Has anyone used The Villager playbook with Class Warfare?
I want my group to start out with humble beginnings and to get invested in their local environment so I’d like to use The Villager.
My group like the idea of Class Warfare and I wonder if it may make classes which are a little too weird to have started out as a Villager.
Have you seen Funnel World?
drivethrurpg.com – Funnel World
I’d be interested to hear how it goes. My group has thought about a similar game using class warfare where everyone owns a shop in a town and there is some type of threat upon them.
I’m aiming with the setting. I’m looking for a kind of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Ghibli-ish game. Putting a ton of small PC’s through a grinder and seeing what survives feels a little too tonally dark for what I’m aiming to establish in the setting.
It may be that a short time jump may be necessary to reflect people’s training or evolution into their new forms.
You could adapt those playbooks – add HP, give them better weapons. The nice thing about Funnel world is that it gives you an method to explain a person’s career choice. Did they discover a spellbook during their adventure? How about an ancient sword, or a bow? Etc.
Sounds like a cool setting though.
I didn’t realise that, Yochai Gal. I’ll have to check it out.
Charlie Etheridge-Nunn if you’re willing to jump straight into “heroes of the local village” and skip the “naught-but-a-villager” phase, perhaps I can interest you in #Stonetop?
If you and your group are interested in playtesting, let me know!
drive.google.com – Welcome to Stonetop.pdf – Google Drive
Jeremy Strandberg that sounds amazing and like what I’ve been wanting out of Dungeon World. You’ve got my interest!
Jeremy Strandberg I’d love to playtest Stonetop with my group.
Honestly, ditto.
Jesse Larimer, Alfred Rudzki… I just started a separate thread to discuss playtesting Stonetop. If anyone else is interested, let me know!
Charlie Etheridge-Nunn I haven’t used the Villager playbook, but I’m familiar with it. The biggest issue that I foresee with using it alongside Class Warfare is that the Class Warfare specialties all have very specific fictional requirements. When you start off making level 1 characters with Class Warfare, it’s assumed that you’ve already met those fictional requirements (or close enough). But when you start off as a (more-or-less) 0-level Villager, those fictional requirements are almost certainly going to be either not hit or (more likely) ignored.
Which, I guess, brings up the issues that I have with the Villager playbook in general. It’s a clever idea, but the “0-to-hero” idea works a lot better when there’s a less drastic jump between 0 and 1st level (see Funnel World & Freebooters on the Frontier, or Dungeon Crawl Classics). In a game like DW, where the fighter is The Fighter and the wizard is The Wizard, that jump from local schlub is a lot bigger and more noticeable.
I’m also not really a fan of the Villager’s mechanics. The way you eventually level up is by assigning bonds, and how you assign bonds isn’t very clear (I think it’s supposed to happen when the fiction demands it, but I get this feeling that there’s supposed to be a metagame moment when this happens, like End of Session… and if not, then what’s to stop me from just spamming bonds and wracking up all the advanced villager moves?). The “write a bond, get a move” thing seems like a very dissociated mechanic to me, and it’s a bit weird that I might gain some of these abilities and then lose them when I level up.
Plus, for your purposes… the Villager playbook “ends” with the PCs leveling up and (according to the Life of Adventure move) leaving town. But it sounds like you’re more interested in keeping things local? If so, I think that last move will grind a little against your goals.
Stonetop description sounds cool. Is it available somewhere yet?