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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8605064" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think we've talked before about my idea that Classic Traveller is a proto-PbtA game: it's maths isn't as tight, but it has the basic idea of genre-appropriate "moves" either bound up in the skills, or in the sub-systems for making jumps, buying up trade goods, etc.I'm not saying that someone interested in PbtA should just play Traveller instead! But imagine playing Traveller, and taking seriously that, if a PC is in a world's urban centre, then the player of that character can declare a Streetwise check to find black markets, corrupt officials and the like; and taking seriously the need to narrate a complication if a player fails their Vacc Suit check when their PC does something other than just move slowly in a vacc suit. You'd have to keep coming up with fiction, right? And you'd want that fiction to push things forward rather than shut them down.I see PbtA as like that but with even more genre/thematically focused moves, and tighter maths.Have we talked about this too? I haven't played or GMed AW yet - it's still on my list - but I'm very keen to. I find it clearer, and more compelling, than DW.I also see it as a nice illustration of the idea that moves, in a PbtA game, tell you what the game is about. So in AW if you (as your PC) have to jump a chasm well you declare that, and the GM replies by making a soft move (unless you hand them a golden opportunity - eg they've describe the chasm as so wide no one could jump it - and then they can make a hard move instead). But if you're doing it under fire, either literally or you're jumping the chasm to get away from Dremmer's gang or whatever, then you have to roll the dice and the whole "snowball" process opens up.There's no generic task resolution of the D&D or RQ or RM etc variety, no "what's my stat to jump a chasm" or "what's my stat to jump-start a tank" or whatever. There's just the back and forth of action declarations and GM soft moves, until a player declares an action that triggers a player-side move and then the action really starts!(I feel that DW maybe comes a little bit too close to trying to have generic task resolution - at least to a reader like me, some of the moves don't seem quite as "crisp" as the AW ones.)To add a bit more on this: the way I see it, preparing a front is basically preparing a fictional reservoir of GM moves - stuff to say when the players look to you, or the dice come up 7 to 9 or even moreso 6-, and you've got to add some new content into the fiction. I see it as a type of prep aimed at relieving the burden of improv some posters have mentioned, but without prepping (meta)plot.Fronts also serve as a type of bridge between two components of the fiction - setting, and characters (including the PCs). By prepping a front, the GM is thinking about how to turn the setting from "backdrop" to something active and antagonistic, and hence something at the forefront of play rather than just stage-setting. You could think of the goal as a type of immersoin-via-visceralness rather than immersion-via-detail-and-catalogues.</blockquote>

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