Hello folks,
I’m new to this community and to Dungeon World. I’m converting my Pathfinder group to Dungeon World in my upcoming game on Friday. My players never handled the crunch of Pathfinder well, and I feel like DW will be a perfect fit. As of now, I read through the SRD, the character sheets, and some of the extra stuff (e.g., Grim Portents mag, some custom classes, the subreddit, and this group). I feel I am confident enough to DM (I’ve been DMing this group of guys for nearly two years now), but I do have a couple of inquiries:
1. Aside from financially supporting Dungeon World, what is the benefit to buying the handbook vs just using the SRD. Is there information that I wouldn’t get from the SRD? I’m planning on purchasing the handbook pdfs anyway, but not for a few weeks.
2. Do you have any hints or tricks for a DM who is used to D20 rules and regulations? My sessions have been going in the DW direction already, and has been a lot of freeform roleplay – so I feel that this will be an easy transition for me. Primarily, I’m concerned about roadblocks some of you DMs have found that you wish you thought of prior to sitting down at the table.
I think transitioning my players to DM will be extremely easy, so I’m not too concerned about that. I am very impressed with the community behind Dungeon World thus far, and I can’t wait to make my own contributions!
Thanks,
Kyle
You could have a look at our Panel about First Sessions and Making GM Moves here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiOAavgAkpn8UmXzPPzevK7HaiB3_w-yO
It is under GM’ing the World.
Also read this:
http://book.dwgazetteer.com/appendices_teaching.html
But the shortform advice is:
Be a fan of the characters
Play to find out what happens
Constantly make moves!
“Everything” you say should be a GM move. Set them up into situations by putting them in a spot or revealing an unwelcome truth or showing the signs of an approaching threat. Even if people are just exploring the dungeon, point them to things, give them stuff to figure out and make Dungeon Moves.
Also, if someone rolls a 6- don’t be afraid to hit them hard. If people are not groaning because of what happens it probarbly wasn’t a hard enough move.
The DW Guide is a good resource if you hadn’t seen it yet.
http://www.mediafire.com/?2qyqqkbhwdzot6d
The text of the game is all open source, you get the high quality PDFs for the art and layout.
Obligatory link to the 16hp dragon:
http://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/
Main things I wish to tell you:
Be strict about following the rules/principles (they are not mere suggestions)
Try not to prepare anything before seeing your fellows to play 1st session.
Keep a list of moves at hand: GM – dungeon – (threat – after front creation) ecc. All in one place.
Good game!
Advice #1: Don’t attempt a hack/conversion. No matter how glorious or easy you think it me be, it is much better to play DW as is before trying to create your own hack. You gotta know what you are working with before you can use it well.
Advice #2: Forget everything you read about fonts and grim portents until after the first game and ask a lot of questions!
Good luck!
1. You want to say something.
2. You check if it goes with your agenda.
3. You check if it goes with your principles.
4. You check if what you want to say is a move.
If you said yes to 2,3 and 4 you say it. Otherwise you think of something different.
(that is the streamlined version. Now lets get technical)
The Goblin Horde moves are:
Charge!
Call more goblins
Retreat and return with (many) more
He is powering through the horde so they probarbly Charge!d already. Retreat and return might work here.
“As you slam your hammer into the Goblins you smash one of them into paste right away and the others are backing up. A few of them start running down into the cave and are out of your reach. You are sure they will be back.”
That is not really that hard though. It really starts to be a hard move if you let them come back with 30 Goblins to attack them. Think of the hord tag. That is A LOT of goblins.
Call more goblins is not that exiting here either so lets have a look at the other moves.
You could just deal damage here (d6+number of other goblins attacking them). You could use up their ressource as a few Goblins take his backpack and al the stuff that is in it.
You could make a dungeon move like Change the environment.
“As your mighty hammer hits the first goblin and smashes him to the ground you hear a loud crack under you and the ground starts to crumble under you, the whole floor starts to collapse and you feel the merciless pull of gravity as you fall down”
Or you could reveal an unwelcome truth.
“You hack and slash through the goblins, cutting them to pieces. As you turn around you see their bodies starting to regenerate. Black oily tendrils pulling the bodies back together, the goblins rising anew to eat you!”
There really is no clear guideline besides the agenda and principles.
Kyle Fusco wrote:
> Aside from financially supporting Dungeon World, what is the benefit to buying the handbook vs just using the SRD. Is there information that I wouldn’t get from the SRD? I’m planning on purchasing the handbook pdfs anyway, but not for a few weeks.
The main benefits are convenience and ease-of-use. The DW Gazetteer site has the entire text, and you can get all the core playbooks from the Dungeon World website, but I don’t like looking at a laptop at the game table. The electronic bundle (available from RPGNow and IPR) inlcudes ebook versions that are fast and easy to use on reading devices like the Kindle, in addition to PDFs. I got by using the Kindle version for about seven months before I got a print edition.
You can play indefinitely using only the Gazetteer and playbooks that are freely available, though.
My biggest piece of advice to you: make stuff happen to the PCs. Don’t wait for them to enter the room with the gelatinous cube in it; THE NEXT ROOM THEY WALK INTO HAS THE GELANTINOUS CUBE!
If four of the five PCs go to do something, and the fifth sits out because he/she doesn’t have the skills to help with the task? Well, something’s GOING to happen to that fifth PC! Maybe he or she gets ambushed. Maybe he or she sees some treasure down the way…
In combat, if the PCs are getting hit with arrows from monsters and they can’t return fire because they don’t have missile weapons and are on the other side of a ravine…well, look, there’s skeletons on the ground from the last adventuring party, and they had crossbows! Or, better yet…there’s a rope bridge across the ravine, the PCs just have to run across it to get to their attackers on the other side…
And so on. Other RPGs with scripted adventures may have these dead moments where the PCs just don’t do anything, or they wait for something to happen. That doesn’t work in DW. In DW, the entire adventure is action. If any PC is sitting around doing something, have something happen!
There’s a paradigm shift in going from PF to DW. DW isn’t about getting the biggest numbers you can, or hitting the “I win” button as fast as possible. It’s much more fun to look cool or be stylish. Really emphasize the fiction. If a player tells you, “I Discern Realities!” ask him how he does it.
PF is still a great system for me. I’m a guy who likes to build complex characters. I’ll spend hours rolling a character for no reason. I also play PF like I would play DW though. I don’t min/max.
My players are very casual, and they just want to get into the action.
DW is satiating my players that way, but also satisfying my need for complexity by world building interesting encounters. That’s not to mention the TON of community driven content that I’ve come across in the past four days. I think I’ll try creating some classes sooner or later.
be warned, it is really hard.
This is definitely one thing I really enjoyed about DW. When the rules got out of the way, I found I had much more ability to make up cool stuff. Sadly, most of the PF players I know are hardcore min/maxers.
The main benefit of buying the book is $$$ for me. The second benefit is that it is awesome and there is art (in color, now, if you buy the PDF!). You don’t have to, though! We made it free so people could try it and see what they think.
I min max in DW. I think it’s in my blood or something, can’t help it.
In DW, min/maxing is the cute little dressing on top of all the cool description.
In other games, I’ve found that min/maxing is the point. Description is the cute dressing.
Just musing at 2:44am.