Kickstarter Delivers! Dungeon World Edition.

I was super excited to see a package come in the mail for me today. People have been reporting recently that they're receiving their hardcover, softcover, t-shirts, extra books whatever for Dungeon World recently, and me, completely out of the loop, had no idea! So, I was not only excited, but quite surprised when I got my softcover and little backer-exclusive books in the mail today.

I've already been talking about Dungeon World quite a bit. I had a heckuva time running an introduction session for my friends last month and am still looking forward to the next opportunity to run it.

I don't have time today to write up a review of the book, but I did take some pictures of what I got, so check those out below. I will say that the book feels nice and meaty, which shouldn't be a surprise if you've seen the pdf.

It reminds me, in a purely physical sense, of the original publishing of Spirit of the Century. It's pretty much the same size, and the smaller pages really help (at least for me) to get excited to read the book all over again.

The three little booklets that I got with my softcover are, simply put, adorable. I can't wait to read them, and if Dungeon World itself is portable, the booklets are down-right convenient. They're about the size of a large wallet, and if one were so inclined, could very, very easily fit in the back pocket of your jeans. It has me intrigued to think about micro RPG's that could be printed in this size and sold for just a couple of books. A fun idea, but definitely a diversion.

Seriously, publishers? Take a look at these tiny supplements. I love them, although I'm not sure how I'm going to store them at this point. The covers are a thicker stock then they may look in the picture, and they feel astoundingly sturdy. They have the feel of a tiny indie comic you can get in larger comic shops in bigger cities or at cons.

As has happened in the past, Dungeon World's got me excited to blog again. There's something about it that energizes me. I'm very excited for Fate Core, another recent Kickstarter I backed, but for some reason it's DW that makes me want to write. I hope to have more in the future, and hopefully anyone still waiting for their DW stuff will get it soon!

The Mirror Monarchy - Playing Dungeon World Play-by-Post!

Dungeon World's got me going and energized to run games, that's for certain. We're going to do some character creation this Saturday with my normal group, which has me excited. I couldn't wait though, and decided to recruit for my first game running a play-by-post style adventure. I recruited on Reddit but decided to use the play-by-post forums on RPG.net since it seemed easier than trying to create (and moderate) a special subreddit for the game.

Here's the link to the first thread. It's an OOC (Out Of Character) thread since we've only just started character generation, but I'm pretty excited to see how it works. I've only ever played a very little bit of PBP before, and never ran one, but I feel like Dungeon World might be a good match to try it out.

So far it's been pretty fun coming up with how to do character gen online. I'm doing my best to teach the game as we go through the steps since only one of my players has read/is familiar with DW. I've got players of all different levels of experience with role playing, but the consensus seems to be a lot of experience with D&D 3.5. I've never played 3.5 (only Star Wars Saga Edition and D&D 4th), but I think I got the jist enough of how to explain DW in comparison to it. I like DW as it's a light system with very little to actually keep track of (which is especially good since keeping track of lots of things feels more difficult in a game where I never see or hear my players.

I've decided to run the game in roughly the same setting as my game with my in-real-life friends. I've always, always, ALWAYS wanted to run more than one group through the same campaign world through different adventures, letting the two parties' efforts impact the world. This is even more interesting in DW where the players have such a big hand in building the setting.

Here's my thought: both groups are going to have an impact and establish aspects of the world, but what happens when two conflicting facts are established? I'm playing with the idea of having nothing set in stone until it's actually proven or shown for a group. What happens when the established fact conflicts with a setting aspect of the other group?

It means the non-established/proven fact may simply be a belief of most people of the setting that's not actually true, or alternatively, depending on how integral the false fact is, maybe it's changed over time and isn't true? These are the kinds of things that make me excited to run these games.

WorldSong - A Dungeon World Setting

I've been ruminating on the game Dungeon World for my last couple of posts, and so it's no secret that I'm quite enamored by the game. It's got me a little sidetracked from writing my own game, in fact it's distracting me from finishing the work on my own game. Annoying, but a real strong sign that DW is not to be underestimated. 

I get to run a game at the end of this month, for the first time in several months, and it's been a big motivating factor to throw some setting information together. I wrote some of the basic concepts and themes I'm going for in my last post (My Own Private Dungeon World). I'm very clearly inspired by King Arthur, Merlin, and Camelot, and so I've decided to run with it and keep moving along with my favorite go-to version of King Arthur - the 1981 movie Excalibur. 

I must have watched this movie a dozen times in high school. I love the thick, heavy plate armor everyone wears, the yelling (everyone yells in this movie!), Mordred being a clearly creepy product of incest, and so forth. The movie feels like two separate films with the entire rise and fall of Arthur, from birth to death.

At the same time, I'm an unabashed Tolkien nerd, and the Silmarillion is one of my all-time favorite books. Excalibur could very easily be an early 80's rendition of one of the Silmarillion's chapters (but with MORE YELLING). So, I've taken two concepts for the creation of the world - one from each of these things I love - and combine them as opposing forces. 

WorldSong and World Dragon

On one hand, just like in Tolkien, the world was created in song. It was music that brought about creation, and as an extension, music and song have a very potent power when used by those wishing to add to the creation of the gods. This music is simply, and fittingly, titled "WorldSong" and is the foundation of everything. It's the force for good and creation. 

On the other, evil-er, hand, you have the force of destruction and chaos - entropy. Taken right out of Excalibur's version of King Arthur's legend, you get the omnipresent and oppressive force of the dragon. Many cults, wild things, and yes, bastard sons of kings lost in battle, worship the "World Dragon"

Queen Bethany Silver, heir of the deceased king, is a Sooth Singer of the highest order. Through observation of the WorldSong, her own sub-creations give her the power she needs to rally those formerly loyal to her father around her in her claim to the throne of the greatest city in the world, Tor Hoxia. Her grip on the city is questionable at best as her half-brother, Baron William of the East Warrens, has gathered those about him to support his claim for the throne. Whispers are spread throughout the kingdom of William's obsession with the World Dragon, though none would dare speak of it in his company.

I'll come up with more later, but I've at least got this much figured out. There's one more major force to fit into the greater scheme of things - the Fae Courts of the wild. I get the feeling that they don't go in for any of this WorldSong or World Dragon foolishness. They're outside of the conflict, probably because they're not from the world of WorldSong,but we shall see! There are of course other things in the world as well, things that are truly foreign to both man and elf and care for them as much as they care for birds in the sky or beast in the field. More on that to come too!

Dungeon World - Classes and Niche Protection

Dungeon World Ranger by Emily DeLisle

I've really been taken by the concept in Dungeon World that every Class is unique. Each class can only be taken once by the players, and this simple rule is pretty much at the core of a game design theory known as "niche protection". Niche protection is good game design because it makes every player character brings something cool and uniquely valuable to the party. It means you don't have redundancies  in the party and competition over who gets to pick the lock or discern the arcane scriblings painted in blood on the wall of the lich's lair. Someone's got to do it, but not just anyone can. That's niche protection!

When it comes to building a new class for Dungeon World, I believe niche protection is probably the number one important thing to consider. You have to ask yourself - does this class have its own niche? Can it do something the other classes can't do? Not "can it do something in a different way from how another class does it?" You have to look at the core of what a class does and what a class knows. If neither of these things are unique, you have to consider another question: "Which existing class does my new class replace?"

As I mentioned in my last Dungeon World post, I'm very interested in writing some custom classes, but before I begin, I've been really coming to grips about the idea of niche protection, and I think I've come to a realization that, while classes can be added on to the 8 classes in the core book (Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, and Wizard), for example the Warlock and Barbarian, I'm really interested in creating a whole new range of core classes, specifically for a Lord of the Rings/Middle Earth hack.

I feel I'd much rather just have wide open design space when it comes to building classes that might be in the middle of two other classes. For example the Dunadan class would be a solid mix of Fighter and Ranger. The Noldor Prince class doesn't have a strong connection to any of the core classes, but might actually look a lot like the Paladin in play.

While it gives me more freedom to create what I like, it also gives me the freedom to remove all that wouldn't work in Middle Earth. The Wizard class of course by name describes Gandalf and Saruman, but the class powers of the Wizard don't work in the setting. It's much simpler to change it to the Istari class or simply remove Wizard altogether. I'm really looking forward to taking the basic concept of each class being unique to the next step. There really only may be a small handful of Noldor Princes in all of Middle Earth (Glorfindel, Elrond, Elladan, Elrohir, and Gildor really), and the player character is among the small handful left. The Dunedain are scattered and few in the North, and a member of the Grey Company would be truly badass to play.

So that's the plan for now! I want to come up with maybe 6 to 8 "core" Middle Earth classes for Dungeon World and go from there. We'll see what happens!

Dungeon World!

It's been a while since I've posted, but it happens, ya know? I haven't had a lot of opportunity to sit down and read a good RPG for quite some time, that is, quite some time before last week. In the past five days I've spent every quiet moment I have shredding through the 400+ pages of my Kickstarter backer pdf copy of Dungeon World. After getting through the whole thing my first reaction is to kick myself in the but for only backing at the $25.00 mark for the softcover version. I don't know if I could have justified the $65.00 for the hardcover, but I sure would like to get my hands on one.

Like all good games, the first thing I wanted to do with DW after reading it was modify it and make it my own. I originally envisioned my DW game going a lot like the Image Comics series Skullkickers. The art style is friendly to the comic, and the two seem to be made for each other.

Then I got to thinking more about a game I could run better than anyone else in my group - a Middle Earth game. I started thinking about running a game in the middle of the Third Age when almost anything could happen and not impact cannon. I thought of fun unique classes such as Noldor Prince, Dunadan, Man of Rohan, etc.

This is what impressed me most with DW - it's flexible and deep enough to make me want to run both a slapstick, joke-riddled game of Skullkicking fun and a serious, high fantasy game of honor and heroics, and either is just as viable and actually reinforce-able with a couple of custom rule tweeks.

First, the game is simple for any single player but complex and incredibly tight when all the players and GM come together to play a game. Characters are dictated by the actions they take rather than the gear they carry. That's a big plus for me as well. Think about it: Aragorn has what some would consider magic in only a handful of items - Anduril, the banner crafted by Arwen, and the Palantir, but he was so great because of the actions he took in the War of the Ring.

I'm hoping to write up some character classes in the coming weeks just to run some game design calisthenics and hopefully contribute to the great amount of fan-produced DW material. In the meantime, take a click over to drivethrurpg and pick up this pdf for a paltry $10.00. You won't regret it.