Dungeon World Gets New Owners, Second Edition Planned

Luke Crane has purchased Dungeon World from its original creators and has plans to make a new edition of the game. Earlier this month, Crane, who previously designed The Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard Roleplaying Games, announced on the Dungeon World+ discord that he had "bought the game from the original creators" (Adam Koebel and Sage LaTorra) with a business partner and was preparing to work on a new edition. Crane did not specify whether either Koebel or LaTorra would be involved in the new edition.

Dungeon World's first edition won several awards when released in 2012, including the 2012 Golden Geek RPG of the Year and the Ennie Awards for Best Rules Gold Winner in 2013. The game was a Powered by the Apocalypse system in which players gained experience points when rolling a 6 or below on a check (which resulted in "trouble" occurring on the check and the opportunity for the DM to make a DM move. The game's co-creator Adam Koebel was a prominent creator and early TTRPG personality until accusations emerged of poor behavior by former partners.

Crane was previously the head of community at Kickstarter and attempted to run a campaign for The Perfect RPG zine back in 2021. He cancelled the campaign after it emerged that Koebel was involved with the project and later resigned from his job as a result of the backlash.

 

[SteveC]

The fact that it is distancing itself from OSR is a big win for me. I never loved DW 1e because of how closely it adhered to really archaic ideas.

I find that interesting. I’m wondering what you are thinking of in particular. I’m not a fan of OSR (I was playing when a lot of those traditions were much more default play) and I think of Dungeon World as, well, very PbTA but with some rules nods to D&D to make the game familiar to those players. What are you thinking of?

 

[zakael19]

I find that interesting. I’m wondering what you are thinking of in particular. I’m not a fan of OSR (I was playing when a lot of those traditions were much more default play) and I think of Dungeon World as, well, very PbTA but with some rules nods to D&D to make the game familiar to those players. What are you thinking of?

Im assuming the focus on treasure as a goal of play in the book, and a general like 2e feel to the presentation and flavor. DW isn't actually a good fit for dungeon delving play (Freebooters on the Frontier exists for that), and is probably best aligned with 3/3.5e D&D; but the trappings lean old school.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'm reserving judgment until the game is finished, when we have an integrated whole and see how the final iterations of these design choices fit into that whole.

This is the Internet. We need you to take an extreme position NOW and refuse to budge from it, even in the face of new information.

 

[Breaking Star Games]

There is definitely an interesting discussion around how much an edition should change from its predecessor. D&D has definitely gone through extreme changes in the previous several to 3e, to 4e then to 5e.

But throughout all of them, the community still had the older editions to enjoy, so more options has always just been a win.

I feel like Ironsworn is another good successor to Dungeon World's simpler design, but it kept it simpler, had more rounded and interesting stats. While scaffolding simple but interesting mechanics around travel and quests. I also found it easy to scale your power up from its standard low-power Viking to even high-power anime just by reflavoring enemies. Though not for everyone since its very much class-less.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Wow, reading the DW blog, why on earth is this being called Dungeon World 2?

Literally everything they're proposing mechanically runs directly counter to Dungeon World's design, ideas, and functionality in those spaces. There's nothing they're proposing so far that ties it to the original game at all. At this point, it just looks like a name re-use in order to potentially better market another, essentially unrelated, PtbA Fantasy RPG.

The designers say they "don't think we've seen the best possible PtbA fantasy RPG", and I actually totally agree! But using Dungeon World's name for attempting that when you're not building on anything DW did, is weird and slightly gross.

One of the key traits of DW was that you could literally just take an old D&D/AD&D adventure, 1:1 replace the monsters with DW ones, and run it. That sort of design was part of why it diverged from "purist" PtbA designs. But this seems like complete PbtA purism. Which is fine as a design principle generally, but bonkers for Dungeon World. The whole point was that wasn't purist.

There is definitely an interesting discussion around how much an edition should change from its predecessor. D&D has definitely gone through extreme changes in the previous several to 3e, to 4e then to 5e.

This already shaping up to be a much larger change than the largest D&D shift, which was 3.5E to 4E.

But throughout all of them, the community still had the older editions to enjoy, so more options has always just been a win.

I don't think that's fully true when you re-use a name. That's the key issue that causes so much conflict and caused 4E to sell a lot worse than expected (and perhaps than it deserved). And from we've seen, this is a much bigger move away from DW than 3.5E to 4E was.

The fact that it is distancing itself from OSR is a big win for me. I never loved DW 1e because of how closely it adhered to really archaic ideas.

I think this is literally the only thing they've said about DW2 so far that is positive. DW didn't play like OSR, it played more like a modern D&D derivative (indeed even the classes and their abilities seemed modern), so it was weird that it insisted on a ton of OSR trappings.

I'm reserving judgment until the game is finished, when we have an integrated whole and see how the final iterations of these design choices fit into that whole.

I'm reserving judgement on whether they're making a good RPG or not until we see the whole - I suspect they might actually make a very good one.

But I don't think it'll have anything at all to do with DW1, so why use the name? It seems like a fairly cynical marketing usage of the name with the level of change they're suggesting. It's not a cash grab or w/e because they are actually trying to make a good game, but it is just very odd to reuse a name to make a game that is at odds with the previous edition in fundamental ways.

 

[Aldarc]

Who is Dungeon World 2 For?

My tentative answer after reading this: "not for me."

It's aiming for a 5e D&D, Critical Role, and Stranger Things crowd. I have zero interest in these things. I don't play 5e D&D. I watch neither Critical Role nor Stranger Things. There are so many games on the market right now that cater to ex-5e players and 5e-style fantasy, and I don't play those games (e.g., Grimwild, DC20, Nimble, Daggerheart, etc.).