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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009096" data-attributes="member: 172">Dungeon WorldDungeon World is a hardback volume detailing a self contained dungeon campaign setting. Dungeon World is by Fast Forward Entertainment, who also did the Treasure Quests book and the Items of Power series of books.A First LookDungeon World is a 192 page hardbound book priced at $29.99. This is a little on the pricey size. Fast Forward's own Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils bears a similar price but has 224 pages. Fantasy Flight Games' Dragonstar Starfarer's Handbook has a similar size and price ratio, but has better art and color plates. However, the interior of the book has reasonably dense text and fairly slender margins.The cover of the book has the same grainy red background texture that all Fast Forward d20 system hardbound books to date have used. The front cover is dominated by a picture by famed D&D artist Larry Elmore depicting a drow elf woman bearing a spear and levitating a skull in front of her, against the backdrop of a stony staircase. The picture appears familiar and I suspect this same piece was used before in D&D.The interior is black and white. Interior artists listed are Andy Hopp, Daniel T. Strain, and Tony Parker. Some of the interior illustrations are very good, including some dramatic action scenes and some panoramic views of sites listed in the book. Some, however, are not so good, and many resemble old public domain etchings and have a certain rustic look.The interior maps are fairly decent and have scales and most have relatively simple keys (if any). The scale on most of the maps is rather large, which puts the responsibility on the GM's shoulder to provide details at a smaller level. Also, the maps are not too clear about entries and exits from the various layers, meaning you have to pore through the text to discover where precisely the entries and exist are between each level. There is, however, a side view which shows which levels connect to one another.A Deeper Look(Warning: This section contains major spoilers behind the concept of the book and nature of the adventures therein.)Thumbing through this book in the game store may lead one to believe that Dungeon World is a multi-level dungeon complex like Ruins of Undermountain, Greyhawk Ruins, or Rappan Athuk. However, the story is not quite that simple.The Dungeon World book details Nex, a section of another plane entombed in rock. It is somewhat difficult to navigate your way directly to Dungeon World; most of its guests weren't originally planning on going there.How does one reach Dungeon World then? Well, at the GM's option, if one or more of the players are killed, instead of truly dying and having their souls transit to otherworldly planes, their soul may be drawn into the Dungeon World. The character in question arrives naked, bereft of all equipment and other possessions. Quite a pickle, eh? If your whole party has died, you can in all likelihood begin your experience in Dungeon World with no further ado. But if only one or some party members are slain, the process of getting there is a bit of an adventure in and of itself. First, they have to figure out that their companion isn't really dead. One symptom that may trigger their suspicions is the fact that the body is not decaying and that (since the soul is now in a fresh body in Dungeon World) it cannot be raised or resurrected. However, if the characters investigate at this point, they may learn that there is a strange purgatorial plane that sometimes draws in souls. Further research may turn up a spell called retrieve. The spell requires the body of the person whose soul is in Dungeon World, and causes the characters to join their companion. Unlike their companion, the newly arriving characters keep their equipment, as well as any infirmities they had in their native plane.Other options are mentioned for getting to Dungeon World, but those seem less likely. The book waives the restriction on teleportation only applying to the same plane and states that you can teleport to dungeon world – at considerable risk. Planewalking to Dungeon World promises to be a time-intensive project requiring much research to find the right pathway. Finally, it is alluded to that some curses can place one in Dungeon World in a manner similar to having one's soul trapped their after death.So having gotten to Dungeon World, how do you get out? Well, those who come involuntarily may arrive without equipment, but they do get one thing. Such characters mentally receive a quest that they are cognizant of immediately upon arriving. Should they complete the terms of this quest, they are immediately transported back to their own world.These quests are the result of the Caretakers, beings that are never seen but watch over Dungeon World. It is apparently they who draw souls into Dungeon World, and the quests are ones that have some manner of impact on the society or creatures within Dungeon World.Other than the Caretakers, there are a variety of portals that exist throughout Dungeon World. Portals are somewhat random, only returning the characters to their own game world about one-third of the time unless the character learns (and has sufficient magical mastery to utilize) the  technique to control the portal. If the character is not returned to their own world, they may end up elsewhere in Dungeon World or be sent to a totally different campaign world.Dungeon World's other major property is that it is somewhat shielded from the touch of the gods. Divine spellcasters who arrive in Dungeon World slowly lose their spellcasting abilities over time.The pages that lay out the above details are actually a minority of the book. The majority of the book are the various levels of this section of Dungeon World. Societies have formed from those who have been trapped here, though in some cases the book is not to clear about how some of the denizens arrived here (though frustratingly, some refer to it.) It appears by some levels it is possible not only for individuals to be drawn into Dungeon World, but major sections of cities. For example, the first level described is the temple quarter of a major city; the temples were apparently drawn to Dungeon World during an event called the Night of Rage, but little else is said about it.Other levels in the book include remnants of the legendary city of Atlantis, a lair dominated by various Duergar clans, a lair dominated by a curios cabal of necromancers, a level controlled by an evil wizard's school with tortuous entry requirements, a largely aquatic level, levels related to the four elements, levels infested by specific types of outsiders, and so on.Each level has an encounter key and one map, as well as random encounter tables. The maps point out where portals lie (mostly well hidden) as well as arrival points. There are also new creature write-up interspersed through the chapters as needed.The stat blocks are generally better than earlier FFE products, but there are still some head-scratchers and outright errors. For example, there is a new type of undead called the warriors of horus that have a constitution score and a corresponding hp bonus, but the incorrect HD type. In another place, there is an "11th level blackguard" with no listed levels in a core class.Perhaps more annoying than this, I felt that if they were selling Dungeon World as a campaign world, they probably should have spent more time developing the state of relationships between different power groups, personality and motives, and so forth. Having the PCs as "strangers in a strange land" that mess up local politics is an old saw in SF/F literature and shows that would have been well deployed here. In this case, there were only a few cases where I saw these sorts of details important.Finally, two other common FFE error pops up: inappropriate treasure and lack of level guidelines for levels or encounter areas. The GM would likely have to do a lot of preplanning to ensure that the party doesn't get overpowered. This applies doubly so considering that the party may have had a considerable impact to their abilities.ConclusionI found Dungeon World to be a rather refreshing idea, one that reminded me of various books and TV shows of my youth in which the main characters are heroes caught in a strange land. Though you could use it as a simple dungeon, the strange twists of the setting could make it so much more.However, I feel that as wonderful as the concept was, it falls a little short of supporting the idea. Not only do lack of attention to details such as encounter difficulty hinder any GMs effort to make use of the book, but the somewhat dryly statted nature of the book leaves out some important details that would make a campaign in Dungeon World really hum. However, a fairly good GM should be able to brush in many of these details; Dungeon World is certain fertile ground for adventure.-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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