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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8417557" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=75787]@GrahamWills[/USER]I don't see why AW couldn't be used to approach a mystery in which the GM has already set up a clock - eg as per my post upthread, a countdown until the kidnappers execute Isle clock.Here is p 143 of the AW rulebook:Countdown Clocks A countdown clock is a reminder to you as MC that your threats have impulse, direction, plans, intentions, the will to sustain action and to respond coherently to others’. When you create a threat, if you have a vision of its future, give it a countdown clock. You can also add countdown clocks to threats you’ve already created. Around the clock, note some things that’ll happen: • Before 9:00, that thing’s coming, but preventable. What are the clues? What are the triggers? What are the steps? • Between 9:00 and 12:00, that thing is inevitable, but there’s still time to brace for impact. What signifies it? • At 12:00, the threat gets its full, active expression. What is it? As you play, advance the clocks, each at their own pace, by marking their segments. Countdown clocks are both descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive: when something you’ve listed happens, advance the clock to that point. Prescriptive: when you advance the clock otherwise, it causes the things you’ve listed. Furthermore, countdown clocks can be derailed: when something happens that changes circumstances so that the countdown no longer makes sense, just scribble it out. For the most part, list things that are beyond the players’ characters’ control: NPCs’ decisions and actions, conditions in a population or a landscape, off-screen relations between rival compounds, the instability of a window into the world’s psychic maelstrom. When you list something within the players’ characters’ control, always list it with an “if,” implied or explicit: “if Bish goes out into the ruins,” not “Bish goes out into the ruins.” Prep circumstances, pressures, developing NPC actions, not (and again, I’m not f*****g around here) NOT future scenes you intend to lead the PCs to.This then feeds into the making of moves by the GM in the usual way: say what honesty and your prep demand.The use of a countdown clock won't change the dynamics of AW - the principles remain what they are; and the player-side moves remain what they are. So because there is no move when you wait patiently to see what turns up but there is a move when you go aggro on someone, I still think it is going to play out more like The Maltese Falcon and less like Poirot.</blockquote>

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