Tag: Rob Alexander

I’ve been working on a first-session worksheet for a game of my own design, building on the one from Apocalypse World (see p28 of http://apocalypse-world.com/AW-basicplaybooks-legal.pdf), and it’s left me wondering if one could be useful for DW too?

I’ve seen someone do this using a shared map before (e.g. we took in turns to add our homelands to the edges of the map). Has anyone done anything more structured than that?

http://apocalypse-world.com/AW-basicplaybooks-legal.pdf

Has anyone used a dungeon starter and given it to the players to look at ? E.g. what would be the effect of giving the players the Blackmoore dungeon starter before the first session?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6681148/DW%20Adventure%20starter%20-%20Blackmoore.pdf

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6681148/DW%20Adventure%20starter%20-%20Blackmoore.pdf

Ok, my third question – how shall I best run the first session for this follow-on arc?

The previous arc was ~six sessions run from the Blackmoore dungeon starter. The PC save the city from the necromancer, and deposed the (human purity fascist) head of the Paladin’s order. In the process, however, the Paladin fell out with the goddess (who turned out to be a bit of an Old-Testament dick). Near the end, the Paladin agreed to reform the church (a bargain with death from a 7-9 Last Breath). This arc starts with the Paladin wandering into the desert, harassed by the goddess and in search of something. It doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s about the Paladin wandering – it could go many ways (and the Paladin might die).

This arc, we’ll have two of the original players, plus one or two more. Probably the second old player will have a new character. I’ve joined games in progress before, and sometimes felt quite disengaged from the game because the history means nothing to me.

So, I’m looking for ways to tailor my first-session questions and materials to best support the new players while giving the existing players some new chances to contribute (i.e. to set the tone and goals for the arc).

Ideas (in order):

1) Make a dungeon starter ahead of time for the desert environment (building in some player ideas from discussions we’ve already had)

2) Give everybody a 300-400 word precis of what happened in the last arc and where that leaves the Paladin now. Distribute in advance, but read out at the start of the first session too.

3) Start the questions with “Luchia [the Paladin], what are you looking for in the desert”? (i.e. lead her towards a search, but leave the object of the search open)

4) Create new characters, and ask each character why they’ve fallen in with Luchia, and what they hope to get out of it. If a player doesn’t come in with something that connects Luchia’s quest, I’ll ask them directly to come up with something that does. Similarly, if a PC has no apparent motivations beyond the quest, I’ll ask for what those might be.

5) I’ll ask each PC what they think about the events from the previous arc (bearing in mind that the new PCs will only know of them second hand).

Any thoughts? Any more ideas?

Second possible rules change for my forthcoming arc… two points:

1) Several people have said that DW’s power scale across the levels is pretty narrow, so mixing character levels (say, 1st and 6th) in a party is not a big problem.

2) However… I don’t know how far people have pushed this. 1st and 8th? One 1st in a party of 9th,9th,10th? Indeed, have they pushed it into the “beyond 10” range?

Reminder – when you qualify for 11th level, you may do one of:

a) Retire to safety

b) Take on a 1st-level apprentice as a second character, who then advances in your stead

c) Take a new class, losing most of your moves but keeping your attributes (which will be about +9 from the starting ones)

My concern is that both (b) and (c) will stretch the upper power limit quite a lot, leaving new 1st-level characters in the dust. So my inclination is to drop them and have characters not advance beyond 10th, except that they may retire to safety any time after becoming eligible for 11th.

Has anyone got as far as this, and got experience with (b) and (c)?

I’m working towards a new DW arc building on our previous one, and I’m looking at the rules changes I plan to make.

First up: resurrection

DW treats resurrection of major characters as the norm, much like D&D does – it’s a 3rd level spell, and failing that the GM is briefed to support it anyway (given some time and effort).

I hate that. I hate resurrection generally – it robs death of its emotional sting, it would totally change the generational dynamic of a society, and it doesn’t fit with any metaphysics I can think of that’s doesn’t make every game a horror game.

(I mean, seriously – if souls can be recalled and put back into bodies, where are they? What are they doing? Hanging around somewhere until the end of time, with the possibility you could be recalled to the mortal world at any point? Sounds like hell to me…)

My instinct is to drop the spell, and replace the instructions to the GM with “The (quiet) dead are gone. They cannot be recalled.”

So, any thoughts? Anyone think this is particularly bad idea for DW?

I originally felt the three end-of-session questions were a little weak – a ritual we went through that didn’t achieve much.

“• Did we learn something new and important about the world?

• Did we overcome a notable monster or enemy?

• Did we loot a memorable treasure?”

Then I realised two things:

1) Every “yes” is 1 XP per player; with 3 players, that’s worth three alignment hits or three 6- rolls

2) The XP are secondary, anyway – the main benefit is the implicit meta-question: “Did exciting fantasy adventure go down this session?”

Watching this talk http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom made me think of Dungeon World (and the OSR scene as well).

http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom

Is it just me, or is the page numbering in the online character sheets PDF messed up? I can’t figure how to print just the Bard pages, because Acrobat Reader thinks they’re neither 1-2 (the numbers they’re labelled with) nor 5-6 (their actual numbers in order).