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.

 

[kenada]

not sure either, definitely getting rid of HP for one

But Apocalypse World does use harm clocks, which is functionally a form of hp. PbtA as described by Baker in his “What is PbtA?” series of articles is actually not all that prescriptive of which techniques a game uses or even the conversation structure or how premise is approached. There are certainly popular ways to design one, but that doesn’t mean they are better or more correct.

I do think design of Dungeon World has issues. @zakael19 touches on a number of them. I think if one wanted to keep hp and damage dice, it could be done. Obviously, the designers of DW2 don’t think it fits with the design they want to do.

 

[SteveC]

Does anyone know about the playbooks? DW had playbooks for the classic D&D classes, which were part of the association with D&D. It sounds like it won't be using the ability scores from D&D, so I wonder about the classes. I've recently been told that a game with D&D classes in the PbtA sense is still D&D, so it does make me wonder. Anyone know?

 

[zakael19]

Does anyone know about the playbooks? DW had playbooks for the classic D&D classes, which were part of the association with D&D. It sounds like it won't be using the ability scores from D&D, so I wonder about the classes. I've recently been told that a game with D&D classes in the PbtA sense is still D&D, so it does make me wonder. Anyone know?

Maybe that’s next weeks dribble of pre-alpha stuff, haha.

 

[mamba]

But Apocalypse World does use harm clocks, which is functionally a form of hp.

that quote was from one of the designers of DW2, so at a minimum they do not think it matches the PbtA philosophy

 

[SteveC]

that quote was from one of the designers of DW2, so at a minimum they do not think it matches the PbtA philosophy

From what I've seen, random damage and increasing hit points are unusual in PbtA. I've played a fair bit of Monster of the Week, which has a Harm system, and characters have a set amount of Harm they can take before death, and injuries over a certain point are Serious Wounds. That's the closest I've seen, and in practice, it doesn't have that "feel of D&D." Most recent PbtA systems I've seen have Conditions you take from being hurt, and some mechanic for how you eventually get taken out.

The damage system from Dungeon World, it seems to me, is one of those designs that are intended to make it look and play similar to D&D. Removing that makes the game more in line with what people will expect if they're coming in familiar with PbtA games. But, and I feel like a broken record here, if the game's goal is to bridge D&D with PbtA, most of the people coming in will know D&D and not PbtA. I'll ask the question of what the point of using the name is if you don't want to draw on the previous game's strengths.

 

[kenada]

that quote was from one of the designers of DW2, so at a minimum they do not think it matches the PbtA philosophy

I know, but I view that as what they’re calling their design preferences. This is something Baker discusses in the first article of that series I linked. Many things that people think are properties of “PbtA” are historical accidents due to choices he made when designing Apocalypse World. Using harm (or hp) doesn’t make a game out of touch or going against the “PbtA philosophy” because what it means to be one is pretty broad. Of course, it’s perfectly fine that it goes against a designer’s preferences. I want designers to have opinions about the games they design and what they want to put in them.

Anyway, I agree with what others have said that variable damage is pretty uncommon in PbtA games. The implementation in Dungeon World is not helped by having problems (e.g., due to the possibility of armor reducing damage to 0, your damage-dealing move can stall the moves snowball). I think this is solvable if you want to keep variable damage as part of that D&D feel, but it’s also fine to want to go in a different direction. The latter is especially true if you are pivoting to an audience you think doesn’t care about the old way or may prefer the new way (that you as a designer want to do).

 

[zakael19]

I almost wish they'd do an A/B test of Harm Track vs Conditions Track with some new PBTA players coming from 5e and see which clicks better. I've been running FITD games for folks coming exclusively from modern narrative-focused 5e play, and the numerical Harm track was very easy for them to onboard after a. bit of play, even if the Harm itself can vary wildly from psychological/mental/physical.

I've enjoyed the split between HP as "marker of ability to keep fighting" and Conditions (a la the classic AW/DW style, where they're a thematic debuff to a stat), and Problematic Injuries (things that linger and affect fictional positioning / may worsen to a Doom) in Stonetop.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I know, but I view that as what they’re calling their design preferences. This is something Baker discusses in the first article of that series I linked. Many things that people think are properties of “PbtA” are historical accidents due to choices he made when designing Apocalypse World. Using harm (or hp) doesn’t make a game out of touch or going against the “PbtA philosophy” because what it means to be one is pretty broad.

This is exactly the issue, and it's true of an awful lot of PtbA games, there's an obsession with using the same mechanisms (or close variants thereof) as Apocalypse World, even though that doesn't really make sense.

Countless design choices in PtbA games and hacks have been attributed to this very nebulous "PbtA philosophy", but it's mostly just cargo cult nonsense, or a convenient method to say "I prefer it this way" without actually taking personal responsibility, which I find I slightly disreputable or at least very disappointing.

I agree that it's fine to have an opinion (albeit slightly less fine to reject basically all design tenets of an RPG and then use the name), but I feel like claiming "PtbA philosophy" is absolutely a dodge to admitting having an opinion, because if you admitted to having an opinion, people could easily engage with you and say "That's a bad opinion", whereas if you claim "PtbA philosophy", you're basically making an almost holy/sacred appeal to authority.

To me it looks like the changes make it align more with PbtA philosophy and remove anything D&D, arriving at generic fantasy, which is a much less unique spot than DW occupies

I don't think such a philosophy really exists, but I do agree that the end result looks likely to be extremely generic fantasy, which is no way reminiscent of Dungeon World, and not useful for any of the same things. The people for whom changing DW to be generic and un-D&D-like will please most, imho, are ultra-online PtbA purists who never liked Dungeon World, fundamentally didn't understand Dungeon World's approach or appeal, didn't play Dungeon World, and probably won't play this either!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The game is called Dungeon World 2, not Dungeon World second edition, for what's worth. Like... maybe they need to make it more explicit -- 'Dungeon World Revisited' -- but it's meant less of a replacement and more of an evolution of the state of PbtA fantasy gaming.

Sure, but nothing they've shown so far suggests "revisiting" DW is at all the goal.

Original DW is from another era of gaming, which itself commented upon a much earlier era of gaming. DW needs to evolve if it's going to be part of the conversation... the gritty '70s-early '80s style of fantasy gaming isn't a common experience for anyone over 40.

As @zakael19 says, that's not what it replicated. You're conflating the framing with the actual design and mechanics.

Without changing much else, you could change the framing, art, etc. and suddenly the game would have a drastically more modern feel. And you could also update the classes to more in-tune with very modern design but you wouldn't really have to do much. I mean, just look at Grimwild - which is extremely modern in all regards, and look at the class design. It's really not that different from DW's design.

But again, that doesn't seem to be the intention - the intention seems very much to be to create an entirely unrelated PtbA fantasy RPG, which just uses the brand name for recognition. This is something actually rarely seen outside of very cynical corporate stuff (though not never), and I'm not surprised they're getting some pushback because of it.

The hobby is filled now with people who came up with the "fantasy superheroes doing action-movie set pieces with a strong focus on thespianism" (awesome description, for real) and I look forward to DW embracing at least some of that.

I'd love an explanation of how current DW wasn't like that/mechanically can't do that, because I've played DW extensively and without changing or modifying any rules, that's how it played out for us. Literally we were coming from 4E which was in many ways more like that description than 5E is (at least innately, given Pg. 42 and so on), and we found DW only made us do more stunt and "real epic fantasy stuff". The rules didn't in any way encourage gritty, 10ft pole dungeon crawling. Indeed they were pretty bad for that!

So I remain very skeptical here, because there's nothing to change but the presentation. I do agree with some critiques of Defy Danger, that's an area which could use a big rework, as could the specifics of some of the other moves, but fundamentally, there's nothing that prevented it being like that already.

I feel like I have to ask, did you ever actually play Dungeon World? I ask because you seem to have a very specific impression of it that's so at odds with how I found it to actually play, from literally the very first time I played it.

 

[Campbell]

What I have seen seems to be moving the game more towards more conventional play. It does not seem to me to make it more of a Powered by the Apocalypse game. Unless that means more like Monster of the Week. This design is emphatically less like Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Apocalypse Keys, Cartel, Pasión de las Pasiones, et al.