9 thoughts on “”

1. It seems like it wouldn’t be too hard to combine the system. Dungeon World could potentially take on a skill system, fate dice and aspects if you so wanted. Then drop the bonds and you are good to go.

2. I didn’t read the post, but I will say that I think they’re fundamentally different games. And FATE is total crap.

3. Andrew Day, I wish you would just say what you mean instead of wrapping your opinion in a candy coated riddle… 😉

4. You hear people mention the “lack” of skills in DW but so far I haven’t ever experienced this as a liability.

   Everything you may do with a skill exists in the system already; sneaking past a guard, Defy Danger with Dexterity. Advanced Moves can easily become a skill; +1 Defy Danger while sneaking or hiding. 

   I think a lot of people think they need a quantified skill system to inform them of what their character is good at, but in DW the fiction should take care of a lot of it. In my game we assume that each class is good at things the class should be good at, elves and dwarves see better in the dark, and a character that has a background as a blacksmith’s apprentice can build and repair things etc.

   For years I thought a game absolutely had to have a skill system to be viable but I’ve really come to appreciate the way Dungeon World handles so much and so easily. 

5. PbtA games can open your eyes to great possibilities once you get your head around the basic principles. It really does take some unlearning though. I’m still working on it!

6. Though on the topic of FATE, I have a player that I play DW with that also played a lot of FATE with. When we first started DW, he kept trying to use Spout Lore to make “declarations” about the setting. I kiboshed that, but I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing.

7. I encourage players to tell me things about the world, rather than the other way around. It’s quite backwards from my previous DM style, but I find I prefer it now.

8. The DW character class moves tell you what they are good at, so a skill system would be redundant.

9. It just totally depends on what you want out of the game. I’ve played both, and they just scratch different itches, especially for the player, rather than the GM. Fate does usually put the players in a bit more of an “author” mode than DW, but I don’t think that’s bad at all. DW functions to emulate the feel of old-school D&D (particularly dungeon-crawling) much more than Fate.

   Both games operate more at the “story” level than at the “physics” level, if that makes sense. Which is a property that I really look for in games, anymore.

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