For those of us unfamiliar with Dungeon World, how long do you guys typically spend building “fronts”?
For those of us unfamiliar with Dungeon World, how long do you guys typically spend building “fronts”?
For those of us unfamiliar with Dungeon World, how long do you guys typically spend building “fronts”?
usually 15 minutes, sometimes I got stuck on a front but posting on the forums helped a lot.
That sounds about right.
None.
Ara Kooser For me, the beauty of the entire game is the blown roll. It’s brilliant that they decided to award experience for a 6-.
I explain to new players that Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars are little more than a lot of 6- and a few 7-9s until the very end.
20 minutes seems pretty normal for me, but I tinker a lot.
First session? None. After that, I don’t know, it depends. I sort of like prep, so I’ll imagine a world in which the threats that emerged in the first session go unchecked. I’ll build Fronts around a world with no PCs. Then I let the PCs go after them, and adapt the Fronts that haven’t advanced. I repeat this every session until the Front is resolved.
You can get away with almost none, which is one of the big appeals of the game to me. But you can also do a lot, too — you can really spend as much time prepping as you you want. The point of Fronts is to focus your work and attention on the most helpful things to prep. Who are the campaign antagonists? What do they want? And then you can work your way down detailing them (and the world) as much as you like, guided by the principles of leaving blanks and playing to find out what happens.
Ultimately, the only meaningful test of “have you done enough prep?” is whether, at the table, you can come up with interesting & satisfying things to happen when it’s your turn to say what happens next. The better you are at that improv, the less prep you need.
Does your prep help you run a better, more entertaining game? Do it!
Do you find it hinders you and forces you down a certain path? Forget it! Let it build organically from play.
The end.
Only did once so far, still having to work in the new ones from the 2nd session, spent an hour doing them. 🙂
I did about an hour of prep for my second session – most of that was creating custom monsters and adapting some fronts from my notes. I probably won’t prep again until this Front is resolved.
I’m glad to see that there’s some wiggle room on how much prep is considered kosher. I’m getting ready to run my first DW session this Saturday, and I’ve found myself doing more than a little bit of prep. My 4E and Gamma World games involved a certain amount of winging it, but not to the extent that DW calls for. I’ve been nervous about being caught short.
+Adam Koebel, I think it’s not quite fair to say “the end”, because you also have to consider time available. One of the key questions that determines what games I run these days is “can I get ready enough in the time I have available?” D&D, no. DW, yes.
Also, +David Thiel and +Mike Shea, my prep includes as much time or more on things that are not fronts, but that I want to have handy when playing. Interesting treasures to find, interesting monsters and encounter ideas, lists of names for NPCs for when i need to invent someone off the cuff — having this sort of thing ready to drop in when the occasion calls for it helps me a lot to keep things flowing in game.
I would say that all of my game preparation is now in the form of fronts, also for non-DW games. I find that they just pop up and the hard part is the writing down. In terms of how much effort you should put in, zero on your first session: just let them get themselves into trouble. If you have too much material behind your screen you will not ask questions, which is crucial to DW.