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I just played my first game of DW last weekend and had a blast with the immolator. The thief kept using the charm poison move to make most of the encountered monsters feel friendly towards me then I'd basically seduce them and use the stare-into-their-eyes to enflame their passions. DM did great by ruling that trolls were amphibians. Broke that poor troll's heart as a steamy salamander. Very goofy and fun. Thief, ranger, paladin, and Immolator all seemed useful and interesting. Wizard accomplished little but a few magic missiles and turning an opponent invisible off of a fantastic failed roll. Bard did next to nothing, but that may have been the player, dunno. 9/10 will play again.
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 21:20 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 19:06 |
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Go RV! posted:Ok so, I'm starting my first game of Dungeon World, and one of my players wants to be a bear druid, that is primarily a bear but can turn into a human. Is there a playbook for primarily-a-bear or is there a way I can make that fit in Druid as written? An add-on module, Planarch Heroes, has rules for playing way-out weirdies that include replacing the race move with a Heritage move that basically lets you roll Shapeshift to get hold on yourself, at start of session and "when you invoke your rites of blood and tradition". Sounds like how you get a bear druid to me. Also don't worry about Sir Bearington horning in on Fightgar's "wreck poo poo up" territory. When Fightgar destroys an obstacle with pure strength, Fightgar picks the consequences. When Sir Bearington spends a hold on "lay frenzied waste" or whatever, you the DM pick the consequences because when Sir Bearington does that, he's letting you run him as a monster. Do keep in mind that it's one of your moves to tell them the requirements or consequences and then ask.
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 21:54 |
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I would look at the playbook The Brute, which is all about being a big scary monster and includes the phrase 'On a 6-, your mouth is full of spiders. Aaaargh!'
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 22:00 |
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deep web creep posted:Hello thread! 7 PCs is a lot for Dungeon World. I would be honest with them. Explain that you love that they're so excited and would love to run a game for them all but you're worried that it won't work well with 7. It's the group's problem as much as it is yours. But eight is enough that you could have two GMs and two parties of three, if anybody else is on for stepping up to the plate. Or you could have two short 3-player sessions with half the players spectating or playing video games or eating popcorn.
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 22:05 |
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gnome7 posted:If you want to do a straight replacement of some of the core playbooks, I'd do something like this: Why the witch and not the mage or the mage variants? E: And how do you feel the "revised" core classes compare to the ones you have written Demon_Corsair fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Apr 8, 2017 |
# ? Apr 8, 2017 05:19 |
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I'd love to hear or read a play-by-play of a dungeon world session. I feel like I'm missing something crucial in how it is run. I tried running a game for my players and maybe my style is poo poo but they couldn't get into it. They don't have roleplaying background but they have played some D&D and video games. They said they just preferred their game to be crunchy and like to play with meta stats and get treasure and so on. I felt like the narrative style wasn't clicking with them, and whenever I'd ask "what do you do" they'd usually just look at their sheet and resort to hack and slash until they'd win. I feel like dungeon world could be great but all of these extra materials and core rules don't help much. I think I'd understand better if I heard a session of people actually playing and enjoying the game. I think I understand the concepts but I'm just not able to apply them. Could be I'm just bad at improvisation. I've run D&D successfully for years, but I usually do a lot of story and world prep ready to go. Dungeon world seems to discourage this.
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 09:53 |
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Sanzuo posted:I'd love to hear or read a play-by-play of a dungeon world session. I feel like I'm missing something crucial in how it is run. I tried running a game for my players and maybe my style is poo poo but they couldn't get into it. They don't have roleplaying background but they have played some D&D and video games. They said they just preferred their game to be crunchy and like to play with meta stats and get treasure and so on. I felt like the narrative style wasn't clicking with them, and whenever I'd ask "what do you do" they'd usually just look at their sheet and resort to hack and slash until they'd win. The trick I find is to always give them something to react to, something that can't just be solved by hacking at it. "The ogre rips the tree out of the ground and hurls it at your head, what do you do?" "The birdman grabs your sword and flies out of reach, what do you do?" "The giant picks up your halfling buddy and hurls him at your head, what do you do?" "The 20 foot tusked sea-hippos are charging your wizard, he'll be squished into a fine pulp - how are you gonna save your mate?" "Whilst your party Head is trying to head off the Head of the Giants, the Giant Head pulls off his giant head and hurls it at your party Head's head - what do you do?"
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 13:51 |
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Sanzuo posted:I'd love to hear or read a play-by-play of a dungeon world session. Caveat: I haven't watched these myself, but I have seen them recommended by others, so it is all just hearsay. Maybe others can corroborate. One-shot with Adam Koebel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UGme0TVMCE&list=PLTj75n3v9eTkH1UJuEwvtCk7ih2OW7zHw MissClicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo44CRPbWLU&list=PLSOKvcIdcJJevC-0LFZKQpHq3CsE5e-7K Friends at the Table: https://friendsatthetable.net/2014/09/ Knights of the Night: http://kotnpodcast.blogspot.com/p/campaign-dungeon-world.html?m=1 Peaches and Hot Sauce podcast: http://peachesandhotsauce.com/podcasts/29-dungeon-world-part-1 Crudely Drawn Swords: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/crudely-drawn-swords Play by post example: http://www.forumopolis.com/showthread.php?t=107933
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 14:29 |
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Demon_Corsair posted:Why the witch and not the mage or the mage variants? Because they requested replacement playbooks that feel like the core playbooks, and The Witch is far closer than any of the Mage variants to a generalist spellcaster. And I have grown to dislike The Mage playbook a lot, I gave it way too much power and its too vague about everything it does. quote:E: And how do you feel the "revised" core classes compare to the ones you have written They're fine! They vary, obviously, but I haven't looked at any of em in a long time so I didn't feel like I should recommend anything blindly.
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 14:47 |
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Sanzuo posted:I'd love to hear or read a play-by-play of a dungeon world session. I feel like I'm missing something crucial in how it is run. I tried running a game for my players and maybe my style is poo poo but they couldn't get into it. They don't have roleplaying background but they have played some D&D and video games. They said they just preferred their game to be crunchy and like to play with meta stats and get treasure and so on. I felt like the narrative style wasn't clicking with them, and whenever I'd ask "what do you do" they'd usually just look at their sheet and resort to hack and slash until they'd win. I don't think it's you. They like to play the "+1, or +3 in edge case" minigame and Dungeon World does not have that.
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 15:09 |
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Sanzuo posted:I'd love to hear or read a play-by-play of a dungeon world session. I feel like I'm missing something crucial in how it is run. I tried running a game for my players and maybe my style is poo poo but they couldn't get into it. They don't have roleplaying background but they have played some D&D and video games. They said they just preferred their game to be crunchy and like to play with meta stats and get treasure and so on. I felt like the narrative style wasn't clicking with them, and whenever I'd ask "what do you do" they'd usually just look at their sheet and resort to hack and slash until they'd win. To add to what others have said - it's important to remember that you don't just Hack & Slash, it's a move that is triggered by what is happening in the fiction. If your players can't reasonably engage in melee combat they can't trigger the move. Try and see if you can get your players to describe what they're doing that is triggering Hack & Slash, put them into fights where they can't actually trigger the move until they change the fictional positioning of the situation through other moves. Dungeon World doesn't really have the numbers optimization game or the square by square positioning tactics of D&D, but you can still introduce combats that require tactical thinking and positioning to resolve.
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 15:26 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:The trick I find is to always give them something to react to, something that can't just be solved by hacking at it. This is my favorite part of dw. Throwing a problem at the players that the can't just straight murder and having no idea how they will beat it. My favorite was I put them up against a time golem when they were exploring a wizards tower. Couldn't hack and slash it since it could see a few seconds into the future and knew what your attack was going to be.
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 16:17 |
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Demon_Corsair posted:This is my favorite part of dw. Throwing a problem at the players that the can't just straight murder and having no idea how they will beat it. My favorite was I put them up against a time golem when they were exploring a wizards tower. Couldn't hack and slash it since it could see a few seconds into the future and knew what your attack was going to be. How did they beat it?
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 19:07 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:The trick I find is to always give them something to react to, something that can't just be solved by hacking at it. Yea again in these cases my players would just look at their sheets and decide the best "move" and roll. "The ogre rips the tree out of the ground and hurls it at your head, what do you do?" - I roll a defy danger to dodge it. "The birdman grabs your sword and flies out of reach, what do you do?" - I shoot him with my bow using volley "The giant picks up your halfling buddy and hurls him at your head, what do you do?" - Defy danger again "The 20 foot tusked sea-hippos are charging your wizard, he'll be squished into a fine pulp - how are you gonna save your mate?" - I use defend. How do holds work again? (We were all a little hazy on this. "Whilst your party Head is trying to head off the Head of the Giants, the Giant Head pulls off his giant head and hurls it at your party Head's head - what do you do?" - What I think that maybe they just didn't prefer the abstract style, and would have much rather had defined lists of stats and abilities. I also found it getting a little old when they were just sort of making the same stat rolls over and over again, and since stats and bonuses don't change much throughout the game it was more of the same. I tried introducing complex opponents like mechanical clockwork monsters that had a bunch of armor and couldn't effectively be attacked with mundane weapons. I was thinking "oh we're going to have to try and find some alternate way of defeating this" but it just came down to charging it with their weapons again.
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 20:13 |
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When you have hold, do you have to spend it before you roll dice, or can you hold onto it to see the roll of the dice before you spend it?
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 20:17 |
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MagnesiumB posted:To add to what others have said - it's important to remember that you don't just Hack & Slash, it's a move that is triggered by what is happening in the fiction. If your players can't reasonably engage in melee combat they can't trigger the move. This is pretty good advice and I think maybe I wasn't doing enough of this. I'm also guilty of the D&D mindset where I picture battles as this grid with characters skirmishing with one another. Another problem is I kept running out of ideas of how to mix up the strategy. That's not to say there weren't a few cool moments. One where they were in a fortified little hamlet surrounded by bandits (think seven samurai). The druid transformed into a rat, realized they could "summon other creatures of it's type" and I decided they could summon a horde of rats to attack the bandits all around. So the bandits are losing their poo poo as they are all being bitten and clawed at by rats and the players were able to hunt down the leader in the confusion. In the end though my players just told me they were bored with the game and would rather just play D&D.
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 20:20 |
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Sanzuo posted:"The giant picks up your halfling buddy and hurls him at your head, what do you do?" Don't move on until they tell you what they're doing. The move names should basically never actually come up in the conversation unless someone doesn't realize that they're supposed to be making a roll. To use this example, how are they defying danger? That'll determine what stat they're rolling; if it's +CON, then maybe on a 7-9, the players are unharmed, but the two of them are now a tangled mass of limbs, giving the giant a chance to close the distance and get in swinging range, but a 10+ means the target player is fine, but the halfling now has to figure out how they're gonna fare against what is essentially an immovable object. Or maybe they roll +STR and on a 7-9 they manage to catch the halfling, but a 10+ lets them redirect the halfling's momentum so they can fastball special the halfling right back. Poops Mcgoots fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Apr 8, 2017 |
# ? Apr 8, 2017 20:34 |
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Poops Mcgoots posted:Don't move on until they tell you what they're doing. Yea I was making an effort to do this, telling them to tell me what their character was going to do. But it would mostly just come up with them searching their moves list and announcing their move. Sometimes the player with the high CON would just try and game ways to use their con in situations where it didn't make much sense. "I want to defy danger with my CON to withstand the sword blow." "I want to use my CON to push through the crowd of enemies." In those situations it seems to me DEX (dodging the sword) or STR (Pushing through) would have been more appropriate. "Okay roll defy danger+Dex to dodge." - "Hm but I want to use my CON"
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 20:51 |
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Thats a common trap I think a lot of players end up in, you really just have to explain in no uncertain terms that "Moves" are not actions they can declare, and that their fiction is the important thing. poo poo ban them from saying stat names or move names if you have to but if they don't get that mindset out of their heads, DW will be a boring game for them In the example you give ask "How" and make them explain to you what their character does specifically to do that.
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# ? Apr 8, 2017 21:00 |
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ask them if they can take a moment to search their bags for that CON item they seem so keen on using and if they do end up finding it, guess that's a resource the GM can take away next time they gently caress up. sorry dude the goblin peed on your shoes and you dropped your CON I don't know if you mentioned this but you might want to switch from saying "What do you do?" to "What does Falcor the Unflinching do?" for a while or, and it kind of sucks to say this, DW might not be the game for your group Babe Magnet fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Apr 9, 2017 |
# ? Apr 9, 2017 02:39 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:How did they beat it? Pretty sure each player attacked one of the four arms simultaneously while the cleric prayed to his god (conveniently the god of time) who took him out of time entirely long enough for him to grab the scroll from the golems mouth to deactivate it while it was distracted by the other players.
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# ? Apr 9, 2017 03:39 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:"Whilst your party Head is trying to head off the Head of the Giants, the Giant Head pulls off his giant head and hurls it at your party Head's head - what do you do?" This only works if your group likes head games.
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# ? Apr 9, 2017 04:42 |
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Dungeon World's Defy Danger is one of the worst things about the game. Combat is a nigh-never-ending stream of players trying to claim the use of their primary stat.
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# ? Apr 9, 2017 05:43 |
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I'm really surprised that there weren't more heroic fantasy aw hacks. I figure someone would have tried to de-d&d fantasy aw. Only one I can think of is fellowship.
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# ? Apr 9, 2017 07:28 |
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How does everyone handle rations? I think if you are out of rations you simply can't use the make camp move. But what if you need to travel? Are you stranded? How long until you die of malnourishment? Does it matter?
Sanzuo fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Apr 9, 2017 |
# ? Apr 9, 2017 07:31 |
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Yeah, I do have to keep on reminding my players: "Physically, what is actually happening here? What do the other character see happen?" It's an uphill struggle, but you do have to put your foot down and refuse to roll any dice until a player describes what they are doing.
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# ? Apr 9, 2017 08:39 |
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Sanzuo posted:How does everyone handle rations? I think if you are out of rations you simply can't use the make camp move. But what if you need to travel? Are you stranded? How long until you die of malnourishment? Does it matter? Begin and end with the fiction: What happens if you run out of food in the wild for real? You'd have to hunt or forage for food. Roleplay it. Think dangerous: What happens, logically, if they don't have any rations and can't find food for some reason? Sounds like a good opportunity to reveal an unwelcome truth: "You can make camp without food, but without nourishment, you can't reap all the benefits. Cleric, you can either heal HP overnight or refresh your spells overnight." And if they decide to go hunt or forage, think offscreen, too and show signs of approaching threats. What else lives in the woods? What's following the ranger while he tracks that deer? Maybe those mushrooms the wizard picked are poisonous... or worse, hallucinogenic. Don't you want to roleplay each character's hosed up mushroom trip? I do. I'd handle being out of rations the same way I'd handle anything as GM: every situation is an opportunity to fill the characters' lives with adventure.
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# ? Apr 9, 2017 16:45 |
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Sanzuo posted:How does everyone handle rations? I think if you are out of rations you simply can't use the make camp move. But what if you need to travel? Are you stranded? How long until you die of malnourishment? Does it matter? Honestly unless it's super relevant to the fiction like being stranded somewhere or being trapped in a dungeon I don't ever bother with rations. I tend to have a more heroic high fantasy style of play where details like that just don't matter to the group most of the time.
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# ? Apr 9, 2017 17:49 |
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Demon_Corsair posted:I'm really surprised that there weren't more heroic fantasy aw hacks. I figure someone would have tried to de-d&d fantasy aw. I've been doing a playtest of the core concepts of this for a little bit. I posted about it in the PbtA thread a while back, but didn't get much traction.
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# ? Apr 10, 2017 06:52 |
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Making Seize by Force a hold move is really interesting, I'd like to see how that works out in play.
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# ? Apr 10, 2017 07:14 |
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rumble in the bunghole posted:Making Seize by Force a hold move is really interesting, I'd like to see how that works out in play. To be fully transparent, the basic structure of the combat move is taken from A Storm Eternal. So far, it's worked out well. In addition to the PCs having moves to influence combat spending, I have experimented with monsters that have abilities that affect resolution (for example I had a monster that emitted spores that always counted as +1 to winning). The way combats with multiple combatants resolve has been kinda fun too, although the test game is one player with 3 PCs so he has an easier time co-ordinaing. The idea is to try and add a semi-tactical layer to combat. Edit: I think I was playing Mouseguard when I had the original idea too, so I think that seeped in there. thefakenews fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Apr 10, 2017 |
# ? Apr 10, 2017 07:55 |
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Demon_Corsair posted:I'm really surprised that there weren't more heroic fantasy aw hacks. I figure someone would have tried to de-d&d fantasy aw.
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# ? Apr 10, 2017 16:54 |
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zarathud posted:Caveat: I haven't watched these myself, but I have seen them recommended by others, so it is all just hearsay. Maybe others can corroborate. To add to this: Adam Koebel runs Dungeon World for the very cool and goofy Waypoint crew. https://youtu.be/qQx4pNVq8Xc. It's a wacky gonzo time.
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# ? Apr 11, 2017 00:44 |
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I'm starting up a game of Dungeon World after pitching a bunch of systems and have not even done the first session stuff yet. I gave them all a pile of playbooks to choose from and folks chose Dashing hero http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/112061/The-Dashing-Hero---A-Dungeon-World-Playbook http://www.mediafire.com/view/?5ll5p66cp36xn33 "City" Thief https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B30fzv28XdrYNjRwTXN6TzhWZ1E/edit Witch http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/113399/The-Witch---A-Dungeon-World-Playbook http://www.mediafire.com/view/?b1a55skq0dk9k1c Elementalist http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/129989/Johnstones-Dungeon-World-Character-Classes I'm a smidge worried that the elementalist steps on the toes of the Witch. I didn't really notice that the Witch had elemental affinities as part of their thing, too. Folks have not even worked to go through their character sheets and pick stuff, but do you think I should tweak some of the witch or elementalist details to make them a bit more divergent?
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# ? Apr 16, 2017 03:36 |
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The Lemondrop Dandy posted:I'm starting up a game of Dungeon World after pitching a bunch of systems and have not even done the first session stuff yet. I gave them all a pile of playbooks to choose from and folks chose As long as you encourage your players to narrate and describe their effects, you should be fine. If you notice an overlap in both characters using a fire spell or something like that, make sure you ask questions that lead the players towards a more unique or character appropriate answer. If the witch/elementalist is giving bland descriptions, ask "Okay, Witch draws her fire from an unholy spell, Elementalist, what does your fiery attack look like? Is it drawn from your body? or the earth?" I find the most important part of getting newer players involved is to just be polite and persistent with asking for details and specificity from them. If their details end up a bit bland, celebrate them and maybe shine them up a bit, but usually by the end of the first session I've been able to get a new player to give me at least one wonderful description of an action or skill.
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# ? Apr 16, 2017 09:43 |
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TheTofuShop posted:As long as you encourage your players to narrate and describe their effects, you should be fine. If you notice an overlap in both characters using a fire spell or something like that, make sure you ask questions that lead the players towards a more unique or character appropriate answer. If the witch/elementalist is giving bland descriptions, ask "Okay, Witch draws her fire from an unholy spell, Elementalist, what does your fiery attack look like? Is it drawn from your body? or the earth?" Cool, that makes sense. Thanks for the advice/reassurance!
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# ? Apr 16, 2017 15:39 |
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1st session went well; drawing a map lots of fun. Starting folks out with a mostly predrawn dungeon, but changing/adding stuff on the fly. Mostly taking stuff from j. Metzger's Lair of the Unknown and Lampblack and Brimstone's monster thing. The owlbats were well received in particular. Ended the session on evidence of rival adventurers coming to a bad end in the absurd dungeon that they're in.
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# ? Apr 22, 2017 17:54 |
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I'm about to kick off my first DW campaign and I'm looking forward to the challenge. I've GM'd dozens of campaigns over a few decades but all in hard crunch systems. With all of the on the fly development of hooks and facts, what tools do you all use to keep track of the ever-growing fiction? I use Roll20 as a digital tabletop on a TV during our games to handle maps, music, handouts and the like but I'm wondering about a tool for general note keeping and organization which Roll20 isn't great at.
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# ? Apr 22, 2017 21:43 |
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I just started too, and I liked scribbling notes all over the big "overland" map that we made while doing the "ask questions" part of the first session stuff. I had a bunch of prepared stuff for the first adventure/dungeon but will be using more of the worldbuilding stuff that the players contributed on for later adventures. For newbie DW DMs, I think having a "traditional" DnD style adventure (with big holes available to improve or expand in!) Is a nice stepping stone to doing more improvised player-guided stuff in following sessions. Getting momentum going is a big help and improvisation can be hard for some folks, like me. Just so long as you still fit with the guiding principles (play to find out what happens, create a fantastic world, and fill character's lives with adventure) you should be in good shape. The GM sheet with fronts and dangers is also helpful.
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# ? Apr 22, 2017 22:34 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 19:06 |
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TKIY posted:I'm about to kick off my first DW campaign and I'm looking forward to the challenge. I've GM'd dozens of campaigns over a few decades but all in hard crunch systems. This is pretty much what Obsidian Portal is designed for.
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# ? Apr 22, 2017 22:57 |