Lampblack & Brimstone – Page 17 – Dungeon World Tavern G+ Archives

How granular do you usually make a Perilous Journey?

How granular do you usually make a Perilous Journey?

I like the revised PJ-rules in Perilous Wilds, but something about the way it’s worded makes me unsure how to resolve it, and how often moves get triggered.

When PJ gets triggered, how often do they make camp? Do they scout ahead and navigate each day? If a journey takes several days, do you sum it up/abstract it in one make camp-move?

I guess it depends on the fiction, how dangerous the route is and how interesting the journey is vs how interesting the end of the journey is, but some examples would be nice.

Perilous Wilds: Hirelings, Hit Points, and the Group tag

Perilous Wilds: Hirelings, Hit Points, and the Group tag

Jeremy Strandberg, or anyone who has used the PW follower rules:

Do you assign Hit Points to a follower differently when they have the Group tag?

Like, I can imagine adapting the Grunt Squad rules from Risus, so that Hit Points represent something more like morale until the group scatters (or something). But I wanted to make sure I wasn’t overlooking an obvious or not-so-obvious function of scale and HP for follower groups.

Have you ever used the Group tag to represent an army?

I’ve been thinking about Managing Provisions lately, and rations in general

I’ve been thinking about Managing Provisions lately, and rations in general

I’m increasingly persuaded that rations should not be a “one per player” deal, but rather a “one per party” deal, so that there is a shared pool of rations and the whole party eats once a day.

Why is this? Well mostly it’s because when somebody inevitably has more food than someone else, they just give the excess to the famished teammate. If you have a group that thrives on petty interpersonal conflict then by all means keep personal ration-tracking in, but what effectively happened in my games was that we had a shared pool of communal food that was broken up and tracked across four-five player sheets. If we reached a point where one person was hungry, it probably meant everyone was hungry, or soon would be. Streamlining this process – having them share that burden, eating and running out of food as a group rather than individuals – increases its dramatic tension and presents hunger as another team obstacle that drives forward the evening’s play.

I’ve decided I want to try out something else – treating rations as another ammo like in Volley. You don’t use up a ration every time you eat – you use it up whenever you get a 7-9 or a GM move or whatever.

This also solves the related issue I’ve had of Manage Provisions having the option of “you use less rations than usual”, which always left the nitty-gritty down to the GM in a way that wasn’t especially interesting. Letting them use less rations than required never mustered more than a “huh, neat”, because food management wasn’t really something they thought of. They just ate when they were told, and gave extra to those without.

Here’s what I’ve thought of so far: Dungeon Rations become an ammo (5) item. The players can describe whether the food is shared among all their packs, or nominate someone to carry it. The weight isn’t really important.

Manage Provisions

When you prepare and distribute food for the party, roll +WIS:

on a 10+, everyone eats well

on a 7-9, everyone eats well after choosing 1 from the list below.

Mark off 1 ration/ammo

The smell of food attracts unwanted attention

(something else)

You know rolling on the random creature table was a great decision when the result comes up “BEAST+dragon” for a…

You know rolling on the random creature table was a great decision when the result comes up “BEAST+dragon” for a PC’s Summon spell.

In other news, ferret-dragons are adorable.

LEVEL 10!

LEVEL 10! Last night, “Lucky” Jak Longshadow became the first player character in one of my d12-World “Advanced Freebooters” games to reach level 10. This is impressive for several reasons: the first being that with my geometrically scaled XP progression table and stingy end-of-session 3XP max, this means he acquired a whopping 408 XP through loads of hard failure. Second, the fact that and his companions are only 60% through the challenging “emergent mega-dungeon” they’re exploring/enjoying is living proof that there will be life well beyond Level 10. Lastly, this achievement is a testament to a great group of stick-with-it players (on the Frontier :-). More to come as others follow…

I’m struggling a bit with the Perilous Journey Scout Ahead option:

I’m struggling a bit with the Perilous Journey Scout Ahead option:

“You discern a beneficial aspect of the terrain—shortcut, shelter, or tactical advantage”

I’ve never quite understood how to work it into the narrative of the rest of the journey and its moves.

Does, for example, a shortcut mean we just skip to the destination, or remove one day from the number of days it will take to reach it? If they describe some form of tactical advantage am I thus obligated, as a Fan of the Characters, to instigate some kind of conflict so they have something to have an advantage over?

Shelter only really makes sense if this is the end-point of the day’s journeying and even then is it just visual – they shelter in a warm dry cave – or should I represent it mechanically with some kind of bonus to taking watch or resting?

I find this option to be a bit too open for me, but more importantly it’s too open for my players as they have never once (thank god) picked it, as they understood better the benefits of Discoveries and Dangers, and I’ve never been able to frame the option in a way that attracted them, largely I suspect because I am myself a bit baffled about what to make of it.

Do people have examples of how they use this move?

I’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts on how you interpret the spells Cacophonous Doom and Crimson Steam

I’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts on how you interpret the spells Cacophonous Doom and Crimson Steam

Here’s the latest development from HIGH LEVEL (d12 WORLD) FREEBOOTERS!

Here’s the latest development from HIGH LEVEL (d12 WORLD) FREEBOOTERS!

Ability Point “burn” is great, and we use it all the time in many ways. As a stiffer challenge to high level characters, I’m also now using debilities.

As in DW, Debilities add a -1 to your rolls against a given ability. With the ability bonus scaling system I use, each debility is equivalent to two points of ability burn.

In addition, they require rest in a SETTLEMENT or the services of a TEMPLE to remove.

Multiple debilities on the same ability stack.

Here’s the section of the character sheet where players can keep track of them. (small circles, right side of modifier).

It’s working great and adding fun to our games!

So as not to complain without putting forward a solution, here’s what I am trying with the Cleric:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Y8inBZjeZueHRtLWI3cUtMSjQ

I wanted an “adventure” Cleric rather than a “town” Cleric, so this guy’s abilities are focused on assisting and converting his fellow Freebooters (inspired by the Keep Company move, which is super fucking cool) rather than the population at large. He also “declares” enemies of his deity, which gives him power, but at the potential cost of it being seen as an abuse of authority by the deity itself. I also tried to adjust the difficulty and rarity of Favor, since it seemed less common and less useful than any other class’ “points.”

I’m a little concerned that Lay On Hands might be a little too powerful, and should perhaps have a greater cost, but in general I feel pretty good about the differences. I also really like the super-flexible Invoke move from the current version, but I just felt like there wasn’t much else that a Cleric could or would do (besides scrounge for Favor to make the move less likely to go horribly, horribly wrong).

Any thoughts?

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Y8inBZjeZueHRtLWI3cUtMSjQ

I’m really excited about a second edition, and planning on giving the playtest stuff a run in a couple of weeks.

I’m really excited about a second edition, and planning on giving the playtest stuff a run in a couple of weeks… I haven’t been this inspired to run a campaign since, well, the first edition of Freebooters arrived in my hands.

Everything just seems great… barring the kind of sad-looking Cleric playbook, but I’ve drafted up some moves for my players to see how they go. Should be a lot of fun.