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Planarch heritage hard move help needed!

In Ditchbiggin last night, our Bard and Wizard both sold all their heritages to a heritage infusion lab, melting themselves down into the mean form of all sentient life (which looks like a Stage 2 Invid pilot, thanks Kevin Siembieda!)

After that, they spent all the money they got from their donations on bargain-basement infusions. The Wizard got a dose of Pixie with a hint of Mushroom Folk. She rolled a 4 on her “receive infusion” move (copied below) and now I have a week to think about what kind of pain will be brought down. I told everyone I didn’t want to do any hard moves that weren’t fun, and the Wizard has pretty much given me carte blanche to do whatever I want, up to death (not interesting to me). This is the one I’m not sure what to do with.

The Bard got shot up with a Black Pudding and an Eldritch Ant-Queen. He rolled 10+ on the pudding infusion but 5- on the ant infusion. I’ve got some clarity on this one, I think that the Bard will not receive any of the Ant-Queen’s moves or looks but will receive all of her baggage. I think that maybe the deep races fought a genocidal war against the Eldritch Ants generations ago in some parish pre-Dis, and some terminators have been lying in wait for the Ant Queen to reawaken.

(the move in question)

When you receive a heritage infusion, you gain a heritage move appropriate to the donor. Then, roll -the number of “native” heritage moves you currently have. On a 7-9, choose two, on a 10+ choose three.

* You may choose the heritage move you gain

* You permanently gain the heritage move

* You do not bodily transform to resemble the donor

* Your future offspring will be viable

* You are not haunted by anxious dreams of your new-but-alien heritage

So i really did it, Actual Play Community.

So i really did it, Actual Play Community. Please feel free to copy the idea but i don’t think one community like this can sustain 2 games.

Play by Community

Play by Community

Sooo, after thinking about for a bit i think one could run DW in a community fairly well and i want to try it. (i could GM but would be happy to play too)

Here is how i think it would work.

You have a extra community for the game that is open for the public. Have extra discussion topics about the characters each. Players will describe their character and the GM can ask questions about them all at the same time. You of course have to read what other people are writing about their character.

When real play starts every “room” of the dungeon or whatever is a own post. Player will mainly post when the GM addressess them, saying “what do you do”. If someone want’s to do something directly he will post so and will be adressed by the GM on the next best opportunity. (this can get a bit wobbly but it can work out i think). More then 3 players + GM would be to much i think.

Have a sepperate discussion for the world where every detail that is revealed get’s archive.

Would anyone be interested in trying that?

Death: “Welcome back to the Black Gate, mortal.”

Player: “It looks more like a fuchsia gate.”

Death: “Oh, you noticed! It really is the Fuchsia Gate, but people rarely get to see it in good light. Do you like it?”

And the obligatory reshare to the Dungeon World Tavern…

Originally shared by Dylan Boates

I just realized that it’s game day tomorrow and I haven’t talked about my Dungeon World game in weeks! This is extra crazy because last week was THE END OF DUNGEON WORLD!

So, since I last posted, the group arrived at a fortress on the edge of the dwarven lands and realized that dwarven bureaucracy is horrible and they don’t have passports. (Non-dwarves weren’t allowed entrance.) Instead they decided they’d sneak into the dwarven undercity through some goblin tunnels.

After attempting to negotiate passage with the goblins they hypocritically decided that the fact that the goblins ate people meant they couldn’t be negotiated with and decided to set the goblins on fire instead. (Gretta is a vampire now and has been eating people for months. Hycorax is the party’s negotiator by virtue of not having a negative Charisma bonus, despite the fact that his disdain for civilized authority figures and his willingness to solve “problems” by turning into a fire elemental mean that his negotiations never end well.)

After nearly being killed by a seemingly endless swarm of goblins (we all enjoy how even at level 9, the PCs have had some TERRIFYINGLY close calls with goblins and zombies, which are typically kind of shitty opponents) they made their rendez vous with a dwarven cleric who was loyal to Gretta and the rest of the displaced nobility. (Oh yeah, Gretta is an exiled princess.)

Gretta agreed to help her people overthrow the Shadow cult that had taken over and restore the old tyranical nobility and descended into the Shadow Realm, from which no LIVING thing could return, to kill Venith (the goddess of shadow) herself.

Gretta lost her signature hammer on the way, so she strangled Venith and decapitated her with her bare hands.

She returned to the world as a living dwarf, having fulfilled her service to Hood (the god of death, who she made a deal with when Venith tried to kill her).

Her bloodstained hands are her new signature weapon.

Then they headed into the heart of the world to confront the Worm God Kryos in his prison and prevent him from escaping/continuing to poison the earth.

They ran into some magmen who were running from something and had a tense standoff due to their unwillingness to talk to outsiders. However, Hycorax’s fire elemental based negotiation style finally paid off since, as creatures of elemental fire, they don’t consider a fire elemental to be an outsider.

The magmen warned them about a cave full of chaos cultists who became tainted by the Worm God and were transformed into Chaos Spawn.

Chaos Spawn are horrible.

They beat the Chaos Spawn, but lost much armour and equipment to their chaos touch as well as picking up some horrible debilities.

Then they confronted the Worm God, in his prison suspended over a Mount Doom style volcano pit, who claimed that he was only poisoning the earth because he was trapped within it, and what the hell do you expect to happen when you trap a maimed god of corruption, upheaval and change inside the Earth Goddess’ heart? Hycorax jumped into the volcano pit to commune with his Goddess, who agreed that letting the Worm God go would be an awesome thing as far as she was concerned, even if it may suck as far as the humans who LIVED on the earth were concerned.

Hycorax was not convinced, but the Worm God offered to make Jonah the Ranger (the only member of the group who wasn’t under some sort of divine influence and wasn’t possibly some sort of demi-god at the time) into his avatar so that Jonah could determine the exact shape of the Worm God’s influence on the world.

Hycorax and Gretta were still not convinced, but Jonah sure as hell was.

The Worm God was freed and the party traveled the continent righting the doings of the Worm God that they thought were wrong, and violently overthrowing the established order of things, mostly for kicks. (They’re ALL chaotic or evil, by the way.)

The end.

Tomorrow: Lotus Blossom’s Bridal Path.

Thursday night is Planarch night!

Our intrepid band arrives in the boom Chaos Sea harbor parish of Greatlune. They jump in with both feet and take on a job helping some penniless Halfling-Cyclops pilgrims who were scammed by the local mob. Some stuff goes down with a human faceman and some Rat Thing welders. They recover some jingle and a chaos gemerald from the scammers but then forget about the pilgrims and spend the money on a week at a nice Fortune City inn and some armor repairs for the Paladin. Fighting Rat Welders is hard on your armor!

Recall that our Wizard and our Bard have switched bodies. The Bard put some rough necromantic miles on the Wizard’s body and so he is eager to switch back. The Wizard, however is enjoying her new body and its Black Pudding heritage and is properly wary of the risk of trying to re-switch so she is not so eager.

Then the Paladin lays hands on the Bard to heal an unrelated injury. His boxcars roll means that Saint Karth’s grace infuses the Bard and all the necromantic miles on the Wizard’s body are rolled back! The Bard loves Karth!

(The Wizard loathes Karth. The Paladin always rolls crappy on his rolls to heal the Wizard.)

The Wizard is suddenly interested in returning to her body. Little does she know that while she is bathing in the basement tubs, the Bard is approached by a friendly Walking Greatrook with spidery mechanical hands. The carrion bird offers to buy the Wizard’s Magmin heritage for J250, or double store credit if the Bard wants to buy some other fine heritage infusions that the Rook offers.

The Wizard’s player fumes. The Rook will come back tomorrow with its equipment…

For Mikael Andersson and anyone else who is interested, here’s the outline of the 24-hour game I ran, back in…

For Mikael Andersson and anyone else who is interested, here’s the outline of the 24-hour game I ran, back in December. I ended up chopping big chunks out of it, and rewriting the back half on the fly, for time and pacing.

I drew a map as the game progressed, adding elements as the players encountered them, then at the end, cut the map into quarters and shared then out.

Opening: The heroes are battling a squad of goblins (why?) when both groups are attacked by skeletons and need to join forces.

1. The heroes recover the magic spear from the lich-king

First hour: Tracking the skeletons to their lair.

Second hour: Asses kicked by lich-king with magic spear.

Third hour: Hunt down lich-king’s phylactery (guarded by? Trolls?)

Fourth hour: Fight and defeat lich-king. The lich-king warns that the peace between the gods has been broken.

Signs of divine war: the dead are rising, and shambling to the service of one army or the other. Cities fortifying and preparing for war.

2. The heroes use the magic spear to rescue the oracle, Manno (Sami moon-goddess)

Fifth hour: Rumours that magic spear is tied to prophecy.

Sixth hour: Giant has kidnapped powerful oracle. Adventure into Jotunheim.

Seventh hour: Fight and defeat giant.

Eighth hour: Spear is the key to unlock the Manno’s prison.

Signs of divine war: the giants are locking down their borders, and building great walls to keep the war out. Forests growing dark and sinister. Human armies in open conflict.

3. The oracle tells the heroes that the dragon has the ring

Ninth hour: Manno explains that there is a magic ring that will settle the war between the gods.

Tenth hour: Adventure into Alfheim. Elf-queen sends heroes into Niflheim to recover magic ice, which she turns into magic water for the oracle.

Eleventh hour: Adventure into Svartalfheim. Dwarf-king sends heroes to Muspellheim to recover magic fire, which he uses to forge a magic mirror for the oracle.

Twelfth hour: Manno reveals that the dragon Fafnir has the ring, and that only a long-dead warrior knows his weakness.

Signs of divine war: Elves are openly armed with magic weapons. Dwarven forges are running nonstop producing arms and armour for the gods. Packs of wolves and flocks of ravens are seen everywhere. Death of the High King, leading to massive civil war.

4. The heroes slay the dragon and recover the ring

Thirteenth hour: Into Hel!

Fourteenth hour: Meet Regin, a giant-smith, and the betrayed brother of Fafnir.

Fifteenth hour: Recover the fragments of the Sword of Sigmund, forged by Wayland the Smith, and destroyed when it was wielded against Odin, now guarded by a fierce demon (and Theodred). The fragments are reforged by Regin into Gram (Wrath).

Sixteenth hour: Battle with Fafnir’s children (naga?) and the dragon himself.

Signs of divine war: Magical beasts, including valkyries, everywhere. Earthquakes, storms. Ruined cities. Fields of corpses.

5. The heroes give the ring to either the Aesir or Vanir

Seventeenth hour: Delegations led by Odin on behalf of the Aesir, and Njord on behalf of the Vanir attend the heroes.

Eighteenth hour: Delegations from Alfheim, Svartalfheim, and the kingdoms of men attend the heroes. What they want will be determined by past dealings. Probably Elves want the passageway between the worlds closed, to keep the war from spilling over; Dwarves want the ring kept from the gods, so that they kill each other off; Men want to use the ring and become gods themselves.

Nineteenth hour: Violence! Somebody attacks. Goblins? Trolls. Yeah, that sounds good.

Twentieth hour: Can the ring be destroyed? Probably. Or else the heroes give it to somebody.

Signs of divine war: Doesn’t get much more personal. Odin always has storms and lightning around. Njord is cold and damp and ageless.

6. The heroes decide the war between the Aesir and Vanir

Twenty-first hour: No matter what happens, somebody is pissed.

Twenty-second hour: War of the gods unleashes Hate and Treachery, two giant magic wolves. Everything becomes wintery all of a sudden. Also their father Fenris.

Twenty-third hour: Jormungand, the World Serpent, arises. Huge upheaval in the oceans, glaciers breaking off, all that fun stuff. Fight him, heroes!

Twenty-fourth hour: Man, I dunno. Pick up the pieces of whatever is left.

Signs of divine war: Maybe the world ends?

A friend of mine tried his hand at Dungeon World for the first time as a GM, also as the first time GM’ing our…

A friend of mine tried his hand at Dungeon World for the first time as a GM, also as the first time GM’ing our regular group of players. He did pretty well I think.

http://stuartkehoe.blogspot.com/2013/03/first-time-game.html

Thursday night is Planarch night!

Thursday night is Planarch night!

On their way to the Chaos harbor of Greatlune, our gang must first travel through the foetid rat-thing landfill parish of Munmeek and the enormous urban park / game reserve of Thrimdoon. Unfortunately Thrimdoon is in the grip of a horrendous ice monsoon.

The Bard pervs his Telepathy spell into a ritual to search for animal guidance. A massive shaggy ice-mastodon appears! The Bard’s huge Charisma is universal and he befriends the mastodon. It leads them through the ice monsoon to Greatlune. The Bard wants to take his new friend along on their adventures. The mastodon hugs the Bard with its trunk! It loves him.

Through the first four weeks of this campaign I have been raining hard moves on the poor Bard. He has been sexually humiliated. He is body-switched and withered by necromancy and if he eats anything he will die. So I am super pumped to see his luck turn good and for him to get the ultimate badass animal friend! I want to see them clean up the shitty districts of Greatlune from the back of a giant furry tank.

Alas, the fun-hating Inevitable/Paladin decrees that since the ice mastodon is the property of the owners of the game reserve, it cannot accompany the gang. He shoos the mastodon away and it obeys because He Is The Law. It disappears into the ice monsoon, never looking back.

Some intense bonds were written in the end-of-session.

Last weekend I ran the first session of my new Dungeon World campaign.

Last weekend I ran the first session of my new Dungeon World campaign. We did some group world creation; I asked each player at the table for one thing they wanted to see in the game. The dwarves of the world have been savaged by some sort of deadly plague that only affects them when they’re under open sky; they’ve retreated into their mountain homes and nobody’s seen them in decades. Humans are the dominant race, but they’re incapable of performing much in the way of arcane magic. Human wizards of any real power are unheard of, though that wasn’t always the case. A long time ago there was a human wizard named Hazan-Khael, but he’s been dead a long time and nobody remembers much about him except that he was a Bad Dude. Coal power is the new thing these days; smiths use it, farmers use it, everybody who can uses it because it makes life easier (even if it also pollutes the hell out of the environment at the rates at which it’s being used).

I’ve got four PCs in the group. There’s Frey, the human druid of the swamps. He’s a bit of an eco-terrorist and hates that people use so much coal. He wants to convince people to go back to more natural forms of sustaining themselves but he’s a bit of a blunt instrument when it comes to convincing people of things. Ragothiir is an elven Marshal (a class I designed) with a loyal follower named Bromir who follows him because everybody thinks that he defeated a great warrior and bandit named Marc the Merciless. Problem is he didn’t; everyone just thinks he did. Emory is an elven ranger raised by humans with an owl named Snap. He’d like nothing more than to befriend a gryphon, and he’s heard that there’s an organization that raises and trains them somewhere in the world. He also grew up in the same neighborhood as the party’s human Thief, Telly, and has some incriminating information about him. Telly is a con man, a huckster who peddles phony cures and magic items. His favorite trick is getting everybody good and drunk with a keg of ale mixed with goldenroot, then selling them “druid insurance”.

Since that’s already a pretty long post I’ll leave it there for now, and talk about what actually happened later.