I cooked up some Keys For Dungeon World, as seen in Lady Blackbird and The Shadow of Yesterday.

I cooked up some Keys For Dungeon World, as seen in Lady Blackbird and The Shadow of Yesterday.

I cooked up some Keys For Dungeon World, as seen in Lady Blackbird and The Shadow of Yesterday.

Keys are goals, ties, beliefs, or vows a character has.

They are meant to replace Alignment or Drives completely.

Keys have two aspects: A Hit, and a Buyoff.

You Hit the Key when you do something appropriate to it; you hit the Buyoff when you forsake your Key and replace it with another.

I’d love some feedback! This was initially planned for Worlds of Adventure but I think they work just fine in Dungeon World as well. As you can probably tell, I cribbed a lot of the structure and style from existing sources (mostly from Jeremy Strandberg and Tam H).

Changes as of 2/10/2018:

Removed flavor text (sorry)

Combined 1XP/2XP keys into one single line, they are now 1XP each

Removed “elevating keys” (basically keys that get more intense) in lieu of divergent ways to hit a Key

Tried to make the Buyoff a bigger deal

Wrote instructions for how to use

Changed font size to have more Key groups per table (fewer pages)

20 thoughts on “I cooked up some Keys For Dungeon World, as seen in Lady Blackbird and The Shadow of Yesterday.”

  6. Neat!

    I like that each “hit” is 1/session. That helps (a lot) in preventing them from being excess cognitive load during play. With that said, you might consider rephrasing the triggers to make that clear? Right now, if I’m looking just at the Key, it’s not clear that I only get that XP once per session.

    How do you see this interacting with bonds and/or the end-of-session questions? Or just the Level Up move? Seems like just adding these as a replacement for alignment/drives would add 1-3 XP per session on average, which could significantly increase the speed of leveling.

    Maybe consider whether you need two “levels” of hits in each key. Seems like you could make both of them 1 XP. That might help reduce the rate of leveling. And glancing over the different hits, the “value” of them seems somewhat arbitrary.

    I don’t see much value in the 1-line description on each key. You don’t need to tell us what they represent; the triggers do that well enough. At best it’s extra words, at worst it feels restricting to players.

    In TSoY and Lady Blackbird, once you buy off a key, you can never regain it. Is that true here as well?

    I’ll put some specific comments on the document.

  8. So, looking more carefully at these, I’ve got a couple more general comments and suggestions. Obviously, take it or leave it!

    First, they buyoffs: one of the coolest things about keys & buyoffs in TSoY and Lady Blackbird are how absolute they are. They represent a moment of significant personal change. Most of these represent more like a moment of weakness, inconsistency, or adaptability.

    For example, the Barbarian’s Key of the Stranger: “Discard one of your own rituals or customers in favor of a local one.” You could argue that you buyoff that key when you decide to wear warm clothes in the winter rather than just the loincloth that your people traditionally wear.

    Also, it’s not clear to me whether the buyoffs are a choice. You can buyoff a key when you hit that trigger? Or you must?

    Either way, I think they’d be a lot stronger if you made the buyoffs a much bigger deal. Like for the Key of the Stranger, something like “Buyoff: When you put down roots in a local community.”

    Another example: instead of “When you knowingly break a sworn oath” as the buyoff for Key of the Honorable, how about “When you intentionally betray someone you know is counting on you.”

    Second: I’d advise trying to avoid making the second trigger on a key just a more intense version of the first key. I know they do that sort of thing in TSoY (and I think in Lady Blackbird), but I think you’d get more mileage out of breadth rather than depth. Maybe have a goal of giving each key 2 out of 3:

    * interacting with NPCs

    * interacting with PCs

    * interacting with the environment/world at large.

    For example: Key of the Cunning could be:

    Gain 1 XP when an NPC acts on your clever advice.

    Gain 1 XP when you use your surroundings to escape danger

    and the Key of the Evangelist could be:

    Gain 1 XP when you proselytize to a NPC

    Gain 1 XP when you lead a fellow PC in a rite or sacrament of your god

    If you do keep the 1 XP/2 XP hierarchy, consider making the triggers discrete from each other. Maybe you can hit both in the same instance, but generally you shouldn’t inherently hit the 1 XP one when you hit the 2 XP one.

  10. Jeremy Strandberg Thank you very much for your feedback, it’s exactly what I was looking for!

    I’m going to think on the comments here (and in the document) and work on this again soon.

  11. Yochai Gal FYI, I stopped reading closely after the barbarian, because I saw I was basically going to be making the same sorts of comments throughout. I’ll gladly take a closer look after you do some revising.

  12. Jeremy Strandberg Making them each 1XP is a great idea, as it reduces the rate of leveling while also giving flexibility to how each Key is hit. I do wonder though: should I go through and make sure each 2nd Key is properly escalated? I do agree some seem arbitrary…

    Either way I’ll look into making the Buyoffs more significant.

    it’s funny that you suggest I remove the descriptions, they were so damn difficult to write (I had a character limit) and now that I think on it, you really don’t need them! I’ll take those out as well.

  16. Yochai Gal I do think the best way to go would be with this simple format:

    KEYNAME

    Hit: Text.

    Buyoff: Text.

    For example:

    THE KEY OF THE OUTSIDER

    Hit: Your foreign customs or status as an outsider causes you trouble.

    Buyoff: Adopt the customs of a new place and abandon your own.

    You then just have a bit of detail in the playkit or rulebook that says: “At the end of the session, check your Keys. For each one you Hit, mark 1 XP (per Key). For each one you Buyoff, you can choose to mark 3 XP and replace that Key (you can’t choose a Key you had before).”

  17. Cameron Burns Sure, I mean that’s how LB does it. But I wanted more than one way to Hit a key. Of course, it should be interesting, and maybe I just need to work harder on them for that to be true!

  18. Yochai Gal Easy enough; you either just add an extra clause to the Hit or add a second Hit altogether. I don’t know which approach would be the least clunky, though.

    Depending on the wording, they don’t even really need to be separate clauses. The Outsider example I gave has a rather broad Hit, for example. Some other Keys with hybrid/multi Hits:

    THE KEY OF POWER

    Hit: Bring to heel a worthy foe or pursue your own ascendancy over the safety of your own companions.

    Buyoff: Relinquish all of your authority.

    THE KEY OF VICE

    Hit: Give in to temptation when doing so will bring you great success or put your friends or family in danger.

    Buyoff: Come clean or say no to a good time.

    After all, all Keys don’t need to be equal. They just have to allow you to properly express your character’s motivations.

  20. OK Jeremy Strandberg and Cameron Burns I did it: I took your advice and reformatted the whole damn thing as per your suggestions; I’d still love some help making the Keys more interesting and I still want to expand the “impact” of some of the Buyoffs; but think you’ll find them much improved!

    Thanks for all the great advice.

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