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I still feel awkward working with Fronts

I still feel awkward working with Fronts

Fronts are a part of the game I expected to really dig, but in practice I find it really hit-or-miss: Sometimes the fiction generated during play fits right into the Front framework, but the majority of my campaign and adventure fronts don’t seem to fit.

As a result, most of my would-be fronts are pretty fuzzy. The concrete thing I work with is a list of major NPCs, locations, and named items, and I have an oblique sense of what everyone wants. Beyond that, I get by on Graham Charles’s advice in Play Unsafe: “Be obvious.” We’re still having fun, mind you, I just feel like I’m missing out on a significant piece of Dungeon World’s game tech that would be making my life better if I was doing it better.

I feel like what I need is to see some examples, each describing a First Session and then the Fronts that came out of it.

Because my DW campaign is in full swing, it’s not easy to isolate something to ask for advice. But a few weeks ago, I ran a completely off-the-cuff session of Swords & Wizardry, which resulted in the same kind of fiction one might expect after running a First Session of Dungeon World.

Before we started, the players told me:

* They are adventuring in a howling forest in a haunted, mountainous region. Most settlements are villages of crooked cottages.

* Their patron is the Archmage, who lives in a tower on a peak, and the party’s magic-user is his pupil. We didn’t establish any other bonds yet, but the Archmage gave them some quirky magical doodads before play began, so he must know them.

* They wanted to kill a bad guy and they wanted to explore a dark cave

I printed out one of Dyson’s cave-like maps and made a quick list of quirky magic items for them to pick from, then started cold. Here are some details that emerged about our setting and the focal conflict:

* The bad guy was a bandit lord called “The Ghost”, because they ride into a village at night, round up almost everyone, and disappear before anyone can alert nobles or their militias.

* Their Ranger led them straight to the cave, they had a confrontation with the Ghost and a few bandit archers. The bandits were puny minions and fell down easily, but the Ghost retreated into the cave complex to mount further defense.

* With a few tense battles, they explored a bear cave, a guard tower built into the mountainside, and a cave being used as a stable for the bandits’ horses and the Ghost’s malefic steed, which had fangs and belched fire. They were just about to venture further into the fortified cave complex at the end of the session.

Here are some things that came to me during and after the session:

* The howling forest/haunted mountains reminds me of Jonathan Harker’s description of Transylvania in Dracula.

* That gave me the idea of a variety of cultural tensions. Maybe the church is about to split, like the Great Schism, and the Archmage is busy trying to broker a truce between the East and West.

* The cave map reminds me of a secret religious order that hides out in caves, like early monastics and the Qumran community.

* The religious order could be a heretical sect of women who worship a snake as a symbol of wisdom, like the serpent who gave Eve the fruit of the tree of knowledge. They built their shrine in these caves. This could tie in to a whole lot of D&D monsters.

* The Ghost is a D&D Wraith.

* She was once the slave of the Sultan of a neighboring kingdom, who was given to the Archmage as a prize for beating the Sultan in a game of Chess. She became the Archmage’s pupil, but studied dark stuff—blah blah blah. The Archmage believes she died, unaware that she planned to come back.

* Why has she been raiding villages at night and taking these people away? This is the question I struggled with most. Maybe she is still loyal to the Sultan, and she is rounding them up for slave labor.

* What is she getting out of it? No idea yet. She must be very shrewd, and she wouldn’t be sending him slaves without some kind of payment.

* What is her relationship with the shrine maidens? My first idea is that they were being held captive with the villagers, and the Ghost just took over their shrine as a convenient base because of it’s seclusion. But it might be cool if they were in cahoots, and giving refuge to the Ghost and her men was benefiting them in some way.

* That reminded me of Mike Mignola’s version of the death of Rasputin (in the Hellboy comic): When he died, he saw the Dragon (of Chaos) and it resurrected him. Maybe the Ghost’s study into dark magic likewise led her to give fealty to the Dragon, and she sees the shrinemaiden’s as fellow-travelers.

* The idea that they might be in cahoots also inspired me to stat up some of the shrine maidens as D&D Monks, with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon martial arts skills.

* Also, I want to put a basilisk in one of the uninhabited caves, which the sisters tend to, blindfolded, as a form of religious devotion. Since that’s kind of vanilla, I thought it might be cool to throw in an invisible goblin that lives in a sort of symbiosis with the basilisk, occasionally killing and eating shrine maidens who come to care for their pet.

* Finally, I thought it would be cool to have the main shrine include a Marilith statue, that is a real Marilith turned to stone by her own sister who is a Medusa. That detail may have no impact at all on this adventure, but if someone ever kills the Medusa in the far off future, the Marilith might thaw out and cause trouble. Anyway, that’s a crazy Easter Egg, but like any stuff you put in, the players might create interesting situations with it.

Anyway, it’s messy, but I tried to expose my thinking so that you can see where I’m coming from. I have not gone over the map yet to

“stock” the dungeon—I just made some notes about stuff I want to remember to put in, like an armory and magazine maintained by the bandits, complete with some sorcerous firearms and maybe a cannon, and a bunch of religious accoutrements—like a mikveh for ritual immersion (filled with holy water), holy scrolls, murals, incense, idols, and altars.

If that was the first session of a Dungeon World game, how would I take that stuff and turn it into Fronts?

Zakess Solitary, Devious, Intelligent, Terrifying

Zakess Solitary, Devious, Intelligent, Terrifying

Vorpal brain b[2d8] ignores armor, 16 HP, 1 armor

Close, Far

This creature is easily mistaken for an invisible construct created by its enemies. The construct has a horde of invisible minions (also constructs) that can be invoked to sow unreasoning fear. Instinct: To weed out the irrational

* Declaim a strong opinion

* Support a claim with evidence

* Expose a weakness in an enemy’s logic (+1 forward on Discern Realities to anyone who considers the information)

* Expose a lie

* Insist on reasoned defense of a controversial claim

* Suffer not the company of a fool

Read Magic

Read Magic

I’m trying to hammer out a custom move that recollects the old school Read Magic spell. The idea is that magical writing—like in NPC spellbooks, scrolls, and on the walls of the dungeon—is inherently unintelligible without the spell, and possibly dangerous. Some scrolls you find in the dungeon might be spells that you want to add to your spellbook, but others might be cursed, and you don’t know until you cast Read Magic and see where the chips fall!

Here’s my rough draft.

When you examine a magical inscription in a book, scroll, weapon, or other object, roll +INT. On a 10+, I will tell you what magic it contains without invoking it. On a 7–9, [TBD].

Here’s the trouble I’m having: On a miss, I want to invoke any curses—but not every inscription will be cursed. I thought about having the spell misfire on a miss, but I wasn’t sure what to do with a partial success.

Does this seem to harsh? “On a 7–9, the inscription is invoked for good or ill; you pick a target and I will tell you what the magic does.”

I reckon I could just create a custom move for cursed inscriptions on a case-by-case basis, but I’m interested in capturing the suspense of reading an unknown scroll and seeing what happens.

Last night, there was a trial in Dungeon World.

Last night, there was a trial in Dungeon World. The prosecutor was the party’s Cleric Lenore, the defendant was Rath, the party’s Wizard, Rath’s sister—our party’s Ranger Serafina—was a witness for the prosecution, and the judge was the Prior of the Cleric’s religious order.

Roughly three weeks before the trial, the party was on Death Mountain, the ominous location of James Raggi’s Death Frost Doom adventure. [Subtle Spoilers] Following an erie trail of evidence, Rath led the party directly to the the seal that was holding back an ancient curse, and they opened the seal. Fleeing Death Mountain, they made there way to Ravensberg, a town built around the Cleric’s shrine, and the curse followed them.

While still on the mountain, Rath rolled a miss while casting his Invisibility spell, and the spell erupted out of him like vomit, in an inky pillar of cloud that reached into the sky. They continued to flee, and the cloud collapsed, becoming a wave of darkness that rushed down the slope behind them.

Everybody Defied Danger to duck behind boulders and trees as the wave of inky fog rolled past them—everybody but Rath, who got a partial success. So his face turned invisible—not completely, just the skin and flesh, so that he looked a bit like Skeletor.

When they arrived in Ravensberg, Rath carefully kept his face veiled with the hood of his cloak. Our Dungeon World takes place on a frontier continent much like colonial North America, and most commoners are unfamiliar with the reality of magic. The party warned the town of a coming siege, and the town mustered its defenses. Over several days, refugees arrived from outlying farms and villages, speaking of the an unnatural horde ravaging the land. Finally, the siege came one night, and the party went to the barricade to give orders.

Mounting the barricade, Rath threw back his hood, revealing his terrifying visage, and cast Fireball into the oncoming horde. Again, he rolled a miss, and the fireball blew up the barricade, injuring everyone in the party and killing a few peasant guards. Immediately the corporal commanded the guards to lay hold of the necromancer! But the guards were panicking while a few were dragging the wounded away from the burning barricade.

The party beat a path to an earthen bank at another edge of the town in order to draw the horde’s attention away from the burning barricade. The enemy overwhelmed them, and Rath cast Fireball again so they could escape. Another miss! The fireball arced over their heads into the sky, coming down a few moments later to blow up the bell tower of the Cleric’s shrine!

The corporal was devoured by the enemy, and a panicked guard shouted through the streets to flee the city! “Our god has abandoned us because we harbored a necromancer in our midst!”

Lenore silenced the guard, and used her “Divine Guidance” ability to gain a boon from her god—a sudden rainstorm put out the fire and saved the shrine, encouraging many guards to continue defending the town. Soon, though, she led a retreat to the shrine, which stands on a high hill surrounded by a tall iron fence. Rath, who had been looting the shops during the chaos, was arrested immediately when they reached the gate, and kept chained in the shrine’s crypts in the week since.

When the trial began, Rath head-butted the guard that was leading him in chains into the sanctuary, making his face visible again. (The regular spell renders you visible when you attack, so we figured the botched spell would end when Rath attacked someone with his face.)

Instead of charging him with raising an ancient curse and bringing doom upon them all—which were viable charges under the circumstances—Lenore charged Rath with “improper use of a fireball, discharging a fireball within city limits without a permit, disorderly conduct, creating a nuisance, and looking funny”. Since the civil government was disrupted by the invasion, Rath was tried under canon law. The trial was varied and entertaining, exposing facts about their adventure on Death Mountain that could be damning to the whole party. Rath gave the old Crucible defense of being seduced into witchcraft by D&D, and publicly repented. Privately though, he had made even more diabolical pacts during his imprisonment, taking Necromancer (from Grim World) as a Compendium Class—he got the moves Animate Dead and Hexed Body Part, the latter of which was demonstrated when he head-butted the guard!

That was the end our session, and we plan to play again today. Based on the evidence presented in the fiction, and the kind-hearted nature of the judge, the trial could go either way. But this is a shrine of the Cleric’s own order and the Prior knows her as the person who receives direct blessings and communications from their deity. So I’m thinking that the Prior will call her into his chambers to discuss the trial and ask for her insight!

Have a good day, Dungeon Worlders! And stay off Death Mountain.

Christmas at Keep on the Borderlands

Christmas at Keep on the Borderlands

We just had a momentous DW session with my daughter and niece. New Sanctuary (the titular Keep on the Borderlands) is now under new management after a visit from a certain Bavarian Christmas spirit.

Image credit: http://www.bromart.com/

While another group is delving through the Caves of Chaos, and another is on Death Mountain fleeing the curse they unleashed in Death Frost Doom, this session focused on a war party from the north: centaurs led by Krampus—the Krampus that appeared here[1]—with a fearsome ettin. Sent by the Eldking, they have marched from the invisible elf kingdom beyond the northern lights, because the Eldking saw a grim portent warning him that the curse on Death Mountain would soon be unleashed.

Junior created Gwen using Adrian’s Fae playbook[2], a prisoner of Krampus, and Niece played Alice (her Druid) again, which she amended to be an elf. They created some interesting bonds between the characters, which established a cool artifact, the Ring of the Eldking’s Herald. Up to now, the campaign was human-only, with one dwarf raised by humans; also no Hogwarts or overt magical society, making magic and monsters truly weird and monstrous. My Keep on the Borderlands is basically part of 17th century Earth, more or less. This session gave us the first glimpse into an alien society, with some upsetting results for the humans.

At the beginning of the game, a senior centaur rode into camp to report to Krampus. Their scouts spotted a fort that would make a good base of operations. With their artillery and a three-headed living siege engine, it should be easy to capture. Gwen, locked in a wicker cage bound to Krampus’s sack, overheard the plan.

Alice fluttered in with the falling snow. While scaling Death Mountain in a previous session, she missed a shapeshift roll and the spirits turned her into a dandelion seed (it was the end of our game, and she couldn’t make it to our next game). Lighting on Gwen’s cage, they observed each other briefly, but Alice blew off as the war party marched downhill toward the Keep, resuming her elfin form.

Gwen managed to free herself from the cage, but her bone dagger got jammed in the lock. She didn’t want to risk the noise of breaking it free or the complications of openly flying off with so many potential onlookers, even with the snowstorm offering cover.

Alice tried following at a distance, but seeing the giant again she thought better of it and turned into an eagle. From on high, her keen eyes spied the fairy, and she swooped down to pluck Gwen from the back of Krampus, landing in a tree before shifting back into her elfin form. Krampus cracked his whip at them in a rage as they escaped, but Alice didn’t fare as well against the sharp-eyed centaurs who loosed a volley of arrows that struck her in her perch. Five arrows pierced her robes, even as she called upon the spirits to turn her into something small enough for Gwen to carry away.

Gwen took her insectified rescuer to the keep, to warn the folk there of the attack.

Landing in the inner bailey, outside the governor’s house, she immediately used her glamour to take on the visage of a seasoned human traveler, and persuaded the guards to take her to their master. Saying she spied out an enemy camp, and leaving out the fantastic details, the governor heard her out, and began preparing the keep for a siege at once.

That’s when the real hijinx began. I don’t have time to recount it all, but the keep residents were already hunkered down because of the blizzard, and now there was a military curfew with the garrison preoccupied. What would you do?

Finally, they took to the battlements at dusk, as the enemy force mounted the sole rode ascending the plateau. Gwen used her glamour to take the shape of the Corporal, who was the first person she bumped into up there. Having rolled a 10+, the real Corporal fell into a dead faint. Alice grabbed his helmet and sword for disguise, and Gwen surveyed the situation and began to shout orders.

The centaurs and the giant marched right up to the crevasse where the upright drawbridge barred their entry; there was no sign of Krampus. The musketeers on the battlements let off their first shots, but many were killed by the rain of enemy arrows while they reloaded. They heard a ruckus and shouts of terror in the entry yard, and Gwen sent Alice with a few soldiers to investigate.

There was a whiff of brimstone and Alice saw Krampus reveling in the terror of a dozen soldiers surrounding him, as smoke still billowed off his shaggy body. He was already stuffing a full-grown soldier into his sack, and he grabbed another by the neck with his whip, and with a yank… well, it was ugly. Alice advanced into the fray while everyone else was falling all over themselves trying to escape.

Krampus swung his whip back toward her, and Alice seized the chance to slash it in half, but it looped around her sword arm, surprising them both when he jerked it forward again and found her entangled. She tried to take the sword in her other hand, but fumbled when he jerked the whip again, cackling.

Gwen was still on the battlements trying to repel the attack outside with the soldiers under her command. One of the giant’s heads, the bearded one, began chanting, and the sky above the keep turned into a whirling maelstrom of blackened cloud flashing with lightning. “Take cover!” Gwen commanded, then daggers of ice began to rain down. A ballista fired from one of the towers, hitting the ettin. Soldiers on the battlements ducked under their shields, but many fell. Gwen dove under the shield of a crouching survivor, but her disguise melted away just as she made eye contact with him as a six-inch sprite.

Alice turned into a massive mountain bear and began mauling Krampus. The goat-man dug his horns deep into the bear’s belly, disappearing in a flash of fire while she reeled backward. Fiery hoofprints pointed to the gatehouse, where they heard a peal of merry laughter, as the drawbridge began to go down.

The soldier reeled back from Gwen as the hail of razors ended, “What are… what are you?” Another ballista fired, hitting the ettin again.

“I’m helping you,” she said, raising her glamour to pose as the Corporal again. Just then the portcullis groaned and the battlements shook with overwhelming force as the giant smashed into the heavy gate below. Gwen called upon some of the remaining soldiers and charged down into the entry yard. Another boom shook the portcullis as they stormed down the steps.

It was then that the governor rode into the courtyard on horseback with some reinforcements on foot, all wearing full plate armor. Seeing the disarray, with a wild bear in the center of a full panic among the garrison, he ordered his men to fire on Alice. Gwen’s men had arrows trained on Alice too, but Gwen commanded them down, telling the governor that they needed to focus their fire on the giant.

Alice returned to her elfin form, nearly collapsing from her injuries. All the archers fired on the giant as he charged the gate a third time, but he narrowly survived the onsloaght, barreling through the portcullis, and smashing the gatehouse. While the governor sat stunned on his horse, centaurs surged in over the rubble, firing perfect bullseyes into the remaining garrison, except the heavily-armored foot soldiers who had come with the governor.

The giant then plucked the governor from his saddle hurling him over his back, over the wall, into the night, and the armored men surrendered while Alice turned into a wolf and Gwen mounted her, fleeing the scene. Gwen put on her ring and commanded the Eldking’s servants to let her pass.

They heard a voice on the battlements singing, “Deck the Halls”, and at the song’s conclusion, ere they fled from the site, Krampus said “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Woo.

#krampus #krampusnacht #christmas #christmas2013 #dungeonworld #keepontheborderlands #b2

[1] http://codex.dungeon-world.com/search?q=krampus

[2] http://www.rpgnow.com/product/113709/The-Fae—A-Dungeon-World-Playbook

In classic D&D, the Wizard and Cleric can only prepare spells once a day.

In classic D&D, the Wizard and Cleric can only prepare spells once a day. (If memory serves—I only have the retro-clones on hand.) Anyway, I was wondering if your Dungeon World follows that pattern. Do your Wizards and/or Clerics prepare and/or commune more than once a day?

I see Andri Erlingsson’s Elf class states explicitly that “you cannot use this move again until after you have Made Camp.” I like that. What do you think?

#RangerWeek question: I’m curious what the inspiration was for “God Amidst the Wastes”.

#RangerWeek question: I’m curious what the inspiration was for “God Amidst the Wastes”. Were there fictional models? Does it have to do with Aragorn healing people in Fellowship and Return? Or is it an homage to a classic multi-class combo? If so, I didn’t know the Ranger-Cleric was a thing in D&D; please illuminate me. 😉

My daughter’s Ranger picked this move after leveling up yesterday on Death Mountain.

This would have been a postcard from Death Mountain, but the messenger was eaten to death

This would have been a postcard from Death Mountain, but the messenger was eaten to death

This weekend we played Death Frost Doom by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Who says you need Old School Rules to crank up the creepy intensity and make the players grip their dice with white knuckles, whispering solemn prayers before every single roll? Dungeon World does just fine!

I will try to post a rundown later this week. Thank you, everyone here who responded to my queries last week!

Does Death have an agenda in your games, that might influence bargains offered in the Last Breath move, for example?

Johnstone Metzger, you’ve written that you “tend to run dungeoncrawls in DW the same as I would in B/X D&D.”…

Johnstone Metzger, you’ve written that you “tend to run dungeoncrawls in DW the same as I would in B/X D&D.” Elsewhere, you said that you didn’t include monsters in Truncheon World because you’re usually playing a module that includes all the monsters you need. I’m curious if you’ve run into any challenges running DW with B/X-style dungeon crawl, particularly because Dungeon World seems to emphasize “leaving blanks” for improvisation, where old school dungeon modules key an entire location.

I’m planning to run a module-inspired dungeon crawl in Dungeon World this weekend. I’ve gone over the module with the the adventure conversion rules in mind several times. There is no plot or factions to convert into conventional Fronts, just a bunch of dangerous and evocative places to explore. That doesn’t bother me though.

The thing that trips me up is the advice from the DW text: “When the players go into that room marked ‘4f’ don’t look it up, just make a guess at what might be there based on your notes and what else has been happening.” But imaginative environmental details are the main thing I like about modules. While it’s easy for me to improvise drama and character-driven conflict, meaningful dungeon dressing is the whole point of a keyed location, to me.

I’m mindful that I grabbed a module for my very first Dungeon World run, and it was totally eclipsed by the fiction that emerged from character creation. It was a pleasant surprise, but the room-by-room exploration seemed a bit stiff by comparison. Do you have any tips or words of caution for running room-by-room exploration of a keyed location in Dungeon World?

Thanks in advance! I welcome ideas from anyone, not just JM, I’ve just been wondering about that particular comment.