I’m looking to do this as a series pitch for Dungeon World:

I’m looking to do this as a series pitch for Dungeon World:

I’m looking to do this as a series pitch for Dungeon World:

“You’re all crew on the Galley Serenity, plying the wine dark seas of the Aegean, 8 years after Paris raped Helen and took her to Ilium, and Agamemnon and Menelaus gathered a fleet.”

“You’ve moved cargo, couriers and things best left unsaid in the mean time.  You’ve got reasons to dislike both the Achaeans and the Trojans, and all this mucking about in the affairs of the Divine has made the world a much stranger place.”

I’d like to run this in Dungeon World, with some of the classes reskinned – Paladin with slightly looser morals makes a nice proxy for “There was a God in your family tree a few generations back.”

I’d like to have magic, but not “spellcasters.” and enough variety in the “non-magic” types that it’s not “All Fighters, All The Time.”

Any suggestions for playbooks that would be appropriate?

(One of the PC niches is the Captain of the Serenity, who’d have a Doom sworn against him – if he passes through the pillars of Pylos, all he loves will be lost.  He’s been avoiding any cargoes or jobs heading back that way ever since.)

18 thoughts on “I’m looking to do this as a series pitch for Dungeon World:”

  1. Calling it serenity is casting weird perceptual shadows. 

    as for classes it really depends on how wonderful(lit) you want the setting to be

    IW’s Sky Dancer works for divine heritage

    IW’s captain obviously

    IW’s Survivor, the priest and  the templar 

    and I assume you’ve considered the base classes

  7. My reason for calling it the Serenity is that I’m aiming for the earthier, grittier stories that happen “behind” the Trojan War, and so that players whose memories of the Trojan War are “Oh, right, that chunk of the Illiad I had to read during AP English…” don’t immediately go “OK, so there’s fighters. And nothing else…”

    These may not be especially sound reasons, but it’s (in part) a chance to give players a quick hook to work from rather than “OK, you need to be a classics dork to play this one.”

  8. Daniel Kellett:  What’s “IW”?  I’ve not heard of any of those.  

    Gray Pawn I’m looking up Agon now.  Please keep the suggestions coming, everyone.

    Right now I have the base classes and wish I had their playbooks in Word so I could customize them to meet the setting.

    (Sage’s InDD documents on GitHub are from a more recent version of the program than I’ve got.)

    I’ve had the Skirmisher from GrimWorld suggested to me, and f

  11. Fighters. Oracles. Priests. Demigods. Fauns and Satyrs. Dryads. Sirens. Amazons. Gladiators. Philosophers. Healers (Aesculapius). Prophets. Politicians. Scientists (Aristoltle) Mathematicians. Merchants. Slavers. Barbarians. Courtiers. Heirs of Alexander.

    I should start writing Greek playbooks…

  12. I’ve worked out a timeline of the major Greek myth cycles as background for my game.  I’m just trying to get playbooks assembled.

    To wit:

    The Theban Cycle (Oedipus to Seven Against Thebes and Antigone) was in your father’s time.

    The Labors of Hercules was in your grandfather’s time, including his eventual exile into Thrace and Illyria.

    Theseus’ voyage was about 30 years ago – he was the King of Athens.

    Jason and the Argo were scouting the route through the islands of the southern Aegean to find the route to Illium.  Medea is still happily married to him…

  13. Grim World’s Skirmisher playbook would be soooo perfect for this.

    Oh, and I guess to a certain extent you could use the Fortune-Teller (seer) and Gladiator playbooks. I figure the Druid could be flavored into a Dryad really easily, too.

  14. Yeah, a friend pointed me at the Skirmisher playbook.  I’ve not seen the Fortune-Teller and Gladiator – are they also in Grim World?

    Right now, here’s my thinking on Playbooks:

    Barbarans = Sons of Hercules/Northerners

    Fighter 

    Skirmisher

    Paladin = Demigod/Divine Warrior

    Druid = Dryad

    Ranger

    I’m looking for a good Seer/Fortune Teller class – anyone got a link to one?

    I’d also be interested in a “Noble” class – someone who knows how to work the levers of the higher echelons of society, or a Hataera for the Inara role.

    Anyone got good nautical themed compendium classes to recommend?

  15. Don’t forget Ken, that the AW playbooks are directly modelled on the Firefly character archetypes….

    So maybe looking back to the core AW playbooks for inspiration? You’d have to do some inter-system hacking though.

    I love the idea of a ‘classical’ iteration of DW. I’d second Agon, its awesome sauce.

  17. I think the Brute would be better suited for a Hercules style character; it’s all about sheer strength (throwing enemies around, bashing stuff!) rather than the outsider focus of the Barbarian. 

    If you’re looking for simple ship and crew rules, they’re also included with the Brute (and 8 other playbooks) in Pirate World, my kickstarter that’s going on right now!

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