Tag: Rob Alexander

The tree spirits gave Herath wooden hand until he does what they want. We established that. We didn’t establish, however, what exactly they wanted.

My instinct here is to come up with an idea for what they want, then introduce it as a soft move (“Reveal an unwelcome truth”) when it’s possible to act on it. If I come up with some other idea in the mean time, and see a situation where it’s possible to act on that, I may use that idea instead and discard my original one.

But do you have any other suggestions for how to do this?

Quick question — how much do you actually use the standard Dungeon Moves (“Change the environment”, “Point to a looming threat”, …), as opposed to just getting by with the basic GM moves?

I’ve run DW twice this week, first time I’ve done it in a while. And I was pretty strict at hewing to the DW conversation model as I see it:

(1) The GM describes the world state, and what’s just happened

(2) The GM asks the players, or one player in particular, “What do you do?”

(3) One player (GM’s choice) gets to be the one that acts

If they described plausible action corresponding to move trigger, execute the move

If the move fails (roll of 6-) and no special handling of that is given in the move text, the GM makes a hard move

If they describe a golden opportunity for the world or an NPC to fuck them up, the GM makes a hard move

If neither of the above, the GM makes a soft move

(4) Loop back to (1)

This meant that I was making a lot of moves, and doing very little else. This kept things interesting, but felt too intense at times. I’ve heard one of the players talk about another GM’s DW game as being “like being on a rollercoaster”, with threat after threat and no peace.

Questions:

1) Do you think my model of above is right? I think I’ve captured the RAW, but they express this procedure vaguely, across several locations in the text.

2) Do you, in practice, use extra moves a bit like these:

a) Let Them Succeed – just let them do what they’re trying to, without opposition

b) Rest – describe the situation, narrate events, without (knowingly) saying anything dramatically significant

I suspect that in the past, when I’ve been less obsessive about mapping my every response to a move, I’ve implicitly used those a lot.

This is how I view the highest-level structure of DW:

Dungeon World (like AW) is a game of rules that modify a conversation. That conversation refers to a simulated world, which is modified by the conversation and in turn shapes the space of what is reasonable for the conversation to say at any point. The world does not have any more reality than that — it doesn’t “do” anything itself, unless the (rule-governed) conversation causes an update.

For example, if the Red Knights haven’t been mentioned for six weeks of game time, they exist in a space of possibilities – they could be here, they could be there, they could be anywhere within six weeks travel of wherever they were last. The conversation can bring them into the current scene (or show their very obvious effects e.g. having burnt down a town and left their flags all over it) as long as that is consistent with the time, the distance, and whether of all of the chaos shrines in all the mountains of the world there is some plausible reason for them to show up in this one.

What the Red Knights don’t do is move around in the background, in some factual sense, even in the GM’s head. The GM may have ideas about this, but they’re merely ideas until the live conversation makes them fact. The GM’s prep is raw material, prompts, aids, but not reality.

I.e. the possibility and plausibility space is “real” beyond the conversation (and each player plus GM will be independently monitoring it to some degree) but the precise facts there are not.

Questions:

1. Is the above consistent with how you play?

2. Is the above consistent with the current RAW?

3. Do you think the above what is Latorra and Koebel intended?

I have put a post on my blog (https://mhuthulan.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/what-i-like-about-dungeon-world-and-what-i-do-not/) describing what I like about Dungeon World, what I am conflicted about, and what I don’t like.

I am interested in comments on it. I am particularly interested if:

* You’ve experienced a specific problem I mention, and can tell me how to fix it

* You’ve enjoyed one of the benefits I mention, and can tell me how to port it into other games

* You’ve experienced anything I mention, and have other words to describe it

My primary goal is to help myself understand DW, and my experiences with it, so that I can design similar games that I like better.

https://mhuthulan.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/what-i-like-about-dungeon-world-and-what-i-do-not/

Following on from my question yesterday, for the first time I offer the world a poll!

Question – “How much have you used the Steading rules from the DW book?”

What are your experiences with the rules for steadings?

I’ve run about 30 sessions of DW,  and I’ve never used them. As it turned out, play was either centered on a single huge city, or in a desert environment where there were only a handful of (again) huge cities. So the steading rules never seemed pertinent.

I’m now looking for some multiple-community-management rules (for another game, not particularly derived from DW), including a between-session update procedure. So I’m wondering if many people here have used steadings in the way that the DW text says to. If you have, has it achieved much for you?

Ranger’s animal companion says “When you work with your animal companion on something it’s trained in…

…and someone interferes with you, add its instinct to their roll”

Is that right? When you’re working with the animal and someone interferes with you, you’re worse off on the interfere roll than if the animal wasn’t there?