Greetings:

Greetings:

Greetings:

Dungeon World was in my stocking this morning. I have spent the day reading the rules. Great game. Strongly narrative obviously. I’m having trouble with some of it.

Is there initiative?

In combat, if a player rolls 2-6, does the monster deal auto damage?

If the roll is 7 – 10, does the GM roll to hit?

Please explain the monster tags. Are they narrative flavor? Or do they have specific game mechanic effects? For example, the Ankheg. What do Undermine the ground, burst from the earth, and Spray forth acid do? When does a GM use them?

32 thoughts on “Greetings:”

  3. Welcome! 

    1) There’s no initiative. Players act in whatever order seems dramatically appropriate at the time.

    2) When a player rolls a 6-, the GM makes a move. Check out the list on page 165. Dealing the monster’s damage is certainly one option, but you can do just about anything else to make the fight more interesting. Cut off one of the PCs from the rest of the group. Have part of the floor give way underneath them. Knock them down under a swarm of kobolds.

    3) The GM never rolls the dice. A 7-9 result is basically a success for the player, but at a cost. There may be some side effects, complications, or only a partial success. One thing the GM can do in this case is make a softer move, which means that they set up for something bad.

    Hard move (6-): Something bad happens to you.

    Soft move (7-9): Something bad may happen to you, how do you react?

    4) Monster moves are GM moves that the GM can use in response to a 6-. Some of them establish an ability in the context of the fiction. A monster with the intelligent tag fights intelligently. As to what the moves do, what do you think would happen if someone got a spray of acid to the face? That’s what happens.

    DW can be a bit counter-intuitive if you’re used to other RPGs. I strongly suggest reading the following guide book, which may help clear things up.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3269630/dwdotcom/eon-guide/Dungeon%20World%20Guide%20pdf%20version%201.2.pdf

  6. The best way to explain gming dungeon world is this: remember all the times in RPGs when you weren’t rolling the dice or looking up combat rules? When you and the players were talking about what happens? Imagine that, but the game gives you broad inspiration for deciding what happens next.

    Monster moves are more specific versions of the broad GM moves that tell you how the monster behaves.

    The fm makes a move (has the world act or respond) when the players look to them to see what happens. It’s all based on the situation, and making judgement calls.

  7. Everyone else has already answer your questions, but just to reiterate.

    1) Nope. No initiative.

    2) If a player gets a result of a 6 or less, the GM makes a GM move. That’s regardless of the situation.

    3) The GM never rolls dice (except for damage). On a 7-9 result on a Hack and Slash move, the monster makes an attack. That can mean it deals its damage to the PC, but it could do something else.

    4) Tags, whether for monsters, weapons, or something else, are narrative reminders. That plate armor is clumsy; you can’t move well when wearing it. That warhammer is forceful; you knock your foes around when you hit them with it. The lich’s attacks are magical; it’s using arcane energy to attack you.

    What you’ve described with your Ankheg example are monster moves. They’re things the GM can have the monster do when they make a GM move.

  9. My favorite way of thinking about Dungeon World is by contrasting to other RPG’s rules for grappling.

    * Other RPGs: bust out the rules because no one remembers how grappling works.

    * DW: “Okay you’re now grabbing him.”

  10. OK, suppose a PC is engulfec by a cloaker or swallowed by purple worm. To escape, the PC makes a Defy Danger move? On 10+, he escapes. On a 6-, the PC is still being choked, or in the case with the purple worm digested for another 1d10+5 damage. On a 7-9, the PC escapes with a “worse outcome” possibly. More damage?

  11. Try to move past the idea that your only way to harm the PCs is by damaging their hit points. Being engulfed by a purple worm? 7-9 defy danger might mean they escape safely… but its stomach acid has eaten through their plate armor, rendering it a blob of useless, twisted metal.

  12. That all depends on how the PC is trying to escape john white. Against the Cloaker? Maybe they can just grab it and try to wrestle it off their face. Which would trigger Defy Danger with STR in my opinion. On a 10+ they pull it off, and on a 6- the GM makes a move. On a 7-9, they pull it off but only at some kind of cost as offered by the GM.

    I have no idea how a PC would survive once they’ve been swallowed by a Purple Worm. :/

  13. Something Christopher said I think deserves a amplifying: “I Defy Danger” doesn’t work. The player should announce what they’re doing, and if it meets the requirement for DD, ask them to roll it. Armed with knowledge of what the player is trying, it’s easier to figure out moves to use in response.

  14. Yeah. Alan De Smet raises a good point. In DW, you always always always have the player narrate what their character is doing. hen you determine if that narration triggers a move, and if so, what move is triggered. Sometimes different players will feel that different moves are triggered, or that no move is triggered.

    If I was GMing, pulling a Cloaker off your face would trigger a Defy Danger move. Maybe it wouldn’t trigger a move if Alan was GMing. Neither of us are wrong; we just have different interpretations of how things work.

  17. Looking at GM moves, only two seem to apply: use a monster move, or deal damage. If its the cloaker choking the PC, does the PC take constriction damage of 1d10? It was suggested above to not always think just in terms of hp loss. What are other possible outcomes besides hp loss?

  20. What seems plausible? Try using the GM moves as a brainstorming tool. Here are what I quickly came up with.

    Exactly how appropriate any given one of these is will depend on what’s going in the game and the sort of game you want to run.  These are pretty aggressive for my style; I’m assuming a roll of 6-.

    Reveal an unwelcome truth – “Alice, while Bob is struggling with the cloaker, you hear a rustle above. Glacing up, you can see that the ceiling is covered in cloakers.”

    Show signs of an approaching threat – “In the distance, you hear shouting. Something about ‘Intruders in the cloaker room.'”

    Deal damage – “You’re running out of oxygen. Take d10.”

    Use up their resources – “The cloaker’s stomach acid is dissolving your backpack.”

    Turn their move back on them – “You tug on the cloaker, but it slides further around you, pinning your arms to your sides.”

    Separate them – “The cloaker flails about, knocking you down and over the steep slope.”

    Put someone in a spot – “The necromancer raises his dagger, about to stab the young prince who is tied to the altar.  Oh, and Bob is still being choked to death by the cloaker. What are you doing, Alice?”

    Tell them the requirements or consequences and ask – “You’re certain you could cut it off your head, but you’re going to cut yourself, badly.”

  22. Alan De Smet ‘s comment is an excellent exercise. The GMing chapter advice is very good, but it takes some time to digest. It’s a good idea to practice applying the principles and using the moves by coming up with a situation and then brainstorming different things to do with it.

    I would further agree that in DW, fiction is king. That means that the important part is the story you tell with the other players, not the numbers on the sheets. Don’t look at moves as a list of powers at your disposal. Rather think of them as ways for the game to react to your actions. A character does something in the story. If their actions trigger a move, the move happens, and the world reacts according to the results of the move.

    Confused yet? This may be a bit difficult to wrap your head around at first. The best way to understand is to look at a few examples.

  23. In addition to the examples that Alan De Smet provided, there are two really important GM moves that it took me a while to appreciate:

    Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities

    Offer an opportunity, with or without cost

    Neither of these moves are “bad”, but they highlight your role as a GM: to give the players interesting choices to make. Sometimes you do that by harming them (to see how they react and survive), and sometimes it’s equally viable to do that by dangling shiny carrots and seeing whether they take the bait.

    Some examples:

    Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities – If your thief PC is trying to wrestle his way out of a purple worm’s maw, that might trigger defy danger+STR. Maybe the dice say he’s not strong enough. You turn to the wizard and say “Don’t you have a levitation spell that could pull the rogue out?” Or you look at the fighter and say “It would take superhuman strength to burst out of a worm’s jaws.” Or you look at the Paladin of the Sun and remark, “The worm isn’t letting go, but it’s a subterranean creature. Maybe sunlight would change its mind.”

    None of these moves really make the rogue’s situation any worse, but they do help guide the players’ next actions.

    Offer an opportunity, with or without cost – “Okay, you manage to pry open the worm’s jaws. You’re about to slip free when you notice the hilt of Temorin’s Eternal Sword glinting in the bowels of its stomach. If you let the worm swallow you, the sword will be yours.” Again, you didn’t actually make their life any worse; the PC could say “Screw that” and escape without penalty. But really, the penalty has changed to “Losing fabulous loot.” And we all know what drives players.

    I just started GMing Dungeon World in October and it’s still a learning process. One thing that I (and my players) struggled with was the idea that GM moves don’t have to be related to what triggered them. If a player tries to muscle out of a worm’s jaws, rolling a 4 could mean they succeed but the floor caves in, plunging them into the abyss; or maybe the worm releases them to pounce on the unsuspecting wizard; or nothing bad happens that they can see, but back in the capital, the king has just been assassinated by his advisor.

    For a while I started explaining the players’ rolls as karma engines. 10+ means good karma, 6- is bad karma, and 7-9 is some of each. When I make my GM moves, I’m spending that karma, but my moves can point wherever I need them to.

    Lately I’m thinking of the dice as a compass. 10+ means that the players are in total control of how the story advances at that moment. 6- means I pick how the story advances. 7-9 is a compromise; maybe the story heads towards a destination they want, but not in the way they want.

  24. As for a cloaker choking a PC, 3 failures is a lot. What are they trying to do?

    If the player says “I wrestle it off me,” let them defy danger+STR the first time and make a move when they fail (it strangles them for damage, it crushes their enchanted sword, etc).

    The next time it’s their “turn,” if they say “I try again,” tell them “Your feeble strength strength is no match for the beast; what else do you try?” They’re no longer triggering defy danger because their actions have no reasonable chance to succeed. But they also don’t “waste their turn” by coming up with a failed idea; just help guide them to the idea that they shouldn’t spam one strategy until it works.

    If they stare at you with a blank look, offer help. “You realize that acid rain is dripping from stalactites on the ceiling. If you time it right, you might be able to roll under one and burn the cloaker.” If they try that, now they’re using reflexes (+DEX) or maybe quick thinking (+INT).

    If they fail, maybe they take acid damage but it still burns the roper off of them. Or maybe the floor is rotten and they plunge through. Even though they fail while rolling to escape a cloaker, you can still let them progress past the cloaker to a more interesting (and more dangerous) scenario.

  26. Just to reiterate, because I only saw it mentioned once so far: if someone rolls a failure, the GM makes a hard move of their choice that advances the fiction – it doesn’t have to “hit” whoever failed, it doesn’t have to belong to the monster of challenge in question, it doesn’t even have to be in the same room if you don’t think that works.

    When someone rolls a miss and nothing interesting immediately occurs to you? It is kosher to scribble a note of something bad happening elsewhere and keep the game moving.

  29. This comment from Kevin Bishop is right on the money:

    “Lately I’m thinking of the dice as a compass. 10+ means that the players are in total control of how the story advances at that moment. 6- means I pick how the story advances. 7-9 is a compromise; maybe the story heads towards a destination they want, but not in the way they want.”

  30. Eric Lochstampfor  Link takes me to 403 then 404. 🙁

    This thread by the way has been gold for me. We only play monthly, so we’ve only played 3-4 sessions.

    Thank you everyone.

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