From a conversation I am having in a non-public thread:

Originally shared by Ray Otus

From a conversation I am having in a non-public thread:

Fronts in Dungeon World are over-explained. I think I could cover the basics in a few short paragraphs. I think I'll try (because I'm studiously avoiding "real" work right now):

Agents who wish to do harm in the world, and maybe specifically to characters, are represented in the game as dangers, which are essentially a list of bad things that might happen to fulfill the agent's agenda.

The items in a danger list are typically arranged as increasingly worse portents (something the characters can see/experience, even if indirectly), culminating in some terrible doom. Any time the GM could make a hard move, most commonly when players fail dice rolls, the GM may trigger the next portent in a Danger list. This can happen even if the portent is not specifically related or localized to the fictional event that triggered the roll. Portents can happen off-screen, as long as there is some way the characters can detect that something has changed. When/if the doom triggers, the danger is complete and the agent either gets everything he/she/it wanted and/or moves on to create a new danger, building on the success of the previous one.

"Agents" can be singular personalities, like named creatures or NPCs. They can be corporate personalities, like political factions. They can even be abstract things, like a toxic environment. Dangers can be large or small in scope: an assassin stalking her prey over the course of an evening or a world-wide cult striving to complete a ritual that will unleash a god of elemental chaos upon the earth.

As a campaign progresses, dangers multiply and relate to each other in a Front. Fronts should be something that arise out of play. Yes, it's okay for the GM to think up some dangers away from the table, but most, if not all of the dangers in a front should be inspired by things that players invent and characters reveal.