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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8238103" data-attributes="member: 85555">I just read the intro and skimmed the Fronts entry in Dungeon World SRD (I have a game tonight and want to exercise before I do my prep so I don't have time to read and absorb the whole thing). It is very possible I am getting something wrong, missing something vital but I think I at least have a general sense of what a front is now. Let me preface this by saying I tend to take an expansive view to sandbox and living world (heck living world to me is a concept I dragged out of a non-sandbox adventure). I think there are many sandboxes and many living worlds. I also think there are orthodox ways of thinking around these concepts in communities where they are common, and it helps everyone if we at least make distinctions between types, so people don't feel like a particular playstyle (whether that is mine or yours) is being stealth'd into a campaign. What I read about Fronts doesn't run counter to living world for me. If I understand it, it takes something that a GM would commonly do in a living world and gives it more parameters, more definition, more formality. In some ways it seems like it places more limits, but in other ways it looks like it also expands. What I was describing above is what I call playing a living character (this is fundamentally what I mean when I say living adventure or living world: are the NPCs active and engaged in the same way as the PCs are, but also limited in ways like the PCs are). I think this covers very similar ground to Fronts, but the front is maybe more interested in things like when those NPCs plot against the party, and when other dangers present themselves. I think for me that is maybe just one part of the living world concept, and you may be placing boundaries on it that I wouldn't place in my campaign (for example the fronts appear to be something that have a regular rhythm to them around sessions----which is fine, I do that with something I call grudge encounters). Really the only difference I see is I tend to be more intuitive and open with applying this stuff (more sensing it when it naturally arises and then initiating things----and I always tend to do them through the eyes of the NPC in question or the group). Another thing that struck me about fronts is they get into some territory some sandbox GMs might quibble over, but I would file under the role of fate in my worlds. For example it seems like you can have these impending dangers that loom over the campaign in some way, and are drivers of certain kinds of conflict. I freely draw on fate for such things (I even have tables for it). I also don't mind introducing dramatic stuff. This is very long winded and meandering but on the face of it, I don't see Fronts as antithetical to living world or to sandbox. I think some GMs might quibble, and it would be a good idea to clearly explain what a font is and how it might go against any expectations a typical sandbox GM would have if you were selling the concept to them (and the areas I would focus on would be do fonts in any way place limits on GM power, or do they in any way enhance player power over the world: those are essentially the two lines you will butt up against). Incidentally this is why when I formalized fate in my own book, I did so in a way that intentionally walks that line, allowing for the dramatic stuff I liked from Chinese Wuxia television series where characters have fated calamities and there are these coincidental meetings of characters that become significant, while also abiding by the expectation that these things have an in setting explanation). But that was just my approach</blockquote>

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