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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2009907" data-attributes="member: 18387">By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer, d20 Magazine Rack and Co-host of Mortality Radio Sizing Up the Target Dungeon World is a 187-page hard cover adventure/accessory published by Fast Forward Entertainment. Tim Brown and James Ward are the concept creators, while 9 others are listed in the credits as designers. The cover is done by long time D&D favorite Larry Elmore, interior work by Andy Hopp, Daniel Strain and Tony Parker and retails for $29.95.First Blood Let me begin by saying that this product has been on the shelves for a while and is one that I have picked up again and again but never purchased in favor of the Wotc accessory, hot pick, etc of the week. This was a mistake on some levels. Dungeon World is a campaign setting, but it isn’t, it is an accessory for sure, but supplies no new spells, items, classes or anything new for your existing campaign. What Dungeon World is, is a campaign concept thought up back in the days of Spelljammer, Ravenloft and Planescape. These were prestige campaigns, explains Tim Brown from when he was at TSR, and had this gem of an idea percolating in the back of his mind for many years. It is a side trek for long standing campaign to give the DM a chance to breathe and assess where his own story is going without having to stop regular play. Dungeon World is like Ravenloft in that it is a world-sized trap for your characters to escape, unlike Ravenloft, is that the duration of the stay in the adventure is as long as the DM wants to make it, whereas the Demi-Plane of Dread has no escape. It was also designed like Spelljammer in that it was a way to break up a campaign allowing time to segue into the next major adventure. And like Planescape, egress from Dungeon World is had when the party has found the correct portal or keys to leave, these being predetermined by the DM. Because the Players are leaving their home plane, time can flow differently where seconds pass between departure and return or months, years or centuries could have passed. Characters can advance in level with the exception of cleric, who along with the other divinely powered classes are cut off from their deities and slowly lose their spell casting abilities and depending on the tenure in Dungeon World, their faith as well. The milieu is a totally enclosed world, as advertised a world comprised totally in a dungeon. It is a way of having your players encounter races and creatures they would not normally meet (like kender or kzinti), introduce new players, or springboard into the next round in your own campaign by planting clues to the adventure ahead, a map, rumor, item etc. The book moves in to living conditions and changes in a world where there is no sun to stimulate plant growth, atmosphere that grows stagnant and stale, little to no light and varying temperatures. The lack of access to divine providence and those denizens who are unable to leave, don’t wish to leave or those who would sacrifice their souls to leave. Language can be an obstacle until new arrivals adapt to whatever language the DM might wish to have as a common tongue. Crippled players find their injuries healed, scars gone. Age is unaffected, but the deleterious side-affects of aging are returned to youthful standards. Disease is abolished when entering but players can contract possibly lethal infections there and return them to their own world. All players are naked and must begin from scratch to outfit themselves. Differing from Ravenloft, Dungeon World has it’s own masters in the form of the Caretakers who arbitrate a characters arrival and possible escape from Dungeon World, occasionally granting quests to achieve a portal home or to some other destination the DM may wish to deposit the party to. The character’s original body is left behind in a suspended state resembling death near –10 HP. If this body is destroyed, the person cannot return to their world as anything but a spirit. Dying in Dungeon World can be returned to their original bodies or reincarnated to a different place to start over. The book advises to be mysterious. Give the players what they want or need in carefully planned doses. Perhaps allow them to encounter an old character who had ‘died’ and been trapped here. Give them near-death visions to inspire them to act out your plot. But of all things, make it difficult. Conditions for moving around and what they may find or could find and time in a world without days are described before moving into a few critters native to this world. A brief description of the heart of the world follows where the players arrive and data on the levels mapped out round out the book, with monsters specific to these level given within their respective chapters. Critical Hits As a way to increase player’s abilities break up the monotony of a campaign or just a way to impress recalcitrant party members that the DM is god; Dungeon World brings an impressive concept to fore. A totally subterranean world where the party can grow in experience or be spat out and returned upon ‘death’. A way to discover new friends or enemies or give your players needed growth outside of the regular campaign. A ‘Q’ world for the DM’s use, it can be a great tool to experiment with your own designs without disrupting the game greatly. A wide assortment of familiar challenges dropped into a crazy quilt world with no up or down, rhyme or reason to give the players a direction to charge off into, they become totally dependent upon the DM (read: caretaker) to save them from this purgatory world and restore them to home. Critical Misses Weird Uncle Rufus has influenced me on occasion to go or not go with a particular product based on his recommendation. In this case, he unfortunately has made several key points on the sparseness of detail in the descriptions in the book. Fast Forward seems to subscribe to a less is more policy. While it allowed for more variety in the described encounters, it did not go into the possible depth of description they may have needed and left too much up to the DM. Coup de Grace Dungeon World gives me something I have wanted in a long time, a place to throw whatever monsters or races or cultures I want into a place that does NOT require I make sense of it. It could be a Monty Haul or a Jack Benny campaign, feast or famine. If you are seeking a change from the same ole, same ole, this could be it for you. A little work on your part and this world can be the biggest rat’s maze your players could ever face.To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at <a href="http://www.d20zines.com" target="_blank">www.d20zines.com.</a></blockquote>

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