Tag: Kasper Brohus Allerslev

I’ve been tinkering a little again, this time about swarm type creatures of a slightly larger format, like kobolds and goblins. Not at all dangerous to an adventurer by itself, you’re much more likely to get killed by slipping and hitting your head on a rock.

I like making scenes epic by throwing in lots and lots of mobs. DW handles that nicely since there’s almost no book keeping, but a hundred goblins are likely to kill an entire party because of the damage modifier.

I wanted to take swarms an extra mile.

How would you model monsters that were only truly dangerous when facing hundreds of them? I was thinking of actually not even give them monster status, but just treat them as terrain, making it a Special Move.

Move through swarm

When forcing you way through a swarm of creatures, roll+DEX. *On a 10+ you move through them otherwise unhindered. *On a 7-9, choose one:

– Critters crawl up your body as you go, weighing you down. Take -1 forward.

– Take 1d6 damage, ignoring armour.

Thoughts?

There’s a lot of moves that allow you to make some choices in DW, like Discern Realities and Volley on a partial.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, about the choices, and some times it in a sense seems to be the character making the choice, as in Hack and Slash, where you can “open yourself up to an attack” in order to deal more damage.

I notice another more prevalent approach; giving options for the player to shape the story. This is reflected in moves such as Discern Realities. While the character might wish to learn the answers to some of the questions, it is ultimately the player that choose which questions that will be answered.

I actually prefer the latter approach, since it doesn’t tie the player down in terms of what his character wants, but lets the player decide the direction of the story.

I have not read the AW rulebook, but the emphasis on player choice in contrast to character choice in DW is something that really speaks to me.

In a lot of games, like D&D and WoD, you can only interact with the story through the actions of your character, and it really only serve to diminish story potential. You never get to say what you want, but only what your character attempts. In DW you are free to do both, almost all the time.

It’s just something I really like about DW, and may in fact be the feature I appreciate the most.

Oh, Dungeon World, how I love thee…

http://partialsuccess.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/the-resistant-spouse/

When players Discern Realities, I have a tendency to think that their questions will imply relevance. For example, if a players asks “what here is not what it appears to be?”, then I take it that there must be something that isn’t what it appears to be.

The reason is that I feel that I cheat the players by answering in the negative. “Nothing” is a boring and dissatisfying answer. Giving answers they already know is also pretty dull, and it doesn’t add to the story.

The hardest question to answer, I think, is often “What should I be on the lookout for?”, at least without telling them something obvious they knew beforehand.

Have other people had problems improvising when a player Discerns Realities?

I have been toying on making a *World hack for World of Darkness. I have discussed this with one of my friends, but we are uncertain how to pull it off.

Making up moves is easy, there’s an abundance of supernatural powers and effects. The hard part is choosing how classes should be structured.

Our first idea was to make “Werewolf” a class, for example, and make Tribe and Auspice what corresponded to alignment and race, but this just sits bad with me.

Then I thought that “Rahu” could be a class, but then we had to design 5 classes per splat we wanted, and I fear that two werewolf classes will look very much alike due to the fact that everyone shares a large amount of powers (aka moves).

How would you guys pull it off?

I’m sorry if it’s a bit off topic.

I was wondering something. It’s a bit cheesy, I know, and I haven’t tried a game where players did it, so it’s more of a theoretical problem.

The bard can play his instrument to heal the wounds of others. The heroes are in a relatively peaceful environment. What would the consequences be when he gets a partial success when making an Arcane Art move?

You can only drop random encounters on them so many times before immersion breaks in two, especially when they are in a safe environment.

I could of course just allow it, having the bard heal the entire party every time they are “safe”, but it strikes me as dumb since it removes the need for the Make Camp move. Unless of course the idea behind this Make Camp is to let all groups have healing readily available, albeit at a time cost (as well as the negligible cost for rations).

How would you deal with it?

Is there a known release date for the physical DW book? I crave it…