I personally find the whole "Fronts in DW are described like crap" meme to be odd.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.
This all seems quite similar to AW, though I haven't gone back to actually re-read and compare.a front's core purpose is "They sort and gather your dangers into easy-to-use clusters."
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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.
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.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.
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?It then succinctly describes what adventure fronts do and how they can be used: "Think of them as episodic content:..."
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Then there's a section on 'Resolving a Front' which simply tells us how to wrap up a front and what that entails.
OK, I finally went and had a look at those pages (pp 202-3 in my book).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.
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!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, 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."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".
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.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?
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.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.
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."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.
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.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.