Do you ever get this problem? Going to start a new Dungeon World campaign with my firends and I have a million ideas I want to try, do I just do traditional megadungeon? Do I do noir style city campaign? Do I go totally weird? I have no idea…how am I supposed to make a first session when I want to make 10 first sessions. And the players are not helping there like, we are ok with anything.
Do you ever get this problem?
Do you ever get this problem?
Not sure what advice to give about that specifically. When I ran my Dungeon World game (first and only so far, but I plan on running it again), everything was collaborative from the ground up. The players made there characters, and the first question I asked either of them was, “Are you from here, or somewhere else?”
The player looked at me confused. “Where’s here?”
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
And we went from there. The whole world sprang up around the fact that these characters lived “here”, a large city connected to a forest that, as such, had a large lumber industry. I threw in a bit of classic orc slavers and boom, we had a game.
Eh, chances are your players aren’t okay with
anything! Maybe they just need some help digging deeper. In the vein of something like Spark RPG, start collecting ideas of media, genres, or tropes that the players volunteer, then collectively find ways to mash them up that is satisfying. They’ll be more invested because they helped contribute.The only campaign you need to worry about running is the one your players define by answering your questions. Don’t ask them “What kind of game do you want to play?”, ask them things like “Cleric, why did you decide to make camp in the skull of a demon lord?” or “Ranger, of all the dangers you expect to face while traveling through these mountains, what is the very worst?” Make the questions interesting. Make them ones that can’t be ignored.
Yeah but doesn’t Dungeon World say start in the middle of the action and ask questions. Well the middle of the action has to be defined somehow and thats what I’m struggling with, what I should give them because the start of all those thing would be different. And those questions already define you to a start.
https://plus.google.com/+OliverLind1/posts/EkRq1W5Qsqc
DW starts with character creation before anything else. During character creation, the players (and GM) should all work together to figure out what sort of game you’re playing, what the world is like, and how the characters fit into that world. Only then do you start in the middle of the action, based on the answers the players have already given you.
The post I linked above helps the DM set some world creation boundaries by providing several interesting choices in several categories. Figured it could accommodate some of your multiple ideas while remaining “in game”
Sounds like your players appreciate your creativity and your passion. If you’re not sure which piece of creativity to run with, you can let your passion be your guide instead.
– Start with what you most want to do at the moment – that will give you a foundation to build from.
– Then *play to find out what happens,* adding whatever ideas fit your game as you go along.
Or you could just give yourself permission to propose an outrageous game that includes everything you want to do…
“Ok guys. It’s a noir style city game, except the city is a megadungeon that has some weird stuff so it functions like a city, kind of.”
“What sort of weird stuff?”
“I don’t know. How about monsters run each area like gang territories, but common services like law enforcement (what there is of it) and deliveries are handled by demons who can magically go anywhere. If you get the right passes you could go anywhere too – provided you don’t piss off the wrong people/monsters/whatever. Otherwise you’ll have to fight, sneak or negotiate your way through. Oh yeah, and there are growing rumors that some serious shit is going down soon, but no one can tell you what it’s going to be, only that it’s going to be bad … as if surviving in this place wasn’t hard enough already.”
“I’m in. Sounds like fun. :-)”
Yeah think I might go simple again and just start in a neutral area like a prison or something like that and build the world outwards from that.
Building outwards is great.
Regarding starting in the action, questions like the following (from the latest draft of Steampunk World) may help:
i. Where are you?
ii. Why are you here?
iii. Who or what here is important to you?
iv. What has just gone wrong?
v. What important person/thing/goal is in the greatest danger right now ?
I’ve used the Interludes mechanic from Savage Worlds, where each player draws a card and the suit dictates a theme of their backstory: clubs = violence, hearts = passion, diamonds = wealth, spades = ambition.
So player who draws a heart tells a vignette of their lost love who disappeared exploring the goblin caverns under the city.
That sounds cool. I will say one of the challenges im going to hsve with this coming group is getting them to open up and come up with things since they are all new to RP and are not to sure what to do.
I GM for a group of kids aged from 12-17, mainly boys…they ain’t known for being in touch with their emotional, creative muses. Interludes work well, with a little gentle prompting, since everyone’s expected to do it.
We have a “campfire chat” at the start of each game session, where the PCs in-game are stopped for a meal and get to spin a little of their backstory…
Oh not saying their not totally uncreative but they need like certain paramaters. I don’t thi k there the types of players to make stuff on their own
james day They’re not supposed to “make stuff on their own.” You, the GM, ask them lots of questions, and use their answers. The questions set the parameters.