My introductory sketch of watercrawling, and the subsequent attempt to apply it to Ghosts of Saltmarsh, assumed a certain traditional form of information generation about the imaginary world, and its flow: the GM builds the setting, structures the information about it, and populates that structure, and then it flows to the players through play. The players act on it through their characters, but they are ultimately discovering something pre-existing. Meanwhile, many modern, narrative games go by variations of the motto "play to find out" - the fiction, that is, the imaginary world, is created by all participants, through the players` character` actions, as well as a combination of in-world rationale and interpretations of the results of dice rolls. While the GM has certain privileges, they do not have exclusive or even predominant authorial power. Any information that was not generated through play is known in advance by everyone. Is a structure like watercrawling relevant in that scenario? Let's post to find out!
I'll use Blades in the Dark as my model for a modern narrative game in which participants play to find out, mostly because it's the one whose rulebook I read through, and which I've playtested a tiny bit. It does, however, have a few interesting features for this project: the game's setting, the city of Doskvol, is mapped, which is a good start; it also has a sea that ships go into to hunt leviathans and extract their blood, which powers this haunted steampunky electrified nightmare city; the region in which it is set also has a map. Additionally, the system's character sheet game is elaborated by also having a crew sheet, for the team of scoundrels that holds the characters together - this sheet, in turn, has a somewhat abstracted board of turf nodes, locations which the crew can gradually conquer during play.
So our starting chart can just be copied from the book, without adding more details than the various starting cities, such as Duskwall. The GM will either fill this in before game start, or it will be filled in later, as we will see below.
Next we sketch out a crew sheet that will be fitting for this type of adventure: Pirates of the Void Sea. The abstract pirate turf could contain elements such as secluded bays to hide treasure in, a smuggler's bar in which booty can be more easily sold for coin, a temple to a forgotten sea god which provides the pirates with some luck if the proper sacrifices are made, and so forth. These can all be eventually be placed on the chart above.
The main loop of Blades in the Dark usually involves a somewhat freeform information-gathering phase, where a target is found and chosen for a heist. Then, to avoid analysis paralysis, once the players have settled on a target, they decide on a general approach to the heist, how heavily they will be armed - balancing preparedness with inconspicuousness - and then, using a variety of parameters, an engagement roll is rolled - its result determines how well or poorly the heist begins. And so it starts, in media res - afterwards, if circumstances are encountered that would have benefitted from planning, flashbacks can be used to attempt and establish contingencies retroactively. After a few challenges the heist ends one way or another, and then some housekeeping is performed, including potential for increasing attention from the authorities, characters landing in prison, and the changes in the relations to various existing factions in the city. Then comes downtime, when characters can work on long-term projects, indulge their vices, create or procure specialized equipment and otherwise while away the hours until the preparation for the next heist.
The way this loop can fit into a watercrawl essentially comes down to two factors: the types of heists, and the way they fit into the map. For a heist in Doskvol, the city map is used to choose the location, which in turn has information keyed to it about the populace, the environment, the kinds of things that are easy or hard to do there, and available NPCs. The party has headquarters and local turf that are also in specified locations. In the sea this could be different, as a pirate ship would normally be on the move, although a hidden cove can act as a more traditional, static base of operations.
As for heists - a treasure island, a lost leviathan hunter, or a trade convoy ripe for the picking - their placement will be determined in one of two ways. The first way is if the GM decides to chart the sea in general terms beforehand: where the currents are, what the weather is everywhere, indeed, a structure very close to how it would be done in a traditional RPG, except that this will all be openly known to the players. Then, when a heist happens, the GM can actively choose to tune its difficulty by putting it closer or farther away from the current location of the pirate ship, in nicer or less pleasant waters, near or far from the pirate crew's existing turf. The crew can draw a course between their current position and the heist target, and this choice will change how the engagement roll is performed - but once that is done, the crew can be said to have made it to the start of the heist in a state depending on that roll, and it can go on as it would in Doskvol, with more aquatic shenanigans available. Afterwards, the rolls in the post-heist state determine where the pirate ship manages to go, either some other random point on the map, or to one of the existing turfs.
But we can take this whole thing further. We can roll to find out not just what will happen in the heist, but to generate the very details of the sea chart. So the ship starts somewhere on the mostly blank canvas. A heist is decided upon - if its details suggest proximity to a known landmark, the GM can just pick a point near there, otherwise, it can either be selected randomly now, or after the engagement roll. Then, an engagement roll is performed - and the difficulty of the journey between the pirates and their target is determined by the result of this roll. If the roll was good, then perhaps there is a usable current in that direction - then that current is marked on the map as part of the nature of the sea. If the roll was poor, then perhaps there is an area of turbulent waters, or even reefs, in the middle, that can be marked on the map. As the map is filled in, the location of the next heist can be more and more constrained by the known aspects of the charted sea, rather than randomly picked. If that becomes too constraining, a feature can always be changed - especially in the Void Sea of this post-apocalyptic nightmare world, it is entirely possible for currents to change, difficult archipelagos to be pushed out of the seabed or swallowed up entirely, and changing seasons can also be made culprits. The point is that you are playing to find out what the sea is like, and having a narrative experience consistent with the structure of the game in the process. You have painted this canvas with your actions as players and GM.
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