So for my one shot session yesterday in dungeon world I kind of wanted something structured, something that would last the 4 hours have a satisfying session and a big bad guy at the end. So I decided to experiment with using the 5 node mystery design that Justin Alexander made : http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37903/roleplaying-games/5-node-mystery.
It went pretty well, I had basically 4 locations which each had various clues that pointed towards each other and each had a little mini “encounter”. The good thing about Dungeon World is.that its front loaded the players can roll spout lore and you can directly tell them it points to this place. This leaves the clues being very open to inspiration and changing them depending what tge players do. The nodes also.weren’t designed throughally, I just had cool ideas that would fit in the particular setting and went with it.
I.will have to see if it works for more canpaign, as I.said its a lot more structured, I didn’t have any fronts and basically kind of pushed each location and cut to it. But for a one shot I recommend it.
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37903/roleplaying-games/5-node-mystery
DW works just fine (great actually) in a more structured, less-improv adventure.
As some people have previously pointed out, if you’re playing with “strangers” it’s good practice to inform them of what to expect, rather than “As Written” DW, which is fair.
Well I think there has been an eternal debate of whether to improv or prep DW. I think this is the best of both worlds, you have your structure but within thst structure you can improv depending on what happens or what your players do falling back on the structure if your stuck.
james day yeah, it’s kinda like a soft-key adventure with improv where needed style deal. Which I think is largely how most GMs operate anyways really.
Improv-ing a mystery is super difficult, so you’d need SOME prepped concept. The five node structure allows you to make a set of clues that point to broad concepts.
For example: one clue could be the address of a small electronics repair shop. This can be gathered anywhere – off a box, from a person, etc. The “node” could then be at the shop itself, or maybe the PCs follow the owner to his home, or maybe they kidnap the guy as he leaves for work. Whatever happens, you can still have the owner produce further clues.
Yeah never thought of that but its something i should think about. Also you can use unused nodes for further adventures, in my session there was all these clues to a location my players never explored and at the time kind of didn’t really fit but definitely thinking in the future expanding on that and creating another adventure
Yeah, I think that the 5 node model is perfect for a Dungeon World front. I recommend looking in to countdown clocks using in the Apocalypse Engine if you want to find a way to light a fire under ‘investigators’ in DW.