Has anyone had any experience with pulling the focus from the moment to moment beats of the fiction, further out to encompass a wider scope when engaging UW moves as written?
The group that I play with is looking to zoom out and progress our setting forward a bit. After some lobbying from a fellow player, I’m fairly confident that there are no inherent inhibitors to engaging the moves in this manner. Everyone at the table is respectful of the fiction and I wouldn’t expect anyone to overreach and exploit the moves.
That said, are there any pit falls, or better yet, potential golden opportunities that lay before us while using this approach?
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I might be doing exactly this for my next session: the group finished a goal they’ve been working at for a while, and things have gotten really open-ended again. I was going to open with “So, X, how long has it been since you guys escaped Galaventa?” And follow up with prompts about what they’ve been doing in the meantime, probably rolling as necessary but everything is likely to be happening in terms of days or even weeks for a bit.
Curious to hear more thoughts on how this can be effectively done (I’m confident it’s at least basically supported by the game).
I’m still trying to find an old Forge thread that talked about conflict resolution and how zooming out “saved his game”. It, too, was a space opera game.
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Hm, have you looked at Burning Empires? It was the first game I’d ever played that had a scene economy, which I didn’t really get at the time, and it explicitly has a meta game mechanic. While its Burning Wheel engine is pretty much opposite end of the spectrum to PbtA, you could take the general intention and apply it.
The basic idea was choosing how to help your side (i.e.- pick a move), play a scene central to that effort, and then roll for the meta effect. An interesting dynamic was when a really successful scene was followed by a failed meta story roll, because then you had to script doctor a bit. But it made for cool over arching plot lines.
The PbtA version could be something like pick a move and it’s application on the macro scale. Play (or don’t, if it’s sort of a mini game to get to the next section of story) out a scene, and then improvise a love letter lead in to the macro-scale roll. If you wanted, the GM could award a -1 to +2 modifier to the roll based on the success of the scene, maybe even set three goals for the scene that could directly earn that bonus, though that seems a little rulesy for PbtA.
Anyway, just spit-balling.
On a different note, go pick up Burning Empires or the Iron Empires comics on which it is based, because the comic is fantastic inspiration for any UW game. And the artist-writer, Chris Moeller, is an amazing painter.