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.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not at all the point, but I'll say I know more people who swear by 4e than any other version of Shadowrun (5 & 6, not so much...)

Oh I believe but in that context I know more people IRL/quasi-IRL who swear by 4E D&D than any other edition of D&D, but like, I'm an outlier, I can tell that.

I do recall at the time there was a pretty intense hard core of posters who swore 4E SR was the best SR, a natural continuation and so on, but there were also an awful lot of people, I suspect a larger number, for whom it was kind of "the end of Shadowrun" (and obviously 5E and 6E have singularly failed to resurrect it). I think a lot of 4E's problem was that it was the first edition where Shadowrun's future was very obviously going to be a retrofuture, and instead of embracing that (as Cyberpunk 2077 and RED later did), 4E fought hard against that. It wasn't a nonsensical decision, but I do think it was the wrong decision, with hindsight, and actually had perhaps the opposite to the intended effect, in that it made Shadowrun seem less relevant and accessible, not more.

Back on DW2, Daggerheart is very interesting, because it does basically everything DW2 has said it's going to do in broad sweep terms, and whilst it's not technically PtbA, it absolutely uses a ton of PtbA terms and approaches, and honestly exemplifies the "fantasy superheroes doing action-movie set pieces with a strong focus on thespianism" in a D&D-ish context better than I suspect DW2 will be able to.

I was definitely not anticipating how DW-like Daggerheart was going to turn out to be. Earlier takes seemed to suggest something much more D&D-like.