So I’ve been playing with the Perilous Wilds rules for my Planar travel campaign and I do think they are great, but from what I am gathering it sounds like my players kind of want a lot more of a focused adventure then just randomly pottering about various locations. Is there a way to marry the two game styles, how would you go about keeping exploration but making it a lot more “adventure” focused?
So I’ve been playing with the Perilous Wilds rules for my Planar travel campaign and I do think they are great, but…
So I’ve been playing with the Perilous Wilds rules for my Planar travel campaign and I do think they are great, but…
You can add in Fronts or adventure hooks to pretty much any campaign. I’m not sure I understand the difficulty – can you explain a typical session?
Well i think the problem is that they have gone into a planar thing and said we like travel and ive tried to make some locarions and stuff. So last session they pottered about the terrain they were exploring then they wwnt aomewhere else and said you have any quests, and then they went to the next place and said do you have any quests. So clearly they want more traditional adventure then im giving but because the planes are very loosly sketched im not to sure what to base it on.
Sounds like they asked for things and you said no. Why not give them what they want?
Cause I’m not to sure how you are supposed to combine the free flow we will go here and there of an exploration with the you got to do this this and this with an adventure…
Just because you give them adventure hooks doesn’t mean you’re not allowing them freedom.
As an example: let’s pretend the party is a group of guys trying to create a name for themselves. So they want to travel around and do good deeds and get the word out that they are heroes so they can retire in luxury.
They go to Town A on Plane A and say “hello villagers, what problems can we solve for you?” and the villagers say “we are normal villagers with no problems.” Of course the players will move on. They will continue moving on until they find a village that says “You can help us with THIS!”.
But you know what? They don’t have to like “THIS”. They might say “your rodent infestation is beneath us, good day villagers” and move on.
You combine the “free flow” with “adventure” simply by doing it and not forcing either. If they want to say “this quest is not worth my time” and move on, let them. If they want to abandon a quest in the middle, let them.
And then, for good measure, have the villagers they failed to help show up later for revenge.
I agree that fronts are the way to go. I love Perilous wilds, and I keep the random tables available for all adventures. But the fronts are a good way to give focus they say WHAT is going to happen, and why. But not how. The players fill in the how c
The rules in Perilous Wilds are all about simulating a hex crawl in DW-esque style. So you use those rules when the PCs are wandering off into the unknown, either just to see what’s there or because they’re trying to reach a known, distant point but it’s unclear what they’ll encounter on the way.
But if they get to a point and they pick up a plot line (“hey man, got any quests?”)… well, you run that like you run any Dungeon World experience: ask the characters what they’ve heard about X, make crap up, write up some fronts, ask what they do, etc.
Now, if the quest they go after is like “bandits raiding from the ruins a couple days out of town…” well now you go back to hex-crawling (i.e. using Perilous Wilds moves) to get them to those ruins. But now your dangers and discoveries are tinged with the knowledge that they’re going after a bunch of bandits in some ruins… maybe the danger they encounter is the bandits! Maybe they make a discovery of a caravan that the bandits sacked. Or, maybe the scout finds a shortcut and the navigator makes good time and BAM, they make it to the ruins before sundown and haven’t been spotted, what do you do?
I have an annual Con with old high school friends that I’m prepping right now using DW, Perilous Wilds, and a healthy dose of the classic “Keep on the Borderlands”:
* Perilous Wilds provides some great mechanics to build up a fiction around “hexploration” and generating regions on the fly (or with limited prep).
* DW provides the general framework through which we can build and interact with the world.
* Lastly, KotB is great for lending itself to fronts. As a first time DW GM, it’s fairly easy for me to see how various factions in the module can become fronts that have a life of their own and proceed in the background.
Now throw in some of Paizo’s Kingmaker hexcrawl, replace the chaotic temple with a Mind Flayer, and take inspiration from the excellent King For A Day setting by jim pinto (imagine: this is like a social sandbox — a Hexcrawl for relationships. Best supplement I’ve ever read: http://www.rpgnow.com/product/112514/King-for-a-Day)...
Fortunately, my players don’t read G+
Matthew G. Not to derail, but I’d love to see how you plan to apply King for a Day to DW!
Aaron Griffin… hate to disappoint, but it was really a jumping off point that showed me how well fiction and fronts could work, even before I knew what DW or PbtA was. Reading King for a Day is like a master class in narrative RPG design… it’s like the best set of notes from a DW campaign about intrigue.
I’ve lifted some broader themes, but now I want to go back and re-read with a fresh perspective. It really is awesome.
(Is jim pinto on G+?. Edit: found him and hoping to spread the love postworldgames jim pinto)
Yeah I own quite a few of his games, and has has my money for three (!) Kickstarters
Have you seen David Guyll’s Sundered World? It might help.