Some notes from our group’s sixteenth weekly session (!)
Some notes from our group’s sixteenth weekly session (!)
Originally shared by Jason Cordova
These pics are from the fifth session of our DW campaign, Oceans of Order & Chaos (and sixteenth session overall).
This one saw the party meeting-up on Reaver’s Rock (after surviving a lizard folk attack). The Rock, which is nothing more than three taverns used by pirates as a stop-over, was eerily quiet when they arrived. After doing battle with several of his flesh golems (and looting some pretty terrific magical items, including the Staff of Ignis, the Vainglorious Boots, and the Horn of Nammu), the party discovered their old nemesis, Gormakir, might not be so dead after all. There was also a pretty epic battle with a hydra (pictured below).
The session ended with the party opening a trap door beneath a bar, which led to a basement of some sort. From this space came a woman’s bloodcurdling cry, along with a creeping sense of dread. We’ll see what they found next session…
Thanks to Kerry Harrison , Daniel Lewis , Trey Palmer Daniel Fowler , Alexander Hay and our newcomer, Ian Hay .
Michael Godesky started running Dungeon World for us on Saturday nights.
Michael Godesky started running Dungeon World for us on Saturday nights. He’s using the Planarch Codex (!), and I want “to say something slightly stranger instead,” too. Help me add some interesting curveballs!
I’m playing a Thief named Ammon Semhazai Duskblade (Pirate King of the Ditchwater Slums, Grand High Poomba of Her Fetid Fecundity Lamashtu, Prince of Anarchy, Lord of Avarice, Mischief, and General Dishonesty, and Supreme Commander of Renegades, Esquire), a tiefling of demonic descent.
Concept: He’s an extraordinarily chaotic person, but whether that means he’s going to be a trickster hero or a rampaging demon, we’ll play to find out. That’s my core issue in this game: which way will Ammon fall?
Established: Here’s what we established about Ammon in the first session:
– Sailed with some interplanar pirates, probably out on the Sea of Embers
– While a pirate, I thought it would be fun to attack an Inevitable warship. Turns out, they’re much tougher than I thought. I ran for my life. Some of my fellow pirates survived, and caught up with me, and were not happy about those things I did.
– So they sold me as a slave to a wizard. I instigated a revolt, including our fighter, the wizard’s digester.
Some pics from our excellent July 4th DW One-Shot. This one saw the party infiltrating the abandoned temple of the ancient god of atrocities and abominations, Azad-Kan. This session, which took place 100 years in the past of our main DW game, also functioned as an origin story for one of that game’s antagonists, the dread sorcerer Gormakir the Cruel.
There were lots of thrilling moments, including our elf wizard facing down a massive abomination made from hundreds of corpses (a la Gandalf and the balrog); our fighter having his hand chewed-off by a ghoul child; and a hopeless, Charge of the Light Brigade-style attack on a horde of orcs.
Speaking of orcs, my one-eyes did this cool thing where they use naked, chained-up orc gimps to function as voodoo doll-like proxies who they can slice and stab to cause injury to the heroes. It was horrific, especially when they started chopping off one of the gimp’s arms!
All in all, a lot of fun. Thanks to Maximilian Garza , Kerry Harrison , Alexander Hay , Ferrell Riley and Ian Hay (who I can’t + for some reason).
Dungeon World in English, in Japan. Adam Koebel ran DW for me, Hayakawa, Emily, and Brian from Blue Kabuto over in Cafe Daydream in Kanda. A great time was had!
Then, a few days later, I came back to run Dungeon World in Japanese for a few new gamers! It was an interesting experience. I used Kambayashi (“Felis”)-san’s excellent Japanese character sheets and rules summaries ( https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-znoCh8p4zEY3RRMXJpaHV5YzQ/edit , https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-znoCh8p4zEOHUyYzdDZncyMUk/edit ) , but at the same time I had English sheets in front of me so that I could remember which ability was which: I’m not so good that I could roll “Jijitsu no Shikibetsu” (Discern Reality) off my head with no problem. I ended up learning like 20 new vocabulary words that night, with only a minor headache to show for running it for like 3 hours! (unfortunately, I was in a daze so I forgot to take pictures)
The adventure was cool! I went all “Thieves’ World”, basically having a scummy fantasy town; a dwarven kickboxing female mob boss who assigned the players some work; and haughty thief racist elves (there were two dwarven PCs) to serve as the bad guys.
The player pool was interesting: I told Okada-san (one of the co-partners who works at Cafe Daydream, a friend and the designer of the Ryuutama RPG) what I planned to run, to make sure there was table space. He then threw out the description of the game (like they do with all set games) on Twitter, and I had two players (plus Hayakawa-san, in that picture there, who came by after work)! It was a great collection: BOTH of them (both guys, one in early 20s, the other in late 20s) were nice, the older one brought homemade sweets for us. And both of them were RPG novices.
The younger guy had only played Dungeon Command a few times, and was interested in RPGs. The older guy had also played DC, but also one single session of d20 (I think it was 4th edition IIRC), and also was interested in something new, yet with familiar (western fantasy) trappings. But both of them heard the title “Dungeon World” and imagined a combat-heavy “going room to room slaying things and giving high fives” game, which surprised them that it was so heavy RP-focused, and player-focused (to come up with new facts, descriptions, etc).
And know what? The both friggin rocked it. Great PC choices (thief and fighter, putting a lot of description into their characters, motivations, items, etc when asked), flowing role-play in character, and so on. Hayakawa joined us soon into the scenario as a Cleric, picking Dwarven and Evil, to great effect (he didn’t play a psycho “fishmalk” evil type, but rather a cunning recruiter for his cult, so that was cool). They ended up having a ton of fun, the role-playing carried the scenario, high action-y battles, and everyone had time to shine. And Hayakawa, the clearly more experienced RP-er (he’s played more World of Darkness than I’ve played anything, ever, in my life; he used to fan-translate all the WoD books into Japanese years before official release) really gave opportunities to help the new players shine rather than out-RPing everyone, which was deeply appreciated.
Highlights included:
* A promise to the kickboxing Dwarf mob boss that they’d ferret out the mole in her organization and “bring him to swift, dark justice” (and in return, be awarded treasure from her unfenced treasury). Then, later, in a bloody battle with the elves, ended the conflict with a negotiation with them, promising “to let the mole live and come back to our guild”. The three PCs weighed their decision on their way back to the mob boss, basically wondering “Do we tell her a lie, and say there was no mole? Do we tell her who the mole was, then beg her to let him live, because of a promise made to a rival guild? (that makes no sense!) Do we fight her to let the mole live?” Hayakawa’s evil Dwarven cleric came up with a solution that worked for everyone, albeit a dark one: They talked to the mole, ushered him outside without telling the mob boss, “set him free” but first taking a hand as payment for betrayal. That honored the promise to the elves (and making him useless to them), while at the same time appealing to the rough-and-tumble mob boss. “Medetashi, Medetashi”.
* The players really picked up on narrating things for themselves. Notable examples were me letting them choose what they saw, and thus picked up, from the reward treasury: They all picked not “powerful weapons”, but cool tricky gear that would benefit their class in some way (Thief: A mirror that lets him teleport to any shadow within sight; Fighter: “I don’t need anything; I proved myself in battle again” (while at the same time pocketing a fistful of rubies).
* I got to narrate two fantasy “bros” trying to recruit them into a thieves’ guild upon reaching town. You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen a middle-aged white guy RPing as a 20-year-old ‘Host Club’ Host from Osaka in fantasy garb.
* The “final fight” was with a combo of a powerful male Elven fighter in armor, and a female Elven parkour-archer (both reskinned monsters), fighting together in the sewers. Just to ham it up a bit, I had the Elven fighter talk like an honorable samurai (“Nanore!” “Announce yourself, cur!”) and named him DEATH MASTER (“DESSU MASUTA-“), which got a lot of lols. But not as much as when parkour-archer started getting into it, the players called her (out loud, then in-character) “Legolas-yarou” (“F’in Legolas wannabe”).
* And even though it was bloody, they were a hair away from taking down Death Master, when they decided to give negotiation a try now that they had the upper hand, leading to the rest of the adventure.
All in all, the players had an awesome time! Many low bows were given at the end(and from me, too, for them trying out this new game and being such good sports about it, and giving it their all), and they said they’re going to come back later and try out other new games. Sweet!
Now if only there were an official Japanese release of DW! …I need to talk to Kambayashi, then Adam/Sage. (^.^)
Tonight we had the fourth session, Eric Nieudan, Bastien Wauthoz and I.
Tonight we had the fourth session, Eric Nieudan, Bastien Wauthoz and I.
They held a party, got stupid drunk, got a quest to slay a werewolf bandit and went out and killed a mountain giant instead. Then they dragged a goat off to a dwarven stronghold.
Meeting up without prep just takes you weird places.
This one saw the party taking their brand new ship out for a spin to the Hydra Isle (so named, allegedly, because of the rock formations off the coast that look like hydra heads). After gaining some info at the tiny fishing village of Tenth Head, the party set out across the jungle, to the cove on the other side of the island.
While traveling across the island, the party encountered a group of lizard folk dragging something on a sled, covered by a tarp. The party determined that whatever was under that tarp, it would be destroyed/ruined if sunlight hit it.
Most of the session was spent in a cave system near the cove, where the party encountered more lizard men, along with a crocodilian, ankhegs, and ropers (one of which caused our dwarf artificer to take his Last Breath). Ultimately, the party did battle with a hydra (it turns out THAT’S why they call it Hydra Isle). After slaying the beast, they retrieved one of its eggs from its lair (along with a weapon of legend, the Bone Glaive, the handle of which is said to have been crafted from the spines of three ancient, evil kings).
As they dragged the egg out of the cave and into the sunlight, it broke apart. They surmised that the lizard folk they encountered in the jungle must be breeding hydras, and that it was hydra eggs they were transporting on the covered sled.. They decided to head back to Tenth Head to warn the villagers.
Upon arriving in Tenth Head, they found that everyone in the village had been massacred, including their ship’s captain, Merek Halworth. The session ended with the party looking out to sea, where their ship was anchored, and watching as a pair of hydras tore the ship apart and made a meal of the crew.
Scott McGougan you wanted to know about Basilisks right.
Scott McGougan you wanted to know about Basilisks right.
You carefully open the heavy stone doors. The first thing you see are a pair of statues of dwarf brothers wielding a long and heavy spear together. As your eyes adjust to the weird light in the room you see more of those livelike statues. You seem to finally have found it’s hiding place. What did you bring with you to help slay that foul creature?
(i am making multiple moves here. change the environment and point to a looming threat. Then i am also asking a question and will build on the answer. Just to give you a cool thing you can use against a basilisk. Only a fool would go without proper equipment right?)
Played an awesome Hangout game tonight with Michael Pearce Peter Johansen and Aaron Mehlhaff as GM.
Played an awesome Hangout game tonight with Michael Pearce Peter Johansen and Aaron Mehlhaff as GM. Despite the fact that it was actually the first time I’ve played a Cleric and that he was probably the most embarrassing one at that, it was still a lot of fun! Oh, and by embarrassing, I mean he ended up with 14 XP from just misses alone. His god, Aezos, simply refused to heal the Thief every single time and he wasn’t fast, nimble, or dextrous in the slightest.
Sharing my own post to go into further DW-related detail.
Sharing my own post to go into further DW-related detail. This was the first real session in my Keep on the Borderlands 1983 setting. Thanks to the Ask Questions principle and some very creative players, this lean sandboxy idea of mine has turned into a potential campaign of epic proportions.
After a couple hours of play time, this rag-tag group of rather inefficient adventurers has set out to find a fallen star. This relic should lead them to discovering who among them is destined to become the traveling companion of a godly avatar. The fun thing is that nobody among the priesthood of said deity has the slightest idea of what he stands for.
Fuck the game, I’m just gonna write a novel on this premise! 😉
Originally shared by Eric Nieudan
I ran my first game via Hangout and Roll20 It was a lot of fun, and my experience as a player helped me work out the kinks.
We started with an ambush by kobold bandits, had some typical social interaction in the village and when we left our bold adventurers, they were about to explore the cellars of the Keep on the Borderlands, looking for giant rats…
#DungeonWorld with five players makes for exhausting fights though.
