Converting Vancian OSR spells to Dungeon World
Has anyone developed guidelines for converting spells from old-school D&D and its simulacra for use with Dungeon World? There are a bunch of interesting spell lists out there that could make interesting treasure or even distinctive Compendium Classes.
The major difference is that most D&D-like spells are defined with strict measurements of range, area, or duration, where DW uses a less buttoned-down descriptive approach. That’s easy enough to deal with: Just leave off the mechanics that aren’t necessary in DW.
But DW has its own mechanical distinctions that aren’t completely a matter of narrative description—like spell level, “-1 to cast a spell”, or “cannot cast a spell”, and similar elements. It would be interesting to hear about the rubric Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel developed to translate the most iconic spells into Dungeon World, or any other wisdom the community has hashed out. Are there any links to previous discussions or other resources?
#spells #osr #dnd #vancian