DMed a really satisfying first session ever of Dungeon World. 5 players, ranging in age from 10 to 40. I’m a real stickler for learning a game being part of the fun, and there was a solid flow of fun in the learning curve. I’ve had dissatisfying experiences with other hack and slash games, and the success-with-a-twist and asking players questions saved things again and again and again. All the players had loads of fun and want to play again as soon as possible. Yes!
DMed a really satisfying first session ever of Dungeon World.
DMed a really satisfying first session ever of Dungeon World.
And, almost completely zero prep. I mean almost zero. Very satisfying to be able to say that.
Can I ask what sorts of questions you asked and when? I ran my first game a week ago, and while I’m normally really confident in my GMing, I felt I didn’t do the system justice.
At first I felt like I wasn’t asking enough questions, forex, during character creation, the Ranger would say “I look like this and can do this and this, and have a wolf companion,” so I asked “what’s his name? how did you meet?” But that’s all I could think of, and it didn’t feel very satisfying, but I moved on to the next character. But what happened was that common themes slowly emerged – we had a Druid, a Forest Mage, and a Ranger, so that was interesting, then I asked the Paladin and the Thief “how did you meet?” and they replied “we were lost in the wilderness and teamed up” – so these wilderness themes kept popping up, the party was really ripe for connections and cross-connections. By the time we hit bonds it was really easy for them all to have a bond with each other – each player made sure they had a bond with every other one. I guess my answer is, whenever possible, I asked just one question per situation, and it was usually a “how did you meet? and where was that?” kind of question. Then during play, any time I felt the slightest bit stumped, I would ask the players to tell me. “What’s the name of the river? I don’t know, what is it’s name?” or “Why are you here?”
Thank you! I am going to try asking more questions next game 🙂
You can never ask too many questions 😉
My lady – one of the players – after a no-story-games streak of a few years, says she believes in dice again. This is a good game, folks.
One question I’ve found that works really well is “what did you have for breakfast?” The day in the life style questions were inspired by Monsterhearts and work well for DW too.