Dungeon World, Actual Play and Q&A

[gaptooth]

After moving, I had about a year-long gaming drought when we were overwhelmed with basic adult responsibilities, and none of my plans for one-off game nights worked out. Finally, I decided to just set up an open table game at the local game shop and see who came. The system I picked was Dungeon World because I thought the game's name recognition would generate interest and bring in the curious. Also, Dungeon World can be run with very little prep, which is a major asset given the limits on my schedule.

After just two sessions at the game store, there was a critical mass of players who were hooked. We've been playing just about every fortnight since, and we just had Session 16 a week ago Saturday.

It continues to be an antic-driven fun time for my crew, and I've learned a lot about how the game ticks. That's what I wanted to talk about here, if anyone is interested. I first tried Dungeon World while waiting for the Deluxe T&T Kickstarter, and I was under a lot of misinformation and misconceptions. At the time, I found misleading understandings of Dungeon World among both fans of the game and its detractors, and I still pick up the same misconceptions now and then when Dungeon World comes up in online discussions.

Anyway, here's the play report of our last session: The Flameghoul Reloaded. This report focuses on the fiction, and I was planning to follow up with a post analyzing how the game's procedures and player choices generated the events in play. The way we run it, it's not that different than an old-school game like T&T or Swords & Wizardry. There are key differences, but they aren't precisely what many critics and enthusiasts hammer on.

I would love to hear any questions or comments you may have about the play report or Dungeon World in general. If you're curious about what I was thinking during any given event in the fiction, or how we arrived at any particular outcome, do let me know!

[gaptooth]

P.S. I'm also aware of a few mistakes I made "behind the screen" that had a minor impact on play, and I'd be happy to talk about those as well.

I don't mind discussing weaknesses of the system either. This post gives a good summary of things people might dislike about it. I don't agree with everything he says, but it is fair overall.

[gaptooth]

My next post is up, comparing how I would commonly prep for T&T to how I've come to prep for Dungeon World.

I've found both games to work well with light prep, but for somewhat different reasons. My ideal prep for T&T does include having at serviceable map of a focal adventure location and at least something about what might be there, even if it's to be randomly generated on the fly. But if the players turn their backs on that, it's easy to follow their lead because T&T doesn't impose a high cost on creating new adversaries on the fly.

Dungeon World offers Fronts, which give you a short-term checklist of the bad things that will happen if the players do nothing. I still bring a handful of Dyson-drawn maps to each session in case things take a completely unexpected turn, but I picked those because the look cool, and I have no idea what might be there. Making adversaries in Dungeon World is only slightly more demanding than T&T, and only because it formalizes something that T&T requires but the rules take for granted: monster "moves". Like T&T, what makes monsters cool and unique isn't their individual stats, but their moves—the things they do in the fiction.

Dungeon World also gives the GM moves, which continuously ratchet up the tension for players, even if they turn their backs on your adventure front. Im sure I'll come back to that idea in my next post.

[ElvenScribe]

My post just disappeared. Strange. Ok then, here's an abbreviated version. I've looked through DW. It seems like a very rich and fun narrative driven game. I especially like how the game handles character creation with very colorful background details that help round out characters.

Out of curiosity, how deadly is DW? Do characters drop like flies like they do in T&T?

[gaptooth]

It has been very deadly in my experience, but in the hands of another GM it could be less so. Still, it does have some features that mitigate the deadliness compared to Tunnels & Trolls, one of which is the move Last Breath. It's like making a hard Saving Roll when you hit Zero hit points. If you make it, you cling to your life, barely. More commonly, Death will offer you a bargain—if you take the bargain, you live. But if you miss the roll or refuse the bargain, the character drops dead.

There's a little more I'd like to say about that. I'll write back when I have time!

[gaptooth]

I want to elaborate on what I said about "in the hands of another GM".

Dungeon World formalizes something that is implicit in games like T&T.

Suppose you fail a Saving Roll in Tunnels & Trolls. What happens?

The answer is, it depends. Suppose you were crossing a tightrope, you might stumble and drop something you were carrying, but otherwise be fine. Or you might slip, fall, and catch the rope with your hands. Woo! That was close! But you might fall into the pit of spikes below, taking 10d10 damage. Or instead of rolling damage, the GM might just tell you you went splat and died.

The consequences of missing a Saving Roll are up to the GM. Hopefully, the GM will telegraph the threat level in some way before you take the risk—if you know you have a 1 in 18 chance of certain doom (at best!), you might choose a different strategy. Then again, if you're running from a hungry troll and this is your only choice, you might take those odds anyway.

My point is, what happens when you miss the roll is what Dungeon World calls the GM's "move".

It might be a soft move. You're trying to pick the lock, and you miss the roll, and the GM says "Another 10 minutes go by. Your torch is flickering."

Or it might be a hard move. You're trying to pick the lock, and you miss the roll, and the GM says "A poison needle hits you right in the web between your fingers. Make a Luck Saving Roll or die."

Or it might be something in between. In Dungeon World, the GM doesn't just make moves when the players roll a miss, but also when they want to know what happens next, or when they create a "golden opportunity".

Generally when the players are just looking at you to find out what happens you make a soft move, otherwise you make a hard move.

A soft move is one without immediate, irrevocable consequences. That usually means it’s something not all that bad, like revealing that there’s more treasure if they can just find a way past the golem (offer an opportunity with cost). It can also mean that it’s something bad, but they have time to avoid it, like having the goblin archers loose their arrows (show signs of an approaching threat) with a chance for them to dodge out of danger.

A soft move ignored becomes a golden opportunity for a hard move. If the players do nothing about the hail of arrows flying towards them it’s a golden opportunity to use the deal damage move.

Hard moves, on the other hand, have immediate consequences. Dealing damage is almost always a hard move, since it means a loss of HP that won’t be recovered without some action from the players.

When you have a chance to make a hard move you can opt for a soft one instead if it better fits the situation. Sometimes things just work out for the best.

It took a couple sessions before I got the hang of choosing hard and soft moves appropriately. In my very 1st session they faced a high-level evil wizard, but I accidentally nerfed him by making two many soft moves, and they killed him in one round. In our next session, I got the hang of hard moves, and the Fighter got killed to a pulp by an ogre aided by a mess of goblins. He wasn't the last player character to die in that campaign.

Dungeon World characters are a bit more hardy at level 1 than classic T&T characters, but they don't benefit from any hit point inflation. One of the cool things about DW is that leveling up isn't mainly about getting bigger numbers—instead it gives you something new you can do in the fiction. This makes it a piece of cake to onboard new characters without them being hopelessly outclassed, and it keeps small-ball enemies relevant at later levels.

Anyway, I hope that makes sense! Please let me know. Cheers!

And if you think of anything else that got cut off in your lost post, I'd love to hear your questions and thoughts.

[ElvenScribe]

Jul 31, 2017 20:32:02 GMT -5 gaptooth said:

I want to elaborate on what I said about "in the hands of another GM".

Dungeon World formalizes something that is implicit in games like T&T.

Suppose you fail a Saving Roll in Tunnels & Trolls. What happens?

The answer is, it depends. Suppose you were crossing a tightrope, you might stumble and drop something you were carrying, but otherwise be fine. Or you might slip, fall, and catch the rope with your hands. Woo! That was close! But you might fall into the pit of spikes below, taking 10d10 damage. Or instead of rolling damage, the GM might just tell you you went splat and died.

The consequences of missing a Saving Roll are up to the GM. Hopefully, the GM will telegraph the threat level in some way before you take the risk—if you know you have a 1 in 18 chance of certain doom (at best!), you might choose a different strategy. Then again, if you're running from a hungry troll and this is your only choice, you might take those odds anyway.

My point is, what happens when you miss the roll is what Dungeon World calls the GM's "move".

It might be a soft move. You're trying to pick the lock, and you miss the roll, and the GM says "Another 10 minutes go by. Your torch is flickering."

Or it might be a hard move. You're trying to pick the lock, and you miss the roll, and the GM says "A poison needle hits you right in the web between your fingers. Make a Luck Saving Roll or die."

Or it might be something in between. In Dungeon World, the GM doesn't just make moves when the players roll a miss, but also when they want to know what happens next, or when they create a "golden opportunity".

Generally when the players are just looking at you to find out what happens you make a soft move, otherwise you make a hard move.

A soft move is one without immediate, irrevocable consequences. That usually means it’s something not all that bad, like revealing that there’s more treasure if they can just find a way past the golem (offer an opportunity with cost). It can also mean that it’s something bad, but they have time to avoid it, like having the goblin archers loose their arrows (show signs of an approaching threat) with a chance for them to dodge out of danger.

A soft move ignored becomes a golden opportunity for a hard move. If the players do nothing about the hail of arrows flying towards them it’s a golden opportunity to use the deal damage move.

Hard moves, on the other hand, have immediate consequences. Dealing damage is almost always a hard move, since it means a loss of HP that won’t be recovered without some action from the players.

When you have a chance to make a hard move you can opt for a soft one instead if it better fits the situation. Sometimes things just work out for the best.

It took a couple sessions before I got the hang of choosing hard and soft moves appropriately. In my very 1st session they faced a high-level evil wizard, but I accidentally nerfed him by making two many soft moves, and they killed him in one round. In our next session, I got the hang of hard moves, and the Fighter got killed to a pulp by an ogre aided by a mess of goblins. He wasn't the last player character to die in that campaign.

Dungeon World characters are a bit more hardy at level 1 than classic T&T characters, but they don't benefit from any hit point inflation. One of the cool things about DW is that leveling up isn't mainly about getting bigger numbers—instead it gives you something new you can do in the fiction. This makes it a piece of cake to onboard new characters without them being hopelessly outclassed, and it keeps small-ball enemies relevant at later levels.

Anyway, I hope that makes sense! Please let me know. Cheers!

And if you think of anything else that got cut off in your lost post, I'd love to hear your questions and thoughts.

The idea of hard and soft moves is really interesting.  And a "last breath" option is equally so.  In fact, I'd like to learn more about this latter rule as it might on be a good "house rule" option for T&T (translated appropriately of course).  I'm also wondering about "play books":  I'm not very familiar with how they work.  Could you elaborate on them, how they work, and what you think of them?  I'm fascinated by narrative based rules.

[gaptooth]

A "play book" is what we used to call a character sheet. The main difference is one of convenience. Instead of having a blank, generic character sheet and all the rules living in the rulebook, Dungeon World has a character sheet for each class with all of that class's rules (and custom options) laid out for ease of use.

I first saw that idea in Old School Hack, and it works the same way: In the first session, the GM spreads out all the class sheets, and everyone takes one. Both games dictate that there is only one of each class in play at first, at least until someone drops dead and has to make a new character. This gives every player unique stuff that only their character can do.

[As an aside, here's a play report of my first time playing OSH, and another from the GM's perspective. I'm sure Risus Monkey uploaded my character portrait too, but his site is offline and I can no longer find it ]

If you want to ease in to something like Dungeon World, Old School Hack is a lot smaller of a game to get your head around. It has a bunch in common with DW (like lateral leveling), and its own really cool combat system. But the biggest difference is its Awesome Points system, which promotes a lot more "WHOOOOPEEEEEEEEEEE!" and over-the-top antics.

If OSH supported characters above level 5, I may not have given Dungeon World a chance. It would have been a shame, because DW has been a lot of fun in its own way.

If you do want to investigate Dungeon World further, the entire text of the game was released under a Creative Commons license, and you can read it online here.

Here's the text of the Last Breath move:

When you’re dying you catch a glimpse of what lies beyond the Black Gates of Death’s Kingdom (the GM will describe it). Then roll (just roll, +nothing—yeah, Death doesn’t care how tough or cool you are). ✴On a 10+, you’ve cheated Death—you’re in a bad spot but you’re still alive. ✴On a 7–9, Death himself will offer you a bargain. Take it and stabilize or refuse and pass beyond the Black Gates into whatever fate awaits you. ✴On 6-, your fate is sealed. You’re marked as Death’s own and you’ll cross the threshold soon. The GM will tell you when.

Before I played Dungeon World, I already hated negative hit points. My house rule for T&T was that if your CON hits zero, you make a Luck Saving Roll (at the current dungeon level) or die.

[gaptooth]

You can download the free Dungeon World Play Kit here, which includes all the core classes.

[gaptooth]

I found my OSH character portrait. Yes, my character did get hit in the face with a ballista.

[gaptooth]

And he did use a rat on a fishing pole as a grappling hook to climb out of the sewer, via an ogre commode. Don't judge.

[Burdbelkus Portabello]

I own a copy of the game and it was a fun read. The game bothers me on a couple of levels. I dislike 1-10 level games.13th age is the same way and Cypher System only has 6! But it's there anyway.
I get Dungeon World and it's a great little system but I don't like how it handles hit points. I do understand why it's like that and that if you want the big bad dragon to be a lot tougher then you make the fiction tougher (like you get attacked before you can even get within reach ect..) but I want actual hit points to increase! Now maybe this is 40 years of other games that I can't get rid of but there it is.

I dislike the crammed together magic spell list. Basically it's just D&D's skipping entire levels. BAH!

There is a whole lot about the game I do like! I love the freedom to just remember a movie or book and take 3 min before running a adventure to prepare and then just having a great time! That aspect of the game calls to me greatly!

[gaptooth]

Aug 6, 2017 11:29:24 GMT -5 Burdbelkus Portabello said:

I own a copy of the game and it was a fun read. The game bothers me on a couple of levels. I dislike 1-10 level games.13th age is the same way and Cypher System only has 6! But it's there anyway.
I get Dungeon World and it's a great little system but I don't like how it handles hit points. I do understand why it's like that and that if you want the big bad dragon to be a lot tougher then you make the fiction tougher (like you get attacked before you can even get within reach ect..) but I want actual hit points to increase! Now maybe this is 40 years of other games that I can't get rid of but there it is.

I dislike the crammed together magic spell list. Basically it's just D&D's skipping entire levels. BAH!

There is a whole lot about the game I do like! I love the freedom to just remember a movie or book and take 3 min before running a adventure to prepare and then just having a great time! That aspect of the game calls to me greatly!

Hey, Burdbelkus Portabello! I was just writing a response to this there was a glitch and I lost the whole thing. It's too late here to start over, but I'll try to write back soon.

I guess I can ask some questions to clarify before I go:

I'm curious what bothers you about the level limits in DW, 13th Age and Cypher System? (I only played Numenera once, and didn't know about the level limit) Is it that you routinely play the same character endlessly? Or something else?

Could you explain what gets in your craw about hit points in Dungeon World? Like, do you enjoy the arms race of the players chasing bigger numbers in damage and hit points in order to keep up with bigger numbers in enemy damage and enemy hit points?

[Burdbelkus Portabello]

I would like the players to have the option of playing a long time sure.
I would like the option to have a really cool monster or villain that can take a pounding.

[gaptooth]

Awesome, thanks for explaining. I didn't want to jump to conclusions before responding.

Before I reply, I want to say I'm not aiming to convince you that Dungeon World is right for you. You have the game and the wisdom to know what you will like. But maybe not everyone here will understand the nuts and bolts of it the way you do, and I want to respond in light of that.

Aug 24, 2017 13:08:11 GMT -5 Burdbelkus Portabello said:

I would like the players to have the option of playing a long time sure.

Cool. First off, to make sure everyone knows: The game doesn't stop you from playing the same character at or after level 10. It gives you 3 options, 2 of which keep the character in play.

But like T&T, Dungeon World is explicitly built to be hacked and adapted, and it gives you explicit tools to do so—especially in the Advanced Delving appendix. If your table carefully considered the options for characters beyond level 10 and weren't satisfied, this issue would probably be the easiest to fix using a tool that is well-supported by the core game, should you want to provide scope for longer-term play.

I've seen several suggestions and documents in the DW community for continuing play after level 10, but most of the schemes I've looked at are overly-complicated or ignore the game's best tool for this: The compendium class (p349).

If we got to level 10, and it became clear that the players were invested in long-term campaign arcs that were unlikely to resolve any time soon; and if they were also invested in continuing with their current characters; but they didn't like the idea of taking on an apprentice or adopting a new class—I'd simply add this custom move to the game.

When you earn enough XP to reach level 11, and any subsequent level, make the Level Up move, but do not raise any of your ability scores. You can take new moves from any compendium class you have earned, or from your class playbook.

We are 18 sessions in to our current campaign, and I think our highest-level character is level 7; but we already have several compendium classes in play. Compendium classes are one of the coolest features of the Dungeon World system, in my view. In many dungeon games, the abilities you get when you level up are unrelated to your character's life and experience (unless you make an effort to say how they are connected). But compendium classes let you highlight a significant event that happened in the fiction and make that a meaningful part of your character and your character's connection to the world.

I'm out of time, but I'll respond to your point about Hit Points later. Thanks again!