I have this idea for a way to play DW with a “win” condition.
Basically, each class is entirely unique. The fighter is actually just one person somehow connected to a primal archetype, or the deity of war, or whatever—point being that they are the one fighter.
Start the game as usual.
After the first session the GM makes a campaign front and some adventure fronts. The more fronts the GM makes the harder the difficulty mode.
When a player character dies, they’re dead. Resurrection still works, sure, with the normal terms (i.e. it’s a discussion with the GM). Remember there’s just one of every class, so you can’t play another fighter if the fighter dies.
If the players defeat all the GM’s fronts before they run out of classes to play, the players win.
If the players run out of classes to play, the GM wins.
Obviously this isn’t a balanced competitive game or anything, but it could be cool to say “oh yeah, we beat a 3 front campaign with only 4 classes!” It’d also be cool to explore the uniqueness of classes through play—why is there just one fighter?
Unfortunately this has the side effect of turning buying one of the classes that funhaver games is making into paying to make the game easier since each class is a “life.” Even adding Jason Morningstar’s Pit Slave, which is deliberately weak, is still one more life to spend in the pursuit of the fronts. If this was an “official” mode of play I can see people being all “it’s just a way for Sage Kobold to make money by selling you more classes!”
I like the idea of printing one of each class for the whole game. If the fighter dies, there’s no more fighter playbook. Sorry. I’d want to keep the remaining playbooks out where everyone could see them during play.
“Unfortunately this has the side effect of turning buying one of the classes that funhaver games is making into paying to make the game easier.”
Congrats, you just created the world’s first in-app-purchase pay-to-win tabletop game.
I know! I kind of hate that side effect, but I try to think of the positive: need more classes to beat the fronts? Better start making them yourself…
It’s an interesting idea. Traditionally we play Apocalypse World this way, but in DW the ‘win’ is a little odd since ‘difficulty’ can vary wildly between GMs. There would need to be a bit more to it than just a count.
The other avenue to take is to design (and charge for) a blatantly overpowered class. BRB, designing “The Golden One”, soon to be on sale for $5 a hardcopy.
(Preview Starting Move) GOLDEN DESTINY: When you would fail any roll, you may gain a point of Destiny, and take the 7-9 result. When you would get the 7-9 result, you may gain a point of Destiny, and take the 10+ result. These can stack: you may take 2 points of Destiny to turn a failure into a 10+.
Sage LaTorra: actually, we were sort of hoping the Funhaver classes would be on par with the core classes rather than more powerful. If you have any feedback, it’d be much appreciated – I have worries the Shaman might be too good at handing out +1s.
Alex Norris that wasn’t my point at all! Everything I’ve seen says they’re well done. I’m just saying if the number of classes is a limiting factor, more classes is buying more lives, essentially. I’ll edit to make that very clear.
Alex Norris I think Sage LaTorra meant that buying extra classes would be like buying extra lives.
Hmmm. I wonder how compendium classes fit into this.
Sage LaTorra Phew! That was my bad for misunderstanding, to be fair!
The simple solution is to limit the number of classes – so players get to pick e.g. ten classes total (I’d say three per player is probably the right number) to be the pool. This is great because it lets them pick the flavour of the setting to some degree by picking what classes are playable (I may just introduce this for normal DW, too); and it means the difficulty is constant.
Also, weirdly, both your post and Mad Adric’s didn’t show up for me until this morning, but Ben’s did.
One of the things I’m doing in my new DW campaign is .. similar, without being identical. Basically, I’m running with the premise that, out of all the world, there’s lots of guys with swords… but only one Fighter.
Not so much primal archetype… more, ‘this is your story, and this is why you’re heroes.’ Lots of hedge magic guys… but only one Wizard. Lots of priests (even some with magic!), but only one Cleric.
Mind you, there could be another should one die – but the campaign is built around the idea that this tiny handful of people are the lynchpin on which the world turns. It just… works that way.