Author: Patrick Joannisse

Live now is Adam Koebel and Steven Lumpkin on Being everything else. A show about GMing and roleplaying games.

http://www.twitch.tv/silent0siris

Let’s say you’ve been playing Dungeon World for a while with the same group of friends and they picked up on how the game works. I never mentioned the name of my moves but they seem to understand the pattern (or maybe they read the rules). When I describe how they get separated by a blast of magic, a player will say “But I didn’t roll anything to get a consequence like that” and another player will come to my defense (I suppose) and say “That’s how the GM moves work”.

Before they would just be so invested in the fiction they would never tell me stuff like that. I guess it’s like when you kids tell you they know Santa is not real before you had to explain them…

Is there anything I can do about it? I feel like a magician in a crowd with other magicians who know how the tricks work.

Adam Koebel recently shared an article about Megadungeons and I have to admit they are my greatest challenge as a GM. I never know how to deal with the scale and how to make it interesting and engaging for players to explore an seemingly infinite dungeon. How to you make sections/rooms interesting and varied specially when you have to leave blanks

I when I get overwhelmed with a dungeon I usually hint an easy exit. I’d like to conquer this sentiment but I have no idea where to start. Any tips, articles, books etc.

I’m looking for weird magical experiments. My players told me of a tower where mages are performing weird magical experiments and I’m looking for inspirations.  Any ideas?

When my players ask what to do when two of them wants to play the same playbook

So yesterday we started a new game of DW to introduce the system to a new player. I decided to go with Grim World as a main source of tone and rules and it was a blast.

Our party was composed of an Elf Templar of Gaia (Godess of Nature), a Human Paladin or Flarius, god of purifying fire and a Centaur Battlemaster (she decided to put some spirituality to fit with the party more so she worships the stars). The game took an interesting twist when I announced they’ve been summoned to a council to talk about the imminent planar invasion. I think last session was 80% world building (mostly from the players) and 20% actual gameplay. It was awesome. The 20% was punctuated by the opening of a storm portal and they had to fight lightning soldiers.

We had major conflicts in the party and I used their bonds against them sometimes (Templar sees the Paladin as an heretic for instance) and at one point they spout lore and the Templar rolled a 5 and the Paladin a 7. So I thought: Why not separate them..not physically but have them say opposite stuff? It was awesome. I might make a move for when the party is sinking into arguments and when someone tries to stop it.

Let’s say your hardcore Pathfinder players finally decided to try Dungeon World and you have a single game session to make them decide between Dungeon World and Pathfinder..what would you put emphasis on during the first session?

I had this idea and I’m just not sure if someone did it before so tell me.

Group playbook. The group playbooks would gain levels with the characters and let them execute group moves. Let’s say your group is composed of characters with all military training and you choose the group playbook: Military squad. Military squad would give you access to (let’s say) Back to back.

When the group is surrounded and position itself in a back to back formation, you hold 3 as in the Defend move and stand in the defense of the group. The group acts as a single individual and everyone in the group can spend hold, 1 for 1, on the Defend options.

Just thinking out loud. Different group playbooks could be made like: Inquisition unit, Tomb raiders, Goblin hunters etc. Each of them would have unique set of moves and, why not, multiclass moves so you can spice things up.

If people like the idea and it wasn’t done before I would actually work on this on publish it for free.

Game tonight after many weeks of cancellation. I lost track of a couple events and facts from our various last games but I’m sure my players will correct me. After a couple of games of intense combat I’ll have then resupply and have some roleplay (after a request from one of my players).

My game so far was set in one city invaded by an army. The survivors are regrouped in a district and I have no idea how the enemy will be contained out of that district..let’s play to find out.

Do you guys think it would be possible somehow to create a hack of Apocalypse or Dungeon World to let players fully customize their character by selecting moves instead of choosing a class?