I recently posted an imperfect poll in which I attempted to classify current Dungeon world adventures as old versus…

I recently posted an imperfect poll in which I attempted to classify current Dungeon world adventures as old versus…

I recently posted an imperfect poll in which I attempted to classify current Dungeon world adventures as old versus new style. For old style I was thinking something like Slave Pit of Drazhu or my own early work. New style would be Perilous Deeps or Joe Banner’s excellent short adventures. The feedback I’ve gotten most often is the best Dungeon World module is Indigo Galleon; which seems to be in a class by itself. So Dungeon Tavern patrons what sort of adventures do you want? Dungeon Starters, short adventures, conversions,Perilous Deeps, Indigo Galleon 2 (John Aegard, I’m looking at you!) If we could agree on some formats it would help our hobby and I think Marshall Miller’s Dungeon Starters really work. What else does?

For examples:

Check out:http://dieheart.net/useful-stuff/dw-resources/

Check out http://dragonsinmyhouse.blogspot.com/2014/01/dungeon-world-adventure-starters.html for some ideas. I’m afraid some of the links are down on this older site.

18 thoughts on “I recently posted an imperfect poll in which I attempted to classify current Dungeon world adventures as old versus…”

  4. I love that there’s no codified approach to DW adventures. I wrote Servants of the Cinder Queen in a mad rush because DW had blown my mind and given me a sense of structural possibility that I hadn’t previously imagined. Since then I’ve been pushing in different directions to see what pops, and Perilous Deeps came out of that investigation. Even within that book, the author of each dungeon takes an individual approach to the loose guidelines I asked them to follow, so each one feels different.

    I think that a more useful question might be, “What about approach A could be improved?” or “Which adventures using approach B are most successful, and why?” What specifically did John Aegard do in “Indigo Galleon” that makes it stand out from and work better than other adventure starters, and how can those specific things be incorporated into future adventure starters that use that same format? Which of the Perilous Deeps is most easy to use at the table, and why? Which is least successful, and why? Is the Perilous Deeps approach flawed in some basic way?

    I think it’s safe to say that DW culture will never develop a “standard” for adventure presentation, and I think that is awesome. As was pointed out in your map thread, the need for cartographic specificity varies from group to group and adventure to adventure, and everyone has a different interpretation of what “draw maps, leave blanks” means in play. The way individual tastes can be adapted and reflected so well in Mssr. Baker’s progeny is a terrific strength, and that carries over into adventure design.

    TLDR: maybe let’s drill down into specific examples to see what works and doesn’t work?

  5. I have yet to really use any dungeon starter effectively.  I have found that going in blind and letting the players set up what is going on (whether they know that’s what they are doing or not ;-} has produced the best sessions.

    I do, however, want to say the attached poster had me in stitches for several minutes!

  6. I’ve never used a pre-written adventure or starter for DW – one of the prime reasons I prefer the game is that it caters so well to winging it as we go along.  That said, I like the general format and size of Dungeon Starters, but they tend to be weak on the two things that I find most important in my own prep:

    * Interesting NPCs who want things, in conflict

    * Grabby events I can toss at players when I don’t know what happens next (what Ron Edwards used to call his “Bandolier of Bangs”).

    I think NPCs are fairly self-explanatory, but what I mean by “events” is the moral equivalent of “Ninjas burst in through the windows!” except with plot velcro attached.  Things like:

    * Three leg-breakers are looking for one of the PCs, who owes money to the thieves’ guild and is late on this month’s payment.  (Why did you need that money, anyway?)

    * A fat priest runs through the street and bowls over a PC.  A bag of gold coins spills on the ground.  A group of howling devil-masked warriors chases through the crowd.  (Other PC, you’ve seen one of those masks before.  When was that?)

    * An effeminate condescending lordling, followed by two hulking, mute servants, has heard of one of the PCs, and wants to hire her to break into a palace to leave a small ivory idol on a particular private altar.  He’s offering too much money, including part up front.  (Oh hey, other PC, you’ve heard of this guy. What do the rumours say?)

    Maybe they tie into the above NPCs, maybe they don’t, who knows?  Play to find out.

  7. I never heard of Indigo Galleon until right now, but it looks a bit like how I design my own sessions (though I do it day of).

    I summarize the setting, add 1-3 dangers which contains a list of events (a mix of foreground events to confront the PCs with and background events to just hint at), then sketch out 2-3 locations and 2-3 NPCs or monsters.

    So what this amounts to is a lightweight adventure front which I create during the first 10-15 minutes of a session from player input. I treat “events” more like Sorcerer’s Bandoleer of Bangs and less like vague Grim Portents. Indigo Galleon is the closest to this I’ve seen from someone else.

    In terms of format, what would provide me the MOST utility is if the pages after the first contained locations, monsters, npcs, and things in a format that I could cut out and use like index cards.

  10. Another way of looking at this: what stuff in published adventures do you never use with DW? What keeps you from using an adventure at all?

    For example, I really like Joe Banner’s work. I think it’s a neat world and he’s got a great sense of style and how the game works. But I’d probably never play any of them, because they feel so specific to that world he’s strung together. If I’m not down to play in that world, then I’m not likely to use those adventures. (Sorry, Joe.)

    But saying “they’re too tied to a specific world” is actually kind of lazy on my part. I haven’t actually done the analysis, but I’m wondering what it is in the adventures that makes them feel so tied to a specific world, enough so that it prevents me from wanting to actually use what I otherwise recognize as good content.

  11. Jason Lutes Makes some good points.

    Great Feedback from everyone in any event; keep it coming. I think that it justifies an imperfect poll. Some GM are going to go gonzo and others like some prep. That’s fair. That’s Dungeon World.

    Also we should all enter into a conspiracy to kidnap +John Aegard https://plus.google.com/113677679278469240206 and force him to write more adventure starters. 

  13. To the point of why things feel tied to a specific world, for me it’s often a combination of whatever proper-noun naming strategy is employed, combined with ties between the content of the adventure itself and the greater setting/world.

    Implying or suggesting things about the world beyond the adventure is fine, but I think the less detail on that front, the better. Suggestion and implication should be the order of the day, because it leaves room for the GM to find the connections between pre-written material their own campaign.

    Maybe there’s some way of formatting a DW adventure starter/module such that the areas of larger connection are more readily adaptable. Boiled down, I mean something like “The Temple of [insert name of local Earth Goddess here],” but more elegant.

    The naming thing I’m just personally super-picky about. Most of the time, I am immediately turned off by adventures filled with Generic Fantasy Names. But the flipside is that, the more specific and coherent your fictional culture, the less easy it is to integrate into preexisting campaigns.

  14. Jason Lutes, in most cases, “The Temple of the Grain Mother” really is nothing more than “The Temple of [insert name of local Earth Goddess here],” and you might be happier if you read it that way.

    Search-and-replace on names is pretty easy.  Porting to a new world is harder when there are assumptions built in about tech level or the ubiquity/rarity of magic.  Something set in a world like Dragon Age, where mages are actively hunted by a powerful paladin organization, is not easily portable to a world like Warcraft, where goblins run regular transcontinental service on magical airships.

  15. Mark Tygart thanks for your kind words! Alas, I have no plans to do another DW adventure — I only publish things that I use at the table and there’s no DW on my docket. But who knows what the future may hold?

    I wrote Indigo because, like Jason, I was captivated by the design language of fronts and dangers and so forth and they pointed to a new style of module writing.  For me, it was a reaction against the terrible (imo) linear-series-of-encounters design that predominates in the hobby. So what I want from a DW module is to see that exciting design language used well.

    For what it’s worth, my thoughts on adventure design have really mutated since Indigo. Nowadays when I DW I do it like this: http://tiny.cc/tight-dw-oneshots . (Oddly, this doesn’t use much of the DW design language at all!)

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