Tag: Leo Breebaart

A while back my group of once-newbie players, with me as their once-newbie DM, after fifteen sessions spanning almost two years of wallclock time finally finished their ongoing Dungeon World campaign.

The secret of the Order of the Green Cape was revealed, the Dragon of Light manifested in our Ranger’s incontinent Eagle companion (don’t ask), and the attempted return of the blood-god Groth was successfully thwarted.

Throughout those two years the Dungeon World Tavern has been my lifeline. I’ve posted questions and asked for advice here so many many times, and you folks never failed to come through for me and help me out with the difficult bits. On behalf of myself and my players I thank you deeply — all of you please take +1 going forward. 🙂

We’re taking a break from DW now, and have started a D&D 5E campaign (boo, hiss!), just to see how a slightly more mechanistic approach to RPG’ing compares to the storytelling-focused DW way of doing things. This time, I will simply get to play a PC and won’t need to worry my head with keeping things running smoothly.

At some point I will undoubtedly return to DW, though — I really like the game, and I really like being DM for it. Until then I think I will still continue to hang out in this Tavern even if I’m not actively playing DW. I just kinda like the atmosphere…

My group of by now no longer quite so new newbie players was finally approaching the end of their campaign. However, our session earlier this week didn’t — of course — go quite as I had hoped.

Basically they decided to simply charge in on the priests doing the preparations for a let’s-materialise-the-blood-god ritual, and because they are five players, and they rolled well, they pretty much succeeded in preemptively foiling the ritual in all aspects that had been established in the fiction over the past year: they killed most lizard priests, freed the kidnapped girl who was supposed to become the avatar of the blood god, and stole the biomagical doohickey that they knew was powering the ritual. The Lizard Abbott only managed to get away by the skin of his teeth.

Now don’t get me wrong: a good time was had by all, but this session did not, at all, have an ‘end-game’ feel to it, and my problem is: how do I now, in the DW spirit, without too much (or any) railroading, give them such an endgame? I can’t just decide to materialise the blood god after all — that would be a cop out, and to be honest this was already the second time they prevented this ritual. Setting up yet another ritual would be boring. I suppose there’s nothing for it but to just forget about the blood god.

I am so conflicted about this. By all rights, having the heroes foil the bad guys’ plans should be a great ending to the campaign — but it was such an anticlimax — they were just so fast, and it was so easy, that it was no different from any normal encounter. It doesn’t feel right to end it here and just send them off to new adventures.

Upon reflection I suppose I should have made more effort to introduce multiple fronts/dangers. We started to focus too much on one story line, and so now there is nowhere else left to go.

Damn, this GM’ing stuff is hard…

Something else that arose during last night’s session: for the first time the Druid 6-minus’ed a Shapeshift roll, and I realised the Move text specifies “hold 1 in addition to whatever the GM says”. Does that mean even a failed Shapeshift will always lead to a shape change? Otherwise I don’t see what the hold 1 is for.

So I handled this by having the Druid shift into one of her other forms — one much less likely to be immediately useful to the situation. I am just wondering if as a GM I have to deal with a Shapeshift miss in this way every time, or if I am free to be more imaginative, and then just ignore the hold 1 if I come up with something to which it’s not applicable?

My group played another session last night, and on the whole things went pretty well. One thing I was a bit unsure of in retrospect is when the wizard decided to investigate a vial of mysterious green oil they had found earlier. He described in detail how he was holding the vial to the light, sloshing the liquid, unscrewing the top, carefully wafting and smelling the air above the opening, etc.

This seemed to me like a clear Discern Realities trigger, so he rolled, it was a 10+ — and at that point I of course realised that it was pretty much impossible for me to, within the fiction, describe how the answers to his three questions would map to something that could come to him from investigating that vial of oil. In the end, I decided to go with:

– Q: What here is useful? A: This oil will give you defensive lizard scales if you rub it on your skin.

– Q: What is about to happen? A: It is a very ethereal oil, so better get the vial closed again or it will all evaporate before you know it!

– Q: What should I be on the lookout for? A: Don’t ever apply this to your eyes or other body orifices, not unless you want a mouthful of reptile hide…

Fictionally not too bad, I suppose, and the players were satisfied — but the more I think about it, the more it annoys me.

Should DR not have been triggered? Would you have chosen other ways of answering these questions? How do you guys handle these kinds of DR rolls?

I find that I have a lot of trouble as a GM to integrate friendly NPCs into the story.

It’s fine when my players directly encounter and interact with an unknown or hostile NPC, because then they will take the initiative and I just play-act how the NPC reacts to their questions/attacks/whatever.

But my group now has a friendly NPC in their party, and many times, especially when there’s combat, I just don’t know what to do with him, and we all mostly end up forgetting him (“oh yeah, he was there too, um, he killed a few of those goblins too, yeah!”).

There is no GM Move that says “the NPC attacks the monster”. Or that otherwise gives him something to do. The best I can think of is to put him in danger when the players roll badly. But I’ve already done that a couple of times now, and that just gets boring really fast.

So are there any general tips and tricks or best practices I can use to bring such NPCs to life, and give them some agency, in a DW-appropriate fashion?

Something came up in last week’s session that really had me stumped.

Our Ranger fell out of a tree, and in the interest of fiction first, I not only assigned her some dice damage, but also described that she now had also suffered a sprained ankle that would take at least a day or so to heal properly.

The Paladin then performed Lay on Hands and rolled 7-9. To me, this ‘obviously’ meant he would now also suffer the sprained ankle in the Ranger’s place, but my players collectively (and sincerely — they weren’t trying to just game the system) felt that it was more logical for only the dice damage to be transferred (as it says in the Move description), and for the sprained ankle to just disappear as part of the successful healing process.

I obviously disagree, but didn’t want to overrule the players without getting a second opinion. So, any thoughts on situations like this?

Just to make sure I’m interpreting the rules correctly: when you get a +1 Forward, it applies to the next Move the player makes, whatever it is, so they cannot treat the Forward like a Hold and use it at a time of their own choosing, right? So specifically if they roll e.g. a 10, the Forward is still consumed, even if it doesn’t do anything?

Similarly, I would assume the conditional +1 Forward a player can get after Discern Realities or the Know-It-All wizard Move can only be used if the condition is fulfilled for the very next Move the player triggers, not just at any random later point in time. Is that correct?

Is there a good way to introduce a monster’s passive qualities in the face of successful player dice rolls?

Let’s say I have a beasty that cannot be attacked in a certain way, e.g. it is impervious to magic. My group gets into a fight with this monster, the Wizard reacts first, and casts Magic Missile. He rolls a 12!

So do I then just say: “well, your spell was totally successful, it just doesn’t do any damage at all, sorry”? Seems a bit contrary to the spirit of the player’s excellent roll. (On a 6- or even a 7-9 it wouldn’t be a problem at all, of course.)

I am looking for some inspiration. One of my players is playing a Ranger with a big stealthy, tireless eagle as familiar (cunning: search). Because most of our playing so far has either been indoors or underground (Dungeon World, you know), the bird has seen very little use in the game so far.

As I am a fan of the character, I’d like to change that, but ideally in a way that’s a bit more original than: “okay, you’re now in the open air, yes, your bird can probably help you attack these orcs”. Unfortunately, this player is not that experienced in out-of-the-box thinking yet, so if I don’t provide a little bit of help I fear that’s exactly the scenario we’ll end up with.

Do you guys have any nifty ideas for a fun sort of scene or setup or puzzle I could throw into the current campaign (maybe as a sort of nano-front?) that would help my player make good use of her familiar? I am having a hard time thinking of something that would require the use of a stealth eagle but would still actually be novel and exciting rather than boring and mundane (“you send the eagle to steal the orc’s shoes. It does so.”)