Taking advantage of winter break to work on PERILOUS JOURNEYS, my overland adventure supplement for DW, and I need some opinions.
So far, the sections I have are:
1) Intro
2) “Learn the Language” (glossary of terms and tags)
3) “Draw the Map” (collaborative mapping, different ways of making and using maps)
4) “See the World” (new and modified overland moves)
5) “Ask the Fates” (tables for generating wilderness discoveries and dangers on the fly)
6) “Trust Your Gut” (Agenda, Principles, advice for GMing wilderness adventures)
7) “Survey the Territories” (a selection of 8-10 sample regions)
My questions are:
1) Am I missing anything you’d like to see in such a supplement?
2) Of the above sections, which one excites you the most, and why?
6) seems the best to me.
Maybe add dangers of the wilds? Not monsters but rather hazards of travel or other natural dangers. I think of all the old movies from my childhood, quicksand seemed to be everywhere. I like 5) but I am a sucker from random tables.
It seems like there is very little for players? Though maybe it is covered in 4… I would be interested in maybe some compendium classes in the theme, and maybe alternate starting options for some playbooks? More details or kinds of hirelings which would be helpful on journeys? I’m trying to ponder now, but I’m excited by the concept!
Fr. Tom, in the terms of this supplement, “Discoveries” are things the PCs can find which are not necessarily dangerous, while “Dangers” are. Something like quicksand or a poison bog would be a Danger, and plenty of prompts for non-monster hazards will be included in the random tables.
Alexander Davis, great ideas — I have only pondered compendium classes briefly, but will give it more thought. And hirelings are a no-brainer, but I had not brained them! So thank you.
Jeremy Strandberg had a lot of cool ideas for hirelings. Which would be cool to have, if one were going on a Grand Expedition. Maybe we’re searching for lost cities made of pure unobtainium.
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Things I think would be awesome and useful:
1) regional starter kits: a map of a region, with interesting features labelled but not otherwise defined. Or not labelled, but with name lists to spur ideas.
2) weather moves; not sure what this would look like, but something to get me as the GM thinking about weather and seasons and how it might affect play and challenge the PCs
3) name lists for places: regions, steadings, sites, etc. bonus if they are grouped linguistically
4) maybe some magic items, spells, or effects related to travel. Linked portals, pathways into Faerie, flying carpets, ancient roads with lingering magic… that sorta thing.
“See the world” gets my creative juices flowing. I’d look forward to the collaborative mapping as well.
In my order of excitement:
5 I’m a sucker for tables and dangers/discoveries
7 I’m almost as much a sucker for story/adventure seeds.
3 I love collaborative map-building games. My kids and I had a really fun night with Dawn of Worlds (even though the rules are only ok – the concept is great). Also love the Quiet Year. And Microscope and Kingdom also seem like they could inspire.
4 This will depend on how “good” the moves are: Ie how quickly I can loop them into my game.
6 Important, but I’m not a sucker for them. In fact, I sometimes feel I need to incorporate the core agendas/principles more into my regular DW game…
2 Key I’m sure, but I’m not excited.
1 Also important but I’m not fired up. Maybe if you did it in comic form?
I’d love to hear about some exotic “overland” environments that could potentially be in the tables I guess.
Floating islands
Sea journeys
Modern geography, but the adventurers are from standard DW Medieval setting: Freeways; skyscrapers; shopping malls.
Also, I’m totally not opposed to more monsters.
Draw the map, See the World and Survey the Territories seem the most interesting to me because overland moves, collaborative mapping and sample resources are something I’m very interested in as far as making an interesting world quickly.