Do you mean the passage of time at the table, or the imagined passage of time in the fiction? I think you mean the latter, but am not 100% sure.
If you do mean the latter, I feel that your question gets things the wrong way round - you seem to say that imagined events necessitate real world action. But it's the opposite - real world actions include the authoring of new imagined events.
So if, at the table, for whatever reason there is agreement that, in the fiction, time has passed, then someone has to frame a new scene or otherwise say something about what is happening now. In AW, this would be the GM making a soft move. In Torchbearer, the rulebook gives the GM advice on how to prompt the move into the next Adventure Phase as the players finish their Town Phase - to use PbtA language, this is a type of soft move, namely, providing an opportunity.
You were correct, I was referring to the
passage of time within the fiction.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, 10 years pass.
Where say in D&D, a DM like myself will narrate to the players what their characters have heard/learned about the changes to a region (imagined events necessitating real world action), your understanding is
The GM frames a new scene (real world action authoring new imagined events), which you say in AW this is referred to a soft move.
I'm suspecting, and please correctly me if I'm wrong or miss something, the only difference that may exist between the two would be the motive for the change in the fiction. Perhaps yours is necessitated by dramatic needs, where the former is because I am attempting to adhere to a
simulationist principle (whatever that is). Is that a fair statement to make?
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Another example. In the style of games you play, one uses clocks/die in order for a GM to make a hard move such as a change in the fiction and the gamist mechanic of that is foregrounded (i.e. the players are aware of it).
Would it be fair then to say that if the DM in your typical traditional D&D game foregrounded the mechanics about a future change and say used a different element, say fictional time (x days something occurs), to narrate changes in the fiction - the two play styles, at least in that example, would be similar if not identical?