Dungeon World

[TiQuinn]

What does a 'black mark by the industry' mean?

You can google Adam Koebel - but the basic gist is that he sprung a sexual assault encounter on a player during an actual play without their prior knowledge and permission, catching the entire cast off guard, and then kept doing it despite everyone being very uncomfortable. Then he handled the aftermath of it incredibly poorly, and effectively got himself blackballed within the community.

 

[TiQuinn]

Dungeon World is no longer supported by its own creators. One of them has received a Black Mark by the industry, and the other has walked away from the game and probably would do Dungeon World differently. So the Dungeon World torch has been carried by other creatives, and their supplements tend to flesh out the game in different ways.

I tend to fall into the Lampblack & Brimstone camp, which involves frequent collaborators Jason Lutes and Jeremy Strandberg. If you read their games and supplements, you can definitely see overlapping ideas between Jeremy Strandberg and Jason Lutes. That also means that it's a fairly compatible eco-system of supplements and games.

Jason Lutes wrote the highly lauded Perilous Wilds supplement, which some people in DW consider as mandatory. Jason is also the creator of Freebooters on the Frontier, which I previously mentioned as being in beta for its second edition.

Jeremy Strandberg created both Hombrew World and Stonetop. Stonetop is probably a Top 3 favorite game for me.

Most of the time if I want to run an easy DW game for friends, I will probably be running Homebrew World (and maybe using Perilous Wilds). If I want a longer-form game, then I will probably be playing Stonetop.

---------

All that said, I also have a separate issue with Dungeon World that has more to do with its brand of D&D sensibilities and aesthetics. When it was written, OSR was the rage. So Dungeon World leans a bit more heavily into the aesthetics of "old school" D&D. I tend to be more of a "new school" D&D person, so I think that I would have preferred a Dungeon World that leaned more heavily into well... 4e "new school" aesthetics and sensibilities. And considering that there is a "weird" overlap between 4e and Dungeon World fans, including myself, it seems that the game would potentially be better served in the long-term by a revision that leaned more heavily into that 4e D&D side of things. But that's just me.

NOTE: My biggest piece of advice for running Dungeon World or any spin-offs is DO NOT TREAT MOVES IN DUNGEON WORLD LIKE D&D SKILL CHECKS. This is one of the biggest mistakes, IME, when it comes to people coming into DW from D&D.

In D&D you roll dozens of ability/skill checks all the time for the most banal of tasks. Climbing a mountain? Roll an Athletics check. Attacking a dragon with your sword? Roll an attack roll.

A character in DW does not roll Defy Danger every time they climb a mountain because you only roll if there is an imminent threat. Likewise, character in DW may not have a chance to succeed in causing physical harm to a dragon with a regular sword, and so there is no need to roll Hack & Slash. (But if they had a Black Arrow passed down from the Lords of Dale and know that there is a missing scale on the dragon's belly? Roll Volley.) Read the Moves in Dungeon World carefully. They tell you the particular conditions when they are triggered.

So what I’ve noticed in our game is that the rules are fantastic for exploration and social interactions and actually drive the story forward and create cool opportunities that are partly determined by the player and partly by the DM. Combat has been pretty seamless and you still feel powerful and competent but certainly not invincible.

 

[GothmogIV]

Thank you all for the input and good convo. I decided I'm not going to pursue this system for now. Between 5e, DCC, Dragonbane, Call of Cthulhu, and Castles&Crusades, my brain is full. I so appreciate the candor and suggestions.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What does a 'black mark by the industry' mean?

They crossed Long John Silver.

 

[jdrakeh]

What does a 'black mark by the industry' mean?

They forced a player in their game to act out SA live, on stream. They then handled the fallout in pretty much the worst way possible. [Edit: Ninja'd.]

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Dungeon World is 12+ years old, and unlike some other elf games, hasn't aged well. As one of the early PbtA games, state of the art moved way past it. Freebooters on the Frontier as mentioned by @Aldarc is my preferred PbtA dungeon crawler. Also upcoming Stonetop is great. That said, back in 2015-2017 I ran a 10+ session DW campaign that may be a highlight of my RPG experience. And it opened me up to the vast panoply of indie RPGs, for which I am forever grateful.

 

[pemerton]

Strong proponents of Dungeon World on this board - proponents both in the technical sense of doing it well, and in the sense of articulating its strengths as a RPG - are @Manbearcat and @AbdulAlhazred.

From my admittedly limited experience with the game, I don't feel that it has quite the problems (or the departure from PbtA "norms") that some critics say it has. But with that said, I will cheerfully confess that my preferred indie RPG with a light touch of classic D&D flavour is Torchbearer 2e, which is not PbtA at all!

 

[Manbearcat]

Strong proponents of Dungeon World on this board - proponents both in the technical sense of doing it well, and in the sense of articulating its strengths as a RPG - are @Manbearcat and @AbdulAlhazred.

From my admittedly limited experience with the game, I don't feel that it has quite the problems (or the departure from PbtA "norms") that some critics say it has. But with that said, I will cheerfully confess that my preferred indie RPG with a light touch of classic D&D flavour is Torchbearer 2e, which is not PbtA at all!

I don't have time to post anything new on this subject and it looks like this thread has probably reached its apex of input and is winding down. But, since you've summoned me, I'll aggregate the things I've written about this subject recently if the lead poster is looking for any further input on the subject (if they're not, that is fine as well!). Lets see:

<A reply elsewhere to someone saying DW is clunky and burdened to with Classic D&D dungeoncrawling conceits>

Me:
I know this is a common refrain, but when I looked at and every time I've played Dungeon World, I didn't see the clunk nor experience any burden of D&D chaff (so to speak). When I looked at and played DW, I saw Baker's Apocalypse World, Nixon's Shadows of Yesterday, and Crane's Burning Wheel in alignment, bonds, playbooks, xp on a miss, NPC/threat tech, and the general shape of play.

I saw AD&D or Moldvay Basic only in a few aspects such as End of Session "treasure question" and a few playbook choices such as Bend Bars/Lift Gates or Trap Expert, but any pretension to them doing the work as they do in Classic D&D is killed stone dead when the game is played or when you look at Heirloom or Through Death's Eyes or Connections or Escape Route.

I won't go into the whole thing again, but I do not agree (conceptually nor empirically) with the general takes out there regarding DW. I've never experienced problems with the game in a metric effton of hours of running it. I would say to anyone having D&D-related issues running the game:

* Focus on Bonds (relationship) and Alignment (ethos) questions. These should drive play as much or more than End of Session Questions.

* Simply port in any alternative End of Session question that generates desired alternative premise/incentive structures.

* Simply use alternative playbooks or make your own (its trivial).

* Constantly focus on generating interesting/costly decision-points around relationships, around ethos, around gear/coin (DW's gear/coin-game is one of my favorites), around tenured hirelings (DW's hireling-game is one of my favorites), around danger, around discovery, bring NPCs/locations to life with their Impulses, and just simply follow where the game goes and the world build-out that emerges in the course of play.

<Same commenter as top replying asking about the incorporation of typical D&D stats being evidence of a burden of Classic D&D influence>

Me:
IME, that just generates a superficial influence. The actual play itself defies D&D conventions quite hard. The equivalent of "dungeon crawling" in DW is a million miles away from Classic D&D. They're barely the same genus (I would certainly entertain a conversation that they aren't!) and they certainly aren't the same species!

IME, a revised DW could lose the "notable treasure" EoS question for something else. That one is just totally ancillary in the blow-by-blow and throughline of play (which defeats the purpose). It doesn't get ticked much and isn't this session-to-session focal point of play. But, again, I think subbing that out for an alternative or just letting it ride and ticking it as it comes is easily done.

<A separate commenter, a player in one of my 1-10 DW games, makes the follow-on comment:

I think I disagree that DW play "defies D&D conventions." I've said that my experience of DW was pretty much exactly like what I think a good game of D&D is, and I know <name redacted> didn't experience a wide variance in feel between your games and mine.>

Me:
Let me revise, I was aiming for Classic or Moldvay Basic Pawn Stance or Dungeoncrawl/Hexcrawl D&D. I meant it defies the conventions of that classical form of the game that people typically point at with DW and say "this is rubbish...you can't play this game like that!"

In terms of High Fantasy Fellowship/Journey D&D? DW does that in spades. That is basically the game.

I think in terms of genre expectations, you and I are pointing at the same thing and you and I expect the same things out of a (non-Classic) D&D game.

Like you guys' DW game that I ran was Heroic Fantasy D&D. Fellowship/Journey/Danger/Discovery. Characters that care about stuff and pursue that with villains large and small, animate and inanimate, interposing themselves between the heroes and their dramatic needs.

But like...if I contrast the DW games I've run with my Moldvay Dungeoncrawl games?

If I hold one in one hand and the other in the other hand and appraise them? These things couldn't be less similar.

Yup. That's it from me. If you get something out of that, lead-poster, great!

If you've already got enough input from others to have made up your mind...also great.

 

[Autumnal]

Since you’re here, @Manbearcat and others, speak to me of ongoing campaigns, if you would. About how many sessions do characters typically take to max out? What you do after that (new characters, postdoc play, something else)?

 

[Manbearcat]

Since you’re here, @Manbearcat and others, speak to me of ongoing campaigns, if you would. About how many sessions do characters typically take to max out? What you do after that (new characters, postdoc play, something else)?

Time to max out (roughly):

* Given 2 hour sessions, weekly play, and End of Session procedure every 2 sessions, you're talking around 8 months.

* 4 hour sessions, weekly play, and EoS every session, you're talking around 4 months.

What happens after maxing out?

The premise of each character should be wrapping either by then or before then. If its not wrapped because there is still an important matter that needs resolving, then go with horizontal growth. DW handles breadth beautifully, but the vertical growth of characters toward the end of play will wonkify the expected AW distribution of results (with +3 primary attribute and plenty of means for "take +1") a bit. Play can still handle it, because you're throwing antagonists at the PCs that are epic tier and should be imposing a lot of soft moves on them simultaneously (some that they'll have to prioritize dealing with and others they'll just have to soak/eat/take on the chin). But Fighter's Hack & Slash, Ranger's Volley, Wizard's/Cleric's Cast a Spell. Druid's Elemental Mastery and so forth are going to be hitting 6- somewhere between 3-8 % now and 10+ somewhere around 58-70 % of the time; bell curve FUBAR.

So just generate Custom Moves for the characters that broaden their capabilities and that befit those characters evolution; Divine Boons, Epic Spells, Grandmaster Techniques, Animal Apotheosis, etc. But, "bring it home" or "land the plane" pretty quick. These games aren't meant to drag out.