Been playing Dungeon World via Facebook messenger for about a week now, and I figure that’s enough time to call a session. Things have been crazy.
•There’s a cult of blood-alchemists
•They worship the Great Spirit of the Earth
•But they’re just using the spirit
•Most people don’t worship Spirits anymore
•Not since one Spirit’s Druid obliterated the Northwest landscape and petrified all life within
•Now they worship humanoid gods
•There’s monsters, but nobody knows where they come from
•Most people aren’t even aware of monsters, making them a big surprise
•The PCs were looking for clues about a local monster, but the blood-cult killed their one lead on a witness
•The blood-alchemist killer has even evading and brawling the party Druid most of the session, and that’s been pretty intense
•The Druid actually freely gave his blood to the cultist to get answers
•The Ranger had her blood ensorcelled and was thrown into a river where she nearly died
•The Bard has been dispensing mad wisdom on the blood cult – evidently gleaned from prying into her lover’s books? Oh goodness.
So from our first session we have:
•a blood cult messing with spirits
•friction between conservative spirit worship and progressive divine church
•monsters with mysterious origins
•cult amongst the nobility in the capital
•Druid gave away some blood
•Ranger has blood sickness
I just have to weave it all into fronts, including some more social elements that haven’t gotten a lot of screen time yet: like the Halk, the people to whom our Ranger belongs, who are outsiders who continue to worship the spirits, and are ‘permitted’ to live on the land — the Fisher’s Guild, a power in the local islands to whom the Druid was heir – some politics or duty versus integrity stuff involving the PC’s status as protectors of the throne.
It’s been a good game so far!
“•Most people don’t worship Spirits anymore
•Not since one Spirit’s Druid obliterated the Northwest landscape and petrified all life within”
Well that escalated quickly.
I shouldn’t have capitalized that instance of druid, I realize now.
In our setting, the Great Spirits – Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess style entities – have got some impressive power. Every once in a while, they anoint someone and that person becomes a druid (more or less as per the playbook). Its like being born under a portentous star, so some people say cool and others say burn the witch-child,
Out Great Spirits specifically embody the Druid’s land choices – since the player called The Open Sea a Great Spirit, I took that and reincorporated by asking about spirit relations between Towering Mountains and Whispering Plains.
In this case, I also asked the player why Spirits have fallen out of the cultural zeitgeist – specifically, what terrible thing did Blasted Wasteland do that ruined it for everybody?
The answer was: Wasteland became convinced that he deserved more than Mountains, Mire, or any of his similar siblings; his druid – known as The Blighter – performed a horrible ritual and so now the Northwestern lands are history.
So… Yes. Yes it did.