Author: T. Franzke

Volley – One of the biggest quirks in Dungeon World

Lets settle this once and for all

You know how you can’t Hack&Slash a Dragon or an Iron Golem with your wooden training sword? You are not engaging in melee in any meaningful way because you can’t hurt them with your weapon. We all understand that or if not it get’s quickly explained. 

Now let’s look at Volley

When you take aim and shoot at an enemy at range, roll+Dex

Now let’s imagine a situation in game. 

MC: “So Seraphine, the Dragon has its giant leathery back to you, Becca the Fighter keeping it busy. While she does so, what do you?”

Seraphine: “I take out my Shortbow and adjust my aim. I take a valuable moment and then shot at it. Every arrow after that coming quicker then the last. I roll Volley?!” 

So Seraphine definetly took aim and she shot at the dragon right? That is what she does. When she rolls a 10+, 

✴On a 10+, you have a clear shot—deal your damage 

and then rolls a 6 for damage. So while a dragon can not be harmed (presumably) by a normal weapon. It can be by arrows. The rules say so. 

There also isn’t a special quality on the dragon we could point at to explain why it doesn’t work. 

An Iron Golem has Special Qualities: Metal though. Does that mean that someone can’t “aim and shot” at them in a meaningful way? For me that doesn’t make sense. I’d rather let the roll Volley and then explain how all the damage is negated by the arrows bouncing of the metal body. 

That reasoning definitely works but it is weird to explain that in melee you need a suitable weapon while someone with a ranged weapon always has the right to roll. 

Some of this is definitely that ammo is a limited resource that you might need to spend to continue firing and you are not always at fire-weapon range but still it is weird. 

When we go away from Arrows and look at thrown weapons though it gets really weird because the dragon that you can’t Hack&Slash with an Iron Sword can be volleyed by an Iron Thrown Dagger and you get to deal damage. 

What wording for volley would you suggest that would allow someone to say “yeah, normal arrows don’t work” without writing it in a way that is cringeworthy? 

I do understand that this is a very strict reading of the rules and that you can just run volley with that restriction in mind but the move supports my reading more I think

In recent times I found myself thinking 

“Dungeon World really works best for oldschool dungeon crawling”

Shocking! 

What I mean are “you stand in front of a dungeon”, traps, monsters, treasure, Caves of chaos. All that stuff. 

This is not really a surprise and is what a lot of people are doing but pushing the game too far away from that basic idea has diminishing returns. You can still do it with the rules system but quite a lot of rule elements don’t really have something to latch on to if you do that. 

The sad thing is that the thing I would do with a potential next Dungeon World campaign isn’t really that. 

When in doubt, use Defy Danger 

Wether this is a good practice or not has come up a few times in this community and has been discussed before. The book definetly mentions that as a possibility. 

I’d like to offer the following alternative

When in doubt, make a quick custom move 

There are moments when our game brain tells us “man, there should be a move rolled right now” but none of the moves really fit. When you feel like that, why not make up a quick custom move for it? This has 2 major upsides I think.

1. You can roll even though none of the basic moves are really triggered in the fiction.

2. If you fail to come up with interesting 7-9 results for the action you see that a roll right now wouldn’t make much sense. This saves you the trouble of rolling Defy Danger and then stumbling on the 7-9 result (maybe one of the toughest decisions you have as a GM in Dungeon World). 

Downside:

You have to come up with a move on the fly. This should however get better the more you practice it. 

The other options for such a situation are of course

* Make a GM move (that might still apply when you can’t come up with a custom move right there)

* Roll Defy Danger 

What do you think? 

https://www.patreon.com/creation?hid=1772638

A few bits by John Harper on Damage in World of Dungeons and Dungeon World 

If it’s a fight, I deal damage on 6- and trade blows on 7-9. It’s not my problem that they only have 3 hp. Don’t think about “challenges.” Don’t make your opponents limp punching bags. Follow through on the fiction (the fiction being super-deadly dungeon delving).

If dealing damage is boring, you’re doing it wrong.

(Definitely use Last Breath if you want a bit less death. That’s much better than toning down damage or making wussy monsters who don’t usually deal damage. But death is part of a classic dungeon crawl game. “Everyone make your first character” I always say when we start.)

Sage LaTorra  adds: 

HP is, partially, a timer on how long you can fight. Death or Last Breath is what happens when that timer runs out.

Messing with HP or damage messed with the tempo, which may not be what you want to do. It makes fights longer or shorter.

Back to John Harper 

 I just usually deal HP damage, too (if it’s a fight). You can’t deal damage without saying what happens, anyway — which usually means escalating the situation and placing them in greater danger. You don’t ever just say, “You take 3 damage” (obviously) and when you say, “The Ogre grabs you by the leg and hurls you across the room,” I find it weird to not also say, “You take 3 damage.”

What I try to avoid as GM (this is my style, not the mandate of the game design) is eyeballing PC hit points and then making moves to be sure I don’t kill them. I find that annoying as a player and it runs counter to the gritty dungeon-delve vibe I try to cultivate. (Blake’s method with the kids is perfect for that group, but not what I want in my game.)

Trading damage (in a back-and-forth fight, remember) on a 7-9 is standard Dungeon World hack and slash.

It sucks, agreed. Which is how the PCs learn that you don’t stand toe to toe and fight things that can kill you. If you attack them some other way, of course, the 7-9 result is different. This isn’t a rule (7-9 means damage!) it’s an application of the general rule, given a set of specific circumstances.

You can read the whole thing here. 

http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/18549/world-of-dungeons-what-are-you-using-for-monsters 

Expect me to do a lot more damage going forward. 

Debuffing Bard

 Something I like in videogames and some fantasy tropes is the “Anti Bard”. Be it a Jester, a Dirge Singer or Doomsayer. They use the magic of music not to help but to bring despair and decay. 

How do you do that mechanically? Simply saying someone does less damage or takes more damage doesn’t seem that interesting. Inducing specific fictional results might brake the fiction at some moments. 

How would you do that? 

Another idea is to use the normal Arcane Arts result an flavor that the advantage you create is because your enemy is weakened somehow.

(Quick point about why “does less damage” makes no sense. If I put -1d6 damage on an enemy and they never deal damage to something this was wasted. To be a fan of the character I am as a GM am incentivised to have the target deal damage to someone so that we can see that they deal less damage now – creating a zero sum result. It is not very interesting too) 

(Quick point about why “takes extra damage” is bad: That is the same as giving extra damage to an ally) 

This month I talk about Class Warfare on the Dungeon World Guide Patreon. 

https://www.patreon.com/creation?hid=1713908&rf=329201