Author: Rob Deobald

We ran our second episode of Johnstone Metzger Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn back at the end of November. 

My thoughts on episode 1 can be found here: http://goo.gl/ZQTYMq

A horrible unedited mashup of my game notes and the scene breakdown throughout episode 2 can be found here: http://goo.gl/w03226

We ran into a few frustrations, especially for the players of Space Wurm and Moonicorn.  I was leaning on the “never speak the name of your move” Principal of Dungeon World to mean that I shouldn’t make explicit what elements or NPCs or whatever in the game were part of any given Front. 

I believe they found this frustrating because it made it difficult to tell if they were progressing towards their win conditions or flailing around in  the dark or drowning or what. To me, it was obvious they were doing all sorts of awesome Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn type things and tackling all sorts of fronts related to the parts of space that were challenging them, but once they pointed out how they felt I could definitely see where they were coming from.

In our post-mortum the next day, I made the fronts so far explicit to the players:

The Imperial Throne

Danger –> The Braintrust

Danger –> Task Force 100.100, “the Centurions” led by Admiral Sartorius

Danger –> The Astral Gate on Shebar

Interstellar Transport

Danger –> The Stardust

Danger –> The Stardust Heretics

Danger –> The Shadows that Swallowed Utopia

Cybernetics

Danger –> That dark secret part of Third Eye Cybernetics that paid the Stardust to divert ‘the Chrome’ away from it’s destination into the hands of the Imperial Republic Navy at Shebar. These people haven’t been seen on screen yet.

With this list obviously being added to as ideas pop up and events play out during the game.

It became clear that Moonicorn and Space Wurm had both defeated a danger, so we’ve decided to address that at the start of Episode 3, which is tomorrow night!

At this point, I’ve got some cool ideas going forward, and I’m excited to see how these defeated dangers play out, so I’m feeling hopeful.

#Moonicorn #Spacewurm #spacewurmvsmoonicorn  

I ran our first episode of Johnstone Metzger’s Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn last night.  It was awesome, you should try it!

A little write up / scene breakdown of our session is here: http://goo.gl/PvDuuZ

I did find myself with a bit of a puzzle when it came to what to prepare for the first session.  I wonder if a little bit of additional, SWvMC specific, guidance would be a good addition to the adventure.

DW tends to suggest not even thinking about fronts for a first session, and instead think about asking questions an leaving blanks, etc.

But with Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn, you know what the fronts are as soon as Space Wurm makes a few decisions, and Space Wurm knows they have to defeat those fronts to win the game, and to be fair to Moonicorn, if you don’t push the fact that they are hunted then Space Wurm might get more chances to face their dangers than Moonicorn does which wouldn’t be fair.

I ended up splitting the difference; I used the planet generating rules from Dungeon Planet and the steading Rules from DW to generate a situation with lots of tensions in it that reference and introduce the fronts and foreshadow some dangers, but didn’t really provide a lot of opportunity to face them directly.  

The approach seemed to work pretty good, and now that all the characters have met each other, and the players have a sense of what is going on, I can see them already start to plot how to move themselves towards their goals.

Has anyone else played it? What did or would you do to prepare for the first session?

#SpaceWurmvsMoonicorn

  #SpaceWurm #Moonicorn  

Johnstone Metzger; Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn looks so incredibly cool! I cannot wait to try it out!

The document released with Monsterhearts Second Skins says it is a rough playtest draft. Are there specific things you would like feedback on? Or a format you would like feedback in? 

Will you be releasing the formatted character sheets soon? Or saving that for a later date?

#SpaceWurmvsMoonicorn #SpaceWurm #Moonicorn