Moving this discussion to Bulwark, cause it's not really about Warhammer 40k anymore!

Whenever you invoke an ancient contract roll +status. On a 10+ pick 3. On a 7-9 pick 1. On a miss, you invoked the wrong deal, sucker.

• You know a secret clause or loophole
• The cost is not dear or is easily fulfilled
• The sanctions aren't severe
• The penalties for a breach are not high
• You know all that's expected of you

I'm not really a fan of the hold+1 moves beyond 'when another PC helps you,' but that's just me. If you ever use this move, it's a fine addition.

Sanction, cost and penalties are all slightly different in my mind. The Sanctions are things that you can't do, the Costs are things you must sacrifice, pay or do and the Penalties are the shit that rains down when you don't hold up your end of the bargain. The clauses are small but specific 'wiggle room'. Exceptions really.

As to the 'who cares if I break it,' lots of people, and not just humans either.

"You're the fucker who screwed the Scarlet Prince of Blood out of his due. Me and the Baron of Crows here owe him a favour and I think I know just how to repay him."

It's a list:

Whenever you invoke an ancient contract roll +status. On a 10+ pick 3. On a 7-9 pick 1. On a miss, don't pick any.

• There are clauses only you know about
• You know of all the clauses
• The cost is not dear
• The sanctions aren't severe
• The penalties for a breach are not high

Negotiated Stakes is really poor word choice on my part. Sorry for that. I meant that you might take about it with the Players first before you set its condition. Talking with the Players about their characters helps me find where they're not in control. You're right that it shouldn't be their choice as to what the conditions are. The MC should present them as tempting but damning; both mechanically and in the fiction.

They'd be like the count down timers for Fronts, except they'd be for PCs explicitly. I suppose a list of generic one would work too. Understandably, it would fit better with the other design themes of AW if it was a premade list or package with a few hard choices.

I don't see the "madness meter" as a player Move, or even so much as a parallel Harm meter but as a micro-Front. So that the custom moves, countdown clock and description are all compressed into one thing. While the player is getting a few extra moves, it should be constantly providing opportunities for the MC to make hard moves and advance the fiction.

What I like about it is that each PC becomes a Front in their own right. Both to themselves and to the other PCs. Mechanically it's all out in the open but it's more hidden in the fiction. I think it could create the right kind of tension with the group.

Yep. Basically, Bulwark is taking all those half-baked axioms in dungeon-punk games like D&D, L5R and other stuff besides seriously. It's not going for some kinda Harn-esque realism but I'll say it again: for every instance of EPIC replace with GRITTY MAGICAL (SUR)REALISM. I have some ideas for the setting, it's ontology and social structure but they're less important. That's like the details of the apocalypse in AW it's more or less important. Shit's built to drift. Monster, magic, castes and clergy; these things have social and political ramifications. By way of example: if you can heal people pretty well with magic (especial disease and such) you'd have a population explosion. Also, slavery was pretty much they way of things for a long time. I don't mean that particular racialized brand of American slavery that came into being sometime in the 1700s but something more ancient and feudal. As a medieval studies prof once put it to me: everyone lived in varying degrees of un-freedom.  That's not in D&D. Moreover, where is the sympathetic magic and the kinds of metaphysics and ontologies that don't assume a germ theory of contagion or vital humors and demons aren't the best way to understand how the body works.

It's the kind of setting and hack that asks what if you had a bunch of attendants, a healing potion, a sword, few charms, and there were demons and worse trying tear apart your little bit of terra firma? What if they was just enough good health and food but not enough space and too many people? What about those people at the edges of the map about to fall off into the darkest abyss? What would you do and how much blood and fire and black powder would it take for you to quit?

On the outside it's all demons and monsters and bleakness and on the inside it's all crowds and slavery and hopelessness. You're not really sure where one starts and the other ends.

That's kinda how I see Bulwark.

I think 'crazy' is a often abused concept in RPGs. Actual madness isn't really that fun or interesting. Both as a sociology student and in my personal life, I can say that the lived experiences of things like depression and anxiety disorders brought on by trauma, often subtle, aren't things you'd typically role-play. They certainly aren't empowering or beneficial in anyway. Moreover, having a stat for that doesn't do it any kind of justice. It's something that needs to be addressed in fiction, apart from the mechanics.

However, I think something like for each of the five (is it six?) countdown stages you could have negotiated stakes for each one. The death spiral is going to be different for every character. Making them almost like Beliefs in Burning Wheel could work well.

Thus, stage one of corruption could be a cold-blooded murder, turning your back on a friend, or aborting a child. Whatever. Then, if the player is decided to cross that line, then they and the MC negotiate or up the stakes in regards to that path. There should be significant mechanical rewards for going down it. Maybe a new custom move. Also, the MC should get the move Whenever a character gives into temptation, make as hard a Move as you like can.

There should also be hard but clear conditions for redemption. Again, set like Stakes.