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Sage LaTorra Adam Koebel

When was the decision made to not make exchange harm for harm a standard outcome of Hack & Slash, something that always happened?

In AW, if two groups open fire at each other, they both deal harm to one another. If my Fighter triggers H&S with a monster, I only take damage if I roll 9 or below, assuming I do not opt for that extra d6 damage on a 10+.

I’m just wondering why. What was the reasoning not to follow the paradigm in AW to always exchange harm for harm, when it made sense that is?

I made a small “hack” to Carouse in our campaign. Basically it’s an extension:

If you spent at least 500 coins, and got a 12+, you get all four instead.

It was a way for me to encourage spending more money on Carouse, and the players seemed to like it.

I need some help with a magic item for my campaign.

I need some help with a magic item for my campaign. The players somehow saved The Grim Reaper’s (our god of Death and the Harvest) true love, and in return he gave the players a set of Reaper Gauntlets. The carrier collects the souls of those he slays in these gauntlets, and the idea was that when the player could offer these souls to the Reaper when Making Camp. In return, the reaper would give the character a favor or offer him a boon.

Problem is, I’m really not getting any ideas for these boons, except to allow the players an audience with a departed soul, any soul. Even one that has entered the Black Gate.

The gauntlets are supposed to work like this:

Reaper Gauntlets

The bearer of these gauntlets can collect the souls of the slain. Whenever the bearer kills a humanoid while wearing these gauntlets, they take 1 soul. When the bearer makes camp, he may offer all souls in the gauntlets and roll+souls offered. On 10+ choose one. On a 7-9 choose one, but Death finds the offering measly and demands a favor in return.

– Gain an audience with any departed soul or Death. You may ask three questions they must answer truthfully.

– Ignore the damage from the next blow that would bring you to 0 hp.

– Remove a debility from a yourself or an ally.

On a miss, Death is insulted by your offering, and you must pay the price. The GM will tell you what this entails.

—

Does anyone have further ideas? I really want to draw on the “Harvest” domain of the god, but I can’t think of anything.

On Tim Franzke’s request, I’ve made a post about stealth in Dungeon World on my blog. Stealth is something that…

On Tim Franzke’s request, I’ve made a post about stealth in Dungeon World on my blog. Stealth is something that comes up fairly often, and it is debated relentlessly why there’s no moves that cover it.

I thought I’d drop it here.

http://partialsuccess.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/stealth-in-dungeon-world

The flowchart prototype is up!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8QkCTxTjMdLd19NUzQxQ2ZUZTA/edit?usp=sharing

EDIT: Changed the link to my Google Drive account. It’s in PDF format. Feedback?

Was bored. Made this:

How to play AW-based games! A simple algorithm.

Step 1 (Initialization):

a) Choose someone to be the GM.

b) All non-GMs make a character.

c) GM initializes the game by presenting an opening situation and a context.

d) Go to step 2.

Step 2 (Players’ turn to speak):

a) GM says “What do you do?”.

b) Wait until a player says something.

c) Does the player give the GM a golden opportunity? Then go to step 4.

d) Does it trigger a move? Then go to step 3.

e) Otherwise, go to step 4.

Step 3 (Resolve move):

a) Carry out the instructions in the move.

b) If you rolled a miss, you have just given the GM a golden

opportunity. Go to step 4.

c) Did the effects of the move trigger a new move? Go to step 3.

d) Otherwise, go to step 4.

Step 4 (GM’s turn):

a) Did a player just give you a golden opportunity? Make a hard

move and go to step 2.

b) Otherwise, make a soft move and go to step 2.

Just a thought I’ve been having on GM moves. This is deeply theoretical, but please chime in with your thoughts.

Assume that we remove all player moves from the game. Every time a player does something, the GM will explicitly give the player a means and a cost for success, in the vein of “tell them the consequences and requirements and ask”.

Instead of having moves, we use tags to make truth statements about the PC’s, based on their class. A cleric could have favored by , a fighter could have unmatched martial prowess. A thief might have all sorts of dubious connections. You get the drift. Bonds would work as tags as well.

Instead of rolling dice by meeting triggers, the player simply say something like “I draw my blade and swing it at the minotaur in one fluid motion. I do not fear it, for my martial prowess is unmatched!” reminding the GM that the cost for defeating the minotaur should be smaller than if any other player had attempted the same feat.

How would this variant play out? Would it be any fun at all for the players?

Charm Person. I looooove this spell.

Charm Person. I looooove this spell.

In yesterday’s session, they were fighting a necromancer, a shadow mage and The Mute (again). The necromancer was performing a ritual to collect some of his friends’ souls from a monolith structure, and the shadow mage had plunged the room in darkness to prevent the players from shooting the necromancer.

The darkness was “thick” in the sense that it dimmed light sources, making the wizards light spell into a “watch me, I’m standing right here spell” and only allowing him to see a few meters. The wizard cast Unseen Servant intending on using it as “bait” by handing it his glowing staff and making it run around. He misses.

I let him cast the spell (thinking it was harmless), but then told him that he felt cold steel on his throat and a voice that whispered in his ear: “One move and you’re dead.”

The expression on the wizard player’s face was priceless. Then his eyes narrowed. I suspected a trick. “Is he touching my skin?” he asked. “Eh, I guess?” I answered. Then the player smiled widely, and I immediately understood. “I cast charm person!”

Game changer. The shadow mage dropped the darkness, the fighter got into yet another fight with The Mute, and the wizard convinced the mage to stop The Mute. He went over to it, and grabbed its arm. The Mute was full well aware that these were dangerous people and that he was under a spell, so thinking it was being attacked it wobbed him on the head for fantastic d10+2 = 9 damage.

While it ended the spell, it gave the Fighter a chance to almost gut it with its own two-handed axe, which the fighter had wrestled from it by being crazy strong. The cleric proceeded down to try and kill the necromancer.

It took 3 sessions to clean out the dungeon, and they went of with 1,975 coins worth of items, plus a “lock of hair”, some Boots of Silence (stolen from the mute), a Soul Jar filled with the soul of an Ancient Dragonlich and a set of magical gauntlets given to them by Death itself for saving his true love.

And everyone went up two levels. It was first after this fight that the players had a chance to Make Camp, and the fighter had belched 4 healing potions to cope with damage. The Cleric also had one.

I have never handed out so much loot in three sessions before. Holy shit. I’m looking forward to seeing Carouse in action…

Coming from games like D&D and World of Darkness, I often find that I need to unlearn stuff.

Coming from games like D&D and World of Darkness, I often find that I need to unlearn stuff. One of my recent discoveries, which I’m sure I’m not the first to make, is the following:

There’s no BBEG

The Big Bad Evil Guy / Gal, a classical trope from D&D, and various other RPG’s and genres, is something we are sort of brought up with. That guy / gal whom this adventure is all about stopping, the one with all the spikes, minions and often also “owns” the dungeon.

A BBEG can prove quite detrimental to a Dungeon World experience, because playing a monster like one often induces several complications, namely because DW characters are a lot more competent than your average D&D character.

We saw an example of this problem a while back, someone wanting to prevent the players from summoning the BBEG of his dungeon, a ghost, with a level 1 wizard spell. He wanted to prevent it because he envisioned a big boss fight with this ghost.

This is a problem, because now the game has shifted from being about adventurers doing adventurous things to a GM trying to prevent players from using their characters’ abilities to trivialize their prep.

Because of this “insight”, I’m going to stop running games with a “main villain”, because if they are disposed of prematurely in some way, the game will grind to a halt without any “plot-bearing element”.

Instead, I’m going to do things this way in the future: I will prep a dungeon as I’ve always done it, even with a “person in charge” (PIC) in the dungeon. The difference is, that person isn’t a BBEG. It’s just a more powerful monster with more resources, and woe to the players if they engage it on its own terms.

The keyword is “dynamic dungeon environment”. If the PIC dies or is defeated, the dungeon should still be a dangerous environment, unless it has been cleared of monsters.

Killed the kobold king? Good for you! He still have thousands of surviving minions that’ll still kill you on sight. The dragon is dead? Great! Now the landsharks aren’t afraid of digging into its lair anymore!

I’m having a problem.

I’m having a problem. It seems like stupid people know nothing and never stop to think about anything in Dungeon World. The pain of a miss is just too great to risk rolling spout lore with a -1 modifier.

My problem isn’t that low-intelligence characters know very little, it’s that they don’t know anything about no subject what so ever.

I don’t know how to deal with this.