlord, Mob as a type of Brute, etc), as analogous to the list of scenario types in ch 8 of Moldvay Basic: they categorise the sorts of antagonists one would expect to meet in Apocalypse World, and attach to them handy impulses and lists of moves, to make the GM's job easy when it is time for them to say something. As per what I quoted upthread, they also pre-commit the GM: for instance, at the start of session 2 the rival does
not have an organised force, but rather has a mob who need to be trained. And the rival
does have a fortress, so it's not like the PCs can just walk up to and confront the rival.
Suppose the PCs try to enter the fortress. Its impulse is to deny access, so it seems natural enough that the GM might
bar the way - "You approach up the road, and can see the concrete entrance ahead of you. Then there is the sound of gunfire, and bullets hit the dirt and rocks around you - the entrance is guarded!" Maybe one of the players says "To hell with that - I charge!" That's acting under fire (literally), and so the move is rolled. Perhaps the result is that the GM
offers an ugly choice by
providing another way - "You're half way there, and the fire's intense - but you can see something above and to the right of the entrance, maybe like an old vent? Do you fall back, or will you go for the vent even if it means taking a bullet?" The player opts for the latter, the GM inflicts the requisite harm, and then play continues - maybe the GM
offers a guide (inside the vent is a useful diagram) or maybe the GM decides to
rearrange things - the floor inside the vent collapses, depositing the PC immediately behind the shooters at the entrance.
One thing to note, relevant to the thread topic, is that there is nothing here, about the process of play or the basis for GM decision-making, that is not visible to the players.
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