Jeremy Strandberg, I’m new to DW and have gamed or mastered in many several years.

Jeremy Strandberg, I’m new to DW and have gamed or mastered in many several years.

Jeremy Strandberg, I’m new to DW and have gamed or mastered in many several years. I ran my first DW game yesterday and it went well. Am I to understand that your “Threats” article (please link below) replaces fronts as described in the DW book? As I read it, I find it far more organized and clear than what’s in the book.

Also, do you have any other resources (by you or someone else) you can share for a burgeoning GM?

Thanks!

I’m trying to figure out a front I’m working on for my current DW game.

I’m trying to figure out a front I’m working on for my current DW game.

I’m trying to figure out a front I’m working on for my current DW game. The concept is a plague, without getting into too much detail with the background on it, how would you create a disease vector as a front?

Further info: the disease is called The Hex Plague and it was created from a bit of magic-eating monster. When infected folks change, distort, and become twisted versions of themselves, tending to attack those nearby to spread the disease.

I can see the infected being a sort-of Horde as their own danger, spreading the disease, but what about the plague itself? How would I classify it?

Thank you for any forthcoming help.

A quickly written capsule-campaign idea, derived from those odd thoughts you have between waking and sleeping.

A quickly written capsule-campaign idea, derived from those odd thoughts you have between waking and sleeping.

A quickly written capsule-campaign idea, derived from those odd thoughts you have between waking and sleeping.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ss-A2Fe_iTXGN6tyTpjjCUTuUAw7q7dI/view?usp=sharing

Here’s the Threats chapter for #Stonetop.

Here’s the Threats chapter for #Stonetop.

Here’s the Threats chapter for #Stonetop. I’ve been bugging y’all so much lately with my posts about Fronts, I figure I owe you a peak at what I’ve been working on.

The biggest differences between this and Fronts are:

* There aren’t actually fronts & dangers. I found that structure to just not fit for Stonetop’s heavily-local setup.

* Instead, it’s much more like AW 2e… there are just threats. (Though, unlike AW, not everything is a threat.)

* Any given threat may or may not have an impending doom, grim portents, or stakes.

* The threat types are different from the danger types, though they cover similar ground. Again, lots of AW influence in here.

* There aren’t prescriptive subtypes with proscribed impulses, just lots of examples.

* Also, I scrapped the difference between impulse and instinct… I just couldn’t see enough of a difference to justify the distinction.

As always: feedback and questions are both welcome and greatly appreciated!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9qx0qhb4wl7kes4/GM04%20Threats.pdf?dl=0

Talk to me about Stakes, those questions you write as part of your fronts.

Talk to me about Stakes, those questions you write as part of your fronts.

Talk to me about Stakes, those questions you write as part of your fronts.

When you write up a front, how often do you write stakes questions?

What are some of your favorite stakes questions that you’ve actually used? How did they turn out? What lead to them turning out that way?

How has their presence shaped your games?

I’m thinking about the games I’ve run over the years, and looking at notes, and I’ve realized… I almost never right stakes questions. And when I do, they’re more like blanks that I’ve left, to decide on later, rather than questions about how things will actually play out.

So, I’d love to hear your experiences. DW or other PbtA games that use them! Please share.

Reasons for the smuggling and selling of halflings

Reasons for the smuggling and selling of halflings

Reasons for the smuggling and selling of halflings

Looking to tap your brain juices for a a danger/front that one of my players came up with during our first session.

They were exploring a ship that drifted ashore seemingly without a living soul aboard. Asking establishing questions, Thalda the halfling thief, who grew up as the only halfling in the entire capital, said the ship was rumored to be smuggling halflings. The following things has been established during the subsequent sessions:

* The halflings where fleeing a foreign city where halflings are doing slave labour.

* The halflings aboard the ship where eaten by a sea hag, who also transformed all of the human crew into horrible mutated sea thralls

* The boxes the halflings were kept in was marked with a symbol of a horrible thieves guild in the closest town, the Red Rock Guild.

*The Red Rock is a landmark close to this town, a known place for smugglers

* The Thief has a contact in this town. Together they broke into a noble woman’s house in the capital, and uncovered a symbol similar to a medallion the Thief stole from another noble sometime later.

* The Thief suspects this medallion is connected to the halfling smuggling somehow

Looking for some inspiration!

Looking for some inspiration!

Looking for some inspiration!

My party has tasked itself with getting into an ancient vault in the catacombs beneath a palace. Anyone going in to the vault for as long as far back as anyone can remember, either never came out or came back out talking complete nonsense/utterly insane.

The vault stores an ancient artifact that will potentially be able to bring back an ancient god to life.

Complicating factor: the sister of one of the PCs has already entered the vault ahead of the party as part of a deal that saved the related PC’s life. Basically the party is mainly going in to make sure she survives, but also to help her obtain the artifact as that was part of the deal. Bad Things will happen (to the sister) if they don’t.

The setting is a bit of a mix between steampunk & lovecraftian horror. So basically there’s cults, sacrifices, gods, mysteries, steampunk-monsters (think mechanical spiders etc), machines with a lot of cogs and tubes that do stuff they have no business of being able to do….

I imagine the vault being a mini-dungeon. Say 3-4 ‘rooms’, each with some problem the party faces. I’m looking for any input for moves, encounters, monsters or traps that could be found in the vault that broadly fit (part of) the setting as described above.

Any thoughts?