World of Dungeons.
I’m gonna play this week, impromptu sessions while on holiday with a few lapsed gamers. Pretty casual, and they all have a D&D background (not beyond the early 90s) so I think WoD will suit to a tee.
The game’s open-endedness and simplicity is a thing to behold, and with more time and a group I know better I’d probably muddle the ambiguities myself. Given the situation I’d like to keep things simple to begin with, and so thought I would consult y’all as to how to approach a few things that aren’t spelled out in the text.
* Besides those with a clear mechanical effect (eg volley), are all abilities meant to be associated with a roll? For instance, if you use Bless, or Scout, or a Cantrip, do you always roll, even if the context the ability is invoked in isn’t immediately risky?
* How do you handle combat? I get the DW approach – use H&S when necessary, but simply deal damage as appropriate when the enemy doesn’t have the chance to fight back. Misses/Fails can have mechanical impact (dealing damage) or fictional ones as appropriate. Similar here? And to that end, are monsters mechanically akin to the WoD approach (hit points, damage, special abilities) or simpler still?
* Spirits: do you tend to have them appear with a shelf-life? The fun/temptation of quicksilver I would imagine is to not have them always on hand, so you need to make a hard choice (in terms of resource use and risk of OD’ing) from time to time. But if you can give them an open-ended task like ‘protect me’ then they could conceivably tag along for the adventure. Or does that not count as a magical effect?
*Ritual – any guidelines on how you might start this out? I’m sure to have a wizard and they will be curious about this stuff. Is the DW stuff of any use, or is it a different animal?
I’m not looking for the right way, just your way – what seems to work and be fun for you. Any scattershot answers would be hungrily appreciated. Thanks team.
My general answer to all of these is that the minimalism of WoDu requires EVEN MORE careful attention to fictional positioning and only rolling when something risky is happening (though that can be, like, all the time).
This applies to skills, rituals, magic, and combat. You’re going set expectations the first few times you handle certain things and then build on them the more you play. So if you decide that rituals generally require a magic circle and a sacrifice, then you go with that. Or maybe they require invoking a higher power or chanting your target’s true name.
Moves snowball but so do rulings (in a rulings-not-rules sense). GM decisions build on your past decisions, in addition to agendas and principles. Hope that helps some!
Nice. Jonathan, in your experience, does that entail a lot of custom move creation, or is the rulings-not-rules better wedded to establishing fictional consequences without moving to the mechanics?