My local game shop, Big Robot Games, is hosting an all-night RPG event. It’s scheduled for 12 hours, 8PM on Oct 5, Saturday, until 8AM on Sunday Oct 6. I am running a Dungeon World table and already have my 6 players signed up for the session.
Two of the six players have played a DW session with me already, so they have a good idea of the game, but the other 4 are firmly entrenched in 3.5 so they will have to catch on as we go.
For such a long game, I have a couple thoughts regarding structure.
1 – I plan to split the session up into 3 parts, both for breaks and to let the characters level up, and probably do End of Session stuff at each break to let them resolve bonds and pick new ones, etc…
2 – Current expectation is to treat this as 3 or 4 “chapters” to the session, which should allow me to play an over-arching Front like a campaign, while still being in a one-shot real-world event.
3 – Because I will be playing with just the core classes, I will have 6 of the 8 covered at the start. This will either let me add another player or two as the night goes on, or let someone try a different class, switching at one of the breaks. Does anyone have thoughts (good or bad) with the idea of switching a class during a session like this?
I welcome your ideas and suggestions for this event! Ideas for a Campaign Front, themes, etc… are all welcome!
12 hours sounds like murder! Good luck man!
The switching of the classes idea sounds messy to me…but I’m sure it could be done some how. Maybe make multi-class moves like “multi-class dabbler” something that everyone has access to?
Another idea:
What if you established each new playing period as the next “season” in the characters lives? Years have passed, what have they been up to? What are they known for now?
Have fun man!
Sounds great! 3-4 chapters in one sitting is a pretty unique opprortunity, and it sounds like you’ll be taking advantage of that. I’d definitely experiment with Fronts: against the norm, it may actually be good idea to have a couple prepared that you can slowly build through the adventure with dire portents. I know that as a player, I’d love if there was some terrible threat coordinating behind the scenes, especially if you only caught glimpses of it once per hour or something!
Class switching is totally fine. I reckon it would be more interesting to bring some Compendium Classes, as across the night the characers are goimg to develop quite significantly. If you want to go a bit further, I actually prefer a few of the Improved classes out there (like the Improved Fighter) as they’re a straight improvement over the base book’s classes.
Matt Smith’s idea about seasons between each session is awesome.
I definitely like Matt Smith’s idea about the seasons and time passing. That’s one I’ll likely use.
Regarding Compendium Classes and other playbooks outside the core rules; I want to use only the core classes because it will be the first foray into Dungeon World for most of the players. It’s my belief that the core classes are more than adequate for a complete Dungeon World experience. Introducing too much choice in the first session is likely to make it more complicated than it needs to be, in my opinion. For example, if I were introducing someone to D&D, I would start with classes/races solely from the Players Handbook, rather than including the myriad other options.
I totally agree, keep the choice of classes limited! The Improved versions of the classes are still the those same basic classes, just marginally updated/ slightly tweaked to make them a bit more streamlined. They’re largely only changed by a move or two, and strictly keep to the same character as the originals. Worth checking out, but not a big difference if you stick to the originals. Anyways, the night sounds awesome, good luck!