Can you give some examples of where the Make A Contract/Pledge Service/Whatnot would get used in play, fiction-wise? It feels like a weird move to me -- especially with the 7-9 being essentially 'you do that thing you just did in the fiction'. That kind of makes me wonder if it's really a move, as opposed to just an important component of the fiction?

By contrast, the whole 'Call on an ancient pledge' move makes total sense and sounds awesome. Maybe it's like John says, and you just need more in the 7-9 -- or maybe a second move that is just kind of generally-about pledges would work better than the actual make-a-pledge move, leaving that to be purely fictional?

More likely I am just not understanding the scope of play.

You could always use your 'get a move from another playbook' advancements to grab +1 hard moves from other characters -- though I think only the Gunlugger has one as a move (it is interesting that every other role has their +2-to-+3 improvement as a move, but the Hardholder has it as a regular improvement option.) So you could get up to +2 to your Hard, regardless of your original role -- at the cost of one of your 'from another playbook' advancements.

Similarly, if you did want to improve your Hot to +3, you could take the move from the Skinner book, unless I am misunderstanding something.

If rolling over Rapport isn't going to be a source of advancement, having it reset to +0 might seem like even more of a 'say what?/argh!' deal -- while AW has some dissonance around the reset (why do you suddenly get worse at helping/hindering, when you have previously been getting better at it?) it can be somewhat justified by the advancement tie-in.

And of course there is some explanation in the rules about reaching a 'new baseline' of understanding.

Anyways, do you anticipate that being an issue? What's your read on the +3 -> +0, besides the obvious mechanical problems with allowing +4 and up?