I GM’d my second session of Dungeon World today…
And I got it.
It’s so natural, so fluid, I might have overly stressed description a bit (literally a single combat encounter was the adventure) But other than that it was amazing!
At first the PC’s were tentative, not really sure how to roleplay, but after a few nudges and pushes, they started. And it rolled on from there. A Barbarian, Paladin, Cleric, Bard and Fighter. I do not recommend playing with so many characters because (at least in my case) I let 3 or so characters have the spotlight for long periods of time.
I want to thank those that wrote the Dungeon World Guide. Because that was what really allowed me to understand what was going on.
And GM moves? Effortless. Well, at the beginning. But after 4 hours of creative haul your brain begins to fry a bit.
Dungeon World is everything I ever wanted in a Tabletop RPG. Simple, fast, easy to use, and there is no stat clogging (which was what I dislike about d20. You find out midway through the session that there was some stat you forgot to use. Almost inevitable)
Thanks to the Tavern. You guys were a great help.
But most of all, thanks to the creators of Dungeon World.
P.S. How do you, speed up an adventure? I used lots of narrative but it all seemed to drag on a bit.
Glad you are having a great time Jasper!
The key to quicker parts of the adventure is to zoom out and clearly communicate what a roll means. Instead of “The orc swings at you, what do you do?” You set it up like “Between you and the room with the Crystal of So and So stands a gang of about 20 orcs. What do you do to handle this problem?”
Then let a single roll determine the entire outcome.
Fighter says he’s killing every last one of them.
Rolls a 10- They all die
Rolls a 7-9- Most of them die, but some go get “The big momma”
Rolls a 6- He gets captured!
In situations like this I like to see what other characters are helping with the effort and how, they roll an applicable stat, and suffer/benefit from the outcome.
In this way I ran a game with 10 players last night with three separate groups, and while it was not ideal to have that many players, it seemed like everybody had a good time.
Also we played for about 3.5 hours. In that time one group successfully set themselves up as the undisputed rulers of a territory, another group slaughtered a goblin infestation and looted every last chicken bone and ogre finger, and the last group travelled to a cursed tower and confronted stone golems guardians.
I’ve actually found five to be about the ideal amount of players using a mixture of zooming in and zooming out.
Good luck!
In re: speed.
One common pacing problem is sessions running like an episode of “24”: in real-time. If we are playing out a scene, there ought to be a reason we’re seeing this part of the story.
Tedious things, like political negotiations or hauling a subdued enemy back to the player’s homebase (or the other way around) can be compressed where only the fun stuff happens “on stage.”
If players stop triggering moves and just plod through a paint by numbers scenario, jump to something interesting.
Congrats on a fun session. I prefer a group of about 5, DW certainly makes it much easier to manage such a size even in combat.
One of the best GM moves you can make when there is a lull in the conversation is to put them in a spot. Aggressively shift the fiction and frame a new scene that fills their lives full of adventure.
This technique, in addition to zooming in and out, are your pacing standbys. Don’t let scenes drag. Cut like a director or editor and move on to the good stuff. What the ‘good stuff’ is is all dependant on what you and your group like to roleplay out in more detail. If folks are having fun, why rush?