So I’ve got a tickling in the back of my mind to do a sort of two-session buildup to a Dungeon World game. In the first session, we’d all play a game of Dawn of Worlds to create the map, as well as the skeletons of civilization and history. In keeping with the general theme of that game, each player could/would be portraying the actions of one of the setting’s deities (though by no means all of them).
In the second session, we would use Microscope to paint a broader picture of the setting’s history and create some memorable NPCs, locations, historical events and so on, as well as getting a general feel for what sorts of themes the players want to focus on.
What do you guys think? Could this work? I know it sort of steps on the toes of “draw maps, but leave blanks,” but seeing as how the players would be helping to fill in some of those blanks I’m thinking it might be an acceptable break.
More to the point: if I (or someone else, given my lack of DWGMXP) were to put together a hangouts game to test the format out, would you be willing to give it a shot?
I’ve played Microscope and liked it. I’ve heard of people doing the same thing. The only thing is, if you’ve developed the world, like in Microscope, how do you play to find out what happens? You have basically created the timeline of history from start to finish. Would you essentially just use those instances of historical events as Fronts?
I haven’t played Dawn of Worlds.
As long as you don’t drill down too deeply into any given era, there should be lots of blanks spots to play in.
That’s very true, Adam!
That said, to deal with any problems of being “overwhelmed by canon,” I would probably run it in one of three ways:
1. Limit the timeline to things that happened before the time of the PCs. The game just needs to cover a period of history, not go until the heat death of the universe (no matter how many times I’ve suggested that as an end-point… or a beginning point…). Also the fallout of the end of an era is a pretty rad setup for DW world-building, I think.
2. No canon survives contact with the players. That timeline we came up with was the work of academics and oracles who should really get out of the house more. If it’s meaningful and fictionally sensible, the written events can still happen, but it’s by no means a given.
3. The PCs can start at any place in the timeline they like, with the understanding that certain events will happen…. unless they do something to prevent them. Perhaps they all received visions of the future, fit the descriptions of some prophesied heroes… whatevs we come up with.
EDIT: Dawn of Worlds is a freely available, collaborative map- and civilization-building game. I’ve played it once, it was a hoot: http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf
I like the “there’s a prophecy but you can change it” angle. That’s very classic.
The PCs could be “Fateless”, their actions rewrite history and change events. Also a good way to have a starting timeline for time travelers that then go in and mess it all up.
Ooh, I like that “Fateless” angle. All sorts of delicious ways that could’ve come about, and it carries some nice ramifications.
Time travel makes me giggle (I love time travel fiction), but I don’t know if I’d run it like that. Too many conceptual headaches for my tastes (also I’m already working on hacking Continuum into FATE, and don’t need any more of that on my buffet :P).
We just did this for our Pirate World game and we’ve had tons of blanks to fill. I don’t think it’s taken any power from the players at all!