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Pollyanna posted:That works beautifully! Clock + related threats is good enough to get something going. The one thing is though, does this clock also advance off-screen, or does it have to advance as a result of what happens right then in the fiction? It'd probably be kinda lovely to say "sorry, you didn't get a chance to save your Grandmaster cause you were occupied with this other front I threw at you". Should I only advance that clock when the PC has a chance to prevent it? If you like, you can think of clocks as a nautilus shell. Three big segments, three littler segments, and then even more triplets of littler and littler segments, too tiny to be relevant at big scale. For a personal story clock that you might not be running against directly, the three big ticks on the outside can happen in the GM's own pace, but once the littler segments are all that left's it becomes its own adventure with its own momentum, which you can start pursuing as long as there are littler ticks remaining and you'll start "one clock down" with the proper number of big ticks already gone. When all the original segments fill up, the embedded adventure is all out of big ticks, and the doom gets worse without you there to stop it and comes to pass.
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Jan 31, 2019 04:26
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Oh poo poo, the nested clocks thing makes so much sense. I was wondering why I was having so much trouble going from Grim Portent #1 to Grim Portent #2, but if I can put a clock between them and spec out the steps I'd have to take to go from A to B, then that might make things easier. I don't want to write everything out in the beginning, though... I'm totally gonna make clocks for these guys! One of the players (the one that was thinking of rerolling, actually) is really responsive about his character and what the hell's going on with them and backstory and responding to my questions and it helps a lot to get stuff done. I've already got ideas for the clock and what 12:00 looks like. I wish all my players were as gung-ho as he is, that makes things way easier. Here's a question for the thread at large: who here has done a long-running campaign of Dungeon World? What's the progression been like? I've been running a campaign every other week for two hours since about mid-August, and it's been pretty loving great. I wonder how like, "far" I'm supposed to be though. I get that apparently two hours every other week is a very very slow pace, but we can't really help it - everyone's tired after work, we've all got to commute, some of us have existing other-weekly plans, and nobody wants to get home at loving 930PM or whatever on a Wednesday. I wonder if I should ask my players if we're up for extended hours, or if I should do something ridiculous like finish one front per session. Worth it? Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Feb 1, 2019 |
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Feb 1, 2019 00:53
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I have been doing a DW campaign under the same conditions for almost two years - we only play on Wednesdays, we only play for about two hours, and we're all exhausted because we're middle school teachers. I've always taken a "we'll get there when we get there" approach. Some days I'm really on it and things are great, but they're exhausted and just ready to go home. Some days, like yesterday, I feel like I'm moving the game slowly and not being very creative and they're doing all the heavy lifting and getting really into it. Yesterday when we did end of session questions they only got one xp each because I wasn't really doing much to move the plot (had a really hard day). It can be done. It just takes some understanding on both ends. My metrics for success are times like today, when I heard two of my players reminiscing about a dungeon they went through and how fun it was. As long as everyone is having fun, it'll be a good campaign.
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Feb 1, 2019 06:41
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Overemotional Robot posted:As long as everyone is having fun, it'll be a good campaign. It doesn't matter if you run your game once a week, once a month, or twice a day and it doesn't matter what pace your game is going at or if you're doing all the rules right or if the encounters are too hard or too easy... As long as everyone is having fun (including the GM)
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Feb 1, 2019 09:23
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∆∆∆∆∆ Definitely make sure you are having fun as the GM! I talked to this guy today about running games and he's a brand new DM running a 5e game for 9 people and was like "it's really stressful and they seem like entitled players compared to yours... but they want to play so..." And like, I just don't know what even but I feel bad for him.
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Feb 2, 2019 05:38
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That’s 10 people, it could easily be two successful groups. But some people hold on tightly to their misery.
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Feb 2, 2019 20:51
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This thread has been sleeping for far too long so I'm gonna try to wake it up: is anyone interested in streaming some DW on Twitch this summer? I'm thinking of doing a weekly thing, but none of my local players have the capability / don't want to do online stuff.
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Mar 31, 2019 05:11
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Overemotional Robot posted:This thread has been sleeping for far too long so I'm gonna try to wake it up: is anyone interested in streaming some DW on Twitch this summer? I'm thinking of doing a weekly thing, but none of my local players have the capability / don't want to do online stuff. I'd be interested in playing, though my schedule might be weird to work with. Did you have particular days/times in mind or anything?
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Mar 31, 2019 06:13
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I've got no concrete plans at the moment. I won't be able to dedicate a lot of time to it until May since that's when school ends. I'm getting together everything right now. Just got a new webcam and am getting the streaming software sorted out. I'd like it to look nice so I'm looking into overlays and stuff.
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Mar 31, 2019 06:25
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Hey, Robot, when are we going to do another "How to run PbtA games" workshop?
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Mar 31, 2019 06:46
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We can maybe do that over the summer too? I'd love to do another one! and maybe actually record it this time...
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Mar 31, 2019 06:57
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Overemotional Robot posted:I've got no concrete plans at the moment. I won't be able to dedicate a lot of time to it until May since that's when school ends. I'd be fine with doing online stuff, but my availability is for poo poo. Sunday afternoon is totally free, Saturday I have something I can drop but would rather not.
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Mar 31, 2019 21:59
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I have every day during the summer off, so would the afternoons work? I'm going to try and be as accommodating as possible but I do want to eventually hammer out some consistent times.
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Mar 31, 2019 22:36
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Overemotional Robot posted:I have every day during the summer off, so would the afternoons work? I'm going to try and be as accommodating as possible but I do want to eventually hammer out some consistent times. Might be some luck there, depending on how late you can stick around. I'm EST and I can't quit my day job.
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Apr 1, 2019 01:30
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It's a perk of being a middle school teacher that I basically get two months a year to screw around. Once we get closer to May I'll reach out in this thread again and start hammering out some dates and times.
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Apr 1, 2019 02:21
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My wife is also a middle school teacher, so in the summers I have ready kid care and increased availability as well.
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Apr 1, 2019 05:29
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Is there a swashbuckling / pirate / sailing ships specific pbta game out there?
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Apr 2, 2019 23:54
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Is there a swashbuckling / pirate / sailing ships specific pbta game out there? There was a kickstarter called Pirate World that produced PDFs for its backers but never hit commercial release. If you're okay with being sky pirates (and who wouldn't be?) You can completely take Inverse World that way.
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Apr 3, 2019 00:34
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Yeah I own inverse world and it rocks, that's what inspired the question - I was hoping for something like that, but specifically age of sail. But never mind that now! Has anyone run World Wide Wrestling who can give me a rundown on how it goes in practice? This poo poo looks amazing.
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Apr 5, 2019 12:52
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The creator has a few YouTube let’s plays. The key is a GM who is willing to go along with the players bullshit because the game is 40% plus player bullshit. Also by the road expansion because I made it.
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Apr 5, 2019 16:32
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Yeah I own inverse world and it rocks, that's what inspired the question - I was hoping for something like that, but specifically age of sail. World Wide Wrestling is the easiest and most satisfying game I've ever run. It encourages you to let poo poo go wild and swing it like you always planned for that to happen. It definitely helps to watch some wrestling to get a feel for how matches are supposed to go, but the Six Feats Under actual plays of the game also do a good job of illustrating how the game works.
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Apr 5, 2019 17:04
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:But never mind that now! Has anyone run World Wide Wrestling who can give me a rundown on how it goes in practice? This poo poo looks amazing. It is so loving good. So loving good. Every other month or so I've been posting on the local game group that I'll be available to run a drop in game and when I get players to show up, it's a goddamn ball. I've watched GLOW and the Mickey Rourke vehicle and maybe three episodes of a wrestling show on netflix, so I'm not exactly in the know how wrestling works, but as far as I can tell it doesn't matter even a little bit. I'll share with you what I found to be best practices for me. I spend a little bit of time finding a smallish sized city and doing a half hour of research to figure out the names of local businesses, public access television shows, college radio stations, and high school mascots. I find more gratifying (and much, much weirder) when the sponsors and promo spots and venues are real places instead of stuff I make up. Having that all at my fingertips when I'm booking the show (and everyone is sitting on their thumbs waiting on me) makes it much, much faster. I like to have at least one backstage bad news storyline per worker I can advance via a flashback when a player botches a cutting a promo and I can't think of anything bad to have happen that's immediately relevant. Don't do the flashback to offscreen during a match tho, that doesn't work at all. Do have non fiddly physical representations for momentum, poker chips if you have them. I have been having troubles with my players wanting a roll on every little maneuver instead of narrating a sequence that's a lead up to an important and impressive move that's worth a roll. I do know it's at least partially my fault. When I run narration for a non player wrestler I'm a little too hurried. I want to get the spotlight back on the player wrestlers, but if I'm setting a bad example it's hard to get players on board.
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Apr 5, 2019 17:38
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When running it, it’s easy to just say “and then what do you do?”
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Apr 5, 2019 21:21
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If your players are a little uncertain about what to do at the start, encourage them to give their character a gimmick.. That'll get a lot of poo poo going quickly.
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Apr 5, 2019 22:34
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So I had asked on here a few weeks ago if people would be interested in streaming with me and doing some Dungeon World this summer (as well as maybe doing another GM camp). I've made a lot of progress setting up everything and am starting to wonder: what kinds of settings would you want to watch/play in? Obviously even the most generic, Tolkien-esque setting can be spiced up by the questions and answers that are given in a game, I'm just kind of wondering what to be looking into in terms of ideas. I'm also thinking about doing a stream called Worldbuilding Wednesdays where I make maps and make worlds and stuff that are just for their own entertainment, or someone else to crib from. Oh, and I made this for a game of Kids on Bikes for some work friends: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rXWWNdzqlxA2HqrLmT5-X08YSOk&usp=sharing Overemotional Robot fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Apr 11, 2019 |
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Apr 11, 2019 03:47
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Overemotional Robot posted:I'm also thinking about doing a stream called Worldbuilding Wednesdays where I make maps and make worlds and stuff that are just for their own entertainment, or someone else to crib from. Check out Microscope if you haven't already.
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Apr 11, 2019 08:10
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Oh yeah, Microscope is one of the best. My group used it before our current campaign to semi build our world. Also, and off topic, can I just say that I've ran into yet another person that likes the idea of Dungeon World but has this assumption that it's not good for campaign play. Where did that come from? Is it a generic dismissal without trying to offend the person who likes it? I mean, I've ran two full on, crazy campaigns and it has worked just like my old D&D ones except they moved at a faster clip. Adam even gave some advice about the 7+your level thing and said the group could ultimately pad that number to draw things out, which I had never thought of. Most D&D campaigns I've played in collapse in on themselves like a dying star anyway, so I really don't get that line of thinking. /Rant Overemotional Robot fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Apr 11, 2019 |
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Apr 11, 2019 13:40
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Overemotional Robot posted:I've made a lot of progress setting up everything and am starting to wonder: what kinds of settings would you want to watch/play in? I'm a big fan of Inverse World and the Planarch Codex, for what it's worth.
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Apr 11, 2019 14:56
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Overemotional Robot posted:Also, and off topic, can I just say that I've ran into yet another person that likes the idea of Dungeon World but has this assumption that it's not good for campaign play. Where did that come from? Is it a generic dismissal without trying to offend the person who likes it? That's it, pretty much? Dungeon World is terrible at running the continuous weekly 10-year campaigns that I'm totally playing in right now, but all my other players are away at college in Canada and they can't post right now.
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Apr 11, 2019 15:55
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I don't get it. Do they think the system itself somehow discourages extended play? I feel like level curve is actually better than in D&D, and you'd still have to play a whole lot of sessions to "max out" character progression. More than I'm likely able to play over the course of a few years in my adult life. And if anything, I'd say historically D&D is more about running a bunch of standalone adventures strung together into a campaign, compared to DW's campaign fronts, where the GM is encouraged to come up with some high-level ideas for relating various threats and using omens and the passage of time to make the entire world feel more alive. It's mostly about the GM rather than the system, unless a system doesn't offer paths for character growth (or is designed to be super brutal and kill off multiple characters every session or two).
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Apr 11, 2019 16:11
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I ran a weekly campaign and the players had pretty much hit their goals by six months. Maybe it wasn’t that often? But even if progression was the same you have 10 levels instead of 20.
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Apr 11, 2019 17:12
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I can't even imagine a world where I could get four or five friends (all of whom have families and jobs and other hobbies) into a room on a weekly basis. I feel like you could do some fun things with retirement (or "retirement") if you did have characters start to hit the level cap.
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Apr 11, 2019 18:01
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I think Dungeon World is good because you can't run it for a super long period of time. Just tell your story and start a new campaign once you finish. If you really get into the weeds with character stuff each session that will of course add more story to tell and make the game last longer. If not you can tell your core narritave and move on. After playing Dungeon World, I can't imagine going back to old school Absolute Genocide Soldiers where you are purging every dungeon and the surrounding lands of all life just so you can grow in power while the campaign drags on for years with no extra narrative.
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Apr 11, 2019 19:24
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Apocalypse World (and many of the PbtA hacks including Dungeon World) have much faster character progression than many traditional RPGs. In AW especially, by eight or ten sessions in, everyone's changing playbooks or taking second characters or whatever because after a certain point you don't really have many options left for "character advancement" (at least mechanically speaking). So the story is not about how many moves you've racked up or what your stats are, but rather how your character changes. That's all well and good, but the story arcs that come out of that kind of play are necessarily compressed. To some extent, this is one of the strengths of PbtA games (it doesn't take years to develop characters and have them undergo interesting and meaningful change), but it also places some limitations on how your game is paced. This issue is actually front-and-center for my Apocalypse World group right now, because the players expressed an interest in doing a longer-term "campaign," where they could play the characters for longer without essentially being forced to change them drastically by AW's accelerated experience progression. I doubled the number of XP required for an Advance from 5 to 10, and it has had a really interesting effect on the game. Character development has been less about "what move am I going to take next?" and more about what's going on in the narrative. Will the Archimandrex sell out Inga for a reward now that Inga has been excommunicated? What sort of trouble will Barbarossa's little fiefdom generate now that he has seized control? What will Tendahl do now that he's back in his workshop? And what the gently caress is up with Carl? We're 12 sessions in now and no one has gotten enough XP to even contemplate changing playbooks or retiring to safety (at this point people have racked up 3, maybe 4 advances). The pacing of the campaign "feels" a bit more like a traditional RPG, which is exactly what people requested when we started.
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Apr 11, 2019 20:03
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I've been thinking about this a little more and I will conceed one downside: DW moves at such a tight clip that we generate TONS of lore in a shorter amount of time. Just from questions and moves and making stuff up and Front progressions. Like, last session the questions that came up at the table were nuts in terms of us generating story stuff: so if he's a mushroom person and got chopped up... can we grow him back? Do they have souls? Why do the cave crickets make their nests out of corpses? Can we just stop adventuring and take over this iron mine to manipulate the economy of the ongoing war? Don't get me wrong, the discussions are awesome and we have a ball talking and answering questions, but keeping up with it all gets tough! Glazius posted:I'm a big fan of Inverse World and the Planarch Codex, for what it's worth. I was actually thinking of Planarch Codex today at work. I've always been interested in it but have never had a chance to run a setting like it. Overemotional Robot fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Apr 12, 2019 05:55
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Some co-workers want to organize a “D&D” game, and I’m running it so I’m suggesting DW instead of 5e. There are a ton of links to expansion content in the OP, but is there anything you goons consider essential? I've seen Perilous Wilds as highly recommended, but I’ve been running other systems for years, so I don’t know how useful a bunch of random generator tables would be for me. BetterWeirdthanDead fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Apr 23, 2019 |
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Apr 23, 2019 15:01
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I'd say get a feel for how much the players are gung go for the world/plot generation stuff and have a strong adventure starter that you like on hand if you think they'll need coaxing. "20 Adventure Starters" is probably fine if one of them grabs you. Don't do this if there's any chance they'll come up with cool poo poo on their own, because that's when the game really shines. So if you ask the Paladin about their quest and they're like "uh slay evil" you bust out one of the starters and circle back like "so why slay it here?" But if they go "to drive the moon mage from the harplands" or someone else goes "and evil's name is Thraxgorang the Severer of Hands"? Cool, you're on.
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Apr 23, 2019 20:45
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I had a really successful Dungeon World game where we used a modified version of the phase trio from Spirit of the Century to create Bonds: 1) Take an index card and write down the “title” of your character’s first true adventure - if your character were the star of a series of adventure stories, this is the title of the first in the series. Write a sentence or two on the back that describes what happened in that adventure. No need to get into detail, no need to even tell us how it ends. Think of it like an abbreviated back cover blurb. Leave space! When everyone is finished, take turns introducing your character's adventure. 2) Pass the card to another player and someone will pass their card to you. Read the title and blurb, and think of how your character can make a “guest appearance” in that adventure. Does your character complicate the situation, or help to solve it, or both? Write in a sentence (or two, at most) about how your character gets involved in the adventure. Then, on your character sheet, write a Bond with that character that relates to your involvement in their adventure. If you have difficulty coming up with a Bond, look to the ones on your character sheet for inspiration - feel free to use one of those, or modify one to suit your story. When everyone is finished, take turns describing your character's role in the adventure, and the Bond that you created based upon it. 3) Repeat step 2, but make sure you end up with a card that isn't your own and is different from the one you just had. I found that it really helped the players flesh out their characters, it gave everyone a reason to be involved with the other characters, and they all wound with two Bonds that actually meant something to them. As an added bonus, everything I needed to launch a year-long campaign came from this process. Your players will give you so much to work with. Drawbacks: it takes a while, and it really requires your players to be gung-ho about making up stuff on the spot. But it's something I'm absolutely going to do again if I end up running another DW campaign.
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Apr 23, 2019 21:43
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Shanty posted:
Always my metric to see what kind of group I have, tbh.
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Apr 24, 2019 00:33
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That’s a good plan. Improv is how my World Wide Wrestling campaign’s Bar Nun (The Wasted) wound up in a Road to Recovery battle royal. This new group should be just as creative. Thanks!
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Apr 24, 2019 11:41
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