Hey ya’ll! I’ve been using the stellar Minimalist Playbooks by Brennen Reece. I wanted to make a few tweaks, and with Brennan’s blessing, I’ll be putting these up for sale sometime early next week!
Before I do that, however, I wanted to field a few questions and get some feedback:
I’m looking to remove Character Creation Suggestions from the class playbooks entirely, while leaving just the space for entering the relevant info (Name, Look, Drive, etc.) What are your thoughts?
(I DO think that it is nice to have suggestions, so I’ll be including an attached Suggestions Sheet with a compilation of the various Drives / Backgrounds / Flags / Bonds, Etc.)
I’m prioritizing newer DW concepts like Drives and Flags over their original versions (Alignments and Bonds). But because I’ve simply included space for those, players should be able to use whatever they want.
I’m struggling to know whether or not I should limit the amount of Flags / Bonds per class. I’ve seen some discussion on the matter (that the number of bonds a class can have is one of their stats, i.e. Bard having the most bonds).
Personally, I think it is a little dumb to restrict the relationships players can have with each other because of their class. But I do see the balancing issue of limiting the amount of XP the player can get per session. Thoughts?
If you have implemented the ability to have multiple Drives and Flags. (Both of which I also enjoy). Then since you are already changing the normal information, then I don’t see why the normal associated rules can’t be changed alongside them. As oppose to doing Bonds at the end of session instead do the following bonus questions.
End Of Session (Modified)
1) Did you accomplish one or more of your drives?
2) Did one or more flags come into play?
*This eliminates the concern of loads of experience for each drive (Normally One Alignment) and each flag (Which can be triggered once or more per ally). To instead just gain 1 more exp per question that is answered “Yes”
RidersOfRohan Good suggestions! I plan on having an introductory sheet as well, so that would be a good place to include those amendments.
I would also add:
3) Did you engage the flag of another player this session?
Because flags are designed to have that incentive, to invite other players to engage.
I experimented with moving character creation suggestions to a separate page. I even had a chance to play test it with people who were not familiar with Dungeon World. It didn’t go as well as I hoped.
I did not explain to anyone that the “setup” sheet was just for character creation and could be discarded afterwards. I did this because I wanted to see if that would be intuitively obvious. I simply passed around the suggestion sheets along with the character sheets and walked everyone though character creation.
There was confusion on how to copy stats and modifiers. Some people got it right some people got it wrong. One person copied their starting gear to the character sheet, most didn’t. No one copied bonds. Everyone kept the suggestions sheet along with their character sheet during play.
My suggestions, which I never got around to implementing for myself :
1. Label the “suggestions” sheet as something like “Character Creation Worksheet” or something to clue people into it being disposable.
2. Put explicit instructions to copy things that you’ve chosen into a specific spot on the character sheet.
3. Maybe even put an explicit instruction at the end something like “You’re done with character creation, you don’t need this sheet anymore”.
4. Keep the stat->modifier chart on the actual character sheets.
Note these are probably unnecessary for veteran players, but for anyone new to DW or PBtA it’s what I would want to do.
Nick Nunes That is a good anecdote. Yeah, I plan on explaining the purpose of the sheet, and it is on the GM to make a system like this work, but there certainly is a beautiful simplicity to the original suggestions / checkboxes. Really helps the players walk through the process themselves. Perhaps I’ll make two different versions.
Nick Nunes (And I did add the stat mod chart to the character sheet! That is nice to have on hand as you level up)
Don’t mess with the Bonds. Bonds influence how good you are at Aiding/Interfering. You may think it’s silly, but it’s how the game works, and the more you custom rig your sheets, the less useful they are.
Alfred Rudzki I changed the Aid or Interfere roll to work like Defy Danger. Roll with a relevant stat. If the player isn’t guaranteed to have bonds, I made sure to disaccociate that.
When I play with new players, they often struggle with Bonds – at least at first. Once things “happen” in the fiction, they develop new Bonds with ease. I now use Flags, Bonds and Drives – usually one of each at the start.
I like the new aid/interfere move from The Forth World, which is more like defy danger, where the player chooses the stat they are using to do so. It makes the move much more usable
That way bonds are not needed anymore, since some of them are really hard to resolve during play as written. I like flags and drives way better.