Preparing hazards

If you're preparing an expedition or a point of interest in advance, you might want to prepare some hazards. Prep hazards for all the reasons you prep anything: to give yourself interesting stuff to say, to speed up play, to shore up your weaknesses, to hone your craft, and to give yourself permission to play hard and visit badness on the PCs.

Prep your hazards as much as or as little as you find valuable. Remember that prep is for your benefit; unless you're making notes for someone else to use, there's little point in writing down stuff that's obvious to you.

There are a few approaches to preparing hazards. You might prepare one as...

... a detailed description;
... a series of GM moves, possibly with an instinct;
... an impending doom (with grim portents);
... one or more player-facing moves; or...
... some combination of the above.

There's no hard and fast rule for when to use each approach. Use whichever one seems most appropriate for the hazard you have in mind.

Book II presents many hazards prepared with these approaches. Use them as-is or refer to them as examples.