I’m taking the plunge! I’ve been flipping through the DW PDFs (including the fan guide) on and off for about a month now, and I’ve decided to take the initiative and run a game for my co-workers.
After running a few sessions of L&F and it’s reskins, I feel pretty confident about running things on-the-fly. The game will likely be a one-shot, and I’ve got a rough idea of what the players could face, but I’m open to throwing it all out if character generation pushes it that way.
I think the only thing left to do for prep is monster familiarization, which should be easy enough if I limit myself to certain environments.
All that being said, If there’s any super tips you all have to offer, I’d love to hear them. (links to similar posts are fine)
Hey Benjamin!
My tips, though I’m sure you more or less know them:
1. Never underestimate the power of several goblins acting intelligently on home turf. An ogre in an empty hall can swing his club, but with Dungeon World’s narrative based rules on your side, you can have goblins popping out of trap-doors, swinging from ropes and bouncing off people’s heads just by saying they do.
2. Which leads into this tip, marry rooms and the monsters therein. A decent lead up to what was in a room I came up with once was part of a giant shed snake-skin hanging across a broken stone throne.
3. Drop questions to the players now and again about the world, what they answer will tell you what they want to come across.
4. Personally? I like to give out little letters/invitations before the game begins. Just a few lines to set the scene will do, and a few lingering questions; if you get one to each of them the day before the session, they’ll have ideas brewing and will hopefully talk amongst themselves about the whole thing. Party’s are at their best when they’re scheming.
5. Weapons in Dungeon World have “tags”, stuff like clumsy, fiery, holy. These are more often than not narrative tags, not game rule tags. You can just straight up make your own tags for the loot you hand out, and use common sense for when that tag comes into play.
Also!
These links might help…
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al9YJeTzgknAdGp6V0dGcXR5MEJ6am1xNVJYVHRLbEE&usp=sharing&hl=en&forcehl=1#gid=0
Equipment Tags by Isaac Keith and assorted other people.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R07KgGsjvv7QWphbVabSEV4H2xNGPw4WSiTj7XetUps/edit?hl=en&forcehl=1#heading=h.23d0eb3zz1wo
Some alternate race rules for when you’ve played a few times by me.
http://book.dwgazetteer.com/index.html
This site, great reference.
Great tips, Tony Ferron. And I actually grabbed a copy of that tags list last week or so. 🙂
No problem, and hey, just have fun!
The game went well! Much slower than I expected, but with all of us being new to the system, and 2 players being new to RPGs in general, it was a learning experience for us all. Enjoyment all around.