Tag: J. Walton

By popular request: I’ve launched a new community for the Planarch Codex, including the long-promised job board of Dis, which I’ve seeded with a job I just randomly rolled up: “The Terms of Surrender.”

I also plan on posting excerpts from the new Planarch booklets I’m working on, and look forward to hearing about all the other awesome stuff that folks are doing.

This community is mostly meant to supplement the existing Dungeon World Tavern and not really be a separate thing, since the Planarch Codex isn’t a stand-alone thing.

Feel free to roll up and post more jobs, or just post about jobs that your crews have already attempted. We’re just getting started, so I’ll make new categories as we need them.

Thanks to Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel, I have in my hands 70 copies of the original print version of Dark Heart of the Dreamer and will mail a copy anywhere in the world for $10. Details below!

http://corvidsun.com/2013/07/27/dark-heart-of-the-dreamer-print/

Guess who just got featured on Scoutbooks.com? Our Kickstarter booklets!

http://www.scoutbooks.com/dungeon-world/

Thought some other GMs might find this intro useful.

Originally shared by J. Walton

I’m starting a new Dungeon World campaign soon and wanted something punchy that helped explain what it means to be a 1st level character, what the game is about, and what you do. This is what I came up with:

—–

Dear Motley Crew of Shiftless Reprobates,

Due to the whims of fate and your own poor decision-making, you have been left with no choice but to join together in a loose comraderie to seek your fortunes by theft, guile, treasure-hunting, and the occasional grisly murder.

You may be relatively satisfied to make your way through this world as a brigand and tomb-robber or you may aspire to a greater calling. Either way, your current means and skills are barely suited for low cut-pursery. If your life ended tomorrow, from a rusty shaving razor drawn across your throat, perhaps, none but the sharks and moneylenders would mourn your untimely passing.

It is up to you, then, to prove that fortune has unjustly overlooked your humble thread, if not through acts of valor, then at least through obscene wealth. But for now, it’s all hand-to-mouth and blade-to-face, the core issues of survival and personal betterment.

With that in mind, your makeshift crew has made its way to [dangerous dungeony locale], which is said to hold [treasures of some kind] as well as [monstrous things that will surely kill you]. If you’re lucky, you’ll find wealth and adventure within, rather than a strange and painful demise; if not, there’s plenty more miserable wretches eager to pick up where you left off.

Best wishes for your first substantial undertaking of criminal tomfoolery,

The GM

Here’s the cover for the Planarch Codex: Over-Turned, the streamlined hack of Inverse World that we will release for free to all backers if the Kickstarter reaches $15,000 (currently at $11,500 with only 9 days left). The cover illustration is by the very talented Turkish artist Bülent Gültek.

Posted a few details on the thing I’m working on for the Inverse World Kickstarter.

Originally shared by J. Walton

Wanted to promote my stretch goal for Inverse World a bit and provide some more details. I don’t have a name for it yet (World of Inversion? Planarch Codex: The World Turned?), but essentially the goal is to take everything in Inverse World and boil it down into the core essentials, making a stand-alone 4-6 page version in the World of Dungeons tradition — though not necessarily using the exact same mechanics — suitable for quick-start convention play, one-shots, and longer-term play that focuses more on the fiction and player choices, since it won’t have the mechanical depth of the full game. You should be able to make characters, a starting situation, and be ready to play in 15 minutes.

I offered to write a hyper-focused hack of Inverse World partially because I’m really excited and interested in the idea of a Dungeon World hack where the core focus is on travel and exploration. Obviously there’s can be a lot of travel and exploration in Dungeon World too, but there’s a shift in focus in Inverse World: it draws more on things like Dinotopia and Avatar: The Last Airbender, where the characters are on an adventure to see exciting things, meeting exciting people, discover who they are, and experience what this fantasy world has to offer. Don’t get me wrong, I love the grimy desperation and personal enrichment of other modes of fantasy adventure (as you can probably tell from the Planarch Codex), but I also really love things like Avatar and Dinotopia and The Neverending Story too, so it’ll be fun to really dig into this style of play and make it work in a very focused format.

Two other things worth mentioning:

1. I’m also excited by the creators’ commitment to a multicultural, multiethnic setting and will push on that button hard. If you’ve read Dark Heart of the Dreamer, this probably doesn’t surprise you! My day job is in Asian studies, and reflecting the diversity of the real world and human history in game settings is important to me. “Anthropological fantasy” all the way!

2. I am hyper-invested in “the fiction” (i.e. the things that are true in the game world) being the core focus when you are hacking Apocalypse World. My design work tends to stay mostly away from +1 bonuses and instead engage with what’s happening, pushing that forward and changing it into new and dramatic situations.

In any event, I hope you’ll consider backing Inverse World or upping your pledge if you’re already backing it at one of the lower levels. Really, between the core game, the Fate version, and now my hyper-focused 4-6 page hack, you’ll have three different rulesets to choose from, so there will probably be a version that you’ll be excited to play. The art is beautiful and inspiring and the setting is really cool, reminiscent of Avatar, Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, and John Kim’s description of his “Water-Uphill World” campaign from Push.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1552912590/inverse-world-a-dungeon-world-sourcebook/posts/483244