Greg Baatard – Dungeon World Tavern G+ Archives

Anecdote from a recent one-shot. High levels of Australian slang ahead. Good luck.

Our cleric chose “Downtrodden and Forgotten” as his deity’s domain and “trial by combat / personal victory” as the precept, so we decided it was a god of underdogs. This snowballed into calling the god Occa, since rooting for the underdog is pretty entrenched in our Aussie “kulcha”.

As a result, the cleric became a bogan priest, with a tin of VB as a holy symbol, and casting a spell became “cracking a tinny”.

The highlight was the cleric trying to maintain Turn Undead while ghouls surrounded the party. A partial success let him keep it going, as long as he kept drinking – can of VB held above his head and pouring into his mouth, chugging the beer down and swapping it out for a new one whenever it emptied…

Ran Ray Otus’s Sinister Solstice (with a number of variations) for a second time as a oneshot with a group of…

Ran Ray Otus’s Sinister Solstice (with a number of variations) for a second time as a oneshot with a group of experienced roleplayers who hadn’t played DW before.

People had fun and the system seemed to go down well. This group took an entirely different route/approach than the previous one, which really kept me on my feet! Took about 6-7 hours to run through.

A custom move idea popped into my head so I thought I’d share what I came up with for discussion/feedback!

Each time you move through an area while fleeing a steading in which you are wanted, roll…

• …+ DEX if you try to flit between cover and shadows.

• …+ CHA if you try to blend and act inconspicuously.

• …+ INT if you try to proceed unseen via the ingenious use of something at hand.

Take a -1 to the roll if the area is likely to contain a member of the faction that you are wanted by.

On a 10+:

You traverse the area without incident.

On a 7-9:

You traverse the area but leave evidence or rumor of your presence.

The GM gains 1 hold.

If the GM now has 3 or more hold, you have been caught.

On a 6-:

The GM will describe how are recognized, delayed or obstructed and you must resolve this before leaving the area.

The GM gains 2 hold.

If the GM now has 3 or more hold, you have been caught.

The hold numbers could definitely be tweaked depending on steading size and notoriety, but I didn’t want the move to outstay its welcome.

The Druid’s “Shapeshifter” move seems really super powerful – pretty much any land a druid chooses will contain…

The Druid’s “Shapeshifter” move seems really super powerful – pretty much any land a druid chooses will contain animals that can allow them to:

* Shapeshift into something dangerous (e.g. a bear)

* Shapeshift into something small/stealthy (e.g. a rat)

* Shapeshift into something airborne (e.g. a hawk)

This allows them to dominate combat, stealth, scouting/recon… I’ve had a druid player use it for all these things in a single session, which I feel may have made some of the other party members feel a little disenfranchised.

How do you go about limiting the move, or am I playing it wrong? One thing I’m not sure about is the move(s) that the GM creates for their new form. I would always base it around what the player was aiming to achieve by shapeshifting, but I never made it a fully defined move (no roll, no 10+/7-9, etc) – just a thing that the player could do a limited amount of times in their new form.

In the couple of DW one-shots I’ve run, Spout Lore and Discern Realities are two moves that I / the party struggle…

In the couple of DW one-shots I’ve run, Spout Lore and Discern Realities are two moves that I / the party struggle with. I think the main reasons for this are:

* Ambiguities over when the move should be triggered – The party often doesn’t remember the move or say/do anything that would trigger it, and I’m not sure how legit it is for the GM to be the one suggesting it.

* Particularly when it comes to Discern Reality, the players tend to be trying to determine something specific – A monster’s weakness, an alternate entrance to a castle, what is keeping the room sealed… Sometimes the questions just don’t seem to fit and it gets awkward trying to keep things rolling…

I tend to describe Spout Lore as “a chance to receive some useful exposition” and Discern Realities as “roughly the equivalent of search/spot/listen checks in other games”. I’m starting to move away from the latter description, since it is probably what is resulting in the second point I mentioned above.

Any advice or suggestions on how I can use these moves more effectively? I’ve seen mention of people tweaking these moves, so if there’s a popular revision of them, please let me know!

So I ran my second ever DW game – a one shot based on the Christmas themed “Sinister Solstice” adventure by Ray Otus…

So I ran my second ever DW game – a one shot based on the Christmas themed “Sinister Solstice” adventure by Ray Otus [ http://www.jellysaw.com/dw/sinister-solstice.pdf ]. I used a fair bit of it, but modified quite a few things as well.

I had 4 players, all experienced in a number of systems but mostly new to Dungeon World. We had a Druid, Ranger, Fighter and Cleric, and the game took ~6 hours.

Some highlights and feedback (some of which may be slightly without context if relating to things I changed or added):

* The druid shapeshifted many times for great effect – scouting, brute strength, stealth, etc… It was seeming a bit too convenient, so when she eventually failed a couple of rolls one caused the destruction of her armour, and the other left her in half rat / half elf form for a while, unable to speak or use her hands well.

* After a brief skirmish with the ice elves, the party was able to negotiate their assistance in getting to the castle – after proving their worth by killing the giant, ghoul-blood-maddened bear.

* The battle with the bear was quite fun, with the cleric providing a bubble of protection among an increasingly large number of ghouls as they tracked it, then trying to maintain Turn Undead during the battle.

* The fighter rolled annoyingly well throughout the session, and as a new DM I sometimes struggled to make him feel challenged in a way that didn’t feel like a copout.

* The workshop was staffed by a workforce of starved and mentally broken children/teens, and patrolled by Mistress Claws, a horrible matron with razor-blades in her boots and gloves, who did not hesitate to hamstring or even kill workers to enforce order or save her skin.

* Kringle was human, once a wizard but now quite insane and dedicated to continually extending his life (the toys that he would deliver this solstice would see the fruition of a plan in quite a devastating way). To work within the theme, I gave him a crooked staff painted in red and gold stripes, shiny ornamental globes full of sleeping or merriment gas, a bell that would slow time for all but the ringer, and a ring that allowed him to phase through walls – all tools that would facilitate his delivery of gifts.

* The ranger had listened to the voices on the wind and learned that much of Kringle’s power came from things he owned, and after lubricating the memory of an old ice elf with the cleric’s flask of hooch, she was able to learn that one of the items was the bell. This had her prepared with a called shot as soon as Kringle whipped it out, leading to a cool scene where it fell down the stairs, time slowing to a crawl for everyone including Kringle and then speeding back up with every step it hit before shattering…

* The clockwork knight became toy guardsmen – clockwork soldiers commanded by Mistress Claws to enforce order in the castle. The fighter stumbled upon a defective one who was able to tick for “yes” and tock for “no”.

* The final battle saw the castle/stables/toy warehouse ablaze while Kringle tried to escape on the sleigh – bumping and jolting along the grounds as it tried to get airborne due to only having a few reindeer tethered and the cleric on board (the fighter was also on board, but a stray shot from the ranger ended up pinning his hand to the sleigh…)

* The tipping point was when the druid turned into a hawk, caught up with the sleigh, latched her talons onto Kringles face and then returned to elf form, sending the sleigh into the ground and in a nasty crash.

* When Kringle was more focused on holding onto his hat [of Revification] than bracing for the impact, the players twigged that they needed to get it off him – managing to do so, he decayed before their eyes, having died a long time ago and been sustained by the hat ever since.

* The fighter ended up with an ankle tangled in the reins of an escaping flying reindeer, but he managed to clamber onto its back, grab it by the antlers and dive bomb it into the ground. It was messy.

All in all, it went really well – thanks Ray Otus!

I struggled to check in on everyone regularly enough at times when things got hectic, and during some hectic combat moments I also struggled to make things flow as well as they could… It’s hard to make it so that people don’t feel like they’re doing nothing and waiting for a “turn” while the combat focus is on someone else…

http://www.jellysaw.com/dw/sinister-solstice.pdf

Ran the first session of an adventure that a friend has written to help her test it last night. It’s written for…

Ran the first session of an adventure that a friend has written to help her test it last night. It’s written for D&D but she wanted to test how flexible it was so I ran it in DW. She was also keen to have it run by an inexperienced GM, so I was able to fill that role too… Apart from a one-shot trial game of DW, I’ve never GMed before.

It went pretty well for the most part, although one thing popped up a few times… The DW equivalent of “everyone do a spot / listen check”.

Telling the players to try to discern reality definitely sounds wrong, so how else should you handle such situations? Situations where there is something to be found / noticed / heard / spotted / etc, but you need to be particularly astute to do so.

I get that I should describe what they see and that they should ask questions (and invoke moves as necessary) from there, but there still seemed to be something missing… =/

A minor issue I encountered with my first DW session (and first session GMing anything) was a player who would do…

A minor issue I encountered with my first DW session (and first session GMing anything) was a player who would do Detect Trap and Discern Reality in just about every room we entered.

It was reasonable to do so given the fiction, but it became clear at times that he was doing it at least partially to try and farm XP (funnily enough, he kept passing the rolls though)…

I struggled a bit when he did it on a room where there was nothing to find from what he was doing – both when he succeeded (just telling him “You don’t find anything” / “There are no traps”) and when he failed (nothing happens…).

I’m guessing this is mainly my fault for having too much of a pre-planned idea of what the room contained, rather than leaving blanks and playing to see what happens… But it seemed that if I had made a trap (or other PoI) go off or be found in every room he checked based on the success or failure of the roll then it might seem… odd. Overpopulated, in a way. And that it would encourage the “I walk around poking everything with a stick” ritual in every single room…

Anyhow, I’m rambling and not doing a great job of describing the issue, but if anyone has had similar experiences or can suggest ways to deal with it (not necessarily eliminate it, just ensure that it is interesting/varied…) it would be appreciated.

Weee, after a few months of asking newbie questions and getting distracted, I finally ran a DW oneshot / test game…

Weee, after a few months of asking newbie questions and getting distracted, I finally ran a DW oneshot / test game with friends!

It went well – started with intro to DW and creating characters at around 7pm and by a little past midnight we had reached the a good wrapup point at the end of my little adventure, with all 4 players having enough XP to hit level 2 (after the End of Session rewards).

Went fairly smoothly, with a few little kinks in places – Have identified a few things I need to do better, but everyone seemed to have fun 🙂

In preparation for running a DW game with friends who have experience in other systems, I’ve prepared a one-page…

In preparation for running a DW game with friends who have experience in other systems, I’ve prepared a one-page “Dungeon World for New Players” summary of the main things I think they should know going in.

Hopefully it’s useful to others. Let me know if you think anything could be better explained or anything important is missing.