Dungeon World con game. planning on 4 hours long.
I know where the players start (You are here. You just did this. This danger has now appeared in reaction to what you just did. What do you do?); I know what their goal pretty much is (deliver the thing to the person).
Do I need fronts?
Only to the extent that you will find them helpful.
Like Jeremy Strandberg said. A ticking time bomb and a living world is a lot of fun, but depending on what your theme and setting is, fronts don’t always work well if you already have a timeline or a general idea of a timeline in your mind. Generally, just involve time in your game and think about it and fronts will become unnecessary, even if they can be helpful, especially to new GMs.
Well, you need an antagonist, right? And that antagonist has to be trying to do something, right? Something possibly grim that will come to pass if the players don’t interfere? It’s nice to have a list handy of Grim Portents that you can have come to pass when it’s time to make a hard move. It’s also often helpful to think about the suggested GM moves for the type of Danger – Arcane Enemies, Ambitious Organizations, what have you. In particular, it’s great to think about what signs the PCs might actually see when the enemy makes its move in the world.
“Okay, roll to Hunt and Track.” “Crap, I rolled a 5. I guess I can’t follow it?” “Well, actually, you know what? It’s not as bad as it might have been. You can still follow it, but it’s pretty slow going. And now you hear a distant pounding of drums. Hundreds of them? A towering cloud of smoke begins to drift over the shoulder of the mountain ahead of you.” “Uh oh.”
That’s what a Front is.
In four hours of con play, you’ll get maybe 3 hrs 30 minutes of actual playtime (if you’re lucky and everyone shows up on time and character creation & orientation doesn’t take too long).
In my experience, with 3-4 players, we can get through a “dramatic scene” in about 45 minutes. Longer if if it’s big and complicated or stuff just keeps escalating.
So you can’t really plan on getting more than 4 (5 at the most) “scenes” in your game.
Fronts are great for helping you figure out what happens and giving you interesting things to say, but only as much as they help you get through those 4-5 scenes and get to a satisfying conclusion.
Jeremy Strandberg – thanks, that really helps me out. colin roald also very helpful. Appreciate it.