Any Dungeon World players here?

[GMMichael]

XP to pemerton for impressive summoning skills.

Quick question for DW users: would you call the game "light rules?" I haven't played, but the moves-system seems to put the focus on storytelling instead of rules-negotiating. How often do you need to reference the rulebook in a single session?

 

[Campbell]

Here's what I do: I print off a copy of the GM principles and the basic moves and each player keeps a print out of their playbook which includes the relevant rules bits for their characters. That's really all you need to reference in play.

It's not really rules light in the sense of not using the rules very much. The rules push play forward and see a lot of use. They just are not very complex.

 

[pemerton]

That's like the hardest thing. We have these characters we all like, but in order for the game to remain interesting meaningful conflict must be sustained. We need to risk that bad things might happen to them.

For me, it's not so much the risking as the following through that's hard!

When I first started running Apocalypse World, I was giving an ad-lib intro and I said 'Let's treat each session like a TV show.

Thinking in terms of TV shows, I'm fine at something fairly light like Castle, or even Queer as Folk. In system terms, 4e and Cortex+ Heroic are like this - risks, and real stuff happens, but the system will fairly reliably have the PCs come out on top in the end, even if there were some costs on the way through.

But some systems are harder than those - I don't have a good analogue in TV terms (maybe Arrow is harder with some of its characters), but in filmic terms I am thinking Kurosawa or Ashes of Time or Hero. Bad things happen to characters; their ideals can be revealed as flawed; they can pay costs and then lose.

Burning Wheel is the system I have in mind in this context, but I suspect DW also can be more like this.

 

[pemerton]

double post

 

[CubicsRube]

XP to pemerton for impressive summoning skills.

Quick question for DW users: would you call the game "light rules?" I haven't played, but the moves-system seems to put the focus on storytelling instead of rules-negotiating. How often do you need to reference the rulebook in a single session?

Well i dont ever reference rules while running, unless people go shopping. I do however keel a list of gm and monster moves handy.

It is extremely rules light, but that doesn't make it easy necessarily. It falls on the gm to make things cinematic and dynamic.

Because its less structured you have to be comfortable with (or learning) to improvise a lot in these in dw (and i assume other pbta games)

 

[Campbell]

The following might be of interest to anyone interested in running Dungeon World or any other Powered By The Apocalypse Game:

Picking The Right GM Move - Part 1
Picking The Right GM Move - Part 2
Guide to Hard Moves - John Harper

 

[Guest 6801328]

So you're suggesting a roll for the monster move, but I was given to believe that if a druid spends hold to pull off a MM it just happens. No roll.

Monsters don't roll because monsters don't roll, not because their moves are different. The idea is that players are driving the story so players do all the rolling. A player rolls to attack a monster, but if a monster attacks a player the player rolls to avoid it. Players always roll. When monsters do something it's because the GM wants it to, so no roll is required.

So just because a player is using a "monster move" it doesn't mean the player shouldn't roll. And if a monster somehow uses a player move (via Possession, maybe?) it would not roll.

Does that make sense?

 

[cthulhu42]

Monsters don't roll because monsters don't roll, not because their moves are different. The idea is that players are driving the story so players do all the rolling. A player rolls to attack a monster, but if a monster attacks a player the player rolls to avoid it. Players always roll. When monsters do something it's because the GM wants it to, so no roll is required.

So just because a player is using a "monster move" it doesn't mean the player shouldn't roll. And if a monster somehow uses a player move (via Possession, maybe?) it would not roll.

Does that make sense?

Actually, no.

According to everything else I've seen, when a Druid uses a monster move, she does not roll. It just happens. The side bar on page 105 seems to imply this as well.

But you're saying that if a player uses a monster move, she does roll? That is literally at odds with everything else I've read about druids.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's at odds. Or that I'm missing something in you're explanation.

 

[cthulhu42]

XP to pemerton for impressive summoning skills.

Quick question for DW users: would you call the game "light rules?" I haven't played, but the moves-system seems to put the focus on storytelling instead of rules-negotiating. How often do you need to reference the rulebook in a single session?

I would call the game, "explanation light."

In general, action resolution is very simple. Anything else is pretty much adjudicated by the GM on the fly.

But there are many nuances to the game that, I feel, are given less than adequate explanation. Hence threads like these that litter the internet.

Honestly, I have no idea how someone would figure out some of the specifics without the internet to turn to, and even then it's a struggle. Despite the excellent advise given on this thread, I'm still struggling with some of it.

That said, the one session I've played was a total hoot! The rules really do push the game and the story forward. I went into our session with only a bare outline of an idea. I had a setting and a couple of monster encounters within that setting in mind. Not much else. By the end of character creation I knew who had built that setting and why. As the session progressed the story sort of wrote itself.

Also, combat was fun, cinematic, and wonderfully fast.

I've read several times that, even if you decide that DW is not for you, it'll make you a better GM. I think that's true. Even after only one session I could feel the beneficial effect it had on my D&D game the following weekend.

 

[cthulhu42]

As I said upthread, I'm not any sort of expert. And I've never seen a druid in play. So I'm proceeding from the rulebook plus intuition.

Here's the text on p 107 (including the sidebar):

When you call upon the spirits to change your shape, roll+Wis. *On a 10+ hold 3. *On a 7–9 hold 2. *On a miss hold 1 in addition to whatever the GM says.

You may take on the physical form of any species whose essence you have studied or who lives in your land: you and your possessions meld into a perfect copy of the species’ form. You have any innate abilities and weaknesses of the form: claws, wings, gills, breathing water instead of air. You still use your normal stats but some moves may be harder to trigger - a housecat will find it hard to do battle with an ogre. The GM will also tell you one or more moves associated with your new form. Spend 1 hold to make that move. Once you’re out of hold, you return to your natural form. At any time, you may spend all your hold and revert to your natural form.

Animal moves just say what the animal naturally does, like "call the pack," "trample them," or "escape to the air." When you spend your hold your natural instinct kicks in and that move happens. If you spend hold to escape to the air, that’s it - you’re away and on the wing.​

(The bolding is not in my copy of the rules. I assume that its absence is a layout error.)

There are references in this to other druid abilities and moves. From p 106:

You learned your magic in a place whose spirits are strong and ancient and they’ve marked you as one of their own. No matter where you go, they live within you and allow you to take their shape. Choose one of the following. It is the land to which you are attuned—when shapeshifting you may take the shape of any animal who might live in your Land.​

And on p 107:

When you spend time in contemplation of an animal spirit, you may add its species to those you can assume using shapeshifting.​

So it is pretty clear that shapeshifting is into animal forms. Whether dragons count as animals seems like a group-specific, campaign-specific thing. If you're worried about it, because you're not sure how to handle it as a GM, then my default would be to say that it's not, unless it is really central to the player's conception of what his/her druid can do. (And I'd be upfront about this - "I'm not sure how to handle a dragon properly, so can we just agree it's not an animal whose spirit you are attuned to?")

So I guess it just depends on how you define, "animal". That's a tough one. Just because a creature doesn't exist in our reality doesn't mean it's not an animal indigenous to another planet/plane/reality.

Would you just draw the line at Earth creatures and be done with it?

That would be fine until the druid takes the advanced move, Doppelgangers Dance, at which point they can, very specifically, shift into an elf (and not just any elf, but a specific elf). So that means that, at least eventually, a druid can take the form of an otherworldly creature that is self aware. Since Doppelgangers Dance is there to allow the druid to shift into an individual, unique, form, it implies, to me, that before they get that move they ought to be able to shift into non-specific animals like elves.

In other words, if I say that, pre-Doppelgangers Dance, the druid can only shift into an animal, and I define, "animal" as a non-self aware, Earth animal, that goes out the window as soon as she takes Doppelgangers Dance.

I'm wondering if the line might not be drawn at innately magical creatures?

What the animal moves are is up to the GM to tell the player, following the logic of the fiction. The sidebar gives examples, and I'd extrapolate from there. If the druid turns into an elephant and tramples them, that sounds like dealing damage and knocking prone. If the druid turns into a shark and rends their flesh, that sounds like dealing damage messily. If the druid turns into a gibbon and escapes through the trees, that sounds like a way of succesfully defying some danger, or perhaps bringing some sorts of situations to an end. Etc.

So then are we rolling for that damage? If so, we still only roll the druids damage dice (d6 for starters). I was beginning to believe that the effect of a given animal move was left up to the GM. In other words, if a druid/elephant spent a hold to trample an enemy I might say, "You crush the goblin under your heavy feet." and the goblin is dead. No damage roll required. But are you saying that the proper response would be, "You crush the goblin under your heavy feet. Roll a d6 for damage."?