Tag: Ezio Melega

Genius has to be remembered.

Caption: “Only 16 HP, eh?”

Luca Maiorani’s masterwork 

Arp Laszlo, this is how I start my DW games.

What I’ll try to describe is an actual demo I run at Lucca Comix 2013 (imagine Italian GenCON): I haven’t the sketch book for that session anymore, but I’ll try to let you figure what I actually drew.

Figure this: I didn’t know anything about the group. I had never met them and was armed only of  a sketchpad and a selection of the classes (at demo I prefer to cut out preparation time by selecting beforehand some classes and let the players choose from them. I usually go for Number of Players + 1 booklets in display).

I explained what I had to, they started creating their character. Almost there, before the Bonds, I stop them and look at the characters.

I see there are a lot of races: a Human Thief, an Elf bard, an Half-Elf Ranger (I told them to take an extra move) and a Orc Barbarian. This is interesting.

I start from the obvious and ask, to the player: “What is an Elf?”

“Well, an Elf is an Elf, duh”, he answers.

“Ok, humor me, can you describe your elves?”

“They are tall and magical, swift and agile”

“Great… why they are magical?”

This question takes the player by surprise. Excellent. He thinks a second and tell me that they are magical because they are closer to the Sky Gods than anyone else. I nod and ask were they live. Since they are closer to the gods they live in high mountain valleys (“Not forest?” “No, valleys. Maybe some tree”, already broke with the stereotype, good) and, keeping asking question we discover that the Elves are a proud mountain dwelling race, divided in several great houses, each with their steading and with machiavellan politics.

It’s the elf player to tell me all of this. I asked him why he is a Bard and why spoken language is so important for him, and he answered the machiavellan politics, I suggested the steadings… it could seem a complex process, but it went smoothly in a copule of minutes and three or four questions answered.

I take a sheet of paper and draw the mountains, with a sun symbol over them. On another sheet I note: “Great houses, chieftainship, nest of magic vipers”.

I reserve the same treatament for the human. He has already seen what I’m doing and is anxious to contribute. I ask him from where he is from and he tells me that there is a town not far form the mountains.

I draw them and give them a name: “Let’s call it Riverbridge”, I say.

“Why?” asks the Thief?

“Because there is a river, see?” [draw the river crossing the city, from the mountain to… draw the coast… to the distant coast. Now we have a quite large plain dominated by a town and closed at north by high mountains controlled by elves] “And the city is built around this fortified brigde” [draw] “What do you think? Why the brigde is so important to justify a town?”

“Hmmm trade, maybe? It’s the only way from this coast to the mountains? I’m a Thief and I have this move to know the criminal underground, so I would like the city to be a nest of scum and villany”

“So, trade from the sea. It makes sense to have a big city here” [draw a city on the coast]” I then ask anyone, because I’ve been on the Rogue for a little too much time: “What’s the main trade of the big city?”

“Slaves!” answers the Orc Barbarian

“I would like my town to be a more anarchic and free-for-all place than a slaver domanin…”, the Rogue isn’t too much happy of that answer.

“Maybe,” says the Ranger, “Slavery is forbidden in the town, and a lot of slaves run from the coast to it, reinforcing the criminal underground”

Everyone claps: “Great!”

“And the bridge”, says the Rogue player, already sold and inventing freely, “Is really the center of the criminal underground. It’s a sort of fortified house that crosses the brigde, and the owner is the lord of the city because his family built it and made everything pay a toll”

“You are quoting from Martin”

“Is it bad?”

“Nothing is bad, this is our world, everything is fine if everyone likes it. Blood and Fire, by the way”

I sketch two towers on the brige, and note apart: “Criminal lord, not slaver, exploitations, a lot of goons, some high level boss” I miss something. I ask: “What’s the name of the criminal lord, and why you know him?”

“He is Rogar the Poison, and I work for him”

New note: “Rogar, why Poison? What kind of work?”

I then look at the Ranger. We already know Elves and Human, now the half-and-half.

I have a pressing question: “Are you the only half-elf that exists?”

He answers that they are very uncommon, but he isn’t unique. It’s more a matter of the Elves being so much pretentious and snobbish that…

I ask him where he lives and he point a space between city and mountains, telling me that there there’s a big forest. I draw it, obediently.

A question on his training, about who raised him and he creates a Forest Godess, and her order of protectors. They are ranger, he is The Ranger because he is blessed by his mixed heritage.

I love this and note: “Ranger in the forest. Godess. Filthy city VS woods. Coal, fires, industry?”

I start to see a shape, and smile my hyena smile.

I ask the Ranger what he has hereditated from the two races, and he keeps going with the “chose one” theme: he is different. Pretty dull, if you ask me, but I already have enough and I have to accept what he likes. Trying to spice it up but working on his bases.

I note the “Chosen one” besides the “Godess” note.

The Barbarian is different, it comes from another culture, is out there. I will probably not need the map, and I purpousefully left him for last, to offer the player a chance at creating contrasts.

It works.

Since everyone seems stuck in this European renaissance mood he describes his orc as a rider from the west, dressed in leather, part of a horse-culture. Good. I ask him why he is travelling, and he is here because of an initiatic travel.

“Are you the only one?”

“No, we are rare, but everyone does it, and some comes here. We come back only when we have found something useful for the Herd”

“This is Mass Effect“

“I played a Vanguard and romanced Tali”

“I a Soldier and Liara forever”

I ask details about the culture and why the moves he has chosen are there: he contextualize them for me, justifying wht’s written and helping delineating a setting.

I tell them they are already a group, they know each other. Maybe they donn’t like each other but they know where everyone stands. Then they write their bond and… other questions. Why it’s so? Why he doesn’t trust you?

We already know a lot about the cultures and the world (but have plenty white spaces), and this helped shape the contours of the relationship between the characters, now the bonds give us details.

I ask them why they are together and they tell me that they are on a mission for the Forest Godness, to protect her. I jump in with my idea of an expanding city that is attacking the forest to have burnwood and they like it. We discover, with the bonds, that the Thief  isn’t sucha  bad perosn and that the Elf is an Elf: he is planning a triple betrayal of almost anyone.

I don’t make them write a long background, just the answer to clarify the bonds and nothing more, I have everything.

Then we can start.

I use a trick.

I ask them: “What was the last mission the Godess gave you?”

The Barbarian answers: “We investigated the city plan to expand”

The Ranger adds: “And we discovered a new cutting tree technology”

“Great,” I tell them “And you are still in that adventure. You are inside a big storehouse, on a high ledge, looking down to three big brass and wood steam powered cutting machines, with round saws and long chimneys. Lord Poison is examining them. He is elegant and dandy, with a black cane” (I’m improvising, following my nose and my tastes of the moment) “and talks about the great experiment, tomorrow morning. These new machines will cut down dozens of trees everyday!”

And so begun. We played, we rolled, I followed my moves. We discovered that lord Poison whas really the mortal host of a great poison devil, that an Elven house was his ally (and the Bard was against that house, bu also against the house supporting the Forest Godess). I create the machines as monsters out of scrap, took the mook statystics from the manual, recoloured I don’t remember what monster for Poison and so on.

I had nothing, we created a world.

It has been fun for me and for them, I had the satisfaction of put all the bits together and run an adventure without any big preparation work, they enjoyed beign part of the creative process, not only spectators, and the absolute center of things.

Worlds I’ve visited with Dungeon World, for a brief period or a longer staying.

The Spirit World: Where there are spirits everywhere, the nomadic Halfling being a natural channel for them, being them nature or death spirits, where the Forest Elvesslive in total isolations, warring between themselves with bronze axes, dueling with magical songs and remember the treachery of the Western Elves, who learned necromancy and the corrupt formulaic magic of humans, and where the deads are coming back because the Death God has been shattered in six different pieces. And Love makes you human…

The Hollow World: Where armored bears with a somewhat vague sense of individuality came from the stars in ages past to protect the world, and on the internal superfice little squirrel-men with fast live gather in tribes between the trees of the jungle, under a sun made from the molten core and a moon when one cas see a mysterious city. In between, in the dark tunnels, live the gnome-like Lapis; for them fantasy and history are sins. They worship keeping them in working order the machines that crisscross the underheart. Something there is stirring, and giant moles are awakening and mutating, while Magic takes human form.

The whole planet is just a giant egg about to hatch, and the machine of the Ancient Ones are keeping it in dormient state, but they are starting to fail. The Lapis are trying to prevent this, but they are creating devastating heartquakes on the Bear’s world and opening passages between the two worlds…

The Archipelago: A tropical chain of islands, where tribal Humans lived isolated, in a tense peace with the predator Elves with night-black skin and razor-like teeths wandering the sea and ferocious, cannibalistic and primitive Halfling, until conquering Dwarves came with steel vessels and colored beards, imposing the law and customs of a distant land and culture. 

Strange things dwell in the open sea between the island: gigantic creatures and strange cultures of carnivorous fish-men…

Havenford: A commercial city, ruled by a corrupt potestas, an haven for escaped slaves from thegreat cities of the coast, bordering the holy woods protected by sacred rangers. The city is building machines to attack the forest to fuel its expansion, while the haugthy Elves, sure in their mountain valley and of their link to the gods, look down on this uprising men, thinking about remembering them their place. A demon lurks in the city, controlling the organized crime and the upcoming expansion…

A World of Steel and Blood: The blood-thirsty God King rules over Civilization, and everything natural is destroyed in front of his violent, fanatic warriors. When the plain of Law brings forth steel angels to transform the world in a perfect metal form the God King sends his men to fight them: this is not his civilization, not his Law…

I love collaborative worldbuilding. I really love it.

Dungeon World is not my ideal for this (I still have to find it, I should deepen my knowledge of Microscope) but it is giving me a lot of fun and satisfaction.

Thank you ^^

And that’s all folks!

Originally shared by Matteo “triex” Suppo

You jelly?

After women (https://plus.google.com/106208215013894151619/posts/A7jYkqXfyaf) and men (https://plus.google.com/106208215013894151619/posts/ZsFnfFaFwCx) from Italian Dungeon World I think is time for some monster goodness.

Angel, Dragon Whelp, Sprite, Deep Elf Swordmaster (totally NOT a drow :-P) and Centaur.

Here I posted some of the women of Italian Dungeon World: https://plus.google.com/106208215013894151619/posts/A7jYkqXfyaf

Now it’s the turn for men.

Shaman, Bard, Halfling Thief