21 thoughts on “Such a great session.”

  1. Because the Druid had the map, that player used his dwarven forge game tiles. I pre-drew the killing pit and chasm on a crystal caste mat in my lunch break but he insisted on paving the tunnel. One player invented the secret door which un-split the party.

  2. Interesting. I’ve never heard of players bringing terrain to a game they aren’t GM’ing. Then again if I blew the bank on some terrain I’d probably go out of my way to use it =P.

  3. This looks amazing!

    I agree that every first session of dungeon world feels different, even if you start with the same players, classes, and module!

    That’s the power of starting session questions and building the world through play.

  4. Nathan Roberts Okay! Here it is. I gave the players some custom questions and told them they were worth either bonus XP or +1 forward if their answers were acted upon.

    We open on the slave pit as the earthquake begins. Some slaves fall into the cracks, the doors wrench open, a rock falls on one of their captors, leaving one panicked goblin in charge of everyone. One of the cracks destroys an anti-magic ward and the Druid & Wizard feel their powers returning. Everyone sees that their chance to escape is upon them, and that time is of the essence, as the entire pit threatens to crack and collapse.

    One player was playing a pit-slave, and two of the four remaining slaves had one hireling skill each, and zero loyalty. This and the anti-magic ward idea had been stolen from posts I skimmed before this session. Great ideas that worked well! I told them that their gear was most likely with the orcs, but that the ranger’s eagle companion was in the killing pit.

    The halfling druid is the first to act, and declares that he is intimidating the goblin into helping them all escape with their pet and gear. I almost fell off my chair, but he rolled well and I ran with it. The party split off into the two corridors and action quickly ramped up.

    Spotting the orcs, the wizard rolled a partial success on Magic Missile and chose Unwanted Attention. She killed the orc, but the Whipmaster lumbered around the corner, enraged.

    The barbarian tackled him, also rolling a partial, so I had him land on the dead orc, with the Whipmaster atop him.

    The pit-slave announces that he throws his rabies-ridden pet Ratso onto the Whipmaster, which is another partial, giving the Whipmaster rabies before his whip sends the vermin flying out of view.

    The thief then sees an opportunity for backstab, and rolls 11 or 12, then describes a Whack-A-Mole style mutiple stabbing which leaves the barbarian in an orc-corpse-sandwich. The remaining orc turns to run, then takes a flying dagger in the back.

    This group then grabs the party’s gear from the Whipmaster’s chamber, and hearing a scratching beneath the bed, reach below and reclaim what they believe to be the pit-slave’s pet rat. The pit-slave reveals that he knows of a secret passage in this room, which reunites them with the druid and the ranger.

    Having rescued their eagle. the druid and the ranger had asked one of the hirelings to loot the killing pit while they checked the chasm web for spiders. A brilliant Discern Realities roll meant that they were sure the web was empty, but the eagle spotted the spider in the pit, reaching for the hireling.

    The barbarian charges in, severing a leg before tossing his sword aside to double-fist-punch the spider in the face. He is bitten, paralysed, sickened and further damaged by the poison. The ranger, not even turning to look, fires an arrow into another leg and the eagle grabs it to lever that leg free of the beast.

    The druid begins his walk across the web only to be grabbed by an assassin vine. He shifts into spider form and continues to the other side, while the pit-slave and wizard follow. They are grabbed at the mid-point so the druid becomes an ice-drake and uses frost-breath to freeze and shatter the vines…as well as the middle of the web. The wizard briefly considers throwing the barbarian some ati-toxin before thinking better of it. She and the pit-slave dash across before the web crumbles, leaving the ranger and barbarian stranded in the killing pit. They hear Drazhu’s chanting growing louder from his sepulchre…and that’s where we ended the session, as I was catching the last train from Central and had precious little time to get there.

  5. We had three (and a quarter) hours but lost the first to pizza and character creation. I just kept pushing us. “What do you do” just became “Who’s next?”

  6. Awesome Recap mate. Central?! Like as In Sydney? Woohoo! Another Dungeon World local(ish). Anytime you want to head up the Mountains for a game, or I can head down the hill; let me know Matt 🙂

  7. Marques Jordan Drazhu is designed for a couple of hours, so I felt it would be okay if I broke the dungeon into three chunks and watched the clock. Pizza and nerves killed my schedule.

  8. I haven’t had a chance to run it yet. I’m constantly surprised at how slow my games can become. My players over-analyze everything. They usually have issues leaping before looking =P

  9. Environmental danger can help the sense of urgency, especially if you can escalate that danger, or show an approaching threat getting closer.

    “While you’re all discussing what to do, the fire begins swirling across the ceiling. The timber groans and the blackened planks begin to creak. What do you do?”

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