Fronts

The Geek Pantheon: Make Campaign

Planning EASY with Fronts from Dungeon
World! | D&D | 5e | DM Advice
Also see Dungeon World Fronts from the SRD.

What are Fronts?

First off, what are fronts? So, fronts aren't really a mechanical thing at all,
really. They're more just a quality of life thing for dungeon masters out
there to keep track of what's going on in your campaign. So essentially,
there are two different kinds of fronts: campaign fronts and adventure
fronts. And those really speak to the scope. So a campaign front is going
to speak to a story or arc that you anticipate taking a whole campaign, or
at least a large chunk of the campaign, whereas an adventure front is
something that's going to take one, two, a handful of sessions. So that's
very much more of an adventure scope versus the whole campaign.

So that's the first thing. Is when you're creating a front, you want to create
your campaign front when you're planning out your campaign to a certain
extent. And then for adventure fronts, you're doing that when you're in the
adventure planning phase and coming up with what the party is going to
be doing for the next few sessions. And so adventure fronts kind of tie
together to become your campaign front. And so you'll be referencing your
campaign front and bringing that stuff into your adventures when you're
creating them. And so we're going to get into, like, the actual step-by-step
of how to do this a little bit further into the video. I just want to go through
kind of defining what all the different parts of a front is.

So when you're creating fronts, and I'm going to speak in terms of

adventure fronts for most of this video just because that's much easier to
create something—a campaign front, you're creating something that
encompasses your whole game—whereas an adventure, we're essentially
planning an adventure, a series of sessions that are going to have a
beginning, middle, and end, and culminate in something. So when you're
creating a front, you want to identify two to three dangers that exist within
that front.

The Components of a Front

Dangers

So, dangers. They are forces that are at work that can have an impact on
the front. So, a group of kobolds that the party is going to come across in
the forest while they're on the road, that is not a danger. That is just an
obstacle, that's a mob, whatever term you want to use. Dangers would be
the tribe of kobolds that that small group belongs to that is threatening to
raid the village that you all, the whole adventure, centers around. That
would be a danger, a force to be reckoned with in the confines of the
adventure or the campaign.

And the Dungeon World core rulebook lists five different types of dangers
to give you just kind of a nice codified list of categories that you can pull
from and kind of think about dangers in that way. And those five different
types are ambitious organizations, planar forces, arcane enemies, horde,
or cursed places. So you can see that we're not just talking about, like,
monsters. We're talking about things that have a large effect on the world.
And then once you've identified your dangers and named them, they're
going to have different impulses that are listed in the Dungeon core
rulebook that fit within their category. So things like to gain power, to
destroy, to judge. And so it's a good way, they have further breakdowns,
there's like almost ten per each of those five categories, so the core
rulebook gives you a lot of different subcategories to go off of. But for our
purposes here, it's a little bit more fluid, but you essentially just want to
identify from, like I said, a very high level, what do they want? What does
this danger want? Do they want to destroy? Do they want to rule? Do they
want to upset the current order? Stuff like that. And so you would just
notate that in terms of the impulse.

Description and Cast

And then you would create your description and cast. So this is a good
thing to do at this step because as we move forward, you're going to be
kind of breaking all of these different dangers, and you want to have two
to three dangers for an adventure front, three to five for a campaign front
is what it recommends, but no more than three for an adventure because
then things can get a little crowded, I guess, for a better way to put it.

But then you want to write out your description and then cast of
characters. So just a description of what is the adventure, kind of when
you buy the pre-made adventures from Wizards of the Coast, they have
the adventure summary that's like a paragraph long at the very front of the
book. Something like that. Like, what's going on? What's happening?
What are the adventurers trying to accomplish? That kind of thing. And
then taking the time, if you know that there are major players, like the
head, if your dangers are organizations, the head of those organizations,
writing their name and a detail or two about them so that you're not caught
off guard in the middle of a session without a good name and you end up
naming the leader of your super cool, edgy, underground cult Bob
because you can't think of anything better. So yeah, taking the time to
write out the character names and just a two-bullet-point description.

Grim Portents and Impending Doom

And then, here is the cool part for me, anyway, of fronts: grim portents into
impending doom. So starting off with the grim portents, you are essentially
going to be writing out, if these dangers existed in the world and the
player characters did not, what would happen? Step by step, what would
they accomplish? And so the super cool, edgy cult, maybe they start
kidnapping villagers and taking them back to their lair, and then they
collect components for the dark ritual that they want to complete, and
that's grim portent number two. And then they acquire the ancient dagger
that is the key to performing this ritual, and so they find that and bring it
back. Then they begin the ritual as step four, and then they complete the
ritual as step five. So those would be the grim portents.

And the idea being that these are the steps as the player characters are
distracted doing other things on the adventure, talking to NPCs that aren't
important, or just going off on side tangents, or taking long rests when
they don't need to be just to try and cheese the system. This is all the stuff
that's happening.

There are two different types of grim portents described in the book:
descriptive and prescriptive. And so descriptive are things that happen
during play at the table. So let's say that the party is in a race through the
temple to try and get the ancient dagger of whatever, and they are trying
to get it before the kobolds can. And let's say they fail their checks, and
they see one of the kobolds grab it and take off in a little tunnel and scurry
away. And they failed their checks, they failed the skill challenge to get to
the dagger first. That is a descriptive one. It has happened in real time
during play. Conversely, prescriptive are things that happen off-screen
that are a result of, let's say that the village is under siege, and some like
evil force is attacking, and there's the ritual happening, but the kobolds
have sent people in force out to provide a distraction to keep the
adventurers from getting to the ritual. And so they fought their way
through like two or three encounters, and they know the ritual is
happening, they need to run because, you know, the fourth one has been
ticked off. And so the only thing left is to complete the ritual, and they
decide, "Oh, I'm pretty low on hit points. Maybe we should take a short
rest. Yeah, yeah, I think that would be smart. It's clear that we're coming to
the big end-of-the-adventure encounter, probably be smart to take a short
rest here."

And you as the dungeon master, like, "Your short rest is an hour, and
they're doing the ritual right now." "Yeah, yeah, but Warlock needs the
spell slots back, so I'm gonna take a short rest." It's just like, "Okay. Ritual
complete." And so that is the idea with a prescriptive grim portent that
happens off-screen due to the decisions and the actions and the agency
of the player. You're not taking away their agency; you're responding to
their agency and their decisions.

And then the impending doom, which is what happens if every one of
those grim portents has a checkbox next to it. What comes to pass?
Tyranny, destruction, chaos? Who knows? You know, because you've
used the front system and planned all this out. And so, yeah, they failed to
stop the ritual. They took that short rest. They get down to the ritual just in
time to see the ancient eldritch horror rise from the earth as it looms its
dominion over the kobolds that are worshiping it. And all of a sudden, now
they have a new supervillain that they have to contend with because,
sure, I'm glad that Warlock got his three spell slots back, but... I, I play a
warlock in my campaign, so that is self-criticism more than anything else.

Stakes

And then another very important part of fronts is stakes. So these are
things that you are relinquishing control of as the dungeon master. You
are saying these are the stakes of the adventure or campaign that I'm
leaving on the table. These things can relate to the larger world, they can
relate to player characters or even NPCs, and they are literally questions
that you write out.

So with the kobold cult ritual with the dagger and all that stuff, let's say
that you have a kobold party member. Let's say this is like a late-game
campaign and they have family that are members of this tribe-slash-cult.
One of the stakes you can write down is, "How will this PC reconcile the
love for their family with their actions?" And that is just something that you
can do. Or if you want it to be something that is more on your side of the
fence, you can say, "How will the PC's mom reconcile her feelings for her
greater goals?" And then you leave it up to the player character to roll a
persuasion check or intimidation or charm, or, well, no, that's persuasion.
Um, you get what I'm saying, though. You leave it up to the player to,
through their actions and roleplay and rolling, determine that outcome.
And so those are just things that normally you might keep within your
purview as the DM that you are allowing the dice to determine or the
actions of the players to determine, which I think is really nice. I like that
you are writing down and codifying things to remind yourself, like, "These
things I am no longer in control of. Like, I am giving these things up for the
sake of the story and the sake of player agency."

Putting It All Together

And then you get it on the table and you resolve the front and you let the
adventure play out, and you check off the grim portents as they happen.
And you ultimately see, do they stop the danger from accomplishing its
goals or coming to fruition and save the day? Or are there certain
elements that escaped? Maybe they stopped the grim portents early and
there were some elements that were still out there that now can be
transferred over to another adventure front. Or perhaps the danger
succeeded and something big has now been introduced into the world.
The aberrant horror has been unleashed, and now you can take that and
move it to your campaign front because it is a much larger threat now that
will encompass the rest of your campaign.

And the other really cool thing is, you can have multiple adventure fronts
going at once. Like, you plan out for an adventure, and we're gonna kind
of do that when I get into the actually putting it into practice. I wrote out a
front, uh, two fronts in fact, so that I can show you all how it works. But the
Dungeon World core rulebook specifically says multiple adventure fronts
are possible. Your players can get sidetracked—is the wrong word—they
can make new discoveries that open up new adventure fronts, and then
you have multiple ones, and you have multiple lists of grim portents that
are happening, and the player characters have to prioritize. Okay, so we
have this thing, we have the kobold ritual going on, but also this house is
haunted and there are people literally dying in the village from some, like,
insane, intense poltergeist. So maybe we have to deal with that right now
because it's like murdering people, and the kobolds have to be put on the
back burner.

And this very much is the way that I would like to run adventure fronts
because it makes the world feel alive. It makes the world feel like it's
moving. And while the players are the heroes of the story and the
protagonists, they aren't always in control. And I like that. I like that feeling
that you have to pick and choose your battles, and sometimes you may
not be able to accomplish everything that you want to accomplish. I
would, as a dungeon master, I would create a situation to where it's
possible. There is a win state, but it's very hard. Like, you're gonna have
to have everything fall your way in order to accomplish everything. Now,
they might prevent the full-on impending doom of all the different dangers,
but there might be elements that fall through the cracks and can come
back and haunt the players later. So that is, multiple adventure fronts are
possible and oftentimes encouraged and warranted, depending on the
actions of your players.

An Example in Practice
So, let's look at what I have come up with.

Adventure Front: Enemies at the Gate

So the capital of Dryab—that's just the name I came up with—is under

siege by the united armies of the north, but the corrupt rulers of the city
will do whatever they can to hold on to their power. So, "Enemies at the
Gate" is the name of the adventure front.

So the dangers:
The first one is Armies of the North. Their impulse is to drive their
enemies before them.

Grim Portents: Burn incoming food shipments, route reinforcements,

organize troops for assault, take the city.
Impending Doom: Rampant chaos.
So that is step by step what they are going to attempt to accomplish
over the course of the adventure.

The other danger is the Governing Body of the City. Impulse is to

control.
 First Grim Portent is: Horde food for nobles, conscript unwilling
citizens into the guard, arrest northern citizens as spies, bribe northern
generals after the city falls.
So those are their portents. And you can see that these things happen
in a singular list. So they're happening and the dangers are moving,
but they're moving in a logical order. So, you know, the Armies of the
North burn incoming food shipments, which leads the governing body
of the city to begin hoarding food for the nobles. The Armies of the
North route reinforcements that are coming into the city, which causes
the governing body to conscript unwilling citizens into the guard. You
see how this is, things are escalating one step at a time and the
dangers are working not in concert with each other, but in response to
one another.

And then I read my description at the outset, and then I have my cast of
characters like:

Olefin Stout-horn, the leader of the northern armies, who is brutal but
honorable.
Tobias Lithan, prime minister of the city, treacherous and cowardly.
You get what you get what I'm doing here. Um, and so that is the
adventure front. I now have a situation in the city, and I can take this
and now actually plan out my session. So, session one: are the
characters residents of the city? So the beginning of this is like the
armies of the north marching over the horizon, or are they coming to
the city? Have they been, have they heard the call for help, and they
managed to get through the blockade and get into the city? That stuff
is for when I'm actually planning it out. This is now my guideline for
when that time comes.

Adventure Front: Treachery Under Parliament

Additionally though, as we talked about with multiple adventure fronts,

let's say while the player characters are in the city, the siege is going on,
oh no! Then they come upon a rally being held by some organization that
is blaming Parliament for the siege and saying that the royal family never
would have let this happen. Huh. That's odd. Like, political debate in the
middle of a siege? Huh. And so now we have another adventure front
available: "Treachery Under Parliament."

So we have our first danger, the Abolition Crown, which is a cabal

organization that wants to reinstitute the monarchy. Their impulse is to
absorb power.

First Grim Portent: Hold rally blaming woes of the city on Parliament,
pay off city guard to lighten security around Parliament House, plant
explosives underneath the Parliament House, cause riot to force
Parliament to meet, blow up Parliament House.
Impending Doom: Usurpation.
So that's, that's, that's what they got going on.

And then the other danger is the Royal Family, and I, I created portents
for them in response to what's happening in the city as well. I'm not going
to get into all of it, but you get what I'm saying.

Multiple Fronts in Action

So the party can then discover this plot to blow up Parliament in this city in
the middle of a siege. And it's clear that these people are taking
advantage of the dire situation, but there's also a siege happening, and
what are you all doing? And so then the party has to begin dividing their
time.

And then let's say we have another adventure front pop up where the
party discovers a cult called the Jade Eye that has been researching
about this arcane seal that's allegedly underneath the city. And I have all
their grim portents for the Jade Eye as an organization and the arcane
seal, the cursed place that holds the lich's phylactery. And if they succeed,
then, you know, the lich will, uh, they'll possess somebody's body and the
lich's soul will go into their body and reside with them while the
organization has a hold of the phylactery. And not necessarily somebody
in the organization that's going to have the lich's soul; the lich is just going
to spot the most worthy mortal nearby that she can possess.

What's a party to do with all this stuff going on in one city? And you have
all this here and you're not having to write everything out. You have the
hooks for all these things, and then if early on in a session the party sees
one of the hooks and latches on, you have something to go off of in the
session, which is what I like about fronts. Is once the session ends, then
you can go and start plotting everything out because it's clear that they
have pivoted to this other front. But the whole time that they're
investigating the Jade Eye and the arcane seal, uh oh, the reinforcements
just got routed that were coming into the city, and now the governing body
is taking unwilling citizens into the army. And oh, by the way, the city
guard is suspiciously, like, not guarding the Parliament House anymore.
And, yeah.

Like, that's a living city with a lot of stuff going on, and the party has to
make decisions or split the party. Let's say that on the same night—if this,
just, I wouldn't orchestrate this, but if things just happen to fall in the right
spot—to where half the party have to go to try to disrupt the ritual that's
happening with the Jade Eye, and the other half of the party have to go to
the Parliament Hall to try and stop the terrorists from blowing it up and,
like, implicate the royal family as being in on this plot to kill Parliament.
That would be an insane session! And like, whoa. Like, and so, and you
have all this ready to go.

And this took me like 45 minutes to come up with three adventure fronts
with very clear, progressive steps of, like, here is what's happening in the
adventure. And this is with three adventure fronts. This is six, seven
sessions' worth of content right here that I have the bones for, that I just
need to, you know, come up with encounters and write out, like, more
detailed NPCs that they might encounter.

And that's why I think fronts are so great. Is like, I have two pages on my
legal pad that have all of this information ready to go for me. Oh, and
stakes! I wrote out stakes also. Like:
 Will Phelan, the northern prince, betray the city? (Phelan, he's an NPC
the party has met. He's a northern prince that came to the capital on
like an exchange program thing, but now he's caught in the siege and
having, like, he's made friends in the city in the south, but his dad is
trying to invade, and what's Phelan going to do?)
And who will the lich's body possess? (Just leave that up to chance.
Um, like, who, who is there for the ritual or who is nearby? Who is,
like, above where the ritual is taking place? Are the, is the party up
there? Could it, could it be a party member? That'd be wild.)
Um, who will Huxton—made-up name of a PC—um, how will Huxton
reconcile his heritage in the north with his new life in the south? (Very
similar to Phelan, like, will Huxton, he'll have some feelings about the
northern armies invading, and that's like his homeland, but, you know,
he doesn't think that it's right what they're doing, or does he think it's
right? You don't know. You wrote it as a stake.)
And like, there's a princess NPC of the royal family of the city who is
very, you know, she's a person of the people. She loves the people,
she doesn't like the way that the governing body is treating them, but
at the same time, she doesn't agree with her family plotting to kill the
governing family. And the PCs know her and have gotten to know her
really well. And what's she going to do? How is she going to help?

And so those are the stakes that you can write down, and then you just
leave it up to the game, to the dice, to the whole thing that we're doing
here.

Conclusion
So, that's dungeon fronts. I got really excited there at the end, but it's just,
like, showing my, showing what I was able to accomplish with so little
work, and like, this is a pretty well-fleshed-out, like, city with three different
adventures going on in it, and I don't feel like it would take a whole lot of
work to, you know, get a couple of sessions out of each of these. But
because they're all happening at the same time, it would be a lot of
sessions going on.
And so let me know what you all think down below. Do you think that this
sounds interesting? If you're familiar with Dungeon World, did I butcher
this? Do I not understand fronts at all? I feel like I do. I read the core
rulebook entry on fronts a couple of times, but let me know down below.
Be sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel. Thank you all so much
for watching, and I will see you next time.