I am very new to Dungeon World (and tabletop RPG / GMing in general). I have the rulebook, but it’s been out quite a while, right? Has there been much as far as addendums or changes that people commonly use that would be good?
I am very new to Dungeon World (and tabletop RPG / GMing in general).
I am very new to Dungeon World (and tabletop RPG / GMing in general).
My personal opinion: nope. The game is just fine as is and all you ever really need is that one book.
I feel a big part of that is because the rules are intentionally open to interpretation. Different groups can apply the exact same rule in different ways and all of them are “right” because they work for the group in question.
That also means people may feel completely opposite the way I do and will say there are other “must have” products/rules to make the game fun.
Agree with Chris. There are add-on products that I very much enjoy, but they’re all of the ‘additional content’ category, mainly more playbooks; the rules themselves are solid, and not really in need of tweaking. And even the extras I like, I wouldn’t qualify as essential.
Get to know the game, then add playbooks or supplements to taste.
i’d only put some playbooks out initially, based on the feel you want.
Look into flags as a potential replacement for bonds
I would definitely say that The Dungeon World Guide, while not “required reading”, is an immense help for someone looking to run Dungeon World (or really any PbtA game).
You can get it from the Download section of the Dungeon World website (dungeon-world.com – Dungeon World – Wave hands like a muppet)
My recommendation would be to get a group together, and play Dungeon World with the materials you get in the book, first. Get comfortable with the way the game plays.
Once your group has gotten into the “groove” of playing the game as written, consider adding Playbooks, custom moves, or other hacks that you can find online; much of it for free, much of it for nominal cost.
My primary reason to advocate learning the base game first is that this will give you a better understanding to evaluate those things you later add to the game. With so much fan content out there, it can be hard to determine what any addendum really adds to the game, or what the impact of certain changes might reasonably be.
Thanks for all the suggestions, this is exactly what I wanted to know. I wasn’t sure if there were any fundamentally broken aspects of the core book, but it sounds like it has stood the test of (some) time!
While someone could certainly break the game, I would say that Dungeon World is pretty robust. Lots of rules are essentially “do what makes sense for the narrative”, so they won’t break due to time.
Oh, sure; just make sure everyone’s playing with the same expectations about scope of action, and you’ll be fine.
Here’s my go-to example of what I mean: the Fighter has this move called Bend Bars, Lift Gates, which triggers when they “use pure strength to destroy an inanimate obstacle.” Question: is there anything in the rules that says what counts as an inanimate obstacle? They can break through a door, sure, but what about a door that’s solid iron? What about a whole collapsed building? How about a mountain? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUQcS4xhhqo
The most common way the game breaks (and this is true for pretty much any PbtA game) is when the people at the table have different answers to that question and others like it, perhaps without realizing it. But the beauty of it is that so long as you all have the same answer, and that same scale applies to every PC, then any answer is fine. Being able to adjust those dials is why you can use Dungeon World for super-gritty Darkest Dungeon style gameplay and super-heroic Final Fantasy style gameplay without really changing any of the mechanics.
Like Chris said, “do what makes sense for the narrative.” Just make sure you’re all on the same page as to what that means.
James Etheridge I remember one game in another system where we were attacked by an army of armored soldiers and my friend started carving up companies with their “cloud swords” after my character very sensibly ran and hid. We were definitely operating on two different scales. I have not tried to play dungeon world at the sort of epic level but it might be cool.