Author: Larry Spiel

It appears I’ll be running an occasional ongoing game of Dungeon World.  I’ve done quite a number of one-shots, often teaching the system as I do so.

I was hoping some of you helpful people might direct me toward anything I should know that will make this easier?  I’ve been running by the book since it first arrived, and my typical one-shots were always improvised.  What’s changed?  What wisdom has been learned?

And yes Jason Cordova, I’ll be mining Discern Realities for advice/ideas.

Just did some DW one shots for PAX east, and it occurred to me that I could crowd source ideas here for them.

When running this game, I improvise the game, but I find it helpful to have some ideas for each class for what they are doing the moment play starts. (I should also point out that I shamelessly style this awesome trick from Alex Roberts)

Examples:

Barbarian – “You have a foe held above your head with both hands.”

Ranger – “You have an arrow notched, and you notice that two of your allies are in danger.”

Paladin – “The brigand and murderer less beaten before you, begging you to spare his life and swearing no longer to follow the path of evil.”

Ect.

Note that I actually prefer not to follow this up with more combat if it can be avoided, but people do like to mess things up a bit of the bat usually.

So, any ideas for opening for various classes? I find they work best if they give the player what they wanted from the class in the first place.