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.

 

[Aldarc]

I found out on Dungeon World's Discord that Luke Crane's Burning Wheel Co. bought the rights for Dungeon World (Powered by the Apocalypse) from creators Adam Koebel and Sage LaTorra. Luke Crane has indicated that there is a new version of Dungeon World on the horizon.

When Luke Crane was asked by Jeremy Strandberg (writer/creator of Stonetop) about his vision for Dungeon World, he wrote:

May I be direct here? I hope I won’t offend anyone if I’m critical of the game. I only critique things I love and respect, so please read me charitably. At the most basic level, DW as it stands now is in need of a good edit. Just cleaning up the text alone would give the game a breath of life. And the book’s organization…is a lot. Maybe its concepts could be better broken down to make sure players have critical information to get started…and then full stop. The other material becomes extra.
It’s also full of assumptions that I feel are unnecessary to expressing the concepts and systems. My vision is a sleeker, tighter text, cleaned up mechanics with new art—color, maybe?!—that retains the game’s accessibility (and reasonable price point). DW is easier to grok than (the current edition) of D&D for people who want to play D&D. I think that is [f*cking] magic, so I want to retain that quality above all else.

I doubt that this will be a radical revision of Dungeon World, which I think would alienate its core audience, but it still sounds like it will be getting a much-needed update.

 

[Retreater]

I'm interested in seeing it. If it's not to my liking, I'll keep DW 1e.

 

[jdrakeh]

I doubt that this will be a radical revision of Dungeon World, which I think would alienate its core audience...

I dunno. This sounds exactly like the kind of thing Luke Crane would do.

 

[ART!]

Interesting! I like a lot of things about DW, but something about the presentation has always been off-putting.

 

[schneeland]

Sounds interesting enough to monitor it and have a look once it's done. I'm a bit skeptical, though, since a lot of time has passed since DW came out and I feel things have evolved quite a bit into different directions. So not sure if a revised Dungeon World will really attract a lot of interest.
That being said, it still holds a special place in my heart since it was one of the first games I tried when moving away from trad games (and despite some shortcomings, I overall liked it quite a bit at the time).

 

[The Soloist]

Luke Crane gives money to Adam Koebel*, and now we have to refund Crane by purchasing the new game. NO.

(*look him up if you don't know him.)

 

[overgeeked]

Dungeon World 2E that does not involve Adam Koebel

Sweet!

Luke Crane

Hard pass.

 

[grankless]

Kickstarter community head quits, apologizes for controversial RPG project Considering the last time Luke told a bunch of people that Koebel was 100% definitely not involved in something.... not much confidence in the project here!

 

[Manbearcat]

Thanks for the heads up @Aldarc (well, I got your heads up by way of @Old Fezziwig , but you're the primary source as I'm not connected to these communities!).

Luke Crane's design chops/history + new Dungeon World iteration? Take my money.