Yeah, the NPCs are definitely another area I need to work on.  At the least, everybody has a name, and certainly the players know who a few of them are, but so far that's mostly by their role or the actions they were involved in.  For example, a lot of them we don't know anything about them beyond, Dice is a biker, or Newton is the hardholder's page.  In order to make triangles with them, I need to figure out who they are so that they aren't defined solely by their job.  Do people have advice for how to do that?  I figure a certain amount of just figuring out who they could be and making decisions is involved, but any additional tricks or advice would help.

So, we're just getting rolling on my first AW game, and I'm noticing that so far, the majority of the action seems to involve one character at a time.  For example, they're planning to mount an expedition to capture a rival hold's scout for questioning.  The hardholder and chopper talk about it and the chopper's going to head out with his gang.  So, one PC for that operation while the others do other stuff back at the hold, presumably.

Is this how games tend to go for others?

In some game systems, I know that I as GM would probably structure things so that the whole party would go or the players would just do it on their own.  But I have the impression that that's not exactly the AW way (though I'm not sure I could explain exactly why).  Another approach might be to pursue parallel stories in parallel.  While the chopper is scout-hunting, maybe I switch the focus back and forth between the hunt and whatever's going on at the hold?

I'm also imagining that this will take a fair amount of screen time, so if I do nothing and let it play out then the others are going to be idle for the duration, which isn't fun.  Maybe I should make such things run faster?

I hope you get the idea.  I'm just curious how such things typically run in AW.  Do the PCs all tend to stick together?  Does the MC jump between stories?  Something else?

I'm not sure I really understand what's happening if you are Revealing an Unwelcome Truth because someone failed  to Spout Lore.

One possibility is that the consequence of failing the roll is that we introduce inconvenient or disadvantageous facts into the fiction.  For the example with the Ogre, maybe you were Spouting Lore because you wanted to bribe an Ogre guard with food.  If you'd succeeded, then maybe Ogre could be swayed with an offering of a whole cow, but because you failed and we choose to introduce an Unwelcome Truth, we decide that now Ogres mainly subsist on halfling flesh.  Sucks to be you...

Is that what Revealing an Unwelcome Truth is?  Or is that too close to punishing them and Unwelcome Truth is supposed to be something else?

Failing Spout Lore:
"The eastern Fluvian Ankheg is distinguished from its southern cousin by the poor range and mildness of its acidic spittl... THAT $$&%&! MELTED MY FAMILY'S $%%$#$ HEIRLOOM KHOPESH!"

:-)

The book says,

Just in case it isn't clear: the answers are always true, even if the
GM had to make them up on the spot. Always say what honesty
demands.

I'm not sure if that's intended to apply to misses, but it doesn't say it's not, so I'm thinking that, as written in the book, giving the bad info might not be kosher.  Thoughts?

Also, in the situation I gave, bad info can work out okay.  The players know it's bad, but they go ahead as if they didn't know.  But if this was a little more removed, say in the village when the farmer is telling you about the Ankheg which took up residence under his field, it's a lot harder for some players (and I'm often one of them... :-) to really act enthusiastically on player-known bad info.  That's why in cases like that we usually have the roll be made by the GM in secret so that you don't know if you're getting good or bad info.  It makes it easier to be as cautious or non-cautious as the situation and characters demand without letting metagame info keep tempting you to change.

But DW's emphasis on what honesty demands and it's general structure don't seem to support such a system.  So, when you're Spouting Lore from the safety of a tavern planning your next foray into the forest, it seems less clear what hard moves make sense.

This might be a general thing I haven't grasped about DW, actually.  When characters are making preparation moves but aren't currently in danger, the hard moves are harder to figure out for me.  Whether it's spouting lore before going into the situation or the druid shapeshifting somewhere safe before entering a potentially dangerous situation, or any of the many situations where it seems like if you failed you could probably just retry until you get it right.  Another one is discern realities when there's no immediate danger to taking more time.  Can you try it again if you get 7-9 to get another question?  If you just fail, can you try again?  In d20, this would be why there's the Take 20 rule.  Or there's Burning Wheel's Let It Ride rule for a different approach.  But neither of those really helps me figure out what the appropriate hard moves might be.

I'd really like to see/hear a few examples of how an encounter with something like a basilisk would go, highlighting soft and hard moves for the beast's signature glare, in such a context.

Ooh, that would be interesting.  The basilisk's monster move, "Turn flesh to stone with a gaze" is so broad and powerful.  I was thinking that you'd have to put the basilisk somewhere where the PC's don't run into it unintentionally, but I guess, at least for the basilisk, you can show signs of an impending threat: "You see stone statues of people.  They look like they're running away from the cave over there with terror on their faces.  They look amazingly realistic.  What do you do?"  What an actual battle would look like that wasn't just a suicide mission though, I'm not sure yet.

I get the feeling that someone, the GM or the players, might need to narrate in some more details so that there was a weakness or limitation or defense or something.  Without that, it sounds like you're always one miss away from statuary...

I guess the 16 HP Dragon thread talked about such narration, but it wasn't clear to me how'd you actually run it in the game.

Thanks for the responses, everyone!  They're really helping!

GM: the arrow hits you in the arm and you drop your sword (show them the downside of their gear) You're going to need it if you're going to be able to do anything about the approaching goblin skirmishers. Unfortunately if you stop to pick it up, that archer's going to have an easy shot (put them in a spot). You could of course, duck down this dark corridor, but you can't really see what's in there (tell them the consequences and ask).

So, if I've got this right, the show them the downside of their gear is the hard move, they dropped their sword, it's a done deal.  And the put them in a spot is a soft move: they have the option to pick it up and take the consequences.  If they decide to pick it up, my first instinct was that they might be defying danger, but looking at it, I'm seeing that they're ignoring the threat of the archer, so this probably calls for a hard move like dealing damage.  Would you think that this second interpretation is the "right" one or that it might go either way depending on how you wanted to play it?

And I suppose that if they took the second option (down the corridor) and survived, they might later come back to retrieve the sword.  Assuming it's that the situation is still similar (archer's out there to make their life difficult) then this would be a time for defying danger because I already made my hard move, and giving them option to defy danger to pick up the sword is my soft move to setup for damage if they fail.

I feel like it's starting to click now.

Or...

GM: the goblins launch a volley of arrows at the big dude in the front with the pointy sword. Your arm takes a solid hit. You're going to need medical attention and fast, especially since you're not much good as a fighter without your sword arm (show them the downside of their class). The goblins are swarming toward you, what do you do (put them in a spot)?

So, here it sounds like I have a choice.  That hard move might mean that they can't fight effectively but it also might mean that they're fighting with a negative, right?  And that the choice might be informed by how much damage the wound was or by how important the battle was.  (Was this just a bunch of goblins or was this the climactic battle with the goblins?)  Sound right?