Originally shared by Adrian Thoen
Tim Franzke asked for a write up on my impressions of the Slayer class from Trenton Kennedy and Deanna Nygren ‘s beautiful Grim World.
I’ll plus in James Macartney for player impressions! I believe he built towards maximised damage.
I GMed an impromptu game of Dungeon World at James’ gaming bucks’s weekend. Other classes included the GW Shaman, the IW Captain and an edible Golem that resembled the Magic Pudding, and the independent class the Gladiator.
The Slayer took us a while to get paced well, but it was certainly an engine of destruction. James played up the thirst as an unreasoning bloodlust, and no foe was safe, even if they surrendered! A failure cascade did occur and make things hairy when there was very present danger and nothing to stab. This is where the class started to click, and if saw the concern in James’ eyes.
With the Slayer and Gladiator in the game, no monster or enemy stood for long, and my cowardly mooks were quickly surrendering to no avail as the Slayer killed them to slake his thirst.
The old friend was great, I love opportunities to create meaningful relationships between the pcs and the world. I was inspired by the advice in GW and had the bartender kidnapped when the motley crew got back to pirate town. The group went with the Slayer and murdered the thugs, and discovered that the Slayers mentor had put a price on his head for his bloodthirsty ways, creating a nice sub plot boiling away.
I think in the future, I would have made James describe the negative effects of the thirst when he took a debility, to embed it in the fiction and give him more flavour to work with.