I understand that the character creation process as it is, is designed to be fun and is part of the DW experience,…

I understand that the character creation process as it is, is designed to be fun and is part of the DW experience,…

I understand that the character creation process as it is, is designed to be fun and is part of the DW experience, but has anyone ever broken the game down to components blocks that would allow more variety in character creation?  For example, broken out the races to allow more variety?  Is that even possible or advisable?

26 thoughts on “I understand that the character creation process as it is, is designed to be fun and is part of the DW experience,…”

  3. At first I thought this might be quite difficult but actually race it’s such a small part of DW mechanically that it might be pretty trivial. Either remove the race section from each playbook and have a common set of racial moves that players pick from. One per race. This makes race much more boring as racial moves become generic and not specific to class. Or write a custom racial move for each race for each class. This is more interesting as the move is specific to the class but is way more work.

  10. I’ve got a different solution for this: Backgrounds.  Basically, grab a compendium class at the start, based on your race, back story or fiction and develop it fictionally. Allows for a lot more customisation really early, and makes the races a bit more in-depth than just a single move. Pirate World backers should see a fairly big preview of this tomorrow 🙂

  12. I don’t think anything is missing.  I was just wondering if anyone had thought about opening up the game to allow for a greater level of customization.  I probably wont even use these rules, but I want them “just in case”.

  15. Well said Tim Franzke.

    My thoughts on customization choices in games like Dungeon World, and particularly Apocalypse World are thus: Players want interesting, meaningful choices in character creation. For some designers, the way to do this is to offer many options so people can tailor a character how they like it.

    That works great for some players, but is not the design philosophy of any AW based game I’ve seen.  The choices given in these tend to aim toward being evocative instead.

  16. From my perspective, the game and characters are already pretty dang customisable. Part of that is because in DW (and other AW-powered games) fiction is mechanics. This came up in another thread, but if Elves can see in the dark, then they do. If Dwarves can meld into stone, then they do.

    Not every race is listed as an option for every class. Personally I’m fine with this because the race choices available for each class are intentionally evoking the original D&D Red Box. If you want a Dragonborn Wizard, there’s no reason why you couldn’t chose one of the available choices and just call it a Dragonborn.

    Or, as people have suggested, write up your own racial options. I’m not thrilled with the idea of a “generic” list of races that work for any class, as they’d have to be be just that; generic. But making a new race for some of the classes is cool. As with all move though, try not to make them overly mechanical though. +1’s to stats and certain moves is pretty boring. 

  17. I saw it somewhere, but I can’t find it anymore. Basically, it’s a classless version of DW where you start out with the same stats (d6 damage, 6 or 8 HP, and so on. Similar to Class Warfare), and you had a pool of points to upgrade these stats. Then you basically drafted all of the moves  available to the basic classes. You had 5 slots, and basically anything magic-related eats up 2 slots, the rest 1. You sit in a circle and one by one go “I want this move for my character,” and then the next person chooses. This way, you can have a Wizard with Paladin features, and so on.

    EDIT: found it:

    https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6UICjDXSd9IMXdDcTBvcUVwdHc/edit?hl=en-GB&forcehl=1

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