Hi!
Since a while in my 5e group we are doing a little experiment "5e meets Dungeonworld" by applying some of the ideas from the gamesystem "Dungeonworld" to 5e. We do NOT use the game system Dungeonworld, but instead we just apply some of it's "principles" and core ideas while using DnD 5e rules as the game system.
The only of us who ever played the game system "Dungeonworld" was NOT impressed by the system and told
us 5e is much better as game system (his idea was it to "import some ideas into 5e").
While I was in the beginning very sceptic on this way of gamemastering vs. traditional gamemastering, here is a short report on the results, maybe interesting for other people as well.
How it works:
"Getting the scenery"
The GM asks the players what they want to play today. For example they might want to play something related to an event in the backstory of their characters, or hunt a specific antagonist, who escaped them in the last session or safe the life of a specific NPC. What the players tell there is usually not in detail (the details will be done by the GM, the players can't dictate that), but they give the direction what they would like to play, so the GM can work from there. In this way of playing it is very important that the players play "the story they want to play, not some scripted story which has nothing to do with their characters. The backstories are actually interwoven into the campaign. The backstories together IS the campaign. While in traditional style often the backstory only comes in as a side-thing while the "adventure" the GM prepared is the main thing in traditional GMing.
"How to start"
The GM presents a situation. The situation is usually NOT scripted out. The GM asks the players to "fill it out".
Usually there is some "gap" between where the players where last time and where they start next time, they
start in the middle of the action. Here is an example:
GM: "You are standing in a side-street in a city in Thay. In front of you there is a man lying in the street, lightly bleeding. Who is this man? Why was he hit? And what have you to do with him?"
Paladin: "Well, I hit him of course! He is a red wizard of Thay. He works for my arch-nemesis and I definitely
will get some answers from him now!"
Rogue: "As you know I am looking for my parents who were abducted by Thayan Slavers. This guy is involved in the slavetrade and might know where they are. Paladin was trying to get it out of the guy. And I joined forces with Paladin and promised to help him against his arch nemesis, the highpriest of Bane."
Usually the start-scene is an action-scene though not needingly a combat encounter.
"Do NOT prepare a story"
Instead of preparing a "script" you just prepare NPCs (and yes, maybe some initial events as outlined above).
After that it is all up to what the players do, what the antagonists do - and the dice rolls of course (see below).
And the antagonists need to react. They are NOT things who wait for the characters to arrive and slay them - when the characters do something - they react!
"Fail Forward"
*Never* say "what you try to do fails", even if the player rolls a 1. This can be applied in several ways, good things are often that something unexpected happens which modifies the outcome, that the antagonist makes a "move" at exactly this time or that some other things happen. It is for this way of doing it important that only ONE character rolls for any event. And it is always the character where the player said he is doing something.
"Hard Move" and "Good Dice Results"
If a player had a really bad dice result (in 5e we did it like if D20+Skill rooll was 5 or smaller, with an even worse result if it was a natural 1), the GM does a "hard move". A "hard move" can mean that the situation is even worse than what the players thought it is. Or that an antagonist does a move. Or that something (bad)
unexpected happens. Characteristic for this system is that many things are not pre-scripted but "come to be" by dice-rolls. Often they only exist due to players investigating them.
We had for example this duke of Cormyr, where the players suspected he might be charmed by a spell, so they examined (using an Arcana check). Sadly the Sorceress rolled 1 on the Arcana check. In this system this does NOT mean she failed to examine the Duke or NOT that the GM gives them false information - actually the guidelines say the GM should NEVER lie to the players!!! Instead it meant the sorceress found out something really bad about the Duke - in this case it was that he was terminally ill with a "magical curse" and only had a few days left to live (though he tried to hide it). This of course had a HUGE influence on the whole plot as you can imagine (there was a hostile army before the gates...).
"Hard Moves" can screw up player plans seriously - but can also be fun. It CAN be a bit of an issue if some players tend to roll on abilities where they are really bad in (like -1 or +0 values), this has a much higher chance in provoking "Hard Moves". Some players who find this funny might even provoke such screwing up by using such abilities often (I heard a story about a game session where in the end the GM said "I am tired of punishing HIS character for YOUR bad rolls - now YOU get it!")
Basically the story evolves by the "Hard Moves", by the reaction of the antagonists to the player's plans and by what the characters do - the same way a bad result forms the story it works for good results, a player might tell "my character once read a legend about a magic sword that was specifically created to defeat THIS dragon we have trouble with - the player rolls History and gets a result of 23 - means it is exactly like the player claims! (Of course with some reason... if the GM says no way this works, then it doesn't... but usually it should be...).
A very specific way in this type of game is that NOTHING is "safe". Everything in the gameworld or backstories can change based on these dice results. You cannot stick to lore, especially, though the GM has of course his way to influence the direction into which everything goes. But if the duke has this terminal illness due to the bad dice roll of the sorceress - then this overrides that in the campaign book it is written this Duke will still be Duke in 20 years or whatever...
Sometimes it can be problematic if the Dice-based Screwup seriously messes up the backstory of a character - the recommendation is to still go with the story as it "flows". Still it is of course possible (we had that once) that if a player is too uncomfortable with an outcome to influence it a bit so the player still has fun (like a player playsa Paladin who is very serious about his believes, and suddenly due to a few bad dice results get gets hunted as a traitor of his order - not everyone wants to play that), the influence not being to revert what happened, but instead to give him scenes where he can redeem himselves or even downplay some situations.
Here the GMs experience is asked for.
But even that should only be rarely done, only if it would be a gamebreaker for some player (have to admit something like that once happened to me, and I was happy about the scene the GM who noticed that gave me then ^^)
"Partial Successes"
If you for example (as the GM) have set 20 as success, then a 15 would not be a failure but a "partial success". This means the character achieved SOME of what he wanted, but not all. Or he needs to make a DECISION (the players hunt a certain villain, and roll Survival to get on his track... they find the track, but ALSO they find that a camp of villagers is attacked by orcs just in this area - and either they can allow the villain get away and fight the orcs, or they can let the villagers die and catch the villain - but maybe they have an idea how they could achieve both?)
The (Non-)Role of Scripting
As mentioned above NOTHING is "safe". Neither the backstory of the characters nor that your (as the GM) favourite villain is not killed on first encounter with the characters. We once had the situation where the characters needed magic oil which the rebels in their fortress had (to destroy a bridge with the burning oil). When they arrived a character rolled perception - the 1. The GM decided that they arrived just when the last dozen of the rebels was cut down by the enemy army who had found (due to the 1) the hideout of the
rebels. Suddenly the situation changed majorly... No Scripted events!
Names
If in the story a name comes up (for example of a city) very often it is dealt with like "okay, you come from this city - what's the name of the city?" meaning not the GM invents the name but the player who currently connects something to his backstory. Many GMs use "name tables" to have names ready for unplanned NPCs appearing. Personally I do not like name tables - I want not to know if the NPC I meet was "planned" or "unplanned". If he consults his name table I know he was unplanned...
My Comment
The system has several advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes it feels a bit "butterfly effect"-y. Might depend a bit on the group how heavily, of course.
- Advantage: Players can play the stories they WANT to play
- Advantage: The backstory of the characters plays the MAINROLE instead of a SIDEROLE (in the example above for example the red mage the Paladin beat up had a big story
with the nemesis of the Paladin, a Cleric of Bane, as it turned out)
- Advantage: GM's need much less time to prepare for the game evening
- Advantage: It is easier to GM in this system (though probably harder to "reach perfection")
- Advantage: No boring "you fail" situations anymore
- Advantage: Players have the feeling their character matters, and does not follow the rails... very often the story leads somewhere what definitely no GM has preimagined
- Disadvantage: If you like "fixed lore" say goodbye to it in this system
- Disadvantage: A series of bad rolls can lead to uncomfortable situations for players and GM
- Disadvantage: It probably needs more experience by the players
- Disadvantage: If you have many players who have no clue about the gameworld you play in you can get quite some deviation from "official" lore (though the GM still has
some influence where the story leads... "our" Thay for example is still fairly similar to official Thay, but still some big differences)
- That "anything can fall" is both disadvantage and advantage, depending on where you stand
- The system seems to lead to less battles, if this is an advantage or disadvantage you need to decide for yourselves (due to a fail not always meaning a fail but the
story moves forward)
If this is for you, you need to decide yourselves! BTW: Doesn't work with most prepublished adventures... most of them use scripting too heavily... with this system if they
write "at that time this and that NPC meets with the PCs at thisandthat place" with this system you don't even know if at that time "that place" still exists or if it maybe
was destroyed ;-)
Best regards,
Steffen
Since a while in my 5e group we are doing a little experiment "5e meets Dungeonworld" by applying some of the ideas from the gamesystem "Dungeonworld" to 5e. We do NOT use the game system Dungeonworld, but instead we just apply some of it's "principles" and core ideas while using DnD 5e rules as the game system.
The only of us who ever played the game system "Dungeonworld" was NOT impressed by the system and told
us 5e is much better as game system (his idea was it to "import some ideas into 5e").
While I was in the beginning very sceptic on this way of gamemastering vs. traditional gamemastering, here is a short report on the results, maybe interesting for other people as well.
How it works:
"Getting the scenery"
The GM asks the players what they want to play today. For example they might want to play something related to an event in the backstory of their characters, or hunt a specific antagonist, who escaped them in the last session or safe the life of a specific NPC. What the players tell there is usually not in detail (the details will be done by the GM, the players can't dictate that), but they give the direction what they would like to play, so the GM can work from there. In this way of playing it is very important that the players play "the story they want to play, not some scripted story which has nothing to do with their characters. The backstories are actually interwoven into the campaign. The backstories together IS the campaign. While in traditional style often the backstory only comes in as a side-thing while the "adventure" the GM prepared is the main thing in traditional GMing.
"How to start"
The GM presents a situation. The situation is usually NOT scripted out. The GM asks the players to "fill it out".
Usually there is some "gap" between where the players where last time and where they start next time, they
start in the middle of the action. Here is an example:
GM: "You are standing in a side-street in a city in Thay. In front of you there is a man lying in the street, lightly bleeding. Who is this man? Why was he hit? And what have you to do with him?"
Paladin: "Well, I hit him of course! He is a red wizard of Thay. He works for my arch-nemesis and I definitely
will get some answers from him now!"
Rogue: "As you know I am looking for my parents who were abducted by Thayan Slavers. This guy is involved in the slavetrade and might know where they are. Paladin was trying to get it out of the guy. And I joined forces with Paladin and promised to help him against his arch nemesis, the highpriest of Bane."
Usually the start-scene is an action-scene though not needingly a combat encounter.
"Do NOT prepare a story"
Instead of preparing a "script" you just prepare NPCs (and yes, maybe some initial events as outlined above).
After that it is all up to what the players do, what the antagonists do - and the dice rolls of course (see below).
And the antagonists need to react. They are NOT things who wait for the characters to arrive and slay them - when the characters do something - they react!
"Fail Forward"
*Never* say "what you try to do fails", even if the player rolls a 1. This can be applied in several ways, good things are often that something unexpected happens which modifies the outcome, that the antagonist makes a "move" at exactly this time or that some other things happen. It is for this way of doing it important that only ONE character rolls for any event. And it is always the character where the player said he is doing something.
"Hard Move" and "Good Dice Results"
If a player had a really bad dice result (in 5e we did it like if D20+Skill rooll was 5 or smaller, with an even worse result if it was a natural 1), the GM does a "hard move". A "hard move" can mean that the situation is even worse than what the players thought it is. Or that an antagonist does a move. Or that something (bad)
unexpected happens. Characteristic for this system is that many things are not pre-scripted but "come to be" by dice-rolls. Often they only exist due to players investigating them.
We had for example this duke of Cormyr, where the players suspected he might be charmed by a spell, so they examined (using an Arcana check). Sadly the Sorceress rolled 1 on the Arcana check. In this system this does NOT mean she failed to examine the Duke or NOT that the GM gives them false information - actually the guidelines say the GM should NEVER lie to the players!!! Instead it meant the sorceress found out something really bad about the Duke - in this case it was that he was terminally ill with a "magical curse" and only had a few days left to live (though he tried to hide it). This of course had a HUGE influence on the whole plot as you can imagine (there was a hostile army before the gates...).
"Hard Moves" can screw up player plans seriously - but can also be fun. It CAN be a bit of an issue if some players tend to roll on abilities where they are really bad in (like -1 or +0 values), this has a much higher chance in provoking "Hard Moves". Some players who find this funny might even provoke such screwing up by using such abilities often (I heard a story about a game session where in the end the GM said "I am tired of punishing HIS character for YOUR bad rolls - now YOU get it!")
Basically the story evolves by the "Hard Moves", by the reaction of the antagonists to the player's plans and by what the characters do - the same way a bad result forms the story it works for good results, a player might tell "my character once read a legend about a magic sword that was specifically created to defeat THIS dragon we have trouble with - the player rolls History and gets a result of 23 - means it is exactly like the player claims! (Of course with some reason... if the GM says no way this works, then it doesn't... but usually it should be...).
A very specific way in this type of game is that NOTHING is "safe". Everything in the gameworld or backstories can change based on these dice results. You cannot stick to lore, especially, though the GM has of course his way to influence the direction into which everything goes. But if the duke has this terminal illness due to the bad dice roll of the sorceress - then this overrides that in the campaign book it is written this Duke will still be Duke in 20 years or whatever...
Sometimes it can be problematic if the Dice-based Screwup seriously messes up the backstory of a character - the recommendation is to still go with the story as it "flows". Still it is of course possible (we had that once) that if a player is too uncomfortable with an outcome to influence it a bit so the player still has fun (like a player playsa Paladin who is very serious about his believes, and suddenly due to a few bad dice results get gets hunted as a traitor of his order - not everyone wants to play that), the influence not being to revert what happened, but instead to give him scenes where he can redeem himselves or even downplay some situations.
Here the GMs experience is asked for.
But even that should only be rarely done, only if it would be a gamebreaker for some player (have to admit something like that once happened to me, and I was happy about the scene the GM who noticed that gave me then ^^)
"Partial Successes"
If you for example (as the GM) have set 20 as success, then a 15 would not be a failure but a "partial success". This means the character achieved SOME of what he wanted, but not all. Or he needs to make a DECISION (the players hunt a certain villain, and roll Survival to get on his track... they find the track, but ALSO they find that a camp of villagers is attacked by orcs just in this area - and either they can allow the villain get away and fight the orcs, or they can let the villagers die and catch the villain - but maybe they have an idea how they could achieve both?)
The (Non-)Role of Scripting
As mentioned above NOTHING is "safe". Neither the backstory of the characters nor that your (as the GM) favourite villain is not killed on first encounter with the characters. We once had the situation where the characters needed magic oil which the rebels in their fortress had (to destroy a bridge with the burning oil). When they arrived a character rolled perception - the 1. The GM decided that they arrived just when the last dozen of the rebels was cut down by the enemy army who had found (due to the 1) the hideout of the
rebels. Suddenly the situation changed majorly... No Scripted events!
Names
If in the story a name comes up (for example of a city) very often it is dealt with like "okay, you come from this city - what's the name of the city?" meaning not the GM invents the name but the player who currently connects something to his backstory. Many GMs use "name tables" to have names ready for unplanned NPCs appearing. Personally I do not like name tables - I want not to know if the NPC I meet was "planned" or "unplanned". If he consults his name table I know he was unplanned...
My Comment
The system has several advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes it feels a bit "butterfly effect"-y. Might depend a bit on the group how heavily, of course.
- Advantage: Players can play the stories they WANT to play
- Advantage: The backstory of the characters plays the MAINROLE instead of a SIDEROLE (in the example above for example the red mage the Paladin beat up had a big story
with the nemesis of the Paladin, a Cleric of Bane, as it turned out)
- Advantage: GM's need much less time to prepare for the game evening
- Advantage: It is easier to GM in this system (though probably harder to "reach perfection")
- Advantage: No boring "you fail" situations anymore
- Advantage: Players have the feeling their character matters, and does not follow the rails... very often the story leads somewhere what definitely no GM has preimagined
- Disadvantage: If you like "fixed lore" say goodbye to it in this system
- Disadvantage: A series of bad rolls can lead to uncomfortable situations for players and GM
- Disadvantage: It probably needs more experience by the players
- Disadvantage: If you have many players who have no clue about the gameworld you play in you can get quite some deviation from "official" lore (though the GM still has
some influence where the story leads... "our" Thay for example is still fairly similar to official Thay, but still some big differences)
- That "anything can fall" is both disadvantage and advantage, depending on where you stand
- The system seems to lead to less battles, if this is an advantage or disadvantage you need to decide for yourselves (due to a fail not always meaning a fail but the
story moves forward)
If this is for you, you need to decide yourselves! BTW: Doesn't work with most prepublished adventures... most of them use scripting too heavily... with this system if they
write "at that time this and that NPC meets with the PCs at thisandthat place" with this system you don't even know if at that time "that place" still exists or if it maybe
was destroyed ;-)
Best regards,
Steffen
)
