Play By Post
Play By Post
I’m tinkering with an idea for a PbP site for PbtA games.
But before I’m even remotely considering implementing it, I need to make sure that it can handle a “standard” DW game.
What would such a site need and what would be nice?
I’ll share my own thoughts later. For now I just want to hear your thoughts.
I’m running a game of DW tomorrow.
I’m running a game of DW tomorrow. Since I read the semi-rant about railroading on The Alexandrian (link below), I really felt like writing a module.
It’ll be simple enough, but I’m focusing on making it suitable for a one-shot, and perhaps convention play by extension.
And it’s gonna be weird.
Anyone up for trying it out tomorrow?
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36900/roleplaying-games/the-railroading-manifesto
Tim Franzke will be running a one-shot to test some of the theory that he’s sharing on his Patreon page.
Originally shared by Kasper Brohus Allerslev
Tim Franzke will be running a one-shot to test some of the theory that he’s sharing on his Patreon page.
A small adventuring party in desperate need of some coin, has accepted the task of finding and capturing a bandit…
Originally shared by Kasper Brohus Allerslev
A small adventuring party in desperate need of some coin, has accepted the task of finding and capturing a bandit lord. Alive. What could possibly go wrong?
For three players. Make characters beforehand, and post your chosen class in comments. First come, first served.
One thing that has become a little annoying for me is the time it takes to have a fight.
One thing that has become a little annoying for me is the time it takes to have a fight. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot faster than most other games, but a fight between two PC’s and a group of 10 or so enemies can take the darnest amount of time. Even if the PC’s ambush them.
I’ve been thinking about how to resolve this, and I’ve come to realize something. This is because DW has exactly the same problem in combat that D&D have; you make a lot of rolls, but the individual roll doesn’t have a huge impact on the progression of the fight. Progression, not the fiction, a single roll can have a lot of fictional impact, but it is rarely a “game changer” per se.
For example, if a level one Fighter deals damage to a “group” monster (6 hp) with leather armor and a shield (2 armor), there’s a 70% chance, given no other modifiers than the fighter’s damage die, that it survives, albeit maybe injured. There’s even a 20% chance that he deals no damage at all. If they also have to roll H&S, then there’s also the chance that the fighter won’t even get to roll damage at all.
As GM, you can make soft moves to speed up the fight, but I think it’s a problem that you have to make monsters flee or run for backup all the time, or just have then die by happenstance or as a “kewl fireworks” effect.
The problem is; the H&S move doesn’t let you kill monsters easily, and given no “help” from the GM, even modest encounters can drag out for a very long time sometimes. And it bugs me, because I don’t want to spend 30+ minutes fighting 5 cultists + a lieutenant, but I want the cultists to be there as an obstacle sometimes, because it forces the players to make choices that affects the fiction.
A fight is a risky situation like so many others, but for some reason it seems like it takes so much longer than vastly more dangerous and intense situations.
How do you people solve this?
Humble beginnings…
Humble beginnings…
#Swordmage
Swordmage Conjuring Style
You can conjure and dismiss a magical sword at will. It has the close tag. Choose a conjuring style from the list below:
Damoclean Style – Your summoned blade is huge! It has the reach, messy and forceful tags.
Hades Style – Your summoned blade is fire made manifest! It has the piercing 2 and precise tag.
If you chose the Damoclean Conjuring Style, you get the following move:
Sword Rain
When you invoke the power of the Falling Blade titanic swords fall from above, skewering your foes with impunity. Roll+STR. On a hit you litter the battlefield with sharp blades and deal damage to everything within near range. On a 7-9 allies in your vicinity are also put in danger from the falling blades.
If you chose the Promethean Conjuring Style you get the following move:
Hades Assault
You can become flame incarnate, capable of dashing at tremendous speeds, fast enough even to take flight for a short amount of time. When you dash while invoking the fires of the Nether choose a destination at near or far range and roll+DEX. On a hit you deal your damage to everyone in your path and arrive at your destination. On a 7-9 you also choose 1:
– You open yourself to an attack from anyone in your path.
– The Nether demands a tribute. You take -1 for as long as you deny it its request.
– You leave a destructive trail of fire that spreads beyond your control.
Arcane Shielding
So long as you have a free hand you take +INT armor. When you weave a shielding spell defy dangerous magic you roll+INT.
Dungeon World combat post
Dungeon World combat post
OK, yesterday I ran a one-shot, and we were setting up for a small fight scene when Craig Hatler had to leave for work. “_Damn your luck…_” But I realized one thing about the fight, and that had something to do with “zones and situational aspects”.
Situational aspects and tags
I ran Fate pretty much like I would Dungeon World, with the exception of breaking the action up into scenes. I realized how much it added to the game to sit down and make situational aspects.
The game began in a tavern, and we had the in the dead of night, *behind enemy lines, crowded* and loud aspects here. The two first had more to do with the outside environment, meaning that it was midnight and that the players were in a different gang’s territory, but just adding the *crowded* and *loud* aspects made the tavern they were in much more alive.
In fact, these aspects helped me describe the situation much better. All it took was a conscious effort to think a bit about them. I even compelled the players on one of them, which would be akin to be making a move on them.
In Dungeon World we could have done the same same just with tags instead. We could have had the midnight, enemy territory, crowded and loud tags, and they could have had more or less the same effect. The aspects are open in the sense that the players know that they are there.
If it’s pitch black they can’t see a damn thing without a light source, and that could easily become a “golden opportunity” for an ambush later.
But we could also use location moves (or dungeon moves) to emulate the tags; a location can after all have moves just like a monster.
So, let’s look at the tavern…
The Bait & Switch
– Attract shady clientele
– “Barfight!”
These moves can be made as appropriate. Since they are in enemy territory, a soft move could be that a larger group from a rival gang enters the place. A hard move could be that a player got hit in the head with a chair, took damage and got disoriented.
All because of tags. Fiction first, right?
But we can extend the concept a bit, because now we are going to talk about zones.
Zones
In Fate, a zone is a part of a conflict in which all characters present can interact with each other, as in they are within fighting distance. A conflict can include multiple zones, and in Fate, you can move to an “adjacent zone” and still take an action.
We don’t have actions in Dungeon World, but we can still use zones as a unit of length. If two characters are in the same zone, then they can freely attack each other. An adjacent zone could be near distance and also charging distance. Zones longer away than that would be at far distance. If you have something that lets you ignore distances, like incredible speed, you can probably increase your charging distance.
While using zones as a unit of measurement can be sort of useful, the power of different zones is that they can have different tags.
The fight I was setting up in Fate was on a docked ship. We had three zones (which should have been four, so I’ll include the fourth):
– Above deck
– Below deck
– The Pier
– The crow’s nest
We already knew that the piers had the aspect crates everywhere, and it was still in the dead of night, but the “above deck” zone had the aspect rigging, which would also be the only way to access the “crow’s nest”, and it might even require a roll to get up there, defy danger, if someone was in the nest and tried to murderize you on your way. The nest would have been cramped, meaning that at most to people could be up there.
The map would have been like this:
– Above Deck would have been adjacent to all other zones, but there wouldn’t be “line of sight” to below deck.
– All other zones would not have been adjacent.
– The crow’s nest had line of sight to the piers and vice versa.
Even if incredibly formalized here, it wasn’t really hard to come up with in practice. If you feel the need, you can also add zones on the fly whenever it makes sense. If one was thrown into the harbor, we could add the harbor as a zone, possible with the water and filthy tags (or aspects).
Zones would lend a tactile element to Dungeon World, making the combat more formalized without adding any real overhead. I say “no real overhead” because tags derive from description, so writing down one or two words per descriptive element doesn’t really take much additional effort. It’s also a big sign to the players saying “you can use this!”
What it does is that it helps you force yourself into actually adding these elements. It does so by helping you think in terms of “What is here? What makes this place special?” and just writing it down. You will finally remember to include that total darkness description that you always forget! (OK, that I always forget, but come on, I’m hardly the only one…)
I was quite amazed how the focus on situational aspects in Fate helped me describe circumstances with mechanical details, and I think that the same approach can be used more or less the same way in Dungeon World with tags.
I’m at least going to give it a try some time. What do you guys think?
I’ve made an “intermediary conclusions” post on my experiments with one-shots.
I’ve made an “intermediary conclusions” post on my experiments with one-shots. Basically this post is only about “setting the scene”, and some of my thoughts on that.
There’s more to follow on this as soon as I’ve gathered my thoughts.
And no, I won’t apologize for writing my first post in over three months! 😛
http://partialsuccess.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/experiments-with-one-shots
In tonight’s hangout, I’m going to try and use the Phase Trio from FATE Core to make custom bonds.
In tonight’s hangout, I’m going to try and use the Phase Trio from FATE Core to make custom bonds. It’ll work the same way as making aspects, but it’s just for inventing bonds instead.
I’ll write a post about how well it went. It seems like a pretty good idea right now.
DW one-shot time. Let the experiments begin!
Originally shared by Kasper Brohus Allerslev
DW one-shot time. Let the experiments begin!