Here’s a general query for DW game masters who have experience in one-shoting adventures. Particularly tagging John Aegard because he has chops in this area.
My new job at a game store is giving me the opportunity to run some indie games on a semi-regular basis, with the caveat of course being that the games need to be ones that they can order for customers. DW is probably the best gateway drug for the indie scene that is also not gonna be filled with material not suitable for younger players (read as: no sex moves like in ApocWorld or Monsterhearts).
Thing is, my time slot will probably be something like two to three hours every couple of weeks, and with a possibly irregular and changing turnout. So, I need a good way of either making a quick one-shot experience, or making a way that would allow for continued adventures but with players changing all the time.
My initial thought is to treat it like a MMORPG (or at least as presented in shows like Log Horizon or ./Hack), so whoever shows up that week are the characters present for that particular “event.” Also thinking the characters would be pre-made, with custom sheets that explain more of the nuances of how their characters work and how it interacts with their Moves. So, perhaps, more like arcade characters that won’t really change much, but probably players who return could try out a whole different character the next time.
Are there better ways or ideas of how to run something like this?
What about doing the “Living Dungeon World” thing? Make each event self a self-contained one-shot, so that different people playing different character from week to week isn’t an issue. But keep a whiteboard of setting stuff that’s generated in each event, and have that influence the world at large. New players won’t be at a disadvantage, and repeat players will get to see their answers and actions have an effect on future games.
I really like Christopher Stone-Bush’s idea of accumulating stuff on a public document! How about accumulating stuff on a map instead of just on a whiteboard? I bet that you could make a beautiful map that would accrete into a cool ongoing campaign setting and perhaps serve to attract players to the game.
I wonder if you could write setting authoring meta-moves into the game? _When you name a god or a city_ choose two from this list: mighty, ascendant, declining, patron…
I’ve done two-hour pure-improv games using a radically cut-down version of my Dragonslaying on a Timetable method and I can talk more about that if it sounds useful. You could easily accumulate a shared campaign out of multiple sessions of my method.
That said, I don’t know if I’d sweat worrying about continuity until repeat players started to show up. And as a player I’m always wary of coming in halfway into something that’s got established backstory and mythology.
Jason Morningstar and I were talking about how he does two-hour DW demos over here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113677679278469240206/posts/LcezMVsSoXS If you want to strongly drive the experience as the GM, I bet that his advice will be very useful!
I’d be interested to see what more teachable DW playbooks would look like! I think that the DW character sheets actually explain themselves pretty well for my purposes, though they do have some usability issues.
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I’m justabout to release Luncheon World; an addon based around making Dungeon World adventures pick-up-and-playable in a really short time. Definitely aimed at less than two hours (ideally a lunch break!), but there’s similar ideas: Owen Briggs has written some pre-defined playbooks that are really short, based on the Pirate World classes. I think it’d work really well with the base DW classes too, but I definitely don’t have time to try making those right now!
Christopher Stone-Bush Sorry G+ only allows me to plus one once.
That said, I would not use pregens since DW character creation is part of the roleplaying experience. It is too much fun to leave out!