Worlds of Adventure: Discussion – Page 4 – Dungeon World Tavern G+ Archives

Hi.

Hi. Nice work on this new ‘edition’! I’ve been looking at the various playbooks and I just want to give you a little feedback while I go through them.

Specifically, I wanted to bring your attending to the Paladin’s “I am the law” move. As it stands, it does very little for the player. In particular, the choices presented are more of a hinderance than anything. I understand that they are there to work with Judge and Jury, which happens to be just as clanky. It might be hard to keep the balance between moves and this has the possibility to upset things are than most, but I feel you should consider revising it.

Oh, as a side note, perhaps you could bundle together the devout virtues and the chains of faith moves, to reduce clutter even further.

Can someone help me some clarification on moves?

Can someone help me some clarification on moves? What’s the difference in application between undertake a perilous journey and navigate?

For those wanting a little more in-depth look at the changes in v0.2, here are some of the big ones.

Bonds have been reworked. They now have two marks; at one mark they don’t count towards your total (but can still be salvaged with the Forge a Bond or Mending Bonds moves), and at two marks they are erased from the playbook. This makes them a bit more robust, and better gels with the “Bonds As Resource” approach of Worlds of Adventure.

Similarly, Break Their Bonds has been replaced by Test Their Bonds, with the focus shifted from erasing their Bonds (now a function of Use Up Their Resources) to introducing circumstances where Bonds can be tested.

Finally, instead of getting experience for making new Bonds, you just get experience for expressing a bond (any Bond) during play, similar to how one might resolve a Bond in traditional Dungeon World. References to players expending Bonds have been cut due to functionality reasons; we couldn’t integrate them deep enough into the mechanics to really make that approach work.

The new Grevious Wounds move should aid GMs (and players) to better tie their dwindling HP into the game’s fiction. Likewise, the new Adventure Moves (drawn from and inspired by Jason Lutes’ fantastic second edition playtest of Freebooters on the Frontier) should engender a better travel experience for all.

Some playbooks have had moves altered, removed, added, or replaced; the changes are too many to count. The Cleric has received the biggest rework, and they should now be a little more unique and distinct from the Wizard. Making a deity is now its own insert, too!

Spellcasting has also been reworked; its costs were too significant to be realistic in play, and so now they use a more standard “10+ Yes; 7-9 Yes, but; 6- No” approach. There are also a few extra premade spells for the Wizard and invocations for the Cleric for you to work with, for a total of 12 each.

GM-Side, the Treasure table has been updated and made a little bit clearer. You’ll also find a new Appendix, Records, for GMs who would rather keep their campaign notes, Fronts, and Monsters in a larger format.

Worlds of Adventure v0.2 is here!

We’re proud to announce the second iteration of this ongoing project. If you’re not familiar with the initial Release of Worlds of Adventure, we’re looking to build on the strengths and themes of Dungeon World with a holistic, take-it-as-is ruleset that emphasises functionality and flexibility.

For those familiar with the v0.1 ruleset, here’s a list of some of the broad-strokes changes:

– Updates to some overall mechanics, particularly for Bonds and the Adventure Moves.

– Some small tweaks to items and item prices.

– Updates to each of the classes, some small, some big.

– The Cleric has been totally reworked!

– Spellcasting (for the Cleric and the Wizard) has also been reworked, and there are some extra premade spells and invocations.

Please send us your comments and suggestions. You can contact me, Yochai Gal, and/or the other owners/moderators of this community whom I can’t seem to +tag right now.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DPj7XzcpuqItzPqiU0SbzPLYI5ciuAp2

This is a really rad revision of the game and is much neater and cleaner.

This is a really rad revision of the game and is much neater and cleaner. I definitely really like it, and I look forward to trying it out.

Question: do you have any blank templates for the playbooks, for making custom classes? I love the little fold-in-half layout (making it a little booklet is a joy, and something we’ve been doing at our table for awhile now). We have some custom classes we love using in my groups, and I’d like to try porting them over to the new look, for the sake of consistency.

Second, some feedback regarding bonds. I like that it’s a bit more streamlined but also versatile, and as-is I have no problems with it (on first glance without playtesting, that is). Often I see players reworking bonds into flags, and I have my own self added a “trait” system that works similarly, and I was curious if, since this was meant to evoke Apocalypse World a little more, you’d considered anything like that (Hx) going with bonds.

In the past I’ve used Traits (zealous, bold, stubborn, shy, cowardly, etc.) for players in DW, and something like “when another player triggers one of your traits, their Hx with you goes up by one. When you respond to the trigger, you gain 1 Hx with them.” Then, when they hit 4 Hx, they erase it and write a bond. Aiding gives 1 Hx, interfering takes one away.

I added in some end-of-session moves like “for every player you played with this time, increase Hx by one. For every player you have played with before who wasn’t here, decrease by 1.” Then I also had some rules for doing the same thing with important NPC’s or even entire communities. And when Hx went too far negative, you’d erase a bond entirely.

In this way Bonds remained a narrative resource but also a nice record of standing with players and NPC’s, but they had a bit more of a mechanical tie in, and the traits, in lieu of flags, helped players get into character.

Hello all!

Hello all! I just found out about this project — what a great idea! Love it! I’ve been playing DW since first edition, and have done a couple of little projects for the community so I’m super stoked to come across this.

A couple of thoughts — while I agree with the principle of simplifying both Load and HP with straight static numbers, I’d like to suggest it’s valuable to differentiate a specific character based on their stats. Have there been any discussions about adding the STR modifier to Load and CON modifier to HP? It seems a fair way to reward these generally lesser used stats (and prevents the dump stat problem to some degree). I don’t want to open up an old discussion if it’s already been set in stone, but I thought I’d offer it up.

When will the next version of Worlds of Adventure be posted? I am looking forward to any changes that you make!

One of the things I really like about this is how races have been incorporated into look.

One of the things I really like about this is how races have been incorporated into look. I think it’s the correct amount of prompting to indicate that race is something the player should care about but is also flexible.

My favorite innovation about this is that you pick an advanced move during character creation. I love the way this opens up character building options and makes starting characters both more varied and more focused. I’d actually like to see this expanded upon, maybe some classes could have fewer starting moves and more starting advanced move choices.

However, these two things together got me thinking–what’s the point of Background moves? I know they’re a replacement for race moves but, beyond that what purpose do they serve? Why should they be set aside instead of included as a starting move with options, or just included in the advanced moves as potential choices? Some of the backgrounds are mutually exclusive (an argument for them being set aside) but most aren’t.

I think background moves also miss something that the best racial moves can bring too. Although most of the racial moves aren’t like this there’s a few like Dwarf Cleric, Dwarf Fighter, or Human Druid, which really add a lot of flavor to what it is to be a particular race/class combination. Of course it’s really hard to come up with a move for every race/class combination that’s that good, most are pretty boring.

I have not had a chance to pick up the recently released Xanathar’s Guide to Everything yet but the reviews mention that there are a lot of class specific backstory tools like superstitions and tattoos for Barbarians or temptations and a nemesis for Paladins. This sounds very interesting and I’m wondering if something like this could make a better background than just some moves that you have to pick from.

Thoughts?

Sharing for those who are following the game here.

Sharing for those who are following the game here. Our recent playtest of Worlds of Adventure featuring the Bard, Ranger, and Druid!

https://youtu.be/0kg8xw9dA3k

Had my first experience with Worlds of Adventure last night.

Had my first experience with Worlds of Adventure last night. Good basis of DW, for context. This is just my writeup from Kyle’s game that he’s recorded for you.

Bond economy feels like a good change to me. Incentivises deleting bonds to aid, and then building them up. This makes the bond loop shorter (ie in vanilla DW, it takes at least 3 sessions to resolve three bonds. In WoA, I can create and “use” 3 bonds in a single session). Bonds feel cleaner when they’re less grandiose if players are expected to “earn and burn” bonds in this way. I dig it, very Fate-point-y.

Addition of extra races in character creation was well received by all players.

Played a Ranger, I love the “Ranger as battlefield tactician” development. Sits with me a lot better than what we’ve seen from DnD. I expect a lot of resistance (because us nerds and our tradition, right?), but personally I loved it. Felt different enough to the fighter, felt like it filled a gap I haven’t seen in a long time. Moving animal companion to it’s own section was nice. It’s good to be an option, but I really didn’t wan to play “guy with a wolf”.

Always Prepared and Ruthless Slayer were enjoyable to interact with. Gives the Ranger a very mobile feel around the battlefield knowing you’ve got 3 defy dangers at 10+ up your sleeve. Really empowering to go wild in the fiction. We do need to talk about Ruthless Slayer and whether the list is permissive or not. “Take Something Important” is pretty wild for a move that doesn’t require a roll. “Their throat, their heart, their kingdom” I just get it, right? I can personally see what you’re going for, but it’d be nice if the rule had more clarity on what my limits are as a ranger. How do I not just kill everything by spending my readiness? Because surely “their life” is something important that I can take.

Tools of the Trade echos The Witcher in exactly the way I want it to. I’m glad this move exists and my greatest regret is that I didn’t get to use it in our playtest.

Grisly Trophy is a nice feel. I would like to see it extended to party-mates, personally. More party interaction from the ranger would feel good, and this is a good way to do it. Defy Danger still limits the power of it, so that doesn’t worry me too much. It’s just something I’d like to see, the ranger’s expertise being passed on to others.

Biggest problem we had was Bestiary Knowledge. It breaks flow a lot on its own. I love the question (says a lot about the ranger that the first thing they think when they see something is “how can I best kill this thing”). But yes, after the GM presents this wonderful description of a person or thing, to have the Ranger immediately ask “So how do I kill it?” is funny the first or second time, but really breaks the tone of the game. We played a couple of hours in a one-shot and I was sick of asking it, I couldn’t imagine how much I’d want to punch my ranger in the face during a campaign. But I love the question, and I don’t want to see it removed. I would prefer to see it merged with the Hunter background or something, maybe added to Discern Realities/Spout Lore. Just thinking out loud.

Regardless, I really enjoyed the ranger in a way I’ve never enjoyed a ranger before. I’m really excited to see this project go forward. I hope these notes and our playtest are of use to you.