I’m running a Dark Sun game using Dungeon World and Travis Stout’s classes/monsters/equipment, filling in the blanks with bits I can find online and what I can come up with from the old source material. I have to say it was probably the best first session of any game I’ve ever run (first time running DW, but have been running AW for a few years) and I am so loving it, but honestly even with like a bit of experience I’m really only just now hitting my stride with this system. I’ve been super hesitant for custom stuff and basically am sticking to what I’ve got and maybe that minimalist collection of compendium classes and the grim world compendium classes. For monsters and their moves I’ve had some fun writing up Dune Reapers and stuff. Also, charging 25 coins per 5 rations is really driving home the whole desert vibe. I’m just hesitant to introduce custom moves because it’s the one part of the system I’m not confident in my ability to kind of roll with and be able to stick to the principles with. I’ve read through what desert related dungeon starters I could and that’s helping a bit, but any suggestions would be great.
Party so far is a Mul Gladiator, Dwarf Fighter, Elf Bard, and Human Water Cleric. Lots of intrigue and chaos already.
Awesome! Glad to see those things are still getting use! 🙂
You don’t need to make custom moves. Do you want to make them because you think you should, or because there’s some particular aspect of the world you want to represent as a move? If it’s the latter, start by thinking about what the thing is. What’s special about the desert environment? What do you want to highlight in this game?
(Incidentally, “when you buy 5 rations in the desert, it costs 25 coin” is totally a custom move.)
(Edit: Much of this comment is to say, don’t put excess pressure on yourself.)
So there’s some custom move advice from me: start with the fiction; think of your themes.
You might also be able to address some of those fictional and thematic desires by tweaking existing moves. Adding a 7-9 option here or there can be a relatively low-stakes way of seeing what works.
Travis Stout Dude, it’s EXACTLY what I was looking for
Hamish Cameron Wow, I’ve got Travis AND the creator of The Sprawl (which I have also played and is great!) Awesome, I will totally keep that in mind. I mean, I used to like teach creative writing a bit and so far everyone is loving the stuff I come up with. I just didn’t know if I explicitly NEED to do custom moves, because for me most of the time I’m looking at ones that people post it’s like nah that would work better with one of the base moves. So I’m just really not sure. Maybe a modification of Undertake a Perilous Journey for assigning positions to drive a Sand Skiff?
Haha, thanks!
I imagine all the same general rules from creative writing apply specifically to move writing. But most importantly, have fun with it and don’t be afraid of rewriting what doesn’t work!
The podcast Discern Realities often discusses custom moves, if that’s not already on your radar.
Really my biggest concern (because I’ve done it once or twice before) is sort of jumping the shark with what I let them do and have it kinda be a snowball from there once they want to keep all their broken awesome moves or whatever
Start with really specific moves that only apply in, say, this single town, single dungeon, just this one NPC. Then if it doesn’t work, you can just write that person/place out of the story, and if it does, you can expand it generalize.
Victor Diaz I’m mostly just using this guy’s rearranging of Travis’ stuff: https://geneome.com/2013/06/05/dark-sun-canon-and-dungeon-world-characters/. So I guess it’s more accurate to say I’m using Travis and Geneome’s efforts here.
The link has playbooks in a PDF and some monsters and stuff. He also did a Dray compendium class.
geneome.com – Dark Sun Dungeon World Characters
I’m letting them fill in the blanks a lot and/or pulling from the source book when we find new locations so I’m recreating the sketch in hexographer format after each session.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/SAhelUXx3Kfl-DcciFOtmCylINAbajANWSAlsCpVDwUkSdO3zJ71TerZSHNAIlEWPrm2AcRPSu9BaRS_bZGR8sMkjG6-TosHN_Y=s0
As for some of my stuff:
Dune Reaper Warrior
horde, medium, intelligent, organized
bite/arm blades b[2d6] close 3 piercing
5 hp 3 armor
Instinct: Devour and breed
-Lay eggs in live hosts
-Burst from chest Alien style
-Grab/drag victims
-Coordinate strikes
-Wait and stalk
One of my players fired up photoshop and used my rough map as a reference to create this fantastic gem that will be updated between sessions based on the sketch map:
(Seriously I’m super impressed with how he just came up with this out of nowhere)
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/h0YBR8b2sUKtoSroskn3X3fiN4Bhkz4cXtzkTc64NNVMi4_KuKfXkDFKLcgJ1vrhvuCNovQNeAR6rTT1KSoeOWvfxOGe_gyQDNY=s0
Okay, so session 2 was great, and ended naturally at the beginning of a dungeon. I now get to sort of design the ziggurat where King Kalak may still lay dormant or something. Any suggestions for moves or dungeon layout etc?