Author: Dylan Boates

And the obligatory reshare to the Dungeon World Tavern…

Originally shared by Dylan Boates

I just realized that it’s game day tomorrow and I haven’t talked about my Dungeon World game in weeks! This is extra crazy because last week was THE END OF DUNGEON WORLD!

So, since I last posted, the group arrived at a fortress on the edge of the dwarven lands and realized that dwarven bureaucracy is horrible and they don’t have passports. (Non-dwarves weren’t allowed entrance.)  Instead they decided they’d sneak into the dwarven undercity through some goblin tunnels.

After attempting to negotiate passage with the goblins they hypocritically decided that the fact that the goblins ate people meant they couldn’t be negotiated with and decided to set the goblins on fire instead. (Gretta is a vampire now and has been eating people for months. Hycorax is the party’s negotiator by virtue of not having a negative Charisma bonus, despite the fact that his disdain for civilized authority figures and his willingness to solve “problems” by turning into a fire elemental mean that his negotiations never end well.)

After nearly being killed by a seemingly endless swarm of goblins (we all enjoy how even at level 9, the PCs have had some TERRIFYINGLY close calls with goblins and zombies, which are typically kind of shitty opponents) they made their rendez vous with a dwarven cleric who was loyal to Gretta and the rest of the displaced nobility. (Oh yeah, Gretta is an exiled princess.)

Gretta agreed to help her people overthrow the Shadow cult that had taken over and restore the old tyranical nobility and descended into the Shadow Realm, from which no LIVING thing could return, to kill Venith (the goddess of shadow) herself.

Gretta lost her signature hammer on the way, so she strangled Venith and decapitated her with her bare hands.

She returned to the world as a living dwarf, having fulfilled her service to Hood (the god of death, who she made a deal with when Venith tried to kill her).

Her bloodstained hands are her new signature weapon.

Then they headed into the heart of the world to confront the Worm God Kryos in his prison and prevent him from escaping/continuing to poison the earth.

They ran into some magmen who were running from something and had a tense standoff due to their unwillingness to talk to outsiders. However, Hycorax’s fire elemental based negotiation style finally paid off since, as creatures of elemental fire, they don’t consider a fire elemental to be an outsider.

The magmen warned them about a cave full of chaos cultists who became tainted by the Worm God and were transformed into Chaos Spawn.

Chaos Spawn are horrible.

They beat the Chaos Spawn, but lost much armour and equipment to their chaos touch as well as picking up some horrible debilities.

Then they confronted the Worm God, in his prison suspended over a Mount Doom style volcano pit, who claimed that he was only poisoning the earth because he was trapped within it, and what the hell do you expect to happen when you trap a maimed god of corruption, upheaval and change inside the Earth Goddess’ heart? Hycorax jumped into the volcano pit to commune with his Goddess, who agreed that letting the Worm God go would be an awesome thing as far as she was concerned, even if it may suck as far as the humans who LIVED on the earth were concerned.

Hycorax was not convinced, but the Worm God offered to make Jonah the Ranger (the only member of the group who wasn’t under some sort of divine influence and wasn’t possibly some sort of demi-god at the time) into his avatar so that Jonah could determine the exact shape of the Worm God’s influence on the world.

Hycorax and Gretta were still not convinced, but Jonah sure as hell was.

The Worm God was freed and the party traveled the continent righting the doings of the Worm God that they thought were wrong, and violently overthrowing the established order of things, mostly for kicks. (They’re ALL chaotic or evil, by the way.)

The end.

Tomorrow: Lotus Blossom’s Bridal Path.

More in the ongoing story of my increasingly bizzare game.

I also forgot to mention, as a wedding gift, the forest spirits blessed the surrounding farmland to be a bountiful and fertile paradise as long as Hycorax’s children tend it for the next nine generations.

Since, apparently, his children will be half elf/half dryad (Fortunately the Planarch Codex has us covered there!) those generations will probably be loooong.

Originally shared by Dylan Boates

Has anyone out there been wondering how my Dungeon World game is going?

After our heroes broke the Worm God’s power in Darujhistan, some of the Worm Cult began worshiping Hycorax the druid instead. He took the Guildmaster compendium class, which we’ve trivially reskinned to “Cult Leader”.

They returned to Devil’s Reach and found that it was full of Worm Zombies, since they never really dealt with the necromancer before they left.

So they killed some zombies, but it turns out the villagers were relying on them to protect the village from bandits and provide extra labour in the mine and fields. The villagers were unwilling to give up the zombies!

Today, our heroes tried to find a better solution, and ended up financing the resettlement of a bunch of the refugees from Darujhistan in Devil’s Reach.

While they were at it, Hycorax used his earth manipulation powers to build a temple/farm to himself. (Took the Guildhall move.)

The power was out of his control though, and it attracted the dryads from the nearby forest.

They had dealt with the dryads before and knew that their passionate and emotional nature could make them dangerous to mortals, so Hycorax tried to negotiate a way that they could live in harmony with his new church and the people of Devil’s Reach.

Got a 7 on his parley, so the dryads want some concrete assurance right now.

The dryads demand that Hycorax marries their queen, and that his two new acolytes marry dryads as well.

We broke out the Wedding Compendium! (I believe the other day Ben Wray asked if anyone had used it?)

Gretta made a new friend, Alastor the wizard/alchemist, who makes a drink powerful enough to get even an undead Dwarf like her drunk!

Jonah got a 6 on his roll to attend the wedding and “things got way out of hand”. He got terribly drunk and apparently spent the night with a dryad. He’s engaged now…

The necromancer also attended the wedding and said some cryptic things. She told Hycorax that her god, who Hycorax is sworn to destroy, is just misunderstood and offered to leave town peacefully as a wedding present!

So yeah. This week we had basically 0 adventure. Instead we founded a new community, built a church and then had a wedding…

Unusual, but fun as hell!

Originally shared by Dylan Boates

So, I haven’t posted about my Dungeon World game in… two weeks?

When last I left off (in this post https://plus.google.com/104977908596381674248/posts/V7tzLMCq789) the PCs had made it to Darujhistan and spent some time talking to priests.

After that they decided to try to track down some suspicious activity in town and see if they can find evidence of the Worm God’s influence.

They’ve seen that the Worm God likes to make zombies, so they tracked down rumors of improperly buried corpses (with help from the local Death Church), particularly ones being dumped in the river from the refugee camps.

They headed back out to the camps and spotted someone dumping a body!

Unfortunately, Gretta flashed some cash around giving money to some poor beggars and then failed a Discern Realities roll and ended up getting pickpocketed!

They caught the thief easily, but lost the body dumpers in the process, which is too bad because when they recovered the body they learned that he was a Captain of the City Watch and that he had been MURDERED! (Garotted and stabbed from behind, in fact.)

This lead to them being questioned by the city watch for quite some time.

Eventually they returned to their tour of the seedy underbelly of Darujhistan and decided to stop by some bars.

The first one was super weird, a black tower built around some sort of well and obelisk. (It used to be a temple to an elder god, but they don’t know that.) The only customers were a bunch of freaks and weirdo’s who were playing a card game (that seemed to be made up on the spot) with a tarot like oracle sacred to the Queen of Dreams.

Gretta decided to play with them and ended up picking up the card representing the Worm God and hanging on to it, while placing her own card on top of “The Throne”… I don’t know what that means yet, but I think it’ll be awesome.

Then they went to another bar where they met a bunch of shady criminals who were plotting some sort of a robbery. One of them seemed to be an information broker who traded them local rumors for news about the war. The rumors included word of a charismatic preacher with an arm made from silver and brass leading the new religion in the refugee camps.

They decided to check this out, but wanted to find an alternate way out of the city because the Watch told them not to leave until the Captain’s murder had been solved. They thought going through the gates would be more trouble than it’s worth.

Hycorax thought, “Hey! I’ll just turn into an earth elemental and tunnel us out!” but got distracted when he discovered that the local earth spirits had been POISONED!

They decided to head over to the temple of the Earth Mother to see if the priests could explain.

These guys must LOVE talking to priests because they chatted for quite some time with the evasive and nervous clergy who insisted that everything was fine before Hycorax pointed out that he has the Divine Revelation spell and can just talk DIRECTLY TO THEIR GOD. Seriously, I don’t know why they bothered mucking around with the clergy…

The Earth Mother revealed that she has been poisoned and corrupted by an ancient god from another world who was imprisoned within her ages ago by an alliance of elder gods.

They’re pretty sure that ancient god is the Worm God.

So they decided to go on with their plan to investigate this new religion, this time deciding to just go through the sewers. They were climbing down into the tunnel when Jonah was garotted from behind!

Then there was a big exciting battle with assassins. A couple assassins were killed, a few things got blown up, and the assassins vanished in the confusion, probably by magic.

Now the PCs are waiting for the Watch to show up and grill them again! We’ll find out what happens next later tonight.

https://plus.google.com/104977908596381674248/posts/V7tzLMCq789

And I’m resharing this WALL OF TEXT because maybe the Dungeon World community is also interested?

Originally shared by Dylan Boates

Does anyone want to help me brainstorm ideas for my Dungeon World game? If you don’t want to help, you may still want to read this post, because I’m going to spend most of it talking about all the cool stuff that’s going on in my game. Maybe you’ll get something out of that.

I’m pretty terrible at prepping stuff and making fronts, so I could use some inspiration and encouragement. I’ve been coasting by on my improvising skills (luckily my players and I have been having a lot of fun with what I’ve been improvising) but that’s no reason not to try to do better.

A bit of background: (If you’ve read the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, you’ll recognize a lot of material I stole here…)

I started out with the Indego Galleon mini adventure, then we used a bit of stuff from Within the Devil’s Reach, so our major plot threads are “Imperials” who have turned out to be an invading force from overseas who the PCs HATE and are slowly laying siege to the “Free Cities”, a set of independant city states that are the major powers in the area. Only two of the “Free Cities” remain free, and one of those just barely. (Thanks to the players being insane. I’ll get to that later.) We’ve also got a Worm God that’s awakening and doing something mysterious with cults and zombies, and may be starting some sort of war between the gods. It’s really hard to tell, but they’re carrying around the son of the God of Fire and The Sky (well, his soul) and he insists that his ancient foe is rising again. (He seems to be right too.)

The group consists of:

Greta, a Dwarf Fighter who used to be some sort of noble and/or general before she was framed and exiled by an evil cult. (She suspects it’s a cult of the Worm God.)

Hycorax, a Druid who’s becoming more and more powerful and less and less human (or Elf, as the case may be).

and Jonah, a half-elf ranger who agreed to help guide these people and now thinks he may be in way over his head. Still, they’re fighting the Imperials, and he thinks that’s a good thing.

So, they killed some Imperials who were being arrogant and oppressive in Codcliffe, then again just outside Devils Reach (Despite the fact that the Imperials were trapped, and arguably innocent. The dryads were pissed that they had cut down some trees, so Hycorax agreed that they had to die… Brutal!)

Then in Devil’s Reach they followed one of the villagers they had rescued from Codcliffe (there were more Imperials on the way, so they thought it was unwise to let the villagers who had helped them stick around to be punished) who got all hypnotized and wandered off. Turns out he was being drawn into the “Silent Tomb” by a powerful spirit that resided there.

They went all ADVENTURER and raided the tomb, looted some stuff and finally confronted the Four Winds (powerful elemental spirits) who guarded the final chamber.

Hycorax was having none of that and told them to fuck off. They did. Quite dramatically. (Hycorax can command the four elements apparently.) Then they looted the tomb and discovered Aleric’s phylactery (the aforementioned demi-god and Priest King of the Sky People) and his legendary spear. (The Carcosan Spire, from the DW book.) Hycorax claimed both of them, and is now semi-possessed by a demi-god (demi-possessed?) and can feel the spear’s hatred for unnatural beings.

Then they investigated some Gnoll cults worshiping Venith, the Godess of Shadows, and found that they were also involved in making some sort of freaky worm zombies. They kicked the Gnolls out of the ruined Temple of Brol and discovered that the temple was the last resting place of Argo-Than, the Holy Avenger. (Another magic weapon from the DW book.)

Since Argo-Than is nothing more than a heavy and awkward sword in anything other than the hands of a Paladin, they decided to head to Pale to find a Paladin.

Pale is one of the last two Free Cities, and it is under siege. They figured that the famous sword could help rally the defenders and give them a chance of resisting the Imperial invasion. They were probably right, but their attempt to sneak into the city was probably what REALLY changed the situation.

They decided that the best place to sneak through was where the Imperial Mage Cadre was preparing to assault the city, but was opposed by Anomander Rake, the favourite son of Mother Dark. (He’s basically the Prince of Darkness.) The Imperial army was giving them a wide berth.

They basically thought, “Hey! Let’s just wait until they start casting their spell, then Hycorax will distract them with a little earthquake and we’ll charge in and kill the lot of them!”

The Imperial High Mages were trying to summon a bunch of fire demons, and the distraction caused the spell to also summon a giant cloud of ash that blanketed most of the city.

They charged, stabbed some wizards, Greta killed a demon, and then they escaped into the city while the Prince of Darkness killed a lot of people in the confusion then left.

They rallied the defenders, found a Paladin (the leader of a mercenary company devoted to the Twin Wolves of War) and Greta and Jonah led a few raids on the Imperial supply camps as the Imperial army tried to regroup. 

Then Hycorax turned into a fire elemental and burned down some Imperial camps while they were sleeping…

After that, they set out to the nearby camp of the Free Cities Coalition Forces, to try to get them to march on Pale and free the city once and for all!

On the way, they discovered that the great danger that Hycorax had seen following Greta was none other than one of the infamous Hounds of Shadow. An ancient beast in the service of Venith. (Although, technically they predate her ascension to deityhood.) It was big and terrifying (it came out a little bit tougher than the “Apocalypse Dragon” in the DW book actually. That’s what you get when you make a Solitary, Large, Magical, Stealthy, Divine, Intelligent, Planar, Ancient monster.) and actually KILLED Gretta before they were able to drive it off.

However, she got an 8 on her Last Breath roll and got to come back! Now she’s a vampire… (We changed her race from Dwarf to “Hungry Dead” from the “Number Appearing” supplement.) Life has become REALLY interesting, since she has to kill sentient creatures and drink their blood, (long distance travel is especially brutal…) but she’s still holding on to her Good alignment. For now.

Anyway, they made it to the camp, had a council of war, didn’t really do much. They did meet a creepy guy who gave Greta some Imperial prisoners of war to eat though. (He was sympathetic, since he’s also cursed with immortality, but no one really realized that yet.) Then they decided to head south, since that’s where Aleric says the Worm God is rising. Also, the Dwarven cities are down there, and we all know it’s going to be fun when Gretta comes home!

Finally, last session they arrived in Darujhistan. The only Free City to not have felt the Imperial presence, and the last major city before we enter Dwarven territory  It’s ruled by a council of High Priests (The gods of War, Death, Shadows, Earth, Darkness, Light/Sky/Fire, Luck and Dreams/Prophecy) and contains a cult of assassins (mostly undefined so far).

They started poking around the refugee camp that’s outside Darujhistan’s walls, looking for signs of the Worm. The did discover that there are a lot of refugees from the south, which is strange because the war is in the north. The southerners bring rumors of a plague of undead and a strange new religion. They worship “The Crippled God” and preach that suffering is the way to purity and that the weak, sick, oppressed and downtrodden are blessed in the eyes of their god. The religion doesn’t seem to have any signs of being tainted by the Worm (but it totally is) and it seems pretty harmless (which it basically is, unless you believe that paying homage to a corrupt god is inherently evil or something…).

Then they made their way inside the city and proceeded to freak everyone out with their crazy stories. First they visited the guard house and claimed to be soldiers from Pale with news of the war (not entirely false, they did actually fight in the Siege of Pale, but they were never officially sworn in), then they gave their report to a lowly desk sergeant, who became more and more terrified and convinced that this was above his pay grade, as they recounted their tale of demi-gods, renowned artifacts and famous heroes.

Then they went to the Temple of Serc (the local name for the god of light and the sky, Aleric’s father) to see if they’d help them fight the Worm God. The priests were totally freaked out, since these guys arrived with the spirit of their centuries dead prophet (Hycorax even preached their religious doctrine, which he doesn’t actually know, in Aleric’s voice) and started telling tales of ancient evils rising. They were not subtle about this, and you can bet that rumors are flying around the temple like crazy, however, the abbot agreed to bring their concerns to the high priest (who was busy with Council business at the time).

Then they trucked across the street to the Temple of Hood (the god of death) to see what they had to say about Greta’s condition. The priest was sympathetic and helpful, but not QUITE as awed as the priests of Serc. He offered to introduce Greta to the local executioner (the High Priest is ALSO a vampire, so they’re used to this) and offered to perform a divination to determine what Hood’s plans for Greta actually are. (Everyone’s been sort of worried, since the Gods seem to be taking sides with or against the Worm God, and no one’s sure where Hood stands, but he’s directly intervening in their quest…)

Greta had a vision of herself staggering through a tunnel, her hands drenched in blood, carrying a human woman’s head.

Then a priest of Serc brought them to the Council Hall to meet with the High Priest of Serc, where they got a glimpse of the rest of the Council. The Council all wears masks of their patron gods, and Greta recognized the mask of Venith as the face from her vision!

And that’s where we left off.

Anyway, I should probably ask some guiding questions or something, but writing all that has left me exhausted, so I’m just going to end it there.

What do you think?