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Threats are antagonistic forces that endanger what the PCs care about, drive them to adventure, and challenge them during play. They may be things that will happen in the future or things happening right now, but either way the PCs probably want to stop them from happening.

Threats are made up of several components:

• Name — What the Threat is. This could be: an infesting curse, an ambitious organization, a corrupting influence, an encroaching army, an invading plane, a collapsing society, an awakening titan, etc.
• Description — A short sentence adding context and details
• Goal — How the Threat will change the world for the worse, intentionally or not
• Assets — Advantages it has going for it before it's introduced, such as important locations, NPCs, objects, secrets, or even stranger things. During play the PCs may learn about these Assets and act to remove them from the Threat's control
• Developments — Steps the Threat will enact to reach towards its Goal. Once enough Developments are completed, the goal is achieved. Maybe all Developments need to be completed, maybe just some of them, depending on the Threat and the fiction.
• Reactions — Actions the Threat might take during a session in response to the PCs impeding it, often as a negative consequence or GM Move

Optionally, a Threat may also have:

• Scenes that may happen in relation to the Threat
• Secrets that can be discovered or revealed about the Threat

Developments are meant to prompt Scenes during the game, usually ones involving tension and action regarding what terrible things might happen next. Generally, you want early Developments to be softer and lighter while introducing the Threat to the PCs, and later Developments to really raise the stakes, push the goal forward, and seal the fate of the Threat itself.

You might sometimes start a later Development before resolving an earlier one. Follow what makes sense in the fiction and what makes for a better paced game in your evaluation at the moment. The example Threat below has far more Developments than needed, but when prepping you can pick and choose which are the most fitting and interesting.

By default, all Goals and Developments are what happens if the PCs don't intervene, and so can only be thwarted by the PCs. Other characters in the world can stall Threats, but if they can fully defeat them without help then those weren't real Threats to begin with.

At some point the PCs will probably act against a Threat, such as stopping a Development or removing an Asset, thus making some of the aspects of a Threat stop making sense or being feasible. When this happens, you can either:

• Rewrite it. Find and create new Developments for the Threat to reach its goal. If the Threat is particularly tenacious you could even tweak the Goal itself. It should still be a problem for the world and the PCs, but the PCs have changed how those problems manifest. Maybe they're weaker or more desperate, maybe two small Threats join forces, or maybe the Threat's goals become much more ambitious.
• End it. If the Threat's goal is now impossible, unimportant, and/or uninteresting, then remove it as a Threat. What happened to its Assets? Will any latent Secrets get revealed?

The number of Developments in a Threat can vary depending on how wide-reaching it is, how complicated its Goal is, and how long you intend them to be in the game. Here are some guidelines.

• Local Threat, simple adventure of the week, resolved in one session — 2-3 Developments
• Regional Threat, straightforward steps to its Goal, resolved in 2-5 sessions — 4-6 Developments
• World Threat, complex machinations to its Goal, resolved in 6+ sessions — 7-10 Developments

A Threat typically has a number of Assets and Reactions each loosely equal to half its number of Developments. So, a Threat with 7 Developments might have 4 Assets and 3 Reactions.

Unifier of the criminals of the region, seems to have endless resources at hand

Goal become an actual monarch

Assets
Disabled ones impact Developments & Reactions

• ☐ Loyalty of The Duskhounds, fear of the other gangs: the White Fox, the Rrawlins, and the Three River Club
• ☐ A remote fortress, highly defensible and tricky to sneak into
• ☐ Several secondary camps and hideouts across the region
• ☐ An especially fearsome and infamous leader

Developments
Happen in order; skip one or more if necessary

• ☐ 1. Recruit or destroy the opposition
• ☐ 2. Send a message to the lonely sheriff, forcing them to look the other way
• ☐ 3. Kill the mayor of Clearbrook, who openly resist their demands, as an example
• ☐ 4. Hunt down and kill troublesome law enforcers
• ☐ 5. Demand open loyalty from all nearby settlements
• ☐ 6. Raze Clearbrook to the ground

Reactions
Activate each as a hard GM Move

• ☐ Secretly sabotage or steal from the PCs
• ☐ Try to bribe or recruit the PCs
• ☐ Ambush or trap the PCs in a brutally unfair fight

Scenes
Can happen in any order, if at all. Fights not included

• ☐ Someone pleading for help
• ☐ The gangs openly taking tribute from even town centers
• ☐ A local militia leader trying to resist a shakedown

Secrets
Can be revealed whenever it makes sense, if at all

• ☐ The Bandit King commands otherworldly power, and many fear or revere the idea that they aren't a person at all
• ☐ The lonely sheriff has a dark secret that would ruin them if it got out, and the Duskraiders are using it as blackmail

[More example Threats will be added in the future]