Tuesday 6 October 2015

Dungeon World: Book review and play test

I first came across Dungeon World about six months ago while going through a bit of a GM burnout phase. Pathfinder was feeling a bit complex and I was looking for a less crunchy game that might lend itself more easily to the more narrative type of game that I prefer.


I have a paperback copy of the book purchased from drivethrurpg, it also came with an ebook version and a selection of PDFs that meant I could start reading while the book itself was in the post. The book is well made with a colour cover and black and white interior. The format is roughly A5 (perhaps the same as a trade paperback) and super easy to fit into my bag so I can read it on the go. 
This book is a combined core rule book, game master guide and monster manual spread over 400ish pages in that order. There is also an advanced game mastery section and a number of appendices at the back of the book.

Core rule book section
The authors state that fiction comes first and the streamlined rule set encourages both players and game master to get creative with the use of the basic and class moves.
All the classes one would expect of a typical fantasy game are here and third party publishers such as awful good games have created a whole bunch more.
The 'powered by the apocalypse' rule set is a radical departure from the D20 system that I'm used to but easy to understand and the move system allows characters of the same class to differentiate themselves as they advance towards level ten. Character advancement looks pretty quick with only current level+7 experience points required to level up. The main source of experience appears to be from failed move attempts which is a nice touch.

Game master guide section
This section describes how to run a session as well as advocating a game mastery style that emphasises emergent story lines. Those new to game mastering will likely find this very helpful and would hopefully give them the confidence to kick off their first campaign. The lightweight and easy to remember ruleset lowers the barrier to entry in terms of system mastery for new game masters.
Those of us who are more experienced will still find useful ideas and methods for generating and organising material even if you prefer your adventures to be more tightly scripted.
There is plenty of advice regarding the consequences for player characters when their moves fail. This system allows the game master a lot of flexibility when it comes to arbitrating the results of success and failure than other systems I've used.

Monster manual section
This section is split into nine themed sections (such as cavern dwellers, twisted experiments, folk of the realm) that make finding an appropriate creature for a given encounter easier. The minimalist stat blocks (each creature only has three proper stats plus a few descriptive tags and a paragraph of text to inform motivations) allows two creatures to be presented per page so I'd guess there are about two hundred creatures in the section.
There are also guidelines for creating you own creatures so if what you need isn't here, you be able to cook it up yourself in a flash.

Overall I think that this book is a worthwhile addition to my bookshelf, and a nice change from the rule heavy world of pathfinder.


The slave pit of Drazhu
Having just wound up my pathfinder campaign I took the opportunity of a free slot in our role playing calendar to run a two hour module called 'The slave pit of Drazhu' by Jason Morningstar. This adventure seems to be intended as an introduction to Dungeon World and has plenty of helpful tips for GMs especially when it comes to keeping to time.

The module begins with a character generation section with a number of questions and bonds to ask and offer the players respectively. These really helped to set the tone of the adventure and to ease the players into the play style that dungeon world encourages.

I ran this adventure with five players and overall it went really well and we enjoyed ourselves, but here are some things I noticed.

It is really easy to overlook quieter players during combat. I think this is mainly due to a combination of my inexperience with combat systems that don't use initiative and maybe having too many players for a first run with the system. I was initially planning to run with four players and I think that might have been the better move for me.

The combat can get really fun. The wizard of the group began play without his spell book and thus no spells to cast, but after an initially disastrous attempt at hack and slash versus an orc while using a drag bucket as a weapon, he decided that trying to distract the orc by swinging the bucket around wildly would be more effective. I suspect that combats very rarely drag out into three hour slugfests in dungeon world.

The fact that my orcs didn't need to roll to hit the player characters during combat was a breath of fresh air. I got through the session without rolling a single die, and my players were happy to accept my adjudication of their failed move attempts. I get the feeling that a band of goblins could still present a threat to a high level party and a dragon isn't necessarily a guarantee of a low level TPK.

Dungeon world may not be for everyone. Before play commenced I asked the cleric of the group 'What terrible crime did Drazhu commit that made you swear to destroy him?' The player then started looking for the answer on his character sheet, the same player later complained that he didn't know what he could do as there were no skills listed on his character sheet. I've noted in the past that this particular player seems to get more enjoyment from fiddling with game mechanics than he does from role playing and as such I think he's not part of the target market for Dungeon World.

I've got another one shot adventure to run, but it's looking likely that my next fantasy campaign will be run with Dungeon World. 

1 comment:

  1. Cool. I have DW and read through it, but still need to play a session before I'd ever try running it. A friend has promised to run me through a quick DW demo at GameHole Con next month. Should be interesting!

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