Was reading Legacy 2e and I like way they way they do Fronts, if only for the ease of understanding and wording used.
DW fronts, I just can’t wrap my head around the way they’re worded.
I’m clearly stealing the format.
Reveal: A way to introduce it to your game after someone gets a 6 or less on a move.
Reactions: Problems the threat causes as it grows.
Resolution: Ways players can get deal with the threat.
Fallout: What the threat will do if it isn’t stopped. Activate this if you’ve checked all three Reactions and it
makes sense in the fiction.
Hmm, now I’m not so sure about “Resolution”. As a GM, already preparing a solution in advance means that you’ll probably be bias toward this solution, even if unconsciously.
I think it’s better, as a GM, to come up with problems and just let the players find the solution.
The way they tie Reactions to the game is by making each reaction a GM move, which is pretty cool!
ex.
Reveal: A screeching noise deafens the characters and draws their attention to the ruined elevator. Particularly sharpeyed characters see the fluttering of wings…
Reactions:
# Remove a Surplus. The winged titan swoops down, ruining a player’s holdings. Surplus: Recruits, Transport or Defences
are good targets.
# Put Someone in a Spot. As a failed Family move resolves, the great winged titan swoops down and assaults the
Family’s agents. They’ll have to fight to survive and escape the titan’s wrath.
# Capture Someone. The titan bursts into wherever the players currently are, grabs one of them, and flies off.
Resolution: Scale the aerie and kill it in its nest; bait it out; find out what it’s searching for and lead it away.
Fallout: The creature’s found whatever it was looking for. With a cacophonous screeching and cracking, smaller winged creatures hatch and flood out of the ruined elevator. The skies are no longer safe, and anyone travelling under the opensky risks assault.
My first thought about resolution was exactly what you said in your first reply. But I wonder if it would be useful to call it resolutions (plural). I’m thinking along the lines of video games like Hitman and Dishonored where you can approach a mission any way you’d like. For tapletop, if you listed them as “resolutions” they would be “ways” (not a single way) to deal with the threat, which is a reminder to you to make sure you describe the scene with those multiple methods in mind.
Having said that, I haven’t read Legacy 2e (is this Life Among the Ruins?), so I don’t know for sure if that is the intent.
I like the Reveal, Reactions and Fallout, although Reactions don’t appear to have the escalating nature of Grim Portents, which is something I like about them. Perhaps that’s the point of Reactions though – instead of an escalating series of things, which needs to be regularly re-jigged between sessions as the players change things, they’re going for self-contained situations which pretty much always apply (and can turn up in any order until the front is resolved).
However, as mentioned, Resolution seems both at odds with “play to find out what happens” and, frankly, unnecessary.
Like, from your example – what happens if they kill the flying titan when it’s doing its second Reaction, rather than by scaling the aerie? That wasn’t listed in Resolution, but it obviously resolves the front.
I don’t see any value in attempting to anticipate all the possible ways that the players might resolve the front. The GM will be right there at the table when the players try to solve things, and can adjudicate their actions on the spot.
I can see resolutions as mental notes for the gm. They don’t need to be thought of as the only way to deal with the threat but just some of the possibilities the GM keeps in the back of their head. They can then use those notes to add helpful details to the world. For example “bait it”: the characters run across a herds men who complains about winged monsters carrying off chicken-sheep. “Them varmints sure seem sweet on my chicken-sheep. They got Bessie Sue just the other night!”.
.