Author: Kasper Brohus Allerslev

Disclaimer: Pseudo-realism post commencing!

I’m reading up on medieval era arms and armor, and I stumbled upon something quite funny. Historically, archers were trained from an extremely young age as bows require an almost extreme amount of practice to use efficiently.

Crossbows on the other hand did not; in one or two weeks of intense training, a (wo)man could become a brutally efficient murder machine.

As far as I could tell, the bow and arrow was the superior weapon simply due to range and loading speed, but the crossbow was way easier to master, perhaps because of the “point and click” nature.

DW makes a distinction between crossbows and bows, but it is not based on how hard they are to use. They make the crossbow “hurt more”, but makes it slower to load.

I am not sure that a crossbow is exactly slow to load, rather I am under the impression that a bow is just extremely fast to load. A common crossbow also won’t strike much harder. Unless we are taking about an arbalest, which is a crossbow that is windlass-pulled to support a very high amount of force. It was slow to load and it pierced plate armor as if it was butter.

DW isn’t really a game that needs a sense of historical accuracy, but I just thought it was really interesting. Actual house-rules to support this could still be interesting though, and this is what I have come up with so far:

You take -1 for shooting a bow at long range. Fighters and Rangers should have the “Marksman” move that made them ignore this penalty (much like the Paladin and Fighters “Armored” move).

Crossbows should not have reload, and they should lose the +1 damage tag.

Bows could historically be loaded much much faster than crossbows, even if crossbows didn’t take a lot of time to use, and in that regard, I think it is feasible to assume that the “Marksman” move should also include the ability to use a bow as a Reach weapon in close combat with the precise tag.

Arbalests should have the reload tag and the piercing 3 tag (plate has 3 armor).

Note on arbalests; according to wikipedia, a skilled arblaster (man using an arbalest) could fire an incredible two arrows per minute. In other words; it is loaded before combat, and you really need a big fucking pause in the action to reliably reload it.

Just a few thoughts, and I won’t apologize for my language 😉

Thoughts on the Minstrel hireling, or rather their A Hero’s Welcome ability.

You get to deduct the minstrels skill level from all prices in town. While I don’t mind that they can get free rations and arrows, I’m thinking that this is kind of crazy. I mean, it’s just so damn potent!

Last night, my group bought a river boat, and they just stuffed it with food and arrows, because hey, it was free!

So we discussed this back an forth, and one of my players actually said something clever; while it might seem weird that a merchant or poor fisher would give you food ad libitum, then that is also not necessarily what happens.

The minstrel gives you praise for the big hero your are and how you are on an important quest, so a lot of people might chip in just a little bit of dried meat or a piece of bandage or a leftover arrow or two. When 50 to a 100 people do this, you end up going away with a significant amount of provisions.

Looking at it this way, it just seem way less crazy. It almost seem plausible, hell even likely.

Just a thought I had while writing up a front. There’s an implicit stake question: Does the impending doom come about? I know it’s not really earth shaking or anything, I just never thought of it before.

Originally shared by Kasper Brohus Allerslev

The last flowchart I made got a lot of response. Much of the response was motivated by the fact that I failed to convey the assumption made by the model.

I made a new model (an even simpler one), but this time I’m going to explain my assumptions.

It is assumed that the players are already in a situation that requires immediate action. The flowchart doesn’t explain how to initialize the game, just how to keep it going by explicitly telling the GM when different things happen.

The box after the chart has been updated to indicate, where the main part of the conversation will be. The arrows out tells you when the conversation triggers response from either a player move or GM move.

The “resolve all moves” box has a term called “non-miss”. This is means each move with a rolled hit, or each move that requires no roll. Also, it is assumed in this box that players can react in any way that makes sense before the final value of the roll has been calculated. I.e, you can spent a use from a bag of books in Dungeon World after you have seen your roll.

I might make a further update to make the “resolve moves” part more explicit, perhaps giving it its own sub-chart.

I want to hear you people out as well!

Originally shared by Kasper Brohus Allerslev

I updated the “GM’ing World Games” flowchart. I like this version much better myself, as it is much more neat.

Thoughts?

Mini-game time!

You are at the entrance to , which is located in / on / by . You have journeyed here to on behalf of . Your luck has turned sour though, because , and that’s a real problem because . To make matters worse, you have just seen signs of . You can’t turn back since , so you must push on. Looking at the entrance, you get a feeling this won’t turn out well for all of you. What do you do?

Give me the best plot ever that fits the above model!