I was digging around in my file bin and found this diagram I made a while back to explain how Dungeon Starters fit into Dungeon World’s GM prep and I thought I’d share.
(Questions, comments, and curse words are all welcome forms of feedback.)
I was digging around in my file bin and found this diagram I made a while back to explain how Dungeon Starters fit…
I was digging around in my file bin and found this diagram I made a while back to explain how Dungeon Starters fit…
My only comment: this is exactly how it works for my games; save the starter part (I’ve never used one). But the way you’ve laid out fronts and sessions is exactly how I’ve been doing it, which is nice.
Dungeon Starters (and this diagram) were a response to seeing people desperately wanting to write fronts before the first session.
I find that fascinating – what is AMAZING about this game is that it doesn’t need prep for the first session! Of course, it is entirely dependent on who is playing, so of course it is still awesome that you can use them as well.
I agree with Yochai Gal: I‘ve never used them, too. But I can understand why it is so funny writing them; I would write some of them, too, if I wasn’t too busy playing. XD
This is great, Marshal… thanks for sharing! I might steal this (with modifications) for Stonetop.
I assume that, in practice, the Third Session >> Fronts (Revised) >> Fourth Session >> Fronts (Revised) >> etc. A loop, basically?
Any thoughts on when/how to go “back to the source” with another adventure starter? Like, do you ever do that? (I haven’t, but I’ve wondering about it…)
If you want to structure your setting that way, I could see doing a new starter for each region or planet or ecosystem and then making sure to include a couple details that tie-in from one to the next. When you go to a new continent or whatever, you break out the new Starter to inform your play but don’t forget about your existing fronts from where-ever you left. Looking back, I wish I had had more interconnections in the ones that I made. See the Fabled Lands gamebook series, the books are structured that way.
The only thing I might add is that sometimes you can use a starter mid-stream to revitalize as well as kick start a campaign.
Inspiration for page 3 or 4 of a GM workshop slideshow…
Matt Horam I’d love to see that when you complete it!
I love this!
Personally, I really like connections back with the prompts embedded in the rules on the character sheets…
So as in Jeremy Strandberg’s question about introducing new starters, they are far more invested if they are more than just GM Interest. Marshall Miller’s advice on interconnectedness is gold here.
In the past I have made brief starters as prep in the vein of Jason Lutes’ advice in Perilous Wilds under Almanacs: Dangers / Discoveries / Plumb the depths. It doesn’t need to be much, or as extensive as a two page starter, but say the Druid’s or Barbarian’s homeland, or the Paladin’s Temple, or the Thief’s Guild is threatened off screen as a ‘sign of an approaching threat’, then that is PERFECT segue into the next starter.
I like the starters to be available on index cards or sticky notes on the map as meta knowledge for the players to peruse – with impressions, provocative stakes questions and maybe a custom move (thus piquing their interest). Especially if you provide them as ‘ugly choices’ to the players: ‘Sure you can overthrow the political machinations of the thieves guild, but meanwhile the Druid’s arctic homeland is being devastated by the Iceworm.’
Nathan Roberts ^This concept (ugly choices between story threads) is what we need to bring to the first #EttinCon WorldBuilding meeting. Adventure is compulsory when threats are Whack-a-Mole.