So, Fronts. I’m prepping them for the first time and finding the division between Fronts and Threats, or one Front and another, to be a bit blurry.
So like there’s this mountain town called Kettle, and the PCs all live in or around there. I’ve made Kettle as a Front, expressing Ambition (the folk put on airs of being a bona fide City, with the holder Harridan styling himself Mayor). The 4 Threats are the Mayoral Council (Warlord: Dictator), the Peacekeepers’ Council (Brute: Enforcer), the Council of Commerce (Dictator: Collector), and Respectability (Affliction: Custom).
That all feels solid to me, ready to write up details and Dark Future.
It gets hazy from there. I made another Front, the Countryside, expressing Decay. Threats are the Hills (Landscape: Maze), Operation Phoenix (a sealed bunker related to the germ warfare that caused the Apocalypse–Landscape: Breeding Pit), and Wolves (Brute: Hunting Pack).
Except, maybe Operation: Phoenix could be a Front of its own? The PCs haven’t interacted with it much yet; maybe it’s just a threat NOW but when it gets fleshed out a bit more (unsealed and explored frinstance), it could split off into its own Front?
And on top of that, there’s this roving gang, referred to as the Burners, that’s been locust-swarming the lands away down south and is now spreading up here. And there’s the distant holding that the Touchstone USED to live in, where he made a rather DitV-ish decision to fix, the dirty laundry of which is following at his heels.
So, where do they go? I started a Front called Far Lands (Threat: Burners, Dictator: Alpha Wolf), but it feels off. What kind of Front/Threat partition would make sense here? I could see the Burners being a whole Front with several Threats (Princy–Dictator: Alpha Wolf; Princy’s Horde–Brute: Mob, etc).
What’s y’all’s read?
The Burners are a Front, for sure. The Countryside’s a Front, yep. What else did the players hand you in the 1st Session? Anything juicy about the baggage the Touchstone’s dragging? Is that a Front? And if Operation Phoenix has a countdown clock, it might be a Front.
And I’m pretty sure it’s safe to swap things around as you go as long you remain honest about the situation in the fiction.
What looks like a threat now could, quite organically, reveal itself to be a Front when you least expect it!
Yup, that all makes a lot of sense, folks. Thanks!
And another thing: sometimes fronts collapse down into threats when you thought for sure they were fronts. Keeps ya on your toes! So don’t worry about it if/when that happens. Having a couple fronts going is good, and they may not all blow up like you think.
I have a whole post in me about fronts and threats, but unfortunately can’t write it tonight. Hang in there, trust your instincts, and listen to these smart people. Plus, remember that AW is telling you how to do something you already kinda know how to do.
I wanna read that post, Jonathan Walton ! Fronts/threats are the only thing I truly struggle with in *World.