W. Flack – Dungeon World Tavern G+ Archives

How does one fictionally and mechanically resolve reducing ammo as the result of a Volley move with a weapon that…

How does one fictionally and mechanically resolve reducing ammo as the result of a Volley move with a weapon that has the reload tag under tense circumstances? Say, for example, an owlbear is charging down the thief, who draws her crossbow fires at its face. The crossbow “takes more than a moment to reset” between each attack – fictionally, if the first shot were to whiff the owlbear should be able to close the distance and tear the poor thief to shreds before she has a chance to load a second bolt. Does the thief simply not have the opportunity to “take multiple shots,” effectively removing that option as a possibility for her 7-9 result? Should the thief be able to reduce ammo, with the added risk of immediately being mauled if the damage doesn’t drop the charging beast?

Looking for a bit of feedback on this one.

Looking for a bit of feedback on this one. I’m pretty happy with the concept, but I figure it would be a good idea to get more eyes on it before I drop it into my home game.

Prudence First and Silence Second

3 weight

Two Handed, Hand, Close, Precise, 1 Piercing, +1 Armor

“One of the more controversial creations of Madame Fayne Gwethana, an infamous student of unnatural philosophy at the Scholarium Obscura. Said by many of Fayne’s peers to go against the very spirit of wizard’s duels, Prudence First and Silence Second are antimagic duelist’s tools designed for engaging spellcasters in direct combat.”

These enchanted weapons are designed to be used together in battle. It isn’t clear which name is meant to refer to the dueling rapier and which is meant for the dagger, but when wielded independently of the other they function like their respective mundane items in all regards. When you fight with Prudence First and Silence Second in your hands, you parry the very winds of magic. The +1 armor granted by your dagger cannot be ignored by magical attacks with the ignores armor tag.

When you hack and slash, you may completely disrupt the magical effects of any counterattack that would come as the consequence of a 7-9 roll. Your enemy must meet your attack with their own strength alone, or watch their spellworks fizzle. On 10+, you may additionally disturb or destroy any ongoing magical effect maintained by your target as if you had cast the wizard spell Dispel Magic.

The Skull of Sir Sylvestre

The Skull of Sir Sylvestre

1 Weight

The boisterous talking skull of an ancient explorer, discovered among a monster’s treasure hoard. Through some fluke of fate, it would seem that death passed over Sylvestre after his decapitation (though he’s decidedly cagey about what cost him his head) and left his spirit clinging to his skull. Countless famed adventurers have used Sylvestre’s skull to guide their journeys over the ages, and his accumulated knowledge of the world’s most obscure reaches is unrivaled in nearly all regards. He’s been almost everywhere at least once.

Sylvestre knows the best route to anywhere you may want to go, and he’s more than willing to impart his centuries of travelling experience to the explorers of the modern age – but only those who prove themselves to be pleasant company. When you are the trailblazer on a perilous journey and work with Sir Sylvestre to plan the trip, roll +CHA instead of +WIS. On a +10, in addition to reducing the time it takes to get there, Sylvestre recalls a useful and valuable fact about where you’re going. On a miss, you make an awful impression on Sylvestre. Tell the GM what started the argument that derailed your trip, and in addition to whatever consequences result from the failed journey take a -1 ongoing to moves made with the skull until the two of you make up.

How has your group treated the cleric’s Resurrection spell at the table?

How has your group treated the cleric’s Resurrection spell at the table? As per the SRD, a cleric is capable of returning life to any corpse “whose soul has not yet fully departed this world,” with the GM setting the specific costs for doing so.

As long as a corpse can be recovered, this is the most straightforward way for player characters to try returning particularly unfortunate comrades from the kingdom beyond the Black Gate. The rule book heavily encourages making death an adventure unto itself, so I’m interested in hearing what costs and consequences some of you guys have applied to raising dead characters In your home games.

Highlight from tonight’s Halloween session:

All hell broke loose when an occultist sorcerer accidentally opened a rift to an aberrant plane at a fancy masquerade. The intent of the host and his cult buddies was to sway the local nobility over to the new heretical religion in town with a show of power, but the attempt to impress everyone by opening a portal to another part of the country ended up peeling back the fabrics of reality and revealing a place between worlds – and then a Beholder on the other side decided to crash the party.

The adventurers quickly learned that attacking the monster head-on was dangerous, especially when they realized the hard way that looking at its big, central eye for too long while trying to act against it ran the risk of paralysis, petrification, fear, and in the worst case, hypnosis.

After the Cleric almost got killed on the spot for trying to charge the beast and got charmed for her troubles so the creature could freely chomp on her, a change of strategy was in order. The Ranger managed to get into a subtle position in the destroyed dining hall and hide until someone else drew the Beholder’s attention so to trigger a called shot while its body was turned away. The beast was stunned (a Beholder is basically just a big head, so there’s not many other called shots to make) and the Druid used this opportunity to shapechange into a stag and charge with the hopes of pushing it back into the portal it came from. The creature didn’t take long to start emerging again, though, so the Druid used their strength to stop it in place halfway between worlds, and then spent their other hold to again push it – and themselves – beyond the abrasion in realities.

At this point, as the Druid and the Beholder both entered the monster’s strange, blasted wasteland of a native realm, the Druid’s expenditure of their last hold caused them to shift back into their natural form. The Beholder opened its mouth wide and lunged forward, trying to take the Druid up into its toothy maw.

At this point I ask: “Druid, what do you do?”

The Druid replies, “Nothing. I let it happen.”

I say that the Druid is pulled into the Beholder’s jaws and gored for what ends up being 15 damage, then ask where that leaves their health.

“Almost dead,” the Druid says. “I shapechange into a bear while inside it.”

Even though the Druid ended up getting a six on their shapeshifter role, it was pointed out that the Druid still gains one hold on a miss. The Beholder bites down and brings the Druid to death’s threshold, but in the process its loses all of its teeth and its jaw is torn off its face. It flees into the wasteland, maimed and critically injured, leaving the rift in reality and the dying bear behind.

In the end the Druid agreed to Death’s bargain: since they were in a state of shifting somewhere between human and animal when death came to claim them, they received to option of forsaking their human body and keeping their bear form as their natural state in return for keeping their mortal soul. They decided to remain on their side of the rift in realities and defend their homeplane against threats like the Beholder as a big magic bear until their companions could figure out how to close the rift, which is so cool I’ve already decided to incorporate it as a lore element into my main DW campaign somehow.

Overall, it was a great night of roleplaying. Dungeon world is a wonderful system for keeping the pace flowing from action to action, and the last few months of running it have given me a lot of appreciation for the potential that sort of flow has for creation really memorable moments at the table.

A custom move created for my group’s Halloween One-Shot tonight, titled “The Night of the Beholder!”

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

When you are forced to look at the Beholder’s many evil eyes while attempting any action against it, Roll+WIS. On a hit, you may attempt to make your move against the terrible creature. On a 7-9, pick one:

>You may attempt your action, but your eye lingers for a moment too long in its gaze. After the action has been attempted, you immediately suffer the effects of one of its magical eyestalks of the DM’s choice:

-A piece of gear the Beholder can see is turned to stone, rendered heavy and useless.

-One of your limbs becomes paralyzed for several hours

-You are struck with immense, supernatural dread towards the Beholder, taking a -1 ongoing against it.

>You are forced to turn away before your action is attempted.

GMs of Dungeon World: what is Death motivated by in your games, when it comes to the bargains he makes with dying…

GMs of Dungeon World: what is Death motivated by in your games, when it comes to the bargains he makes with dying adventurers? It’s not too hard to come up with generally “tough” choices to present players who hit the 7-9 on their Last Breath: put the Ranger’s animal companion in the crosshairs, make the Thief give up their prized trinket from their most memorable theft, force the Paladin to go against their divine oath in some way, etc.

What challenges me sometimes is making the Last Breath move’s hard choices follow the fiction in a believable way. The first time someone appears before the Black Gates, Death becomes a character just like any other in your campaign and should have agendas that characterize the interactions with PCs. Saying “the Druid must defile the great oak tree that sustains the Wood Elves of the Ithdell Forest” is one thing, but answering “why does Death want this?” is another thing entirely that I find myself getting caught up on.

Does Death want to take as many souls as possible beyond the Black Gates? Does Death believe in a balance such that a soul must be sacrificed to save another? Is Death a neutral party just trying to do its job? Is Death spiteful, and seeks to torment anyone who cheats it? Is Death simply cruel, and enjoys toying with mortals and watching the tragedy that comes from their attempts to escape its grasp? Any of these answers would result in very different deals when it comes time to deal with a 7-9, I feel.

I’m interested in hearing how other GMs tend to handle this question: what motivates your Death to strike deals, and in what ways does this tend to color the nature of those deals?