When do you decide to advance a countdown clock for a front/storm?
I mean, I know the technical answer about MC moves and “when it makes sense in the fiction” and whatnot, but I still find myself struggling with this sometimes. My current strategy is not more than once a “scene” if a failure is rolled (unless the scene directly involves whatever the clock counts), or anytime PCs actively decide to sit around (to rest from injuries, prepare spells, etc.) when the clock is clearly ticking … but pacing is still tough for me sometimes.
(Currently running Urban Shadows, Dungeon World, and occasional homebrew SF PbtA games.)
I personally find it hard/jarring to advance something in the background as a hard move response to a 6-. I feel like a hard move should show immediate repercussions, so unless the players are right there at Throgth’s lair, it’s kinda silly to have him “learn the secret of corruption magic”.
That’s just me, though. I like to look at my fronts/dangers/storms/etc at the end of each session and advance or change what would have changed due to the activity of the session.
But I’ll be the first to admit i think this violates the expected behavior for a PbtA GM
I’ve done different things as needed for different fronts. Sometimes it’s straight out the passage of time, so every time night falls, the clock advances. Sometimes it’s moving toward or away from an event, and the clock is more like the “how close are we to nuclear war” clock. Sometimes it’s every missed roll. I do want to see some advancement on at least one front each session, or I’m just not kicking it hard enough and I’m being too soft on my players. I can get too caught up in how badass they are and how interesting their lives are and just get lost in the apocalyptic minutiae, and keeping those clocks ticking is a way to keep me on pace too.
This is really interesting to read – thanks to you both!
I try to always make the advancement obvious to players (and PCs), which is part of why I struggle with this. Yesterday I had them find a note from the big bad evil guy in Servants of the Cinder Queen so they’d know he already started the ritual he was working on, and they were on the clock … which they found useful, but which also felt really forced. I wonder if I should brainstorm “ways you might find out this happened offscreen” for some countdowns.
I think clocks are both descriptive + prescriptive ie if something happens in the fiction so the 9pm clock event happens then we’re at 9pm, no need to wait for 3 ticks to get there! OTOH advancing a clock as a result of a PC miss works too, especially when it directly flows from the “on stage” fiction. In terms of off-stage events I see at least 3 options: 1) never move off-stage (seems against the principle to “think off stage too”; 2) only move off-stage when you can show on-stage effects, eg smoke on the horizon from the direction of Satan’s place; 3) make the off-stage event a cut-scene piece of narration from the GM that the the PCs don’t know about but their players now do. I prefer 2.
One thing I’d advise is for MCs to not burn through their front/threat countdown clocks too fast as in may ways these represent the campaign arc/meat as generated in session 1. Instead by mixing hard moves up between generic GM moves, threat specific moves and campaign/front moves (probably in that order in terms of frequency) you conserve the narrative “currency” of the campaign. (I made this mistake in my first AW campaign and in a single session burnt through several sessions worth of content – this tends to leave the PCs as bystanders to the action as they don’t have time to influence things.)
Say what honesty demands. If the PCs are pushing a clock faster, or ignoring one that’s ticking along, that’s their choice. You put those clocks on the board. Show them. Mark them publicly, and relax. Really, it’s the players that are in charge of the pacing.
Option B: keep one clock back that can only go up once a session, and run one or two more immediate issues that could go up per scene.
Followup question: what unfavourable outcomes are resulting from your current way of managing countdowns? Complaints from your players, issues you’ve noticed?
Oh! I do not make the clocks public. Is that a thing people do?
As for the follow-up question, the only real “unfavorable outcome” is anxiety on my part that I’m not doing it as well as I could be. I get nervous that I am advancing the clock more quickly than is fair to the players, or that I’m going too slowly to preserve a sense of tension and drama. I get distracted trying to figure out a way to communicate “hey this thing happened offscreen” when I should be focusing on what people are saying. I’m kind of prone to stress, and it’s just a lot to keep track of, so I’m just curious what I can … automate, maybe? Systematize? Just trying to figure out things I can do to make it feel like I don’t have to spend as much mental energy asking myself after every more, “Is this the move that should advance a clock?”
Jason Tocci yeah public info is definitely the way to go. Talk to your players about keeping in-character and out-of-character info separate. Do you play with a GM screen?
Oh goodness no, no GM screen. My players don’t all really appreciate having the curtain pulled back too much, but there’s a spectrum, I guess. I’m not sure where countdown clocks would fall on the continuum between “visible dice rolls” (always okay) and “why don’t YOU tell me what’s around the corer” (not okay, with rare exceptions).
You can use the clocks without giving details away. Just write like “Duke Lasgar’s dark plan (X)” or something and then color in segments as things happen