Hi. I’m new to Dungeon World and am going to give it a try. I’m just wondering though… Has anyone tried optional character creation methods? I was thinking about giving my players a choice… as far a generating the stats.
A – the method in the book.
B – Allowing them to roll 4D6 and drop the lowest die. Then assign those to the stats.
Which ever they choose they have to stick with. Any thoughts? Or should I just go with A till I learn the game better?
My first posting.
If t’were me, I’d stick to the book until you’ve got a better handle on the game mechanics in general 🙂 Remember the old adage: “You have to know the rules, before you can break the rules.”
The second method’s totally alright! The first one keeps them “balanced” lets characters make hard choices (what can I suck in?) but mechanical balance is not as important in Dungeon World as opposed to other systems anyway.
Option A all the way
The recently released Class Warfare takes “alternate character creation” in a much more radical direction.
Class Warfare is more about making your own custom class rather than assigning stats, though.
I such a newbie at this game. I don’t know what all is out there for it as of yet. Got the book, character sheets, move sheets, and GM cardstock panels to make a GM screen. Oh, and I’ve read the “Read and Understand Dungeon World”.
Warren Shultzaberger Don’t make a GM screen. You don’t need it. Just keep the GM’s principles, agendas and moves on a sheet of paper in front of you, with another sheet or notebook to keep track of fronts and threats.
Option A
Life is more interesting in DW with partial success rather than complete success. High stats makes complete successes easier. And welcome to the tavern!
If you roll 4d6 and drop 1, you have 3 Numbers. How so You assign those to 6 stats?
You’d roll the 4d6, drop the lowest, add the highest 3 to give you one stat. You’d do this 6 times generating 6 numbers to assign to the 6 stats.
Sounds time consuming.
And doing that is a bad idea, every level up a person can raise a stat by 1, your method breaks that.
Okay. So Plan A it is.
How does rolling 4D6 6 times at char creation break adding 1 stat point every level? I think people are clinging a little too seriously to default stat lines.
Rolling for stats doesn’t break anything. You just might get a super badass. Ask the table how they want to do it – don’t make the decision yourself.
From the sidenote of page 50
“Alternatively, if everyone wants a little more randomness then you can roll stats. Roll 3d6 and assign the total to a stat—repeat this until you have all your stats.
If you want something really random you can roll for stats in order (STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA). If you choose this method you get to roll before you choose your class.”
Honestly, balancing is not so important in Dungeon World. I could easily have tons of fun by playing someone with 3 in all the stats (if the rest of the group support me), so a totally random character isn’t a big deal.
But it is time consuming and could be frustrating for inexperienced players, maybe less used to weave a fun and entertaining story with a character costantly failing.
The stantard stat values are good to give you a character that’s very good in a pretty wild field of expertise (your “fighting character” will probably be strong, resistant and quite agile, your “magic character” will be intelligent, observan and charming…), with some less-than-good things added to round it up it offers quite a good balance between in-game gratification, XP failures and an angle of attack to the GM, and keeps the progression pace steady and pleasantly constant.
I suggest to use them for the first games, and then, if you want, go crazy when you have become a little more experienced and can accept a more different party and a different pace of advancment between the players.
A +3 in your main stat makes a real difference in the game. You’re succeeding more, sure, but your life becomes less interesting and you will gain less xp. This might become a problem if some characters have good stats while others have low ones.
You can do the traditional 3d6 type stat rolls if you like, but be prepared for someone rolling up a character that has no bonuses to their moves, or alternately someone that breaks the stat array defaulted in the rules as written.
You have to roll at least a 13 to get a +1 so you could have folk that have all stats less than that. A single plus is not that big a deal, they will just fail a bit more often and you’ll be making more moves (and hard moves as GM), although they will be marking XP more often.
If you are going to have folk roll the stats in order and not let them move them, you have to let them roll before choosing a class.
Class first, stats second could get you a character who will continually fail at his primary role and your letting the characters shine remember so that’s a bit contrary to the Principles. Your also forcing the players to play a specific class based on their stats (which may all suck) rather than their preference which is less fun for everyone.
If you do end up let ting people move points around the stats your pretty much allowing them to move closer to the default stat array anyway, so I’d just use what’s in the book.
Keep in mind that you level up more slowly if you have higher stats. Probably best to use the book method so everyone levels up at approximately the same rate.
That is an oversimplification though.Â