Hi all,
I’m starting to do some work assembling a game set in ancient Rome. I’d like the game to work at two levels, the first being Roman legionnaires against the Celts (who may or may not have allied with Cthonic darkness), and the second being the senatorial power players.
We want the game to be gritty and somewhat realistic, so my first thought was that I should probably look at repurposing AW or put together my own hack, but I keep coming back to DW and thinking that, especially for the legionnaires section, I could make this work.
What do folks here think? Are there any tweaks required or recommended? Should I just give up and start building from scratch?
Thanks for any thoughts in advance!
C
A DW hack I want to try is running a non-magical world just by saying “You can’t play a cleric/paladin/mage”, and adding a healer class (or maybe just an advanced move” to deal with that.
What do you think the problem of just doing a color setting of Dungeon World would be? Magic? Not “real” enough? Too many HPs?
I would run the senators with burning wheel but that’s just me
Hi all,
Nikitias: All of that, really: too many hit points and then the magic and such as well. I guess I just wonder about taking the Dungeon out of the World and whether I’m trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
I recently bought Adventurer Conqueror King as well, and while I’d love to give it a shot, I don’t think it would capture the right feel.
I guess with DW, there’s just that lingering, “Maybe this could work,” idea. And if it works, it would rock.
Maybe I should just give it a shot and see…
Hi Tim,
I have and quite like BW. I think it might be too fiddly for my group’s tastes, though. That said, the love The One Ring (my other game).
We played something very similar using Primetime Adventures. It was wonderful!
An idea: exclude Bard, Druid, Wizard & Cleric, add Medic, Gladiator, Noble (refitted) & Barbarian and some color tweaks and I think you can do it with DW.
Nothing that some custom-classes and a color tweak can not do.
Just a suggestion, but running the senators by porting in 13th Age’s Icon system could work pretty well. It would also give the players a chance to have bad, good, or neutral standings with them and use those standings to their advantage.
Hi all,
Yeah – I’ve been thinking of AW a lot and will probably run with that. It just seems to get the grittier vibe that we’re looking for a bit better. I hadn’t thought of gladiators as Battlebabes! That is awesome!
I think I’ll need to develop a new playbook for the senatorials though and build a couple of setting rules:
Define you relationship with your patron as based on one of your stats. This doesn’t change. When you appeal to your partron for succor or aid, roll + stat. On 10+ you get what you want if it’s within their power. On 7-9, you get what you want, but choose 1:
– the cost is high
– you’ve pissed off or insulted your patron
– you’ve insulted or angered someone else
– you only get part of what you wanted
– there are unforseen complications
– etc…
+Kirby – I haven’t checked out the Icon system. Is it an influence system of sorts?
Senators are somewhere between Hocuse and Maestro’D i guess, but Sharp
Chris Allison it’s a system where the player’s association with an Icon can be leveraged for narrative control. It’s pretty sweet.