EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
A few things.
1. Such difficulties, at least the way you've described them, simply don't happen in practice. If, as intended, a game of this kind starts out as "no myth," nothing is established unless it is discussed, openly, during Session Zero. Nothing, full stop--doesn't mean there isn't anything there at all, just means the group knows nothing about it. So if you never actually said that XYZ thing was part of the world...it's not (but potentially could be, if it makes sense.) And if you do say it, everyone can comment and discuss, so there's little to no issue. No one is sitting off in their own little corner tooling up everything totally in isolation.
2. Correct me if I'm wrong: it sounds like you read the previous stuff as "15% of everything that can ever be learned, ever." Not my intent. I meant more "15% of starting material," because you are not supposed to nail down the whole world in DW. E.g., a player (call her Alice) says her char came from Harlingast, bustling small city aspiring higher, partly due to the prestigious magic college, which the char (call 'em Perry Haughter) attends(/attended.) That by itself could be everything Alice contributes at Session Zero--I'd be quite happy. Thereafter, if Harlingast details are relevant, I have both informal ("ask questions and use the answers") and formal (the Spout Lore move) ways for player and/or GM to expand this in the open. I can also safely prep situations ("draw maps, leave blanks"--no plots, but events/conditions/etc.) that leverage Harlingast, knowing at least Perry will care about them, and the players get to explore.
3. If you don't have some kind of conversation like this--where the players discuss what they care about, what they wish to play, what values they have, what kinds of stories and/or story-beats they enjoy, what elements excite them--how do you as DM have any guess as to what they'll like? Obviously, if you've been playing with a group for a long time that's useful evidence. Thing is, that is (in effect) treating all your past history with them as an unofficial, implied Session Zero that they can't alter or comment on, thus leaving lots of potential land mines. Wouldn't it be better to sit down with them, and talk, at least at a high/abstract level, about the kinds of things they want and, perhaps, things required or implied? E.g., if one of your players wants to play a Wizard, stereotypically that means they had to get an education from somewhere--so where? Sure, you could write up the whole school all by yourself, but the player must have at least a few ideas about what that school must have been like to attend. Same goes for other characters: a Rogue likely had to practice their skills on the streets, so how did that happen, where, why, etc.? A Fighter had to learn the art of the sword, even if self-taught, so how did that happen, where, why, etc.? These things become seeds. Even if most of the backdrop of the world is ultimately written by the DM, the tendrils that grow from those seeds will spread and likely end up touching many parts of the game, almost always in ways no one (not even the players) expected initially--meaning even stuff you personally created can still lead to "discovery" and "exploration," not just flat, fiat declaration.
Then Dungeon World probably isn't for them. In much the same way that bog-standard 5e isn't for someone who wants a cyberpunk game. If you hack the game enough, you can support it (that would be "Sixth World," in PbtA terms, the hack that implements Shadowrun in this system), but...to hack it enough to get to that point, you'd be inventing a new game, not playing the original one.
1, 3, 4, 5 (despite the statement of "non-adventure-related"), 7, and 8 are all adventure activities in Dungeon World terms. Going to somewhere that you have no idea what's there? That's (pretty clearly) Undertake a Perilous Journey--if the area is genuinely uncharted, that almost certainly means it's at least tough to reach or has something dangerous in it. That's an adventure, even if it's not of the stereotypical "delve into a murder-hole" type. Building a safe place is also totally an adventure. Baseline Dungeon World has rules for "Steadings," and another PbtA game called Stonetop is all about this sort of thing, so if the Steading rules are insufficient, you can probably burgle bits from Stonetop too.
I personally love few things more than "digging into the history or significance of items found while adventuring," so you 110% have my support on that front. One of my players is an anthropologist by training, so those sorts of questions are always up for discussion, and we have discovered a great many things along the way because of it.
The only two that might be not-exactly-adventuring are 2 and 6. 2 because "settle down and protect my family and nothing else" is...well, it's kind of a retirement condition for a D&D character. You don't go on adventures at all anymore, you're too busy being a spouse or parent, taking care of domestic issues, etc. Much like actually becoming properly the monarch of a realm or the like, where you have too many responsibilities to be delving into murder-holes.
6 is...more complicated. I enjoy these adventures, and have been including them in my game. However, the extant DW rules are a little thin for supporting this. I've done a handful of alterations (e.g., expanding what things qualify for the End of Session XP sources), and am continuing to look for ways to better support it. So, I certainly approve of this kind of adventuring, but I recognize that Dungeon World is not necessarily the best option for doing so.
You would never have a DW GM saying that. Like...absolutely not ever. Instead, you would have something like the following. (spoilered for length)
Perry: "Alright, that's all my shopping done. Darren, you finished with your meditations?"
Darren: "Yes. The Platinum Dragon flows."
Kara: "I'm...going to assume that's a go. Village mayor already paid us, so unless there's anything else people want to do...?"
Jaan: (shakes head) "Adventure calls!"
GM: "Indeed it does. You guys are packed up. The horses are fed, the pack mule is loaded, a village full of bittersweet goodbyes (and perhaps a couple admirers) is almost at your back. What do you do?"
Perry: "Well, I've been looking at maps the local priest had of the surrounding area. There's a spot north of here, toward the mountains, that nobody knew anything about--that's what we found out just before we wrapped things up there. Sounds mysterious!"
Jaan: "And mysteries are full of adventure!"
GM: "Well then. Kara, your people come from mountains, just not these ones. What does a dwarf do, when exploring new Stone?"
Kara: "We...do something we don't normally do, like, ever: We climb to the top of the tallest tree, and have a lookabout."
GM: "Have you done such a climb yourself?"
Kara: "No, but my father did, when he was young. He taught me the ways, after he knew he wouldn't be able to stop me from traveling. A dwarf is short and stout, you don't scramble up the tree like a kn--er, an elf." (winks at Jaan, who laughs) "You have to use superior leverage. Ropes. Counterweights."
GM: "Alright. You're able to find a mighty pine, not the tallest tree you've ever seen but certainly the tallest for miles around. Mark off your use of adventuring gear, then give me a Defy Danger with Strength--like you said, you've only been taught in theory."
Kara: (rolls: 9) "Alright. What's the damage?"
GM: "The tree is bigger than you thought--the rope you've got isn't enough to get you all the way up. This far off the ground, you feel a little dizzy--if you go the rest of the way with no rope, you'll definitely be feeling it for a few hours. Or you can try to survey what you can from where you're at, but you won't have the full picture."
Kara: "Damn. Alright, I go the whole way. Dad wouldn't approve of breaking tradition, but he'd approve even less of leaving a job half-done."
GM: "Alright. You're going to feel Sick, -1 CON, until you get a good night's sleep. From the treetops, you can see that there's more than meets the eye about this mountain, because...."
Darren: "Yes. The Platinum Dragon flows."
Kara: "I'm...going to assume that's a go. Village mayor already paid us, so unless there's anything else people want to do...?"
Jaan: (shakes head) "Adventure calls!"
GM: "Indeed it does. You guys are packed up. The horses are fed, the pack mule is loaded, a village full of bittersweet goodbyes (and perhaps a couple admirers) is almost at your back. What do you do?"
Perry: "Well, I've been looking at maps the local priest had of the surrounding area. There's a spot north of here, toward the mountains, that nobody knew anything about--that's what we found out just before we wrapped things up there. Sounds mysterious!"
Jaan: "And mysteries are full of adventure!"
GM: "Well then. Kara, your people come from mountains, just not these ones. What does a dwarf do, when exploring new Stone?"
Kara: "We...do something we don't normally do, like, ever: We climb to the top of the tallest tree, and have a lookabout."
GM: "Have you done such a climb yourself?"
Kara: "No, but my father did, when he was young. He taught me the ways, after he knew he wouldn't be able to stop me from traveling. A dwarf is short and stout, you don't scramble up the tree like a kn--er, an elf." (winks at Jaan, who laughs) "You have to use superior leverage. Ropes. Counterweights."
GM: "Alright. You're able to find a mighty pine, not the tallest tree you've ever seen but certainly the tallest for miles around. Mark off your use of adventuring gear, then give me a Defy Danger with Strength--like you said, you've only been taught in theory."
Kara: (rolls: 9) "Alright. What's the damage?"
GM: "The tree is bigger than you thought--the rope you've got isn't enough to get you all the way up. This far off the ground, you feel a little dizzy--if you go the rest of the way with no rope, you'll definitely be feeling it for a few hours. Or you can try to survey what you can from where you're at, but you won't have the full picture."
Kara: "Damn. Alright, I go the whole way. Dad wouldn't approve of breaking tradition, but he'd approve even less of leaving a job half-done."
GM: "Alright. You're going to feel Sick, -1 CON, until you get a good night's sleep. From the treetops, you can see that there's more than meets the eye about this mountain, because...."
And from there, new things are learned. Most likely, the party will Undertake a Perilous Journey to get to whatever's on the mountain, which will introduce all sorts of new things, and then there will be adventure on the mountain. Notice, the player created multiple things here (dwarven history, climbing techniques, personal connections), and yet all of it was in service to discovery. Filling in that blank on the map--which the GM likely did not have anything prepared for, originally--is part of the process of play, driven forward by player actions, but not simply one player narrating the full information about it. That's how Dungeon World works, like any PbtA game.
