Commentary on my first game of Dungeon World

The Commentary On my First Dungeon World Game

The commentary is on this game linked to here

Some of this is disconnected craziness that bounces around.  Bear with me as I get negative and cranky, positive, then negative.

Two of six expected guests came to the game.  The players of the Paladin Cassius and the Artificer Thrawn.  Together with my wife playing Tana the Ranger, they formed the party of player characters.  We snacked on vegetables and tea biscuits while building the characters. Character creation was difficult as my wife who was overwhelmed by the Dungeonworld character sheet.  So I filled out her stats, asked her what her pet's name was and what it was, picked her gear, and told her not to worry about the sheet or the rules until I thought they applied.  Just to know that she's a friend of animals, can track, and is good with a bow.

The other two were familiar with RPGs generally and had a fairly easy time with creation.  They both had backstories pre-written to give some flavor to their chracters.  The Paladin had a huge hammer instead of a halbard.  I gave him a specially crafted plate armor, rather than scale, as with such a small party they'd want a tank.  Plus his drawing of the Paladin was fantastic and depicted him in a full suit of armor.  Very bad-ass.  The Dwarven Artificer was a priest of his technology religion with magical  gadgets.

I narrated how the other player characters wandered off:  The wizard had academic work to attend to.  His friend the bard joined him.  The Barbarian had to work on his tent.  His friend, a warrior maiden, decided to stay with him.  The druid had to dance the hoe-down at a forest folk music festival.  The thief had pregnancy related fatigue and decided a rough adventure was not right for her at this time.  That made the beginning of the story humorous and light-hearted.  It was easy to do after a couple shots of whiskey.

Now to put myself down, feel miserable, and try to learn from it:

Lacking a hard copy of the rule book, I had to improvise some of the rules of the game. For example, The Artificer used some bandages to bind up the Paladin, so I called it 1d4+1 healing.  The Paladin later pulled a healing potion from his Adventuring Gear and I called it 1d6+1 healing.  The Ranger wanted to pick a door lock with metal bits found in a crate.  So improvising, I said she could do it but with no Dex bonus.  Turns out she got a partial success so I had steam shoot out of the lock hole.  Lucky for her, I rolled a 2 on a 1d6 and with her leather armor it was reduced to one point.

If I could redo those decisions, I would.  I definitely want to be consistent with making calls on that kind of stuff.  I was afraid to let the Ranger pick the lock, but with no thief present, why not?  DW is about saying yes, so I must conclude that anyone can try to pick a lock but the Thief can do it better.  The early editions of D&D had no thief class and folks just said whether they're picking a lock or a pocket and a call was made.  I'm a fan of that.  I also noted, that if not for the presence of the artificer, this adventure would not have happened.  If there was no artificer, there would have been no airship story and thus no lock for the ranger to pick.  I allowed the artificer (an optional class), so therefore I must also allow the ranger to pick a lock.

I've read that it takes practice to get the Discern Realities and Spout Lore moves done correctly.  I need to work on that if we play this again.  They're not bad moves, I just fumbled them a bit.

I also need to work on more dynamic NPC behavior.  The goblins swarmed the Paladin in front of the door but he splatted them.  That's not a bad thing.  Read on.  The Paladin did not fail a single roll the entire game.  I didn't inflict sufficient consequences aside from damage rolls when he had partial success.  The goblins are supposed to swarm, jump on your shoulders, grab your weapon, bite you on the ear, pour past you like a flood.  I'll do better next time.  I allowed the Paladin to kill multiple goblins by dividing their HP into his damage roll.  That made for a great scene.  But I didn't do that for the Ranger who wanted to fire multiple arrows.  Bad choice.  What's good for the goose is good for the gander.  If ever faced with a similar situation of huge mobs of disposable creatures, the ranger can fire multiple arrows at multiple clustered targets.  After all, a partial success on Volley can result in multiple shots, so why not just do it?

As far as dynamic action, I tried to "pan the camera" to different players, but I found it difficult to get a decent and satisfying flow going and including everyone in the story.  After failing at this, I went around to each player and asked them what they're doing in turn, and narrated the results.  This was actually worked well for us.  Maybe I need more practice, but I prefer a turn based structure to encounters.  

As far as mapping goes, I also somehow connected the aft of the middle deck to the bow of the top deck of the ship.  Nobody said anything about it.  In retrospect I feel kind of silly for doing that.

What did I do right?

I made a wet-erase board by laminating an old flat board with cold peel lamination sheets that I had lying around for years.  I drew a nice scene of the road going along the mountains, river crossing it, a bit of terrain.  I cut up some thick cardboard and made an airship prop as well as rectangles for the caravan.  I cut some rectangles for the players and put their character names on them.  I used Mancala stones for foes.  When they boarded the ship, I erased the board and drew each level of the ship as they explored it.

The Dungeon World rules say for the GM to leave blanks, so I left blanks in the map.  I had to pull the kitchen and the room across from it out of thin air. I also left blanks for the engine room.  I knew it was an engine room, but not everything that was there.  I honestly had forgotten to place the switch for the door on the other side of the ship, so I'm glad I didn't pre-plan the whole ship.  I had kicked around an idea for The Dentist when first creating the starting adventure, and discarded it.  I included the Dentist when a goblin was interrogated.  However, by that time I was really tired for lack of sleep and was getting a headache from the whiskey I drank at the start of the game, so the Dentist wasn't the kind of challenge I hoped he would be.

Back on negative:

I was quite fatigued near the end, so got a bit ridiculous with the surrender of the mad dwarf taking off all his things and standing in his boxers and shirt.  I should have skipped that.

The players had fun.  That's a positive.

There's nothing wrong with Dungeon World.  I'm not sure if it's right for me, however.

What bugs me: The character sheets are really busy and wordy. My wife was overwhelmed by hers.  I like to play games simple enough for my wife to enjoy them.  I like to play with my wife, so I prefer games she can easily grasp.  That means my RPGs and my Board Games and my Video Games.  Gaming is one of the few things I'm interested in so I want to make the time I spend with her count.  She enjoyed Fighting Fantasy, but we also finished that in two hours.  So I'm thinking we may need to simplify the sheets or play with different rules, and stick to the time limit.  The "prequal" World Of Dungeons has a simpler ruleset but with the basic 2d6 fail/partial/success mechanic.  Success and Partial success are not wordy paragraphs.  I think we could cut out the verbiage and just let the GM make the calls.

I also found a game called "Dungeon Teller" that uses a dice pool mechanic that seems simple as well.  Roll dice for your skill, 5's and 6's are successes.  So a warrior say rolls 5 dices for his sword but a weak wizard rolls only 1 or 2.  Each 5 or 6 is a hit.  Ta da.  Competing actions are simply a comparing of successes rolled.  Tug of war, we both roll muscle, greatest number of successes wins.  Anyone might pick a lock with their Stealth trait but the thief gets extra dice for it.  And so on, and so forth.  I think just about everything in Dungeon World might be directly convertible to this system and less complicated.  Hell I can even get blank dice and paint smileys on them, or some other positive looking symbol, or just a dot even, and those are successes.  Skip the number crap altogether.  I'm not against maths (as my distant English cousins call it), I just prefer simplicity while retaining enough depth to stay interesting.

I found the Artificer sheet confusing.   I think the player used only the basic functions of his tools and not any of his character abilities such as Field Test or Jury Rig.  I allowed him a cleric spell "Words of the Unspeaking" but allows him to only talk to Machinery.  But examining the sheet, I notice he has a similar ability already called "Let me see that."  The rules governing "Charge" are confusing.  It's the power supply/ammo of his gadgets.  He can Volly or Melee with his INT bonus rather than STR or DEX, but it depletes a charge regardless of a hit.  Then I ask, can he strike with his axe if it's out of charge?  I assume it is, just no electrocution power.

While a lot of my difficulty and mistakes are of course the bumps and bruises of trying something new, I can't help but think there's a way go about making this sort of game simpler.

I still prefer Fighting Fantasy to this.  If I could somehow convert the classes of D&D/Dungeon World to Fighting Fantasy, or perhaps Dungeon Teller, then I'd play with those rules.

My First Game of Dungeon World

This is a narrative of my first game of Dungeon World.  Commentary on the game and how it went in my next post.  Reposted after correcting some spelling, punctuation and sentence structure errors.

The Airship

A large party assembled at the coastal town of Fishbasket to escort a trade caravan to Academ about two days north.  Of the nine who initially showed interest in the mission, only 3 remained to escort three wagons.  The Ranger Tana and her pet hawk, Airwolf.  The Paladin "Gabriel Cassius" of the (now declining) Black Templar order, sworn to destroy witches wherever they may be found, armed with his engraved maul.  And lastly but not leastly the Dwarven Artificer named Thrawn Blastmaker, a priest of a dwarven technology cult.

One wagon contained a load of silks and linens, the second driven by Adrik, a wizened elderly trader carried magical powders and artifacts bound for the academy of wizardry in Academ, and another of ocean based goods.  Of particular interest to Thrawn was a large cube carried in Adrik's wagon embedded with brownish gems on each face.

The After about a day's journey, on a cloudy, cool day, the caravan was travelling the road through rough terrain next to a mountain range when they heard loud squealing sounds on the other side of a hill.  Thrawn activated his invisibility device and scouted forward, to find 6 Pig Men flailing about at a river crossing.  They could have been fishing or just wrestling. Cassius also came forward and Tana worked her way eastward across the rough to cover with her bow.  Thrawn returns to warn the caravan not to proceed until they deal with the pig men.

Cassius meanwhile steps forward to challenge them.  The pig men are large and tough looking, but timid.  Shaking their spears and squealing challenges.  Two come forth to fight Cassius.  Cassius Crushes one with his Maul while the other approaches with his spear.  Thrawn blasts another with his energy bolt thrower device.  Just then the party hears a loud hissing sound and a giant airship (held aloft by a large blimp baloon) comes down from the clouds over the mountain and turns heading to the bridge where the pig men stood. Tana sends Airwolf to investigate while Cassius stands his ground.

Before long the Airship approaches the bridge and there's a loud blast and the pig men, save one, are blown to bacon bits.  A second blast sounds and the bridge itself is destroyed, the airship turning and landing where there bridge once stood.  Cassius finishes off the last pig man.

Thrawn urges the caravan to turn around but the drivers panic and two wagons get stuck in ditches off the road.

A large door opens in the side of the ship and a swarm of goblins pours out.  On the deck of the ship can be seen a crazy looking dwarf with an eye patch and gems for teeth laughing maniacally.  Thrawn studies the airship's balloon and sees blue gems embedded into it.  Passing a Spout Lore, and being a magical technologist, he recognizes the device as a container for an elemental spirit, and the key to the container are the gems in it.

Cassius splatters multiple goblins in a single swing while Thrawn shoots his weapon at the gem, beginning to dislodge it.  Tana fires arrows at the gem and dislodges it, and the air elemental spirit begins to hiss out of the now unsecure balloon.

Thrawn joins Cassius and Tana maintains her distance, firing arrows at the swarm of goblins.  Airwolf flies to the deck of the ship, and amid much commotion and flying darts, emerges again with the gem in its claws, returning to his mistress.  She orders it to attack a goblin while she fires arrows.  The goblin goes down and Airwolf rips its jawbone off and returns with it as a prize.

Cassius engages in a gory splattefest with his maul, pooping goblins two at a time  while Thrawn swings his electric axe, missing, and some goblins evade them and begin bolting for the caravan over the hill.  Thrawn shoots one but only partially damages it and it trips and falls.  Two goblins charge Tana and she shoots one while the other knocks her to the ground.  She grabs her spear and skerwers him groin to skull.

The remaining goblins still in the ship retreat while Cassius sprints after the two, now split up, heading for the caravan.  One reaches the foremost wagon and leaps on while the drivers, panicked, try to drive off.  Cassius runs alongside and swipes the goblin with his maul, it flies off and splits it skull on a rock.  He begins to question Adrik about what the pirate might want, and Adrick admits they're after his Earth Elemental trapped in the cube.  He chose to transport it in a small caravan so as not to attract the attention of thieves and pirates.  Just then the last goblin (who was shot previously) is seen by Adrick running up behind Cassius.  And Adrik fells it with a spell that burns it to a crisp.

Returning to the ship, Tana (with her spear now recovered and her Hawk on her shoulder), Cassius and Thrawn enter the ship. The lower deck of the ship appears to be a cargo bay, dimly lit with hanging lamps.  Thrawn uses his electric axe to give some illumination.  There's barrels and crates.  Tana pulls out a crowbar and begins popping the lids of the barrels, finding mostly stinky goblin food and some machine parts.  There's talk of finding a switch to open another door on the other side of the cargo bay.  Thrawn turns his attention to a door in the aft of the ship while Cassius goes toward the bow, where there's a ladder.  Several goblin faces can be seen and they hurl darts at the brave Paladin, then retreating.  Cassius decides to follow them up the ladder.

Tana checks out a door in the bow, finding a latrine.  She returns to popping crates, finding one filled with small brass statues of various animals.  The first real loot of the adventure.  She takes one and puts it in her pack.

Thrawn tries to pick the lock with the screwdriver end of his electric axe, but to no avail.

Upstairs, Cassius finds the gunnery room in the bow.  Two large steel tubes encrusted with blue gems akin to those on the now deflated balloon. On the walls are racks with very large stones (the obvious projectiles). He tries to smash the tubes, but only leaves dents.  He opens the door leading aftward, seeing a sleeping quarters strung with hammocks and is confronted by six goblins and a large, great dane with filed teeth.  Those teeth being various colors of gems.   A melee begins, Thrawn dashes up the ladder to help his friend.

The dog lunges at Cassius, knocking him down.  Cassius throws off the dog and it is stunned as it hits a support beam.  Thrawn picks up Cassius and Tana enters the gunnery room.  "Get out of the way" she says, an arrow knocked and ready to fire.  Thrawn enters the room, and Tana lets fly, hitting a goblin while Airwolf dashes in, ripping out its eyeballs and returning.  Airwolf eats an eyeball and gives one to his mum as a prize (eww).

The three finish off the goblins and the dog, taking it's gemmed teeth as a prize.  The last goblin is questioned, and under duress, says the captain is working for someone called "The Dentist" who can be in two places at once.  He is the executed. It is quiet for a while.  They explore aftward, finding a small kitchen with pots of goblin crud still on the boil.  Opposite is a door to an unknown room.  Trying the door, Thrawn's hand becomes stuck to the knob.  A pair of 2 dimensional eyes open on the door and a long, almost psuedopod of a fist reaches out to punch him.  He gets clocked and takes a bruise.  Tana takes her crowbar and jams it in the eye of this creature-door.  One eye goes dark, and it absorbs the crowbar, which now floats in a goo of it's translucent body.  Thrawn gets flung backwards into the kitchen, banging into pots and spilling goblin crud all overhimself as the creature now assumes humanoid form and goes to attack the rest of the team.  Tana figures burning it with the oil from one of the hanging lamps might work, but before she can do it, Cassius lays into the beast with his maul and it splatters into dozens of jello fragments, landing especially on Thrawn.

Thrawn tries to keep his dignity, and they open the door to the cabin.  Tana returns to the lower deck to try to find the switch to open the other door.  Meanwhile Cassius, in a rush to go lay down so justice, ascends to the deck to mop up the remnants of the goblins.  Before Thrawn can open a chest, he hears the sounds of battle upstairs. He rushes to help his friend.

Tana takes bits and pieces of wire and machinery and uses them as improvised lock picks, trying to pick the door lock in the aft of the cargo bay. She succeeds, but a blast of steam comes out of the lock, scalding her slightly but otherwise not hurting her.  She enters and finds the engine room: two cubes connected by pipes that lead to an exhaust pipe out the back of the ship.  One has red gems and the other has clear ones.  There's doors on the the starboard and larboad sides of the room.

Up on the deck, A hail of darts from the poop deck suppress Thrawn as he takes cover behind slightly elevated quarterdeck.   The mad dwarf can be heard shouting curses and urging his goblins to attack.  Cassius dodges incoming darts and kills one goblin, the rest fleeing up to their comrades.  After a short fight, the two ascend the poop to confront dwarf Bolgur and his two remaining goblins.  They find Bolgur in a small basket and balloon and the two goblins rapidly pumping some kind of apparattus to inflate the balloon attached to the basket.

Thrawn uses his last shot to blow a hole in the balloon.  The three enemies then surrender.  Cassius delivers swift justice to the goblins but Thrawn stops him before Bolgur is finished.  They order Bolgur to disarm.  He tosses down his cutlass, his eye patch (revealing a perfectly healthy eye underneath), and knives from every sleeve, pantleg, and from under his hat.  He tosses his trousers, standing in just his shorts and shirt, surrenders.  They question him.  He whines, begs for mercy.  "*I* won't kill you" says Thrawn.  Cassius delivers justice, black templar style.

Meanwhile Tana returns to the deck, informing her comrades that she found the switch.  With just one foe remaining, and two doors to the poop cabin, they pair off.  Cassius to the right, Thrawn and Tana to the left.  Cassius bangs on the door with his hammer.  "Open in the name of the black templar."  The door explodes, Cassius is flung back, wacking his head on a raised platform.  The room appears full of smoke.  Thrawn begins chopping at the door with his axe.  Tana gives the weakened door a kick and it falls open.  Inside there's an gaunt, creepy looking elf staring at them calmly.  It doesn't respond to any words.  Thrawn goes to poke it with his axe, but his axe goes through the image.

Now Cassius recovers and charges the now open cabin, where The Dentist awaits him.  He dodges a magical blast of energy and shatters the right arm of his foe.  He then breaks the elf's legs.  The Dentist passes out.

The tie him to the bed in the other room, and the Paladin lays on hands to heal him.  In his rage, he absorbs the injury rather than just healing it.  The Paladin feels sick and weak.  Thrawn goes to question him, but Cassius says "let me do my thing."

He slaps the elf.  "Who are you working for?"

The elf denies working for anyone.  Another slap.  The same question.  Another denial.  He's just a dentist, that's all.  The Paladin says "By the law of the Black Templar I order you answer our questions!"

The elf talks.  He wanted to seize the earth elemental for his ship.  Once imbued into the hull of the ship, it would be nearly invulnerable.  There are warrants for his arrest in seven cities.  He really is a dentist.  He works for himself.  He employs goblins because they're cheap as as long as you feed them, they'll fight for you.

Cassius does his thing again with his maul.

They loot the chest in room and find 1700 coin worth of gems and gold.  Aside from dental tools, nothing else of particular value was found.

The three return to the engine room.  The engine runs on steam generated by the interactions of a trapped fire elemental and trapped a water elemental.

They open the door on the other side of the cargo bay, and the caravan drives through.  They make it to Academ and get their pay.  The academy plans to send a team to remove the ship and build a new bridge.  The heroes stay at an inn.

"The Riddling Reaver" and modifications

I just received the Riddling Reaver book from Amazon.  It contains a four part adventure for Fighting Fantasy.  It also contains alternative rules for battle damage, weapons, and magic.

Damage is rather simple.  When reduced to zero stamina, the character is unconscious.  -1 is a life threatening wound, -2 is dead.  Not a bad rule.   In fights, roll a natural 12 and the character slays his enemy outright.  Not sure if I want to use this.  I may, however, allow an extra wound for this.  See below.

The book contains a chart for weapon damage.  On a successful hit, you roll d6 and consult the chart for your weapon damage.  Two handed swords do 2 or 3 damage, daggers do 1 or 2.  Others a range from 1 to 3, weighted at the lighter, middle, or heavier end.  My understanding is that Advanced Fighting Fantasy uses this system for weapon damage.  I'm not hostile to variable damage.  However, I do like 2 points of damage being a standard wound.  After reading up on Old School Hack, which uses a wounds based system, I'm going to keep the damage rather simple for FF: A successful hit is 2 points of damage.  Test luck to double it.

 I will borrow from Tunnels and Trolls the "spite damage" concept.  In T&T, if you roll doubles in battle, you do one point of damage.  In that game you're potentially tossing a bucket load of dice, so there's potential for a bit of spite damage.  In FF, I want to give the weaker fighters a chance to damage their enemies.  So on doubles, you'll do one extra point of damage, even if your attack roll is lower.

Magic.  In the Riddling Reaver, one player may become a wizard.  His Skill score is 4 + d6 rather than 6+d6.  His Magic score is 6 + 2d6.  The total magic score acts as a vancian spell list:  The character can memorize as many spells as his magic score. He can take multiple copies of a spell.  There's only a handful of spells in the book.  To cast a spell, he must roll 3d6 < Magic score to succeed.

Maybe I'm too obessive, but I don't like it.  Why do 6+2d6 for magic when it's 6+d6 for Stamina and Luck?  For a wider range of stats, 6+2d6 for all stats wouldn't be so bad.  Mathematically, 6+2d6 averages out to just above the average 3d6 roll.  So odds are your character would be slightly above average.  So the real choice is to bump everything up to 3d6, but then any adventure supplements and monster manuals have to be converted.  And that's more work.  Ugh.

 Like a poop sandwich, I don't need to try it to see if I like it.  If I play this campaign, it will be 6 + d6 magic.  Roll 2d6 < Magic to cast.  And I prefer the system that depletes Stamina to cast.  I'm not hostile to Vancian spell memorization.  So either Stamina or Vancian will fuel the spells.  I may ditch the Magic stat altogether, just to keep it simple.

I'm going to change how Luck works.  Luck will only be depleted if your Luck check is favorable.  There's already in game penalties for being unlucky.  I see no point in both harming the character with both the bad luck consequences and making Luck less useful than before.