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Message: <blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2010010" data-attributes="member: 924">Dungeon World is a setting of sorts for d20.  It's somewhat reminescent of Phillip Jose Farmer's "River World" combined with his "The Dungeon" (which he didn't write, but had his name on the novels for some reason I never really understood). Basically, when a PC dies, instead of dying, they go to Dungeon World. It's a hardcover book priced at $29.99. (I paid $20 for it on ebay). It's 192 pages, though the last few ones are ads. It's an interesting product, one of the better ones from Fast Forward, but like most of their stuff, is somewhat flawed, especially when it comes to maps and d20 stats. (Though it's much much better stat wise than their previous products that I've seen.)The art is also pretty ugly.  The cover is by Larry Elmore, and is okay, except it's from 1999, and has nothing whatsoever to do with this product (and like a lot of his work, the face seems to look like a cousin of mine, which is disquieting). The interior art wouldn't be out of place from a book from the late 1800s. It's bad. Bad and nonsensical, almost. Though on the plus side, the paper quality is pretty good. And the cover and binding is also very solid.Dungeon World is essentially what is sounds like, one huge dungeon. The first 32 pages describe the basic premise, the background, how to use it, etc. As mentioned, the basic premise is that when certain people die, they end up in Dungeon World.  Presumably the PCs just happen to be some of those people. If they can escape Dungeon World, they can return to the living.It's essentially it's own plane. It's run by mysterious beings called "The Caretakers". They usually leave the inhabitants to their own devices, but sometimes give some of them quests to perform. If they do, they get rewarded, which usually consists of letting them leave the place.The most notable thing, and quite possibly most annoying, is that Clerics get screwed. There's no real other way to say it. Essentially, for each month in the place, they lose one level of cleric. This is pretty much permanent, even when they leave the place. They can regain the levels, but only by advancing as a cleric - they get one lost level back for each they level up. However, there are a number of NPC clerics mentioned in the book. None of them seem affected by this, except when it comes to spells. But that is different than what the rules section implies. I would recommend that most people just ignore this rule, much like the writers seem to have. They also seem to have ignored the rule that all magic items' effectiveness are reduced by 1.The bulk of the book, the 150 pages or so after the intro, detail the dungeon. While Dungeon World is apparently really really big, if not infinite, only part is detailed here (called "Nex").  More is detailed in future products (one additional book was just released).This is where my main disappointment sets in. The 25 dungeon levels are pretty dull. There's a bunch of ruined temples (some of which are for Gods from the World of Greyhawk, which aren't open content, AFAIK). There's ruins of Atlantis (but this is glossed over), a level full of orcs, 4 levels for each element, some Egyptian tombs, a level for Duergar, a level full of Undead, one full of Slaad, one for Bugs, one for evil Wizards, one for good people (run by a Paladin), a couple with dragons, and a couple more I can't remember.  There were a couple nice ideas, like the Atlantean section, but they are implemented poorly and skimpily. The really memorable and legendary dungeons, like Castle Greyhawk or the City of the Gods or Undermountain have areas that are interesting or memorable or just plain cool. This really doesn't have anything notable. Take the Atlantis section. It's a remanant of the famous lost city. Except, you're not really told how many people live there, what the economy is, how many buildings. You just get a vague desciption of the major parts of the city. (It's greek like. Whee!)They're also too static. Frozen in time. Each area is somewhat keyed like a regular dungeon in a D&D adventure.  Like there is a corpse in section x. There's a woman kidnapped in section y (the number of people held prisoner is amazing!). That's not really realistic, nor is it very helpful if I'm going to use Dungeon World as a well, world, as opposed to a once through adventure. I would also have liked to have seen more dynamicism between the various levels. Another problem is that they are very poorly mapped. Vaguely mapped, I should say, rather than minute, detailed maps, you just get a general, back of the envelope style map. The scale is just too big, usually one square = 50 yards, though in some cases more (up to a mile per square), and the maps themselves are tiny (usually only about 1/3 of a page!). So if you want to use this product, you'll have to come up with small scale maps on your own. Though the maps are also poor, because once again, like in most of their previous products, the maps were apparently originally in color, then reduced to B&W when it was printed out. The resulting is a horrible, blurry mess. (Though to be fair, WOTC does the same thing, and I hate it when they do it too. Give me nice clear maps like in the old days of TSR). Again, let me take the example of the Atlantean level.  We get a pyramid shaped map about 3 inches by 3 inches. This has a bunch of vague drawings and numbers.  Is that really an adequate map of a city? No. Not even close. There's also a rectangle, rather dark and blurry, about 1 inch by 2 inches. This is numbered from 1 to 10. What exactly is this thing? I don't know which is supposed to be the keyed map for the level, to be honest. Both suck as far as maps go.Not to beat a dead horse, but Fast Forward still does not have a good grasp of the d20 system. Or the OGL or d20 STL. In many cases, they seem to still be using original AD&D things. For instance, hit points. In some places, Rangers have a d8 for hit points. Somehow, a 16th level Barbarian with 17 Con has only 78 hit points. They should have 60 hp just due to Con, and another 12 hp from first level. That leaves the character to have gotten 6 hit points in 15 rolls of a d12 (the average of one roll should be better). Hit points for a lot of characters seem low. In some places, you just have to scratch your head. For instance, some characters have a skill called "Spellcasting" (there is no such skill in D&D 3e/d20).The whole thing makes me think that perhaps the people at FF should put away their AD&D books and pick up the 3e rulebooks for a good read.Or maybe not. As noted, in some cases, they used Intellectual Property from WOTC that is not in the SRD, but from the Player's Handbook. Most notably the gods from the world of Greyhawk. Maybe not a huge thing, but it's something they should know better than to do.So, basically, they've taken a really neat idea and really fumbled it. That shouldn't be a shock, they've done that enough that it could be their company motto. (Another motto could be: "We're the Cincinnati Bengals of the d20 industry")The sad part is, the company is full of industry professionals. I'm sure they can do better.  Unfortunately, they seem to take sort of criticism as a personal attack, or misguided, rather than listening and attempting to make better products. (I also think that perhaps some of their problem is they always have a legion of writers. When you have 10 writers for a book, things can get somewhat disjointed. AEG has the same problem with their line of one word d20 products, though most of their writers at least know something about the d20 rules)That said, it is salvageable, like most of their products. And you do get a lot of text. Just be prepared to do a lot of work, especially maps and stats. D+</blockquote>

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