Author: Oliver Granger (watergoesred)

For our co-GMed Funnel World game, we’re slowing down villagers progression to 1 Level using Class Warfare. In Funnel World, if a villager survives an adventure and has 5 XP, they level up. But what’s the rush? With Class Warfare, the fun can last three times longer!

Class Warfare splits classes into an archetype and two or three specialities. This makes it easy to break up zero to hero into three stages. 

When you survive your first “adventure” and have 5 or more XP, follow the funnel world Level Up move. Except you’re not first level yet. Instead pick archetype and a speciality and start with 1/3 HP for 1 level (rounded down) based on that archetype with any speciality and Constitution modifiers. Also, add +1 to any stat (the score not the +mod). Don’t forget to -5 XP as per Funnel World Level Up move.

When you survive your second “adventure” and have 5 or more XP, follow the funnel world Level Up move. Except you’re not first level yet. Instead pick a second speciality, add 1/3 HP for 1 level (rounded down) based on your archetype with any speciality and Constitution modifiers. Also, add +1 to any stat (the score not the +mod). Don’t forget to -5 XP as per Funnel World Level Up move.

When you survive your third “adventure” and have 5 or more XP, follow the funnel world Level Up move. You’re finally first level so pick a third speciality, take the full HP for 1 level based on your archetype with any speciality and Constitution modifiers. Also, add +1 to any stat (the score not the +mod). Don’t forget to -5 XP as per Funnel World Level Up move.

“Surviving the adventure” could mean all kinds of narrative pauses. In our co-GMing funnel, we’re making the dungeon on-the-fly, so there’s no adventure module or even map that could trigger these stages. So we’re probably going to have make a call when it feels right.

For improving the damage die, consider the base damage for their archetype and any speciality modifiers.

D4: Same as villager. No change.

D6: Only get the d6 after third adventure when Level 1.

D8: Get d6 after second adventure and d8 after third when Level 1.

d10: get d6 after first adventure, d8 after second, and d10 after third when Level 1. 

The idea behind +1 to stats is the villagers random generation often leads to poorly stated characters, and some speciality moves only work if the stat mod is at least +1. I’m not particularly sold on the idea. I don’t see good stats as particularly desirable, as they often lead to safe play, but I also don’t care if some PCs have über-stats. And it’d work in the fiction, part of the villagers rising to the challenge and surviving the intense trauma.

Still need to think about calculating load and choosing alignment at some point. But otherwise should work okay. Well if any villagers last that long.

Last week we played our third session co-GMing a Dungeon World Funnel and test-driving Jason Lutes’s Perilous Journeys. One friend couldn’t play, so we hacked up something to do: villager gauntlets. To see how other villagers fared when the Dog-men attacked, to explore and expand on the village and its surroundings, to create pools of other villagers should the current bunch not make it out of the Lost Tomb of…. 

We made up rules for the gauntlets as we went along. The basic idea was: the default for failure was a villager died, and the gauntlet ended at predestined point if anyone survived. Lucky I still had 132 pre-printed villagers…   

We used the village map we created during funnel creation for Griffinmere to pick locations to focus on. We ended up running two gauntlets: 

– Tower-in-the-hole, an ancient tower rising from the centre of a bottomless pit, and

– the Forest, north of the defensive ditch maintained by Griffinmere.

We pulled out Plumb the Depths and decided on foundation, themes, and areas for the Tower-in-the-hole and the Forest. This worked surprisingly well for things not typical “dungeons”.

The Forest gauntlet is probably most interesting. We had 12 villagers, four each player, trying to escape the Dog-men chasing them into the Forest. We decided on four stages to the gauntlet: the ditch, the forest, the river, and the Volkar Stones. Each stage required a roll for each villager modified by one of two of their stats: 

– STR or DEX to survive the ditch

– WIS or DEX to make it out of the forest

– WIS or CON to escape the Dog-men’s tracking by surviving the river, and 

– WIS or INT to find shelter amidst the Volkar Stones.

Villagers actions (and death) would be coloured by the mod they rolled with.

10+ meant the villager was ahead of most villagers and safe. In the next stage, failure meant moving to the slow group, rather than death, as they are helped by villagers who catch up to them.

7-9 meant the villager was in the slow group. The villager with the lowest luck in the slow group dies. All villagers tied for lowest luck die. The Dog-men were picking off the slowest.

6- meant the villager dies if they also fail a luck roll. If you haven’t read Funnel World, anything less than 10 on a luck roll is failure. Success on the luck roll put the villager in the slow group and so up for elimination if they had or tied for the lowest luck.

Forest Gauntlet: Four rolls per villager with a choice for best modifier and a luck save on failure.

Result: Only 3 of the 12 villagers made it through. 

All-in-all a fun diversion, providing plenty of fuel for later adventures, fronts and rumours following the Devastation of Griffinmere.

Originally shared by Oliver Granger (watergoesred)

Two nights ago I wrote of how three friends and I are co-GMing a Dungeon World funnel. By the end of the first session our villagers had entered the dungeon. So in the second we used Plumb the Depths to find out what it contained.

Plumb the Depths has worked very well for collaborating at the table. That’s important for us because we’re co-GMing things by the seat of our pants really, so a way to frame our collaboration and generate some minimal content is exactly what we were looking for.

The set up process was quick and evocative. The dungeon was discovered on rumour of an old secret fur smuggler hideout, but we knew the history was richer than that. The Dungeon Foundation rolls revealed it was originally built by humanoids as a tomb. We easily connected ideas with the village we created using Funnel World that the humanoids must be dwarfs. Justin Wightbred or Narayan Bajpe might remember why exactly. I think it was something about the village being built on top of abandoned dwarven mines or something. Anyway, there’s were no dwarves in our original party of 16 (now 12 or maybe 11 or 10) so there’s been a bit of myth-building around dwarves. Anyway, a lost dwarven tomb it was, though the characters thought it was just a smugglers bolt hole. We didn’t explore any other bits of the history of the dungeon, like what ruined it etc. But we felt we had enough to go on.. 

The Plumbing Procedure was fun, and we did it together in a couple of minutes. Our table enjoys playing with an open hand and this process got us on the same page about the dungeon without taking too long or filling in too much detail.

We rolled a small dungeon, so no more than 4 areas, with 3 themes:

– Unusual: deepening mystery 

– Extraordinary: ancient curse

– Extraordinary: bottomless hunger 

What a cheerful place!

I have mixed feelings about the countdowns. I’m drawn to follow Planarch Codex’s “Monster as Dungeons” rules and rolling for each theme to possibly get combinations of themes in one area, which I think might help themes evoke more immediate ideas because interpreting what a particular combination could mean might inspire some creative leaps.

Writing the area list ahead of time was very useful, as it set some of our expectations about what lies ahead and added colour and flesh to the bones of our Dungeon Foundations. We chose:

– catacombs (common)

– natural caverns (common)

– smugglers storeroom (unique)

– ritual chamber (unique)

Upon entering the first area from the secret entrance in the now ruined hunting lodge, we rolled a common area holding a Danger with a theme of your choice. And the Danger rolled was an Entity: Dark God. Well that escalated quickly! We decided bottomless hunger was appropriate. 

Through many poor rolls, grim portents and cowardice, we had villagers falling down floor traps, piles of furs emerging as rather large monstrous beetle things, villagers dragged into the darkness, villagers hearing voices and becoming shimmering avatars of a dark god complete with unholy plate armour, broad sword and resonating voice-over. The village healer was beaten back at that point, only to become a shining angel of an opposing god. Unfortunately, the epic battle was cut short when the angel was dissipated in a single mighty blow, leaving the dark god avatar—as his powers allowed— to instantly fell beasts at the cost of killing one unlucky villager 1:1. At least until the avatar was dragged away into the dark and the rest of villagers fled down the trapdoor from the remaining giant hide beetles.

That’s when I rolled the next area, and decided the set up myself, mainly because the others were bickering and hen pecking each other. The See What They Find roll revealed the next area was a common area holding a Discovery with a theme of your choice. I said a hexagonal network of catacombs with the theme deepening mystery and rolled the discovery, a Find: artefact. Quick and interesting.

So I described the first two villagers who slid down the trapdoor had discovered an ornate, finely wrought shovel. One of these was my outclassed-in-every-way blacksmith, who proceeded to spout lore about the origins of it because the only things she got going for her is she found it first. She nailed it and everyone at the table gave suggestions. I picked my favourite: it was the legendary First and Last Shovel, said to be how the dwarfs were created. If this shovel kills a creature, a dwarf is said to then crawl out of the corpse. Gimm, the short-sighted old man, decides to off himself in the hope of rising again as a young dwarf, except Cynewolf the opportunistic ditch digger switches shovels and Gimm ends up knocking himself out with an ordinary shovel.

No doubt the chorus of a demonic ritual to summon a dark god will soon be heard.

Plumb the Depths is giving us a great framework to co-GM a Dungeon World Funnel. I’m excited to finish this adventure (because hell I’m afraid how long these villagers will last) and map out the wider world with the Learn the Language.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B254Gcq3LvXQYmdTMmZPbkt1NmM/view?usp=sharing

Originally shared by Oliver Granger (watergoesred)

Three friends and I have run two sessions of Dungeon World using the Funnel World character and village creation rules, Plumb the Depths draft and Monsterheartless co-GMing rules. 

I made a spreadsheet that automates the Funnel villager creation process. Not necessary but having a pile of 144 villagers to just shuffle and deal out certainly sped things up. We were dealt four characters each.

We’re co-GMing it, or running GMless, however you prefer your parlance. Basically we all created characters and are following the procedures set out in Monsterheartless, which is about co-GMing Monsterhearts specifically, but we’ve found works great with Dungeon World too. Here’s a link to the discussion with the Monsterheartless pdf: http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/comment/417843/#Comment_417843. Co-GMing is working great for us, perhaps because all four people round the table are experienced GMs, enthusiastic about making shit up, and embrace failure and uncertainty. 

The co-GMing is relevant because I think the tools Jason Lutes’s is creating here work really well for really collaborative tables. 

Funnel World’s collaborative village creation was fun and helped us connect the villagers and establish a history to their home. Tagging the village seemed a little administrative and I’m not sure we’ve gotten much use out of it. We’re planning on mapping out the broader world with the draft “Learn the Language” after this adventure, so it may be more useful then. The Map the Village step was easily the most fun and inspired some quirky and sensible features that really grounded the PC villagers. The round robin process worked well.

We used the Dog-Men Cometh Funnel Starter, and that gave us enough to run an initial scene and a fight. Three villagers died before we killed the Dog-Man Champion and the last Dog-Man fled, injured but able to call the rest of his pack for aid. That’s when the halfling brewer remembered tales regaled of an underground fur smugglers hideout and she convinced everyone to find its secret entrance and escape the approaching dog-man pack.

That’s when we pulled out Plumb the Depths, which I’ll post about tomorrow, with any luck.

http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/comment/417843/#Comment_417843