Swanholm - Fronts & Dilemmas
This is a continuation of Swanholm - a modular framework for community- or domain-level play.
Fronts
Fronts are the high-level concerns facing the players’ community. These should be large or complex enough problems that they can’t be resolved with a single decisive action (at least not to start). You can also think of them as narrative flags: whatever you set as fronts will become central to the fiction. If you want to talk about religion in your setting, make a religious front. If you don’t want to foreground violence, don’t make a front about warfare.
Humza K.’s “A Spectre (7+3 HD) Is Haunting the Flaeness: Towards a Leftist OSR” provides a great set of concerns we can start with:
- Identity - How strongly the community identifies as a group together, with a shared culture.
- Prosperity - Whether the community is economically stable. Are folks able to get by comfortably? Are folks living hand-to-mouth?
- Safety - Are people physically safe in this community? Is their security under threat?
- Governance - The breadth and scope of government function. How well do governing institutions respond to the requirements of the community?
- Legitimacy - Is the government regarded as representative of the community's people? Are these seen as interlopers or leaders?
- Sustainability - Is the community's usage of resources sustainable in the long run? Is support infrastructure properly available for the residents?
Some of these may not apply, but I would select at least a few. To this list, I would add some concerns that bubble up from your base game or genre. If you are playing Beyond the Wall (or another coming-of-age fantasy game), you might have fronts about magic, the fae, or family. If you are playing Mothership (or another dystopian cyberpunk game), you might have fronts about debt, corporate influence / interference, or tech access.
Dilemmas
Dilemmas are a little more zoomed in. A good dilemmas has a few key features:
- It’s either binary or concretely answerable.
- If left unresolved, it will become a problem.
- It asks for action, not just observation.
Rather than provide a concrete list of dilemmas for you to use verbatim, I’ve drafted some templates corresponding to the fronts I borrowed from Humza K.'s work. Note that these aren’t intended as a complete political theory, but rather as starters for good drama.
I encourage you to take these and specify. Invoke specific locations, factions, and beings from the setting your players have encountered as a party.
Identity
- Do we include outsiders and risk changing who we are or exclude them and risk isolation?
- Do we preserve tradition or adapt new customs?
- Do we acknowledge a painful truth about ourselves or cover it up?
- What single symbol (banner, language, ritual) do we adopt to represent everyone?
- Can we reconcile a specific internal difference or is there a schism?
- Can we agree on who counts as a member of this community?
Prosperity
- Do we pursue a risky opportunity or protect what we have?
- Do we prioritize growth or equitable distribution?
- Do we take on debt/obligation for immediate relief?
- What vital resource becomes scarce?
- Can we keep a specific essential service running?
- Can we sustain our current standard of living through hard times?
Safety
- Do we fortify and defend or strike preemptively?
- Do we protect everyone or prioritize key people or places?
- Do we negotiate with a threat or refuse and escalate?
- What beloved individual comes under threat?
- Can we protect an exposed outpost?
- Can we secure all key routes into the community?
Governance
- Do we centralize authority for efficiency or distribute it for fairness?
- Do we follow existing law or bend it to meet the moment?
- Do we act quickly without consensus or delay for deliberation?
- Who is invested with executive power?
- Can we keep a key decision-making process functioning?
- Can we hold leadership accountable in this moment?
Legitimacy
- Do we seek approval from the people or assert authority regardless?
- Do we make a transparent decision that may cause backlash or act quietly?
- Do we ally with a controversial power to bolster authority?
- What promise is revealed to have been broken?
- Can we persuade an ally of our needs?
- Can we repay a long overdue debt?
Sustainability
- Do we consume now to survive or ration for the future?
- Do we relocate or repair what we have?
- Do we shift to alternative practices or resources, even if they are unfamiliar or risky?
- What infrastructure begins to fail from overuse or neglect?
- Can we secure a viable alternative in time?
- Can we maintain this system without long-term harm?