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DW’ers, how do you handle your BBEG?

DW’ers, how do you handle your BBEG? I mean, let’s say I see a confrontation coming up with a high-end Mage. How would you handle the Mage proactively casting a spell?

My usual RPG group got together yesterday.

My usual RPG group got together yesterday. Down a few guys, we couldn’t run our typical game (an ongoing 4E campaign), so I offered/pushed really hard to run DW. I ran Morningstar’s Slave Pit of Drazhu with it geared toward characters possibly continuing on: standard level progression and the characters may recover their starting gear if they make it out.

Our group has had some expanded RPG experiences in the past year (ShadowRun, Spirit of the Century, Dread, Don’t Rest Your Head), so the flexibility and narrative focus of DW wasn’t totally foreign. I ended up with 3 players (elf druid, human paladin, and dwarf cleric) and they all felt out their characters pretty well and the game had several great moments.

— The Paladin had a knack for taking down the baddies (one hit kills on the Orc whipmaster and on Drazhu)

— The Paladin also had a knack for getting into trouble (got super low on HP twice, was ensnared in spiderweb and failed two Defy Dangers vs Str to get free, etc)

— The Druid contemplated the corpse of the cave spider and eventually used that form to re-enforce and make less sticky the spider silk bridge over the chasm.

— The druid rolled a 3 when attempting to transform into a ram when attacked by the zombies. “Did you say ‘lamb’?” I said. “I heard you say lamb, you turn into a fluffy lamb and your move is ‘Bleat helplessly'”.

— The cleric scored some good hits at range with some iron spikes as well as some up close hits with a goblin spear.

— The cleric also was able to “Turn Undead” the zombies that dropped from the ceiling, securing enough time for the druid and paladin to reverse the stone falls that blocked the exit.

They came very close to death, but no one had to draw their last breath. The party in general didn’t take too much damage until the zombies at the very end, although the cleric did wind up with two debilities as a result of the spider’s venom.

It was a hit and I think DW may move up into regular rotation with my group.

Can anyone offer any advice or share any experience with running DW as a city-focused rather than dungeon/wilderness…

Can anyone offer any advice or share any experience with running DW as a city-focused rather than dungeon/wilderness focused game? Skulduggery, heists, cons, dirty politics, mysteries and investigation, conflicted loyalties, etc.

I ask, because I was struck by the notion of converting Wrekkengutt, the dirty little setting I knocked together for the D&D5e playtest. The campaign is called The Slaughter Season (as Wrekkengutt is like fantasy Chicago during the absolute worst of the meatpacking days). There are monsters and sewers and occasional invasions, but the focus is mostly on dealing with (near)human enemies, and not always (or often) by spitting them onto spears. Things do go gloriously and grotesquely wrong quite regularly, of course. The current plot-line involves mind control delivered by sausages, and troll cancer.

Happy GM’s Day!

http://gmsday.com/2013/02/27/march-fourth-for-gms-day/

My new monster is a construct cobbled together from bits of petrified wood. Here’s description I gave in-game:

“The thing turns awkwardly and rises. It’s half again as tall as you, naked under its cloak. This is clearly no natural thing, nor any elf-magic. It has not been grown, but somehow cobbled-together, different chunks and bits of wood assembled into a roughly human form, but all the wood strange in color, grays and blacks.

It makes no verbal answer, but it moves toward you, its over-long legs rapidly eating up the distance. Garro hisses at its approach. As it draws quickly nearer, its spindly hands reach toward you, its talons outstretched.”

Now it just needs a better name than “Petrified Tree Person.” Any help?

Has anyone tried running DW as a one-on-one game? Curious as to how well suited it is with a gm and a single player.

Sage LaTorra Adam Koebel Out of interest, given that DW originally started life as an AW hack, what are your…

Sage LaTorra Adam Koebel Out of interest, given that DW originally started life as an AW hack, what are your feelings about people hacking on the DW ruleset? With its task-focus, it feels better suited to some styles of game then AW was.

Everytime a player chose to play a Paladin he ask me “who is evil here?” and they get upset when I remember them I…

Everytime a player chose to play a Paladin he ask me “who is evil here?” and they get upset when I remember them I can only answer “what here is evil?”.

I’m too hipster if I decide that “what” refers to behaviors (and maybe things) and not persons? If a demon always do evil he is more an amoral robot than an evil person. I’m too sophisticated?

Had my first session last night.

Had my first session last night. I ran an escape from slave mines (taken liberally from Jason Marningstar’s Excellent “Escape from the Slave Pit of Drazhu”) and it went very well. Had three players playing Fighter, Cleric and Wizard. They managed to escape the mines, find their stuff, fight an ogre and some goblins, steal an snow sled and dogs, navigate down an icy hill with a giant fissure (Which cuts perpendicular towards the bottom).

They had two sleds, one with the dogs anther with none with the fighter in the sled without the dogs. The wizard decides he wants to jump from one sled to the other to help the fighter, manages to get himself halfway on. As the fighter helps him up the sleds hit each other sending them in different directions. The cleric sitting in the other sled has to either bail on his sled or try to turn his sled around (it was sliding backwards) to regain speed to make the jump. He fails miserably and at the last minute hits the breaks and ends up dangling his sled on the edge of the fissure cliff while his allies sail on over.

Fast forward a bit, they end up all hanging over the side in a human link chain with the fighters grip failing him. I gave the wizard the hard choice. Hold on to the cleric and risk you all falling in or drop the wizard so the fighter can pull you up. He dropped him.

At this point I could have called for a last breath roll but instead I gave the cleric one more shot. I knew he had about half his hp left so I told him to roll a d20 for damage. Luckily he rolled a 7. I gave him a stunned and weak condition and broke his leg but otherwise he was alive.

The remaining party members needed to act fast to get the cleric out has the goblin slavers were finally on the move with a dog sled team of their own. The fighter tries to climb down a rope tied to the sled, but the wizard was left trying to keep the sled from sliding back down the remaining portion of the hill. Wizard fails and the fighter looses his grip falling half way down. The wizard sees the goblins getting a close and decides to take the rope and climb down the cliff and he manages to succeed. He then casts prestidigitation to make it look bloody and gory and tells everyone to play dead. The goblins buy it but fire a few arrows down for good measure. The group over hears the goblins saying that they need to get that chest back (one they took along with their stuff) and that they will have to find another way down.

So that was pretty much the first game.

Maybe the first french convention to see a DW play yesterday.

Had six players and it went quite well. It took 45 mn to prepare PCs and everybody seemed satisfied with the rules. We focused on fiction and it flowed smoothly. Some newbies even played the bonds which is remarkable to my opinion.

Because of religious divergence, the cleric and the paladin didn’t want to heal each other (how true life reflects in roleplay sometimes…).

The dwarf cleric healed the cute elf fighter and his deity got a little upset with that. This game is definitely fun by creating interaction between players.

The druid tested a lot of forms and it was quite fun. She tried an otter form in the sea to realize that her eyes were not made for salty water, so she transformed herself into a salmon and got chased by sharks and cormorants.