I got to run a great game of Dungeon World on the weekend with my regular players and a few extras.

I got to run a great game of Dungeon World on the weekend with my regular players and a few extras.

The cast consisted of:

The Cap’n, a Pirate Captain from Inverse World,

Fabio, an Orcish Slayer from Grim World,

Norman, a magical pudding Golem from Inverse World and first mate of the Cap’n’s ship,

Makale, a Goblin Shaman from Grim World,

and Goraka, an Ogre Gladiatior from the Gladiatior third party playbook by Somethingawful’s GimpInBlack.

After writing bonds, I asked the captain why Airships were necessary in this world, and he responded with “The floor is lava.” I interpreted that to mean the world was a great ocean of lava with islands of rock and earth jutting far out of the burning ocean.

I told them they were in the middle of an attack between their ship and another and another round of questions revealed that their ship was attacking another, slow, lightly armed, and heavily laden with wealth and goods. The Cap’n tried to order his crew to attack the crew on the other vessel, but the enemy captain had come out on deck, and he was a giant brute, and the crew were terrified after the enemy brute had chopped off the amorphous pudding golem’s arm. The Gladiator calls out the Brute, and has to make a choice, he decides that the other enemies won’t interfere with the fight.

The group led the attack against the brute, and things went from bad to worse. The Shaman knocked a soldier from the other ship overboard, he plummeted to his firey death, and the lava began to shift and undulate as though something massive swam just beneath the surface.

Back on the transport vessel, the Slayer, the Gladiator, and the Pudding are battling the Brute Captain, trading blows and taking some big hits. Eventually,  the pudding blinds the brute by gumming up his eyes with pudding goop. The Gladiator took this opportunity to use the Brute’s own giant axe to behead him, sending the head, and the pudding clinging to it, over the edge of the ship.

The Gladiator has to make a hard choice, catch the head and his delicious friend, or stay on the deck of the ship. He choose the former, and we leave him with the head in his hand and his leg hooked in a railing dangling over the edge looking at the undulating lava below. With the Brute dead, the Cap’n’s crew finally agrees to board the enemy vessel and fight, so they all charge into a pitched battle.

Meanwhile the little shaman has leaped onto the back of the toppling Brute’s body and jammed a shrunken head onto the dead brute’s neck stump in order to capture it’s soul. This doesn’t go well, and instead of doing what the Shaman wants it will do what it wants, and starts fighting again. While this happens, the two dangling over the side see a gigantic lava serpent slowly emerge from the burning sea and wend it’s way upwards towards the two ships.

As the Shaman is messing about with powers best left alone, the Slayer helps his comrades back onto the deck, and the gladiator and pudding attack the brute simultaneously, the Ogre stabbing the brute, and the putting morphing into the hole and then exploding the body from inside.

With the brute destroyed, the enemies all surrender, but the Serpent is coming, the heavy cargo vessel is too slow to escape it, so they only have a short amount of time to grab what loot they can and get away. The Slayer decides to start chasing the surrendered enemies around the deck so he can slake his thirst and throw their bodies to the serpent. The Shaman consults the spirits, and discovers that the serpent doesn’t eat flesh – it eats wood!

The group scurries to grab what loot they can, and recruit the survivors to help them load some valuable upgrades for the ship in exchange for their lives. Just as they are ready to leave, the Slayer spots a map case in the doorway to the brute’s cabin, ties a rope to himself and gives it to the Gladiator, and makes a dash through the splintering cargo vessel for the case, they leave as the serpent finishes crushing the ship, all it’s wealth tumbling down and burning up into the lava….