We ran our second episode of Johnstone Metzger Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn back at the end of November.
My thoughts on episode 1 can be found here: http://goo.gl/ZQTYMq
A horrible unedited mashup of my game notes and the scene breakdown throughout episode 2 can be found here: http://goo.gl/w03226
We ran into a few frustrations, especially for the players of Space Wurm and Moonicorn. I was leaning on the “never speak the name of your move” Principal of Dungeon World to mean that I shouldn’t make explicit what elements or NPCs or whatever in the game were part of any given Front.
I believe they found this frustrating because it made it difficult to tell if they were progressing towards their win conditions or flailing around in the dark or drowning or what. To me, it was obvious they were doing all sorts of awesome Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn type things and tackling all sorts of fronts related to the parts of space that were challenging them, but once they pointed out how they felt I could definitely see where they were coming from.
In our post-mortum the next day, I made the fronts so far explicit to the players:
The Imperial Throne
Danger –> The Braintrust
Danger –> Task Force 100.100, “the Centurions” led by Admiral Sartorius
Danger –> The Astral Gate on Shebar
Interstellar Transport
Danger –> The Stardust
Danger –> The Stardust Heretics
Danger –> The Shadows that Swallowed Utopia
Cybernetics
Danger –> That dark secret part of Third Eye Cybernetics that paid the Stardust to divert ‘the Chrome’ away from it’s destination into the hands of the Imperial Republic Navy at Shebar. These people haven’t been seen on screen yet.
With this list obviously being added to as ideas pop up and events play out during the game.
It became clear that Moonicorn and Space Wurm had both defeated a danger, so we’ve decided to address that at the start of Episode 3, which is tomorrow night!
At this point, I’ve got some cool ideas going forward, and I’m excited to see how these defeated dangers play out, so I’m feeling hopeful.
#Moonicorn #Spacewurm #spacewurmvsmoonicorn
Hmm. That’s a good point, and I remember the same feeling playing AW sometimes, not knowing how important different elements were. I think it’s totally OK to explicitly state which elements are dangers and which are just incidental. Also remember you can make dangers explicit by introducing their leaders, who should trigger Moonicorn’s being hunted move (if you haven’t done that yet).
Playing DW with “win conditions”? What dark sorcery is this?
Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn is Johnstone’s space fantasy adventure mashup of Dungeon World and Monsterhearts. The playtest package was released as part of the Monsterhearts Second Skins kickstarter. It is seriously cool. http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/18485/more-science-fantasy-stuff-for-dungeon-world
So about win conditions: Spacewurm is a galactic Tyrant, she controls 2/5th of the galaxy. She wins when she gains control of all of the galaxy. Moonicorn is a universal free spirit. She’s being hunted by 3/5th of the galaxy. She wins when she defeats enough bad guys to escape for good, without compromising her Integrity. The other players are their friends, lieutenants and confidantes, who are each in charge of their own thin slice of the galaxy, or in love with both of them, or spying on one of them for the other or what have you.