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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2009176" data-attributes="member: 9860">This is not a playtest review.Beware! This review contains major spoilers. Dungeon World presents an unusual campaign setting set in a plane of endless caves.At $29.99 for a 192-page hardcover book, this is slightly above average in price for a hardcover book. 10 of those pages are not direct game information, but the rest of the space is used fairly well. The art ranges from appalling to good, with most being poor (excluding the Elmore front cover of a female drow with floating skull, which rises well above the rest). The maps are dark and lack detail. Bizarrely, some of them show compass direction, which is kind of strange for the world concept. Writing style is basic, with regular editing mistakes.Dungeon World is an interesting concept - a plane ruled by the mysterious Caretakers, completely encased in stone with no known surface. Certain characters find themselves transported to the plane after death, naked, cured of all ills, and set a quest by the Caretakers in order to regain life back on their home plane and escape from Dungeon World. This underground plane is populated by denizens who have died and been brought here by the Caretakers. The plane itself is currently believed to be infinite. It can also be accessed by planewalking, through portals, or via a spell or curse. The core area of Dungeon World, known as Nex, is detailed in this book, and looks much like a very nasty 1st Edition-style dungeon at first glance. This is where newly-dead PCs first arrive. Those who die in Dungeon World return to the land of the living as ghosts.The book puts forward Dungeon World as a diversion for PCs from the main campaign world. Individual PCs from a party are picked out by the Caretakers for 'resurrection' into Dungeon World. The rest of the party may discover the PCs body does not decay when he dies, and seek out means to enter Dungeon World to rescue the 'dead' PC. They may help the PC complete the Caretaker's Quest, help the PC escape Dungeon World by other means or become trapped in Dungeon World themselves.The book describes the nature of Dungeon World at some length - covering issues such as light, time, temperature, terrain, up and down, food and water, atmosphere and ventilation. Dungeon World is perhaps most notable for PCs for its lack of spirituality - Clerics begin to lose levels after more than a month's stay and these are only slowly regained even if they escape Dungeon World. The various types of citizens are discussed, before the book gives some good advice for introducing and integrating the concept of Dungeon World into your campaign setting. Another notable aspect of Dungeon World is magical items are less powerful. In addition, materials other than stone and gems are hard to find, and the effects of rust and decay on items is greater than in a normal setting. The denizens also suffer from the environment - such aspects as respiratory problems, skin conditions, poor nutrition, and depression run rampant.Some further detail on the Caretakers is given for the GM - these beings seek to maintain the balance of power in Dungeon World, and set quests for newly-dead beings that aim to keep powerful entities of Dungeon World in line. This enables the odd ecology/politics of Dungeon World to be maintained. In addition, the Caretakers create five types of monsters to aid them when adventurers fail, refuse to help or are not powerful enough. These five 'Children of the Caretakers' are detailed with stats, and an explanation is given of how they use their abilities to keep the factions of Nex restricted within the Caretakers' designs.The remainder of the book details the 25 locations in Nex. At its centre and connecting all the other levels is a demonic stairwell. On each side of the stairs are entrances to the various levels of Nex, with various areas ruled by demons, dragons, and giants, whilst others are the realms of fungi, bugs, undead, paladins and wizards. In addition, some levels are dominated by Elements - Air, Earth, Water and Fire. Each location varies in size, from many miles to a few hundred feet. The locations are detailed from a very 1st-Edition perspective with occupants, furnishings, and treasure mentioned, though the level itself begins with some notes on the politics and atmosphere. There are also wandering monster tables for each level.The book concludes with some Caretaker quests - in essence, adventure ideas to set the PC on his entry into Dungeon World. These are described as if the GM was reading them to the player who finds himself naked and alone in Dungeon World as he wakes from 'death'.Conclusion:This is a clever and cohesive campaign setting, with meta-game implications that may suit many DMs and players, especially those who crave a good old 1st Edition epic dungeon crawl (though there are certainly roleplaying opportunities). However, there is an unsettling artificiality about the setting that annoyed me somewhat. It seems deliberately developed to pander to meta-game considerations such as the death of a PC, justification of underground ecologies and the need for adventure hooks. The setting deals with all these aspects very cleverly, but in a way that left a slightly bad taste in my mouth.In addition, the various levels lacked enough detail for my liking - there needed to be far more information on the inter-relationship (both physically and politically) between the various levels to justify the deus ex machina of the Caretakers' influence. The idea behind leaving information sparse on each level was to allow the GM to fill in this information for herself - I felt this was a bit of a cop-out. Further, the errata that accumulated in reading through the text of the levels was quite stunning at times - examples of it have been noted in other reviews, but there was even a major mistake on the back page.All in all, I thought Dungeon World was a great concept, let down by its execution. 1st Edition-like Dungeon settings are not really my type of thing either so I have to admit to a bit of bias here too. For those who like the concept and are willing to do a great deal more work fleshing out the Nex levels (and other possible levels of the GM's choosing), are willing to work out the creases of the rules and editing mistakes, and are willing to ignore (or revel in) the artificial flavour of the setting, there's still a lot to take away from this. For me, the concept wasn't good enough to forgive the poor execution.</blockquote>

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