I ran a game of Dungeon World last night; it went really well. I LOVE this game! In 2 1/2 hours we managed to have a nice mix of a social interaction, some hiking and descriptive narration, a confrontation, and a fight. This is with a group (online) that normally takes 3 hours to run a single 4e combat…
The rules flowed really well; my only difficulty came in getting the PCs to roll their own damage – it really surprised them to do that!
I broke the wizard’s arm in the fight, when he got kicked by a Satyr while striking it with his staff, which was fun. But the best part was the hostage-taking. The rogue of the group grabbed a faun that was one of a trio “sorta-kinda” threatening them. They suspected the Satyr and fauns were guilty of kidnapping a child.
Once they grabbed the faun, they were able to get to where the child was being held, and trade hostage for victim, and escape. Unfortunately, they let the big Satyr get away because nobody had a ranged attack… Oh well; I guess they’ll have to deal with that in the future…
Having players roll damage is mostly a convenience for the GM. If it doesn’t work for your group, having the GM roll damage is pretty much the smallest “hack” you can make and won’t hurt much of anything.
I like it, though. And online it really is easier; I don’t have to have a dice-roller window open…