Ran my first session of DW last night on G+, and it was a blast 🙂 Had one player comment “Why haven’t I been playing Dungeons & Dragons all this time if it’s this much fun?”
I also have to give a big shout out to the generators on http://www.apocwords.net/ for letting me go into the session with literally zero plot prep and be up and running with fronts, portents, Steadings and a media res situation for the party before the players had finished their character generation.
In short, it was pretty much everything I’d hoped a session of Dungeon World would be.
Apoc Words is just awesome for all the reasons you say it is.
Yeah, the Steadings and Fronts generator was so handy. Push of a button and I had the starting material ready to weave into the character gen choices as the players went along.
The one thing I should have done is asked questions more and got the players to establish more of the world. I did it a bit, but there’s at least one place it would have been better to let them answer a question than having done it myself. Odd habit to get into, but it works so well!
It is hard to ask questions until you are used to it and it is also hard to properly incorporate the DM moves also. I found the biggest thing for me in getting my world GM/MC/DM style right was just allowing myself to take the time and make the right decision.
Sometimes the right decision is obvious and you can just run off the cuff but sometimes the game is better if you take your time and consult your play aids. (like when adjudicating defy danger for example).
I probably disclaim decision making more than the rules say I should but sometimes the players come up with better ideas than I do.
The players did take a little getting used to the fact that I made my moves in response to their actions. They did really like the fact that failed rolls on their part still made interesting things happen. It was amazing to see how quickly people got engaged with the game and the world. I love how *World games manage that.