The Dungeon World Tavern: Actual Play – Page 46 – Dungeon World Tavern G+ Archives

Our Ranger threw me for a loop today. He had chosen the Wild Empathy move when last he levelled, and I wasn’t aware.

Ranger: “Are there any animals in the town?”

GM: “One dog, a couple of cats, a few goats”

Ranger: “I go down to the docks first thing in the morning, buy some fish and sit down to feed and speak with the cats”

GM: “…um…okay?”

Ranger: “I ask the cats what has happened to bring the townsfolk so low”

Cat: “Hungry.”

Ranger: “I just gave you some fish. What’s wrong with the town?”

Cat: “Hungry. Hungry. Sad. Hungry.”

Ranger: “Why are the people unfriendly?”

Cat: “Hungry. Broken. Town, people broken. Spirits broken. Hungry.”

Ranger: “Do you ever go up to the graveyard on the cliff?”

Cat (hair standing on end, hissing): “Not there. Don’t like light there.”

Ranger: “The moon?”

Cat: “Not sky-light. Rain-light. Rain-growl.”

Ranger: “…Lightning? Thunder?”

GM: * Grins *

This is the map my 7-yo DM drew before running my solo adventure today.

This is the map my 7-yo DM drew before running my solo adventure today. He had never DM’d before and he was awesome. His only flaw was showing mercy during some of my half-dozen missed rolls.

Thanks to LaTorra & Koebel for making DW so easy to improvise and easy to mash up with my favorite game ever.

Thanks to LaTorra & Koebel for making DW so easy to improvise and easy to mash up with my favorite game ever.

So about five weeks ago, I found a group of guys on /r/lfg to run Dungeon World for.

I’m in Australia, and they’re in the US, so for me, when we play, it’s Saturday around midday, and for them, it’s Friday evening. Its worked out really well so far, playing for about four hours each session.

In three sessions, they’ve finished off the intro “adventure” I cooked up. I plonked them down with some combats, right near a refuge to the god Bo-Voormith, the king of dreams.

Just a half hour ago, we finished up with that, and next session they’ll be on the road to the nearest town, where they were heading before they got sort of swept up into the fray.

It’s been a really great learning experience, and I just wanted to share with you guys how much I love Dungeon World. Thanks for existing, and thank you all for sharing stories.

Well, my idea worked! In fact, it couldn’t have gone better!

Well, my idea worked! In fact, it couldn’t have gone better!

We played a one shot of DW last weekend for a friend’s birthday. I found a few images and set them up to rotate through as we talked a little about DW (first time for several players). Then, before we selected characters I let them choose which picture was most compelling to them. The one here is the one they decided on.

It was a great game — dodging cultists and a demon of decay in order to rescue the Arc of Purity. Little did they know their Paladin would have to make the ultimate sacrifice to power the Arc, but if they didn’t get it the hordes of undead coming from the North would all but destroy the world. In the end, Vander the Paladin’s soul became Seraphim Vander, while his body lay mummified in the Arc, destroying undead with it’s purity.

All of the background was made up on the fly, asking questions… Why are you here? What do you have to do? Who sent you? What happens if you fail? What happens if you succeed?

I’ve run D&D5 and 13th Age with these guys, but I keep coming back to DW. I don’t ever feel like I’m fighting the rules to tell a great story.

Capped off the first arc of our Dungeon World campaign as an order of overzealous paladins nuked a city to stop it…

Capped off the first arc of our Dungeon World campaign as an order of overzealous paladins nuked a city to stop it from becoming a portal to the Hells. Our own paladin went down in blood and gore in an attempt to stop them, finally coming to terms with the violence that stained his own hands before he passed over to death.

I think we just Empire Strikes Back’d this thing. I’ve got a paladin civil war to make a Front for, some new recurring NPCs who were saved, and the paladin’s player is already planning his next character…a bard who was saved by our fighter.

Isle of Dread Actual Play Report

Isle of Dread Actual Play Report

With an extended example of play!

Stalwart GM Josh Curtis ported the Isle of Dread over to Dungeon World and ran the first session of it for me, Justin Evans, and Greg Bailey. Awesome game!

Who says bards can’t have fun stranded on a deserted island?

http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-isle-of-dread/

Session 9 write-up of our ten session Dungeon World Sapphire Island campaign.

All right, running my first DW game on Monday. Any sage words of advice? (Or dire words of warning?)

Something that came out of our Roll20 game tonight that I discussed with the GM afterward: when he asked about any…

Something that came out of our Roll20 game tonight that I discussed with the GM afterward: when he asked about any feedback I had to improve things, I mentioned a point in the game where my character’s actions led up directly to shifting the spotlight to another character. We then talked about spotlight shifting and how that is something we want to work toward developing more in practice.

Part of that discussion referenced a time in a previous session where another character used Defend to “open up the attacker to an ally” and how that mechanic seemed to invite a player to signal a spotlight shift to another player/character by saying I want you to get involved here – take +1 forward as an incentive.

This then led to my suggesting the GM should consider whether he could learn anything from “popcorn initiative” as it’s used in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. We thought for the purposes of Dungeon World it might make more sense to have the GM use player actions as a guideline in general for how the flow of spotlight might shift, rather than having players explicitly name who would go next.

But the idea remained. Any thoughts on whether I am hitting an insight here? If so, is there other space within the moves to suggest that you can adopt a sort of popcorn approach to how to let the spotlight get shared?

The biggest thing I can see might be that it would still be up to the GM to pull players in from time to time who might need the help in getting spotlight time, because of table dynamics or other things, but I think there might be something here.