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Play experience with Pirate World ship combat?

Play experience with Pirate World ship combat?

I’m curious if anyone has closely examined and/or played with the ship combat rules in Iain Chantler’s disputed Pirate World supplement?

I’m referring mostly to the following sections:

– Basic Ship Moves, Create a Ship: 177–180, 182–183

– Mob Rules, Ship Battle!: 188–190

I’m particularly interested in knowing how well the additional structure and custom moves worked out in play.

What parts of the rules shined? How did it affect the flow of play? What were the highlights? What was confusing or fiddly? What did you discard? Would you use the system again? Was there anything that didn’t come into play that you would like to see in action?

It’s possible that ship battle might come up soon in my ongoing campaign, maybe even the very next session. I’m starting to pore over the Pirate World rules now, and I’d like to hear from anyone who has put them to the test.

It looks like there are a bunch of cool ideas, but also some more bookkeeping and moves to juggle. I was curious if you found it worth the extra work?

A certain Bard wanders into the netherworld, where someone hid his heart…

> In my Dungeon World game, Death is an ancient dwarf who delved so deep that he found the underworld, and became the king there.

> It’s been established that he carries a gold abacus with him as he surveys his domain.

> If the adventurers get ahold of it, *what does it do?*

Hidey Soul

Hidey Soul

[Includes SPOILERS for “Planets Collide” campaign]

The Bard missed his Last Breath roll and was “marked as Death’s own”. He spent most of Friday’s session getting his affairs in order. Seeing a golden opportunity here, the ghost of a witch came to him and promised to hide his heart at the roots of the world so that Death could not claim him. He took the witch’s deal. That was the end of the session.

I’m curious how you might handle this mechanically.

Obviously, he won’t roll Last Breath again, whether he hits zero HP or is disintegrated by death rays, blasted by dragon’s breath, or flattened by having ten boulders dropped on his head.

But other than that, there were no promises about what would happen if he loses all his HP or otherwise suffers physical annihilation.

I could give him some way to revive, provided someone can put his pieces back together. Or he could re-spawn somewhere, after a given interval. Or he could get stuck in a time loop like Groundhog Day. Or he could follow the party like a specter, maybe using a custom move to influence events.

There was also no specification in the deal about what losing his heart might cost him. Can a bard even perform Arcane Art without a heart?

What are your thoughts?

Goatkin compendium class

Goatkin compendium class

My Dungeon World group has been traversing the Three Faces of Penny Lantern’s Perilous Almanacs. In our game, the Goatkin elder was replaced by a diabolical witch known as the Mother, who is tied into the fiction generated by the players. She lived in the desecrated monastery, raising her goatkin children, biding their time until the planets collide when they would sweep down into the valleys and slake their thirst for chaos.

Thing is, the Bard made a pact with the Mother, and he grew horns. When the Mother was killed in an ensuing battle, the Bard’s player asked to reach further into the transformation and began chanting the incantation the Mother marked him with.

So, my idea of the compendium class is that it combines three ideas: The satyr-like lust for wine and revelry, the Billy Goats Gruff idea of being tough against trolls, and the diabolical spirit of the Baphomet. I’m thinking of adding two moves for each aspect.

Game night is tonight, and I’m working on it now. Feel free to comment, suggest moves, or heap your scorn upon it:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10R3qns5PGMnoqr8dIED3kFXUxAcDGbiYA8Z4t3MnmmU/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks in advance for any ideas or feedback! I’ll try to post another comment when I’m wrapping it up.

Discern Realities: Trigger the questions separate from triggering the move?

Discern Realities: Trigger the questions separate from triggering the move?

In my Bardic Lore question last week, James Young wrote:

> If he’s used to Pathfinder he might be used to that passive roll-and-listen style. “I roll perception. 18. What do I see?”

That pretty much nails the experience, and I think the same expectations crept into a Discern Realities attempt he made during that session.

To be honest, handling Discern Realities has been hit-or-miss for me on the GM side, even though I’ve been running Dungeon World off and on since 2013. So the trouble during this session wasn’t entirely due to Pathfinder expectations.

During one scene, the Bard stopped to carefully look and listen to the environment—the inside of a strange “clock tower”—which I took as a trigger to Discern Realities.

He rolled high enough to ask 3 questions, and picked “What should I be on the lookout for?” as his first question.

Me: “That depends on what you are doing. How are you investigating that? Are you poking at the springs and gears?”

Bard: “No…”

Me: “Hmm. I can’t answer that yet, but I might be able to answer it as you continue investigating.”

Bard: “Okay. What here is not what it appears to be?”

Me: “Right on! This is not a clock tower! There are small windows at intervals opening to the night sky outside. You can see some of the machinery is controlling the position of lenses facing the sky. The lenses are directing faint rays of what must be starlight to a central column of crystal that forms the core of the tower. The crystal seems to be responding to the light by pulsing and turning slightly. Could be a sensor of some kind…”

Bard: “I really want to know what should I be on the lookout for. I guess my next question is what is about to happen?”

Me: “I can’t answer that from just what you can see or hear without doing something more. Want to interact with the scene more and ask again later?”

Bard: “Sure. You said there’s a door here?”

I suppose I might have said “You don’t notice anything to watch out for / anything imminent about to happen.” That’s supported by the text: “Of course, some questions might have a negative answer, that’s fine. If there really, honestly is nothing useful or valuable here, the GM will answer that question with ‘Nothing, sorry.'” But that seems like a worthless response in light of the risk of triggering a GM move on a miss.

Now that I write about it, I guess I jumped the gun on triggering the move. The text says straight up “You can’t just stick your head in the doorway and discern realities about a room. …you have to look under and around things, tap the walls, and check for weird dust patterns on the bookshelves.”

I realize this could be a perfect time to ask the players and use the answers, but I also see that I was responding as though the questions must be triggered by the details of the investigation.

That’s the nub of my question: When you run Discern Realities, is any investigation that triggers the move sufficient to answer all the questions, OR are some of the questions disqualified based on the nature of the investigation?

What do you say?

For my next session, I was thinking about using D. Vincent Baker’s alternate “Perception Test” moves from Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions. They are written up for B/X-style D&D, but that makes them very easy to adapt to DW. They have three separate triggers covering more specific situations, and the questions available for each are more closely tied to the specific triggers.

Bardic Lore question

Bardic Lore question

“…you can ask the GM any one question about it; the GM will answer truthfully.”

On Monday, a new player—a veteran Pathfinder player and GM—came to my DW game and he picked the Bard sheet. Overall, the game was a thrill ride, but something new came up that I wasn’t prepared for.

For “Bardic Lore” the new player picked “A Bestiary of Creatures Unusual”. But when it came into play—he met an unusual creature—the question he asked was “what do I know about it?”

It took me off-guard, but it was a creature from my prep, and I shared some general info about it: how it lives, what it does, and a brief description visualizing the monster’s tags in the fiction. Per the move, we also established how he learned about this creature.

It took me off-guard because I was expecting a more specific question. “What do I know about it” seems like a “wishing for more wishes” approach to the move: Instead of asking a definite question and getting a limited answer, the question suggests that it includes any and all more specific questions, like “What is it’s weakness?” or “What is its most common form of attack?”

It occurs to me now as I re-read the move text that his question wasn’t technically about the monster but about him. “What do I know about it?” seems like it might trigger Spout Lore instead; then he could have used Bardic Lore to ask a specific question. That way, he might feel less bewildered about what question to ask, since Spout Lore could have already given him general info giving him a basis for further questions.

I’m curious if anything similar has ever come up for you, and what your thoughts are.

Thanks!

Does anyone know of an article somewhere that talks about the origin of Dungeon World?

I’m superficially aware that Tony Dowler was the author behind Apocalypse D&D, but I have no idea how Sage and Adam got involved, and became the driving force behind the game. It would also be cool to hear about the different versions of DW before the current CC text.

It seems like it could be a story worth telling.

Title

For a pulp-fantasy-inspired setting:

Black Lotus

A potent and deadly hallucinogen. When you huff black lotus, you fall into a deep slumber. Roll+CON. On a 10+, you recover half your max HP and pick one. On a 7-9, the GM picks one, and you wake from a fugue hours or days later with no memory of the missing time. On a miss, take your Last Breath.

– The GM reveals a Grim Portent and how you can avoid or counter it.

– Your vision shows you something from the past or future, but you can’t remember what. You gain 1 hold. Any time you Discern Realities or Spout Lore, you can spend 1 hold to succeed as if you had rolled 12+.

– You catch a glimpse of your own death. Gain 1 hold. Any time you take damage, you can spend 1 hold to declare that the person, monster, or weapon that hit you won’t be the means of your demise.

– You have a rendezvous with Death. Tell us where you met. Take +1 forward the next time you take your Last Breath (+3 max).

If you survive, mark XP every time you willingly consume black lotus. When black lotus is available, you must Defy Danger to abstain. When you successfully abstain 3 consecutive times, you overcome the addiction—for now.

Thoughts?

#WoDu: Skirmish + Slay: Does it stack, or are they for different situations?

#WoDu: Skirmish + Slay: Does it stack, or are they for different situations?

We played our first session with World of Dungeons yesterday! One of the characters had both Skirmish and Slay. The player asked if tht gave him a +3 for melee damage, and we weren’t sure. For that session, we went with +2.

How do you do it? Do the bonuses stack, or are they intended for different fictional situations?

Encroaching Darkness

Encroaching Darkness

Looking at the preview videos for Darkest Dungeon put me in the mood for darkness as a vivid and tangible threat. I’ve heard that people tend to use Dungeon World for characters on a more heroic scale, and I understand this idea was aptly tackled by Torchbearer, but I don’t own it.

Anyway, these moves just kind of materialized, and I wanted to put them out there in case anyone can refine them into something useful. Maybe they could only be used for 0-level Villagers, henchmen, or characters in World of Dungeons. Or maybe regular Dungeon World heroes should fear the dark.

When you light a torch, add +1 Light for the whole party, for a maximum of +3. Other light effects, such as the Clerical rote or Wizardly cantrip, may also add +1 to the party’s Light. If the party ever splits up, divide their Light based on who is holding the torches.

When you enter an unexplored area of the dungeon, Roll +Light. On a 10+, you make out whatever your light reveals with clarity and resolve. On a 7–9 you see clearly, but pick one:

* You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The GM will say what.

* Your nerves are shaken by the closing darkness. Suffer a debility of your choice until you relax in view of daylight.

* A torch burns low: Subtract 1 from your current Light level.

When you deal damage to a dungeon fiend, whether it’s a dweller in darkness, or creature of the night, add +Light to the damage.

When you Order a Hireling in the dungeon, if your Light level is lower than the Hireling’s Loyalty, Roll +Light instead.

When your last torch burns low…