7 thoughts on “#dungeonworld  !”

  1. So awesome!  I love the idea of the vase controlling the skeletons, and then having the tough skeleton inside it.  “Battle is it’s own purpose.”  Awesome line!

    I’m totally going to steal the vase idea I think – my players will be in a tomb soon, and while I probably won’t use a vase or undead, I like the idea of some central item in a room being the source bringing their enemies at them.

    Oh, and I love the “players released a great evil upon the world on accident” theme.  I’m planning something similar in my game – they are likely going to find an item that is from the ancient evil race that has died out.  I’m hoping that they’ll sell it to a merchant, and then weird things will start to happen all over 🙂

    Finally, awesome cliff hanger 🙂

    BTW, I noticed you used the term ‘hir’ – is that a mispelling of her?

    Also, I’m curious: how long did this session last?  Did it include character generation?

    I ran our first game recently, and found that character generation took some time.  Largely because the players (& I, though I’ve been reading a bunch of DW stuff) were new and we asked a lot of questions.  I had a blast, but in the end they only had time for one fight… and now they’re on the run 🙂

    Keep it up – I look forward to hearing more about this campaign 🙂

  2. Michael Barrett:  From the perspective of a player (Shank the Rogue) in the game:

    -Yeah, I think we agreed to use ‘hir’ as a catch-all ‘his/her’, as the player likes to run androgynous characters (previously a gnoll in D&D, as well as an L5R Kitsune shugenja alternating between wild man of the woods and singing Disney princess with a flock of wild animals surrounding him/her).

    -We had something in the range of 3 hours, including teaching the basic concepts and character creation. Not as much time as we really wanted, but enough for a cinematic battle with an undead swarm and a headless skeletal warlord. We were acting more like nervous D&D adventurers at the start, but by the time we were in the Red Rajah’s grave we got into the two-fisted pulp action spirit a bit more.

    -Unwittingly releasing great evil in the name of survival is an excellent fantasy trope. I hope it turns out well for your game as well. >:)

    -BJ Recio was totally trying to get one of us to put on the blood mail armor, but the barbarian came from a culture that disdained armor, the bard was too genre savvy, and Shank was far more concerned about market value (and eventually handing over the mail to the elves as a diversion in order to save our skins) to put it on.

  3. Heya Michael Barrett !

    “Battle is its own purpose” is indeed an awesome line, but I can’t claim it as my idea. I shnicked it from the flavor text of a Magic: The Gathering card. I think it was the 4th ed black knight. He always seemed more badass than the white knight, and when the bard started talking to the Red Rajah the line seemed apt so I used it.

    No worries on stealing the vase idea, and thanks for the kind words. I was initially thinking that one of the players would want to keep the chain mail (I would then make a compendium class about fighting the consciousness within the armor), but the players were smart enough to discern realities and spout lore to avoid that fate. All in all though, I suppose it’s easier to advance the story if it goes to a gullible NPC instead.

    Ah, I used ‘hir’ because the elf wizard’s gender has not been clarified yet. I had difficulty writing the scenes with Lilliastre (my native language uses gender-neutral pronouns), and rather than work around it I introduced the pronoun. Lazy, I know. 😀 I remember reading that pronoun somewhere else to depict a similarly ambiguously-gendered character, but for the life of me I can’t remember where I read it.

    On character creation – the process took about half an hour; that’s because I let them choose classes and see the sheet pdf ahead of time. Bonds also took another half-hour, but that’s okay as it helps establish important character details.

    After that we were able to game for a good three hours: In my estimate, the trap took an hour (this group is apparently very cautious), the skeletons another hour, while the rajah took 30 mins. Finally, interacting with the elves took up the rest of the time.

    Ultimately, even if the rajah took less time, it actually scared the players more. Going from mindless undead to heavily armored, strategically-fighting death knight provided a good contrast, I think. 🙂

    Ooh, I’m interested to hear about your first fight. Was that the same crocodile fight that you mentioned in my other post? 🙂 I’d love to hear about it more.

  4. Phil Corpuz Ah-hah!  The hir thing is awesome – I should have picked that up, since BJ Recio specifically mentioned the sex of the wizard wasn’t known 🙂  Thanks

    Wow, three hours- that’s an awesome amount of story in three hours.  Nice 🙂  We spent 4 hours the first game, had one fight – six orcs, a crocadilian and a small snake that bit one of the characters, though they managed to avoid being poisoned.  At the end of it they heard drumming in the distance and realized the tribe was coming for them, now they’re fleeing.

    Bummer none of the guys put on the armor, I bet that would have been awesome, but I get being cautious 🙂  The idea of the compendium class sounds like a lot of fun.

    My players took a bit of time with the bonds as well, and they lead to a lot of questions.  That said, I’m a little disappointed in that it seems that for some reason they focused on the antagonistic bonds – the Wizard didn’t even take the prophecy bond, and that one seems so cool (and fitting for two of the other characters potentially).  I’m hoping to get them to add a few more.

  6. Oh, and let me give you a quick overview of the croc fight.  Basically what happened was the players found themselves in the swamps that were near the village they had just come from.  They came up with the idea they were there to find a child that had wandered off.. I think I’m going to turn this into a sort of front and say this isn’t the first child, but I’m still working on that.

    Anyway, they were making their way through a swamp when suddenly they were attacked by a bunch of orc blood warriors.  I had plans for potentially having a sneaking orc with poison moves and when the bard rolled a 6- early on I had the sneaky orc leap out at him and spit a mouth full of poison.  Fortunately he avoided it, still wasn’t sure just what the poison would do.

    The croc came as a result of another 6- roll and almost got ahold of the wizard, who quickly used his invisibility spell.

    In the end I think the fight ended up being on the ‘very hard’ end of the scale.  They were pretty hurt, and at the end the Wizard heard the drums in the distance (another poor roll) and the bard recognized them as the sound alerting the tribe to invaders.  So now they’re on the run 🙂

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