Are Steadings Grabby Enough?

Sorry for the sidetrack, but Noofy:

If you want to collaborate on Planescape, I consider myself something of an expert on the subject and actually own all the 2e materials. My first DW campaign will be set entirely there. Happy to help and bounce ideas off each other.

We've gotten a few ideas from people about making Steadings more active. Some people want them to be more positive, only kept in check by the fronts and such. Some people want them to be actively deteriorating.

Marshall suggested a good example to me of what we're thinking with Steadings: think of locations from Lord of the Rings. You head off from your nice safe home in The Shire, get to a seedy but civilized inn, stop by Lothlorien, etc. Some of those places have built in problems or things going on, but for the most part they're respites from the ongoing journey. Sure, the elves are all headed across the sea and all that, but Lothlorien is mostly just a safe place.

Steadings fill that role. When Helm's Deep is under siege it's important to defend it because it's a resource AND it contributes to the safety of Gondor.

Steading and the rules on how to update them exist primarily to reflect back at the players their choices. You put the safety of Greybark over that of Torsea? Well now Battlemoore doesn't have fish to eat since Torsea doesn't have enough boats. That means it's vulnerable, who's going to take advantage of that.

I worry that making Steadings active things, with goals that they might achieve, puts too much with the GM. That's part of why, without the players or fronts, Steadings will tend to a steady state (where not much changes). This is by design: without the players or the fronts, the world is boring. It's the canvas that the fronts and players paint on.

That said, we'll totally see how this plays out over a few sessions. We just don't want the fronts and steadings to be so actively opposed that the GM doesn't need the players.

Its serendipitous that you should elucidate your thoughts Sage :)
We just had a session where all we did was 'create' Dingledale, Port Blackrock and the city of eternal glass (Drow citadel) as a group activity following the steading rules.

The player investment was massive. We already have many fictional constants about all three of these steadings already established. But to 'tag' them in this way? To locate them in the wider scheme of (the hitherto unknown) world? Magic. Pure Magic.

We found it just enough. Not too detailed, not too sparse. I asked questions as I thought appropriate and wrote down all the stakes I was interested in. We seemed to create connections between the steadings almost like 'bonds'; adventures waiting to happen, that if the players did nothing would either resolve on their own or retreat back into the small measure of safety that Sage references above.

We used Brandon's wonderful maps as backdrops, and ended up with a 'regional' map full of unanswered questions and mysterious dungeons too (which we didn't have before - other than an impermanent one made in the dirt at our campsite). The relationship map filled out a little, a few more NPC's and potentially player flagged adventure opportunities presented themselves.

We have a whole host of new dangers, Impending Dooms aplenty and many quests and adventure possibilities - some dynamic, some interdependent, others lying dormant -  just waiting  for the adventurers to insert themselves (or not) into a developing situation. In short, I will not need to do much prep for the game (other than write a few grim portents and detail the dangers and monsters for many many sessions to come!

I thoroughly encourage this 'session' as Sage suggests somewhere after your first few sessions. Make it group orientated if you like, it in some ways was very reminiscent of the initial situation and world burning sessions of Burning Wheel. Heady stuff :)