The Dungeon World Tavern: Actual Play – Page 91 – Dungeon World Tavern G+ Archives

Insane DW/Planarch session tonight.

First, house rule! We decide that the “invoke your right of blood and tradition” requirement for the heritage moves can be satisfied by doing a camera monologue describing what it’s like to be one of your people.

Onto the AP:

* The Ink Pudding-heritage Bard cleverly uses his ink blood to mark part of the party’s path through the Labyrinth but pushes too hard and faints. When spiderlings attack, the Wizard uses her Telepathy to mind-yell him awake. She rolls a 2. GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY. The telepathy goes awry and they switch bodies!

* “Should we take the bond ‘_____ has switched bodies with me?'” the Wizard’s player asks.

* The party’s guide gets eaten by a giant, cowardly puppeteer spider. They kill the spider and retrieve the guide’s magic navigation spectacles from its gullet. The Thief steals some of its monofilament silk for a garrote.

But the navigation glasses are out of charges! The body-switched Wizard and Bard collaborate on a ritual to recharge them. “You can recharge the battery in one rations’ worth of time if you use the death energy that’s coming off the spider” I say. “Or you can do it in three or four rations each if you use a safer source of ambient magic.”

* Death energy all the way! They both completely botch their necromantic Defy Danger rolls. The body-switched duo watch as their own bodies are twisted by the netherworld. The ink-pudding bard’s body turns chalk white. The rubenesque wizard’s body is suddenly emaciated and cursed with hunger that can’t be satiated. She’ll be eating double rations until she gets that figured out. However, the glasses are charged and are eager to guide them out of the labyrinth.

* During the necromantic ritual, an old minotaur Gentle Brother prisoner happens by. Glad for the opportunity to be guided out of the maze, he holds his nose at the necromancy and joins them. But the glasses, charged with netherworld power, can see the death spirits hovering around the Gentle Brother. The Paladin gets wind of this and insists on Laying On Hands, even though the minotaur does not want to be healed. He rolls a mixed success and cures the minotaur’s angina — but brings it on himself. He can barely climb stairs now without doubling over in pain. The stubborn minotaur, angry at the Paladin’s foolish generousity, carries the Paladin out of the Labyrinth.

* They make it back to Ditchwater Manor, where they find their stuff piled in the street. It’s been there since the morning, but no one wanted it. They didn’t pay their rent in advance. However the Fleshblender inkeeper is still happy to do business with them. He offers an “infusion procedure” to restore the emaciated Wizard’s appearance, at the low, low cost of only J500. That’s way more than she can afford, but maybe they can pay for the wizard’s cosmetic surgery with some grave robbing…

So the wizard is not allowed to cast Alarm anymore.

So the wizard is not allowed to cast Alarm anymore.

(There’s an ever-growing list of who is not allowed to do what. For example, Gregor the Fighter is no longer allowed to trailblaze after last session’s hobgoblin ambush.)

Aelfwalch, who is an aspiring necromancer, has magic missiles that look like screaming skulls, so I was pretty interested in what his alarm spell was going to look like. As he paced the perimeter of the circle, ghostly hands and faces reached up out of the ground and then subsided, waiting. As he closed the circle, he rolled…

…a 6.

Well. He’s summoning spirits to call out a warning of danger, I think to myself, and I flip through the undead section. And oh look,, there it is—a spirit who calls out a warning of danger. I start to describe the translucent, cadaverous form rising up from the ground and I see the look of horror on the player’s face, and he’s way more into this than I would expect…

…oh, wait a minute. His master died under “mysterious circumstances” on the ship ride over, didn’t he? I add in some seaweed and ghostly water to the description and glance down at the banshee’s writeup. “A victim of betrayal (often by a loved one)”

Some things are just meant to be.

A brief overview of the “Freddie Mercury and his Bodyguard Fight the Taliban in the Flesh-Pits of Sigil” game.

—–

Dak the minotaur barbarian and Cormac the human bard live in the parish of Cinderfall, which has lately been invaded by a race/culture/movement called the Culminant. The Culminant decry song and dance as “noise of the flesh that drowns out the quiet contemplation of the Universal Song.” Up until game start, Cormac had a license (and a Culminant sex partner) that allowed him to perform his interpretation of liturgical music. (Described to me like “I’m singing songs about God: [sings NIN’s “Closer”]”) Love letters to the two resulted in a 7-9 hit for the barbarian, a miss for the bard. Shit about to get real.

Cormac and Dak awake in their drafty garret to the smell of smoke – not resin in a bubble-pipe, or another mote of coal on the fire, but burning plaster and tar and linen and varnish. After a few seconds to grab essentials, Dak smashes out a dormer and the two rope down into the street, where a group of Culminant aiskoses, the footsoldiers and street preachers of the movement, have arms linked and are preventing a listless bucket brigade from reaching the burning tavern (The Pit Lord’s Pen). Cormac talks to them and discovers that the Culminant desires their fiery death. A little bardic frank talk, and the aiskoses agree that banishment from Cinderfall Parish, never to return and never again to pervert the liturgy, will be an acceptable alternative to their death. So half a dozen rag-wrapped, blue-glowing-eyed whip-thin Culminant with cudgels and knives shepherd them away from the burning tavern.

Before too long it’s clear the dazzling duo are being escorted to Bleak Forge Parish, a place populated by the denizens of a plane where every living thing is a piece of magical clockwork. It’s relentlessly hostile to meat-beings. Cormac tries to convince the guides that the neighboring Aethereal Sky-wharves parish is just as good, but the Culminant ain’t havin’ none of that. After foot-dragging and insults from both Cormac and Dak, the aiskoses get fed up and attack!

What Are You Waiting For? works phenomenally well, and the Culminant ignore Cormac to concentrate their efforts on the bellowing, 7’6″, two-handed-sword-wielding minotaur. While Dak carves up one of them, the other aiskoses go low and inside, slashing at his legs in an effort to hamstring and/or exsanguinate. Cormac starts up a Culminant hymn and his partner’s blood ceases to patter on the filthy cobbles – however, two of the remaining Culminant turn to attack the bard, who Defends (can you stand in defense of yourself? I figured you could) and beats both away, sending one backstepping right into Dak’s sword. Heads are crushed and glowing blue living-glass eyes pop on the street kerb like cheap Christmas ornaments.

Diminished from 6 healthy to 4 dead, 1 gravely wounded, and 1 healthy the last aiskosis flees. The dying one reveals, at the prompting of some frank talk from the bard, that he serves a ploiarch who is a rival to Cormac’s lover (stealing heavily from Iain M. Banks, the Culminant have a transfer sex. “Oh, the things you can do with an evertible vagina.”) revealing a deep crack in the uniform facade of the Culminant.

At that point, our respective 3-year-old children intervened and the game was called on account of being parents.

I guess that brief overview turned into an AP.

Heya guys and gals

Heya guys and gals,

I’ll be tweeting live from my gaming table tonight, and Dungeon World has the honour to be the game we’ll be playing. If you want to see how a group mixes the Roman Empire, Industrial Revolution and space dragons, you should check it out!

http://thechindividual.com/2013/02/16/tweeting-dungeon-world/

In preparation of running my first DW session this weekend, I’ve printed the character sheets and move sheets.

In preparation of running my first DW session this weekend, I’ve printed the character sheets and move sheets. I decided to print two pages on one A4. To me, the font size looks big enough to do that, and you can fold the sheets nicely in the middle. Anyone else who prefers doing it this way?

So my first game involving the Planarch Codex went rather swimmingly, we started off with the Indigo Galleon intro…

So my first game involving the Planarch Codex went rather swimmingly, we started off with the Indigo Galleon intro adventure but by the time our group sorted out the situation with the dread captain Hobart, the octopus-men and the Imperial soldiers I was left with nothing much to do with the abandoned dwarven mine part of the adventure, but they still knew it existed and wanted to investigate anyway… time to drop in Dis!

So rather than the escapee pirates the adventure originally calls for, they find the place filled with the curious inhabitants of the Ravenous City, a diverse bunch indeed and much more fun to describe than regular old pirates. A pair of sibling elf/shoggoth hybrids were particularly noteworthy. Fortunately, the party paladin had taken as part of his quest to investigate the mine the power to transcend language and after a few bloody misunderstandings were able to ascertain that the people of Dis were not actively hostile, despite their monstrous countenances. Rather they were just in the process of looting the abandoned mine before it was fully consumed by Dis and became part of the Sultana’s realm and subject to her laws (of which prohibition against looting is one).

As the villagers they had just saved from almost certain poultry, nay, calimari, still used the mine as a shelter when the octopus-folk got irate, the party was needless to say a bit put out at the idea of it being swallowed off the map by a hellish multiplanar urban organism and set out to bring their complaint before the Sultana. So, after perusing the impromtu mining/looting/thrift store operation that the Dissians had opened up (and joining in on the action themselves, getting into a few fights for claim-jumping, most of which ended in fisticuffs rather than blades), they sallied forth through the portal at the very bottom of the complex and met with one of the Sultana’s mysterious Road Wardens who agreed to carry their petition and would meet them in three days to be brought before the Sultana to make their case.

I have to say, I absolutely love the Planarch Codex and Dis in particular, I’ve been throwing in bits of everything from Perdido Street Station to Imajica and Planescape: Torment and it all works, the world building is going swimmingly and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next. This DW game has been the best game I’ve ever GM’d by a country mile, both I and the players are having a blast with it.

Had my inaugural game of Dungeon World. It was pretty great, I think.

We settled on a framework after some conversation: a game about a fellowship of peacekeepers serving the treaty of several kingdoms in control of powerful artifacts.

The party included…

•Puck (formerly of Clan Shakesberry) the good halfling Druid

•Mouse Shakesberry the chaotic halfling Thief

•Takola the Mirthful the neutral outsider Barbarian

Things discovered through play:

•The Halflings of the southern forests are spiritualists, worshipping the nature spirits of their home.

•Puck is a sign they are favored by the spirits — his Druid powers mean they are blessed.

•The Halflings are the fourth member of the alliance also consisting of the Elf dominion, Human kingdoms, and Orc city-states.

•The most recent addition to the alliance are the Stone Elves from the eastern mountain tops.

•The Stone Elves (called “gnomes”) are elves created through a forgotten pact with earth spirits — their bodies are marble-esque and their eyes are gemstones.

•The gnomes are hated by the dwarves deep in the mountains because they “stole” their earth spirits.

•The Eocene used to inhabit the mainland before being cast out. They’ve begun to return in small numbers, searching for something.

•The Eocene are seen as good fortune and welcomed in most places.

•Kobolds and Lizard-folk are not part of the treaty — apparently, dragons in the desert beyond the mountains drive the Kobolds to raid and pillage cities for their artifacts.

•The artifact possessed by the Halfling High Council is a spirit tree. Its seeds, when planted, connect the Halfling’s land to the spirit world and give trees life. It also allows direct communication to the spirits while in its presence.

So, yeah, we had a long session with a lot of questions asked about the world… And still more to ask.

The players chose for their bonds:

Takola the barbarian…

•Mouse is puny and foolish, but amusing to me.

•Mouse is always getting into trouble — I must protect her from herself.

•Puck’s ways are strange and confusing.

Mouse the thief…

•Puck has my back when things go wrong.

Puck the druid…

•Tak smells more like prey than hunter.

•I have showed Mouse a secret rite of the Land.

•Mouse has tasted my blood and I theirs. We are bound by it.

We also played through some stuff, but that’s probably a separate post. Everybody said they had a blast, everyone seemed excited to get together and play again!

In our last game, the Mammodon Barbarian, Yig, died.

In our last game, the Mammodon Barbarian, Yig, died. He fell to cultist spearmen in the depths below the swamp. At the gates of death, he wrestled with Ymir, god of all the ancient tribes, for the right to live. Ymir snatched away his soul’s rune and said “You’re mine, now, little calf, but go back to the world, for I am not done with you. I will see you in time.”

Yig’s player rolled a -6, so this wasn’t a bargain, this was Death saying “get back out there and finish your quest but remember, you’re done when I say you are.” Yig is tasked with finding an artifact, the key to the Dragon Graveyard, and now, he’s a dead thing, walking a dark path.

The game took a strange and awesome turn.

Looks like I’m going to be running a game of Dungeon World loosely inspired by the Hell Dorado/Claustrophobia…

Looks like I’m going to be running a game of Dungeon World loosely inspired by the Hell Dorado/Claustrophobia setting. The PCs’ world is dying — time to colonize Hell!

So, I haven’t posted about my Dungeon World game in… two weeks?

Originally shared by Dylan Boates

So, I haven’t posted about my Dungeon World game in… two weeks?

When last I left off (in this post https://plus.google.com/104977908596381674248/posts/V7tzLMCq789) the PCs had made it to Darujhistan and spent some time talking to priests.

After that they decided to try to track down some suspicious activity in town and see if they can find evidence of the Worm God’s influence.

They’ve seen that the Worm God likes to make zombies, so they tracked down rumors of improperly buried corpses (with help from the local Death Church), particularly ones being dumped in the river from the refugee camps.

They headed back out to the camps and spotted someone dumping a body!

Unfortunately, Gretta flashed some cash around giving money to some poor beggars and then failed a Discern Realities roll and ended up getting pickpocketed!

They caught the thief easily, but lost the body dumpers in the process, which is too bad because when they recovered the body they learned that he was a Captain of the City Watch and that he had been MURDERED! (Garotted and stabbed from behind, in fact.)

This lead to them being questioned by the city watch for quite some time.

Eventually they returned to their tour of the seedy underbelly of Darujhistan and decided to stop by some bars.

The first one was super weird, a black tower built around some sort of well and obelisk. (It used to be a temple to an elder god, but they don’t know that.) The only customers were a bunch of freaks and weirdo’s who were playing a card game (that seemed to be made up on the spot) with a tarot like oracle sacred to the Queen of Dreams.

Gretta decided to play with them and ended up picking up the card representing the Worm God and hanging on to it, while placing her own card on top of “The Throne”… I don’t know what that means yet, but I think it’ll be awesome.

Then they went to another bar where they met a bunch of shady criminals who were plotting some sort of a robbery. One of them seemed to be an information broker who traded them local rumors for news about the war. The rumors included word of a charismatic preacher with an arm made from silver and brass leading the new religion in the refugee camps.

They decided to check this out, but wanted to find an alternate way out of the city because the Watch told them not to leave until the Captain’s murder had been solved. They thought going through the gates would be more trouble than it’s worth.

Hycorax thought, “Hey! I’ll just turn into an earth elemental and tunnel us out!” but got distracted when he discovered that the local earth spirits had been POISONED!

They decided to head over to the temple of the Earth Mother to see if the priests could explain.

These guys must LOVE talking to priests because they chatted for quite some time with the evasive and nervous clergy who insisted that everything was fine before Hycorax pointed out that he has the Divine Revelation spell and can just talk DIRECTLY TO THEIR GOD. Seriously, I don’t know why they bothered mucking around with the clergy…

The Earth Mother revealed that she has been poisoned and corrupted by an ancient god from another world who was imprisoned within her ages ago by an alliance of elder gods.

They’re pretty sure that ancient god is the Worm God.

So they decided to go on with their plan to investigate this new religion, this time deciding to just go through the sewers. They were climbing down into the tunnel when Jonah was garotted from behind!

Then there was a big exciting battle with assassins. A couple assassins were killed, a few things got blown up, and the assassins vanished in the confusion, probably by magic.

Now the PCs are waiting for the Watch to show up and grill them again! We’ll find out what happens next later tonight.

https://plus.google.com/104977908596381674248/posts/V7tzLMCq789