Author: Pedro Bastos

Hey folks, not sure if you remember, but some time ago I told you about how I started my first three player group (I’ve only played 1 on 1 games before that), so I’m here to tell you about the next two sessions we had(this is going to be a long post, folks!) One thing of note is that I won’t be explaining what happened during the first session, since I already had posted about it here before.

The second session was a bit of a letdown. We had a new, fourth player, one of our friends who unfortunately couldn’t join us on the first session, so I talked with her privately about how should we introduce her to the rest of the group (planning some kind of surprise introduction, since we play online she would log on to roll20 the moment I gave her the signal)

She decided that she would play a cleric that had been locked in some kind of magical stasis for something like 50 years, inside the catacombs the group were exploring (kinda like captain america). The other players loved the surprise (I had told them that she wouldn’t join us again) and released her from her prison right away. And that’s when I made a mistake.

She told me she had experience playing tabletop RPGs, as she had played on a Vampire: the Masquerade group some years ago, so I thought that she would get the Dungeon World rules quite easily, and we both decided that she would create her character during the session, and well, she didn’t get the rules as fast as I expected, as I’ve spent roughly an hour explaining character creation and the basic rules to her (I should have done that before the session began), so we didn’t do much else after that , the players had an encounter with a kraken, which was pretty fun, but we decided to finish the session after defeating it, as it was already late.

The thing is, the players still enjoyed the session nonetheless and still wanted to play (I was relieved with that, really), so I promised myself to do better next time, and that I did.

The third session was last saturday, and our players finished exploring the dungeon with an epic fight against a cultist trying to sacrifice the mayor’s daughter (they were looking for her) in a ritual to revive Ur-Gammon, the wizard they’d fought on the first session (the cultist was guarded by an abomination by the way). After killing the cultist and disrupting its ritual, Ur-gammon’s spirit was totally mad with them, and turned the cultist’s body into a chaos spawn that almost killed the party (the PCs had already taken a beating).

After slaying the spawn, our characters decided that it would be best to return to town, taking with them some gold, a magical shield and some notes the cultist’s journal. The notes explained about an ancient god’s cult, led by Ur-Gammon himself. This cult had been performing rituals like the the one our PCs disrupted for generations, always reviving Ur-Gammon so he could keep working to bring this ancient god into the mortal realm. With this important info, the group left the dungeon and went back to town.

The thing is, while they were outside, the bandits they fought on the first session had regrouped and were now literally raiding the town, their numbers stronger than ever. The session ended with our character’s finding the guard captain’s body, slain by the foul bandits, and now they want to get to the mayor before the same happens to him.

I think our third session was the most fun and dynamic we had by far. There was a lot of action and we discovered a lot about the land and its gods and kings (play to find what happens, right?), and right now I believe the whole group has fully grasped the rules (even our newest player).

Hey folks, how do you handle spellcasting failures? I was thinking about making a table of random consequences, kinda like Dungeon Crawl Classics (is there one of those out there already?)

Last night I introduced three of my friends to Dungeon World, they were pretty familiar with the concept of tabletop RPGs, but I guess they never experienced the “real thing”. The session began at 10:30 PM yesterday and we finished at 3:00 AM today (yeah, they enjoyed the game).

During the first hour I explained how the game works and they made their characters (it took that long because they had a lot of questions, these guys were very green), so we got a a Fighter, a Wizard and a Ranger.

Next I explained them that their characters already knew each other, and I asked them how would they name their last adventure, giving some suggestions; they choose to name it “The Journey of Ur-Gammon”, then I asked what happened during this adventure, and they explained that they were escorting this wizard named Ur-Gammon to an ancient place, until they discovered his evil, necromantic intentions and took him down.

Without further ado, their adventure began at a tavern (they REALLY wanted to begin at a tavern, see how those guys were very new to this thing), where they were drinking and telling their story to the locals (the ranger couldn’t stop saying that he killed three zombies with a single shot), until a group of bandits broke in town raiding and stealing and eventually locking themselves in the local temple with both the priest and the mayor’s mom as hostages. This was a very small town, and they hadn’t much of a guard, so the mayor asked the PCs to solve this situation, promising gold in return.

As they are big fans of hack an’ slash videogames, I wasn’t surprised that they decided to go kicking the front door down “guns blazing”. Considering that they were very new players, I decided to let them deal with this situation without very severe consequences for their “rash” entrance, as the adventure turned into a good old dungeon crawl (there were some hidden catacombs under the temple).

We finished the session with them finding the priest’s body, sacrificed in a dark ritual to raise undead, and yet no sign of the mayor’s mom. They didn’t explore the whole place, it was getting late and we all agreed that it would be best to continue on in the next session.

I have to say that this was the biggest group I had (I mostly play one-on-one short campaigns with my brother), and that I was kinda nervous at the beginning, but I’m happy to say that everyone had a blast playing. The players were very engaged right from the beginning (they were always curious about tabletop RPGs), and right now they’re already asking when is the next session.

Damn, this game is fun! : )

Hey folks, have you ever done an “epilogue” kind of adventure? A more lighthearted, more personal small story where the players wrap the small details, find out what happened to the NPCs they encontered during the campaign and whatnot?

I’m asking this because last weekend me and my brother continued our one-on-one campaign, but to my surprise, after some clever decisions his character made (and an amazing streak of 10+’s during the whole session) he dealt such a powerful blow against the villains (their main leaders killed and their main source of power gone), it really felt like the campaign front was solved before I was expecting, which is not a bad feeling at all, it was an amazing and “very cinematic” session that ended with a satisfactory feeling of “job’s done”.

With that said, my brother’s character still got some levels before hitting the cap, and we both feel that his thief’s story is not over yet, but I’m not sure what direction it should take: an epilogue kind of thing or maybe a new threat arrising, taking his PC to another campaign front?

Hey folks, do you use music when running a game? Any tips on how to choose the right song for the right moment?

I’ve been using the soundtracks from the good old Infinity Engine videogames and they work amazingly well for the classic “adventurer party looking for gold and glory” theme, but I want to hear about your experiences and get some suggestions you might have : )

Hey folks, do you have any tips for running a hexcrawl? Doesn’t need to be specific DW tips, as I don’t want to use much more than the core rules, but I was looking for “general” hints on keeping the game running and whatnot.

Hey folks, I’m trying to create my very first custom move (kinda new to DW yet). I’m playing a 1 on 1 campaign that’s themed on Necromancy (lots of undead, corrupted paladins, liches and whatnot), so I figured that it would be cool to create a move around the ideia of resisting necrotic corruption: the more you have it, the more you are resistant to necromantic spells, but, you get some kind of penalty that increases with this corruption.

So, here’s the move:

“You feel the dark hand of the Great Raven holding your soul, trying to bring you to the realms of undeath. When you try to resist it, roll plus your corruption.

– If you get 10+, you resist the effects of the spell and get away clean.

– If you get 7-9, choose one:

You take the effect of the spell, but stay clean

You take +1 corruption, but the spell doesn’t work against you

– If you get 6-, the spell affects you like intended, and you add +1 corruption.”

So yeah, there’s the move, right now I’m trying to figure out what kind of penalty the accumalated corruption should come with. Any suggestions?

Hey guys, let me ask you something:

Let’s say a fighter gets to level 2 and chooses multiclass dabbler to cast spells like a level 1 wizard. If he/she gets to level 3, will he/she be able to cast spells as level 2 wizard, or is he/she stuck as a 1st level wizard?

Hey folks, i’ve an interesting situation.

I’m introducing my brother to Dungeon World and we created his first character, a Halfling Thief, which is fine and all, but the funny thing happened when I started asking about these character’s background: my brother decided that his character is also a baker, that makes cakes and sell them to get by (when not adventuring).

Personally, I liked his idea, a lot. Giving this character a mundane job made it much more believable, you know, you just can’t be a full-time, treasure-hunting murder hobo for the rest of your life, right?

The thing is, should I make a custom move about making cakes? Or maybe a compendium class that would allow him to make poisoned or magic desserts and whatnot.

Any suggestions?

Guys, I have a small question: when a character levels up, its maximum Hit Points will only increase if the player chooses to increase the character’s Constitution?