So I finally pulled the trigger on Dungeon World at my local game shop and find myself with a couple of questions. I remember reading somewhere about a bits and mortar type of deal for DW, but cannot find any details now. Am I misremembering? Also, are there any source books that are generally considered invaluable? Inverse World, Planarch Codex, and Perilous Wilds are on my radar, but I figured it would be best to ask people more familiar with the game.
So I finally pulled the trigger on Dungeon World at my local game shop and find myself with a couple of questions.
So I finally pulled the trigger on Dungeon World at my local game shop and find myself with a couple of questions.
I can’t answer about the bits and mortal deal, but I would not say there are any “invaluable” source books for DW. The game works great with just that one book.
Perilous Wilds is great if you want to wander and explore the wilderness.
What is “bits and mortar”?
Free PDF copy when you buy the physical copy from a local game store.
I am also not sure about Bits and Mortar, but the playbooks and basic moves are free in PDF. That’s really all you’ll need, since the players only need those sheets.
Echoing what others have said, you don’t need any supplements. Perilous Wilds and Planarch Codex are fantastic.
For Dungeon World this is also a handy site. It’s all the rules of the game in handy web site form for free. I heard about it recently on one of the older Roll20 YouTube videos where Adam Koebel was running the game. Very handy stuff.
book.dwgazetteer.com – Dungeon World
Bits & Mortar is a deal your LGS needs to be participating in. If they participate, you just let them know you also want the PDF, and they should be able to email it to you/
I know on the official site you can get the physical and digital combo. But not sure about LGS.
Truncheon World from Red Box Vancouver … essential! And basically anything Red Box does. Its super fine. The free read and understand Dungeon world is also essential.
Perilous wilds is great for procedural wilderness exploration. Planarch codex is like the distilled spirit to DW’s fine wine: DW is an acquired taste (that once you acquire is hard to do without). PC is everything good about it in a condensed shot to the gut. Inverse World is pretty meh. Like one cool playbook. Preferred A Sundered World (and pretty much all Awful Good Games stuff) for interesting playbooks and how it breaks out racial moves from class. Grim World is pretty well respected. The playbooks and death moves are first rate. Class Warfare is cool for how it teaches you to deconstruct a playbook, but it’s mostly a huge collection of moves that are wildly unbalanced. You’re better off just writing your own playbook than cobbling together specialties.
Of course, George, you can find a ton of “starters” and Playbooks, for free, in the net. Lot of them are well done.
My suggestion for paid products: almost all the David Guyll stuff (I loved his undead Playbooks, also the Witch, the Theriantrope, the new Bard, etc. I hated only the Vancomancer). The Mages “package” from Jason Randolph. Grim World is ok, cool extras (lot of races, death moves etc.). Sundered World it’s well done, with a lot of detailed points, and a pretty “alien” setting.
Very very nice for campaign inspiration, the Perilous Wilds and the related products. I’d start with those one. Avoid Inverse World, it’s pretty bland, and lazy work. Almost no details, few stuff, bad design etc. Only some playbook is playable (also very powerful in comparison to the standard ones, so you can’t easily mix them).
PS edited post, I made a mess with text.
Your most valuable resource is your imagination. Beyond that, the base book. And beyond that there is a ton of free stuff online. As a GM, I recomend that you take advantage of the monsters, creatures, and NPC builds online. They will give you a bit of a baseline for some of the creatures, don’t ignore the descriptive text. Being a narrative system you will need that information to run the creature. Follow the Font advice in the main book.
That’s about it.
I always plug Mounted Combat when someone asks this question, because it does what it does just fine.
I’ve been running the game for the last year at my local hobby shop. I have used almost exclusively the main book, though for the second campaign I allowed outside classes to be used. Thus, we have an awesome Kobold character joining our Ranger, Thief, and Bard.
Well, I think that a GM will need some extra playbook, if he wants to run varied campaigns. One of the DW “weak points” is that (my) players found a little boring to play again with the same playbook, more than play again with the same class in other RpGs. This is probably because you have less thinking abilities, and while the narrative part is surely helpful, the “crunch” part isn’t.