What is your vision for Dungeon World 2?
- What is your vision for Dungeon World 2?
What are the sore or rough spots that you see in Dungeon World 1 that you believe need addressed?
- What are some of the "lessons learned" from running Dungeon World 1 or other PbtA games that you would like to see addressed in Dungeon World 2?
- Not that I am personally complaining, but why moving away from hit points to conditions?
So final question: how did you get this gig? And how do you feel about this?
Hi there!
Sorry for the late reply, but I'm just sitting down in front of a computer xD
So, I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my abilty.
Regarding our vision for DW2, I'll re-share here what Spencer already posted on the DW+ Discord:
We envision Dungeon World 2 as…
- Cinematic. Interesting scenes with engaging questions or stakes are evocatively prompted, smoothly established, and enjoyably played out. The game's mechanics serve to prop up such scenes, rather than get in the way of them.
- Exciting. Dungeons are any place that is dangerous. The game's world is filled with dungeons, brimming with perilous threats, enchanting mysteries, and tempting opportunities. There is beauty and horror buried deep within this world.
- Conversational. Focuses on both the real life conversation that is a roleplaying game, and also conversations that the characters have with each other.
- Expressive. Players can create and explore a wide variety of characters that all fit within this world. The archetypes, moves, and other character options will serve as inspirational avenues of self-expression for most players, rather than straightjackets.
- Cooperative. The player characters grow together. As time goes on they both expand their relationships with each other and become more effective when cooperating.
- Versatile. While the core of the game will focus on 'typical' fantasy, it will provide support for playing any kind of fantasy one can think of.
I think this is a great summary of the principles that are guiding our design.
I feel that the sorest spot I found on my latest re-read of the original
Dungeon World is how old and antiquated some of its design choices are in 2024. Like, I remember it being so innovative and mind-blowing during my first read on 2012-2013, but now it feels really outdated when compared to more recent PbtA games like
Masks: A New Generation. One of our main goals with DW2 is to make it a PbtA that's on the edge of innovation in its mechanics, presentation, overall procedures, and tools.
We want DW2 to be a dynamic, narrative fantasy PbtA that feels like what D&D looks from the outside. Basically, we want all the fun of playing a group of fantasy heroes fighting for what's right and none of the bore/unintuitive/residual design that D&D sometimes suffers from.
One of these is hp (and damage dice in OG DW). To be quite frank, hit points are an unfitting mechanic for a PbtA in two main ways. Firstly, they have no real equivalent in the fiction/conversation. If you hit for 6 damage, what does that look like in the fiction? How does it change the conversation? I'm not saying anything new here if I mention that the only hp that matters is the last one; when you lose it, the fiction actually changes. Before that, it's just accounting. And, with all due respect to accountants, we don't find accounting fun.
If that weren't enough, hp flies in the face of PbtA general philosophy. In short, that each move should propel the narrative forward, push it so it gets closer to its "natural" (narratively logical) conclusion. In this sense, you can make a move such as
hack & slash or
volley and, in essence, the conversation loses momentum or even stalls because of the disconnection.
Conditions, in contrast, are always highly dramatic. Whenever you mark them, something changes in the conversation. And we love that! It makes it so both PC & NPCs change their behavior during a combat because of the conditions they've chosen—or been forced—to mark. And that is such a huge win for the flow of play that we just couldn't ignore its obvious benefits.
Finally, I wrote that comment before Luke contacted me on Discord to have a meeting about DW2. We had more than one of those meetings, actually, and we found common ground regarding what we like about TTRPGs. In the end, when they offered me the chance to work with Spencer to bring about DW2, I just couldn't say no. Of course I'll always have a soft spot for
Against the Odds in my heart (and I'll try to keep on developing/perfectioning it as much as I can in the future) but, in the end, AtO is a passion project with a seemingly niche audience, whereas
Dungeon World 2, I hope, will reach a much larger audience—and finally allow me to run a game I created for my friends having all the resources I could only dream of as an indie TTRPG designer.
Thanks a lot for your interest and questions. Hopefully, if you want to learn more, you can give us your email here:
Dungeon World 2 Email Sign-Up and we'll let you know about any and all
Dungeon World 2 news!
