Tag: Brian Holland

My first DW Campaign as a GM will be coming to a close in a few weeks, and I have joined another group as a player. I have had a tremendous amount of fun playing DW and have already started taking notes for the next time I GM.

I wanted to “play it straight” in my first campaign so we could all get a feel for DW, but my players have asked about adding a crafting system similar to something in Diablo or Skyrim.

I fear this will add too much crunch to a game designed to avoid crunch. I have some ideas about a simple crafting system which adds some bookkeeping, but I don’t know if it would be “crafty” enough.

I’m thinking about custom move template for finding crafting components that looks something like this:

When you spend some time to search [location] for [a crafting component that is commonly found here], you find 1d4 of that component and roll+WIS.

10+ Choose 2

7-9 Choose 1

* You avoid running into [denizens of this location].

* You don’t draw the attention of [an NPC or special guardian], who will [take an appropriate action].

* You gain an additional 1d4 of that component, or 1 of another component more rare to this area of the GM’s choice.

So filling in the blanks (in the order presented) for a graveyard may look like this:

The Westmarch Cemetary / Bone Shards/ a group of fresh Zombies / Captain Blazer’s Ghost / Haunt you until you leave Westmarch.

A forested location may look like this:

The Timberfall / Wood Spirit / a pack of starving wolves / A wood Elf / demand you give her what you’ve found

I would love all thoughts on the idea of crafting in general, as well as ideas about how to make this move template better.

All of this is very high level right now. I won’t be running a campaign again for about 6 months, so I have plenty of time to work on it. I want to make a system that my players asked for, but NOT add a lot of crunch and bookkeeping (which MAY not even be possible).

Thanks!

So I spent a good portion of last night reading A Sundered World, and I’m loving it. There are some really awesome things in it, and although I don’t know if I’ll play the setting yet, there are several things I would like to take over to Vanilla DW.

Most notably is the way races are used in SW. For anyone unfamiliar with it, SW uses a race – which has some starting moves and advanced moves associated with it – as well as the class (whereas in DW you pick a class and it has a couple race options).

I’ve been working on a “Morphling” class (with the help of several of you here… Thanks!), but I feel it should really be a Race, as it’s an amorphous being that “morphs” into other shapes.

So my question is, has anyone been using the SW idea of Race + Class in Vanilla DW?

I need some help with a new class I’m working on please. I want to create a morphling class that is totally unlike the druid, and closer to Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine than T-1000 from Terminator 2.

Odo could do all kinds of morphy stuff, but he had to recuperate at the end of each day, “sleeping” in his gooey form in a bucket. I don’t want the character to have to turn to goo every night, but I would like to make the player make choices as to when they’ll morph based on a value of hold. Morphing into a new form costs hold, but reverting to normal is free.

As such, I’d like one of the main moves to a modification of the healing that takes place during rest (when you rest…gain half your max HP). I’m thinking “when you rest…regain all your HP, lose all hold you have and gain X Hold”.

An advanced move can be “when you do this, gain an additional 1d4 hold” and a higher level version that replaces it could be “…additional 1d6 hold”.

Very high levels thoughts. Fictionally I’d want the character to be one of a kind; no others of their class exist (at least that’s what the character thinks 🙂 ).

I’d love any feedback on wording, amount of hold, etc.

Thanks!

Skyrim opening

With Skyrim Special Edition coming out last week I decided to make an opening adventure for DW that mirrors the opening of that game, which I spent SSOO much time playing (400+ hours on my PS3 and at about 25 since I picked up my PS4 copy on Friday).

The idea is that the party, along with a high profile NPC have been captured and are taken to the gallows. Something crashes in, killing several guards and others, and in the confusion the characters make their escape.

The players get to tell me where there are, why they’ve been captured, who the High Profile NPC is, and why he’s there, what it is that crashes in, plus some more goodies.

I plan to start a new campaign this weekend with this start, and can’t wait to see what kind of world my players and I build. My biggest challenge: Playing to see what happens instead of trying to recreate Skyrim.

Has anyone else ripped something straight out of a video game or other source to start their campaign? If so, has it been difficult to divorce the sources fiction from your own?