Dungeon World - a new tabletop RPG
Jul. 27th, 2023 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzAs Steve is adamant we only play Traveller when we have a full house, i.e. all six players and himself as GM attending, Olly suggested we play Dungeon World on the off weeks. He volunteered as tribute to host the sessions for us as GM. Yesterday was our first, as Dan was double-booked, Steve was meeting up with his son Matt, and Eisirt was working that night. That only left the other Matt, Olly and me to dive straight into Dungeon World.
Ever since I started playing D&D in err...the early zeroes? I've struggled to get a grasp of the rules and things really haven't changed. When I had to spend some points on my Emphebion character I completely blanked out and forgot pretty much everything but my name, and yesterday's character building session was no different. I didn't read the Dungeon World rulebook, I skimmed over the introduction and figured 'yeah, yeah, elves, humans, druids, fighters, I know the schtick'.
I wanted to play a dwarf druid but apparently Dungeon World doesn't have dwarves. Luckily, Olly suggested I play a halfling with a big beard that was kind of dwarvish, and we'd use that excuse as a workaround. Great!
Then we started building the characters. Olly set us up with a list of numbers we could randomly assign to stats like dexterity, charisma, strength, you know, the lot. So I asked "Um, so how do I divide these so that they're good for a druid?"
"Oh, you need high wisdom for a druid." Olly said. I dutifully marked my wisdom with the highest number Olly had provided us with. And then I waited.
"So, um, how do I divide the rest?" I asked.
"Well, it's not so different from D&D, really." the answer came. I imagined Matt S. happily building his character at that point. My anxiety rose significantly.
I don't know what points should go where for a "good" build. Or where they should go for a "decent" build. I pretty much know only that my Charisma would be my lowest stat, because dwarves aren't very pretty or something.
Olly helped me divide up the rest, but I was struggling with all of it. The strange character sheet, the weird way to set up the character. Everything including the rules was new and I didn't like it one bit. I can only imagine what it must have been like for the guys having a freaked out Karen-esqe Jane on the voicechat.
When we were choosing alignments I freaked out again, and they said something about "heart" which I couldn't understand because both Matt and Olly were speaking over eachother. Finally, I figured out they said 'Just follow your heart'. We settled on 'we can always change it later'.
Phew.
Anyway, Matt is playing Barion: a bard-barian, a human fighter who wants really badly to be an artist, but might get violent when his audience doesn't appreciate his work. He might also be tone-deaf. His less-than-smart character was travelling around and found the little halfling village that my character is from, and he tried to get people to join him on his quest.
In the end, after literally smashing through the wall of the tavern at some point, the village elders tasked my character Runnan with helping him be on his merry way, and under no circumstances let him get back to the village. I think Runnan is a bit of a misfit in the village, just scavenging the shoreline and talking to the gulls with seaweed in my beard. Good riddance, right?
We visited a dark dungeon, with dank steps leading down. The interaction between Runnan and Barion was priceless and Olly let us decide on a ton of things about the world. For instance: my character had some halfling pipeweed on him, and when we were going to say a little prayer to the gods by smoking the pipeweed and taking a moment. Olly asked "What does that look like, exactly?"
Apparently saying a little prayer to the gods is best done with halfling pipeweed, and the pipeweed makes you remember your ancestors and how disappointed they are with you. You remember your parents (and Runnan's parents are dead) and their parents, who are also dead, and their parents and so on, and they are all disappointed with you. You get a little high and the effect is also that you get a +1 bonus on Defy Danger for 30 minutes if you do something stupid.
And now, this is a Thing in this world. Every time we smoke pipeweed we will remember our ancestors and how disappointed they are with us and get bonuses on stupid actions. Olly let us decide these kinds of things several times.
At the end of the little dungeon we found an ornate tomb.
"So whose tomb is it? Runnan, this is in your lands, so you probably know who it is." Olly said.
I was on a roll by this time.
"Oh yes, it's the tomb of [some halfling name or other]. He was a King who was known for being a peacemaker. But the stories vary. One type of person would tell you he would broker a peace between the peoples. And another person would agree and say that this king did this by making pieces from the people fighting. By chopping them into pieces. So he was a piecemaker, and a peacemaker."
A stunned silence followed, while Olly was trying to make sense of this, or possibly trying to write it down for future use on our very own Dungeon World Campaign.
In the end we opened the tomb and we found the treasure Barion was searching for.
And we didn't loot the tomb.
Barion, Intelligence 8, and Runnan, Intelligence 9, discussed what to do. We could take the treasures, but Runnan thought that would be wrong. Barion suggested we take the treasures back to the village, and display them for the people there, as they would know how special the treasures were because everyone in the village knew about this king, whereas he'd never heard of him.
Ah, back to the village. Um. No, can't go back to the village with Barion. So we decided instead to leave the treasures there. And if any halflings would want to come here to view the tomb, that would be fine. And we shouldn't disturb the peace of such an important king. Or his piece, even.
"Didn't you come out here to find treasure?" Olly asked Matt's character Barion.
"Ah, yes but I did find treasure." he said. "In the end, the most important treasure was the friend I found along the way."
The session was hilarious, and despite the rocky start I laughed a lot. I won't be writing out our sessions in full like I do with Traveller -- logging one campaign is quite enough, thank you very much -- but I am really looking forward to the next one.
Ever since I started playing D&D in err...the early zeroes? I've struggled to get a grasp of the rules and things really haven't changed. When I had to spend some points on my Emphebion character I completely blanked out and forgot pretty much everything but my name, and yesterday's character building session was no different. I didn't read the Dungeon World rulebook, I skimmed over the introduction and figured 'yeah, yeah, elves, humans, druids, fighters, I know the schtick'.
I wanted to play a dwarf druid but apparently Dungeon World doesn't have dwarves. Luckily, Olly suggested I play a halfling with a big beard that was kind of dwarvish, and we'd use that excuse as a workaround. Great!
Then we started building the characters. Olly set us up with a list of numbers we could randomly assign to stats like dexterity, charisma, strength, you know, the lot. So I asked "Um, so how do I divide these so that they're good for a druid?"
"Oh, you need high wisdom for a druid." Olly said. I dutifully marked my wisdom with the highest number Olly had provided us with. And then I waited.
"So, um, how do I divide the rest?" I asked.
"Well, it's not so different from D&D, really." the answer came. I imagined Matt S. happily building his character at that point. My anxiety rose significantly.
I don't know what points should go where for a "good" build. Or where they should go for a "decent" build. I pretty much know only that my Charisma would be my lowest stat, because dwarves aren't very pretty or something.
Olly helped me divide up the rest, but I was struggling with all of it. The strange character sheet, the weird way to set up the character. Everything including the rules was new and I didn't like it one bit. I can only imagine what it must have been like for the guys having a freaked out Karen-esqe Jane on the voicechat.
When we were choosing alignments I freaked out again, and they said something about "heart" which I couldn't understand because both Matt and Olly were speaking over eachother. Finally, I figured out they said 'Just follow your heart'. We settled on 'we can always change it later'.
Phew.
Anyway, Matt is playing Barion: a bard-barian, a human fighter who wants really badly to be an artist, but might get violent when his audience doesn't appreciate his work. He might also be tone-deaf. His less-than-smart character was travelling around and found the little halfling village that my character is from, and he tried to get people to join him on his quest.
In the end, after literally smashing through the wall of the tavern at some point, the village elders tasked my character Runnan with helping him be on his merry way, and under no circumstances let him get back to the village. I think Runnan is a bit of a misfit in the village, just scavenging the shoreline and talking to the gulls with seaweed in my beard. Good riddance, right?
We visited a dark dungeon, with dank steps leading down. The interaction between Runnan and Barion was priceless and Olly let us decide on a ton of things about the world. For instance: my character had some halfling pipeweed on him, and when we were going to say a little prayer to the gods by smoking the pipeweed and taking a moment. Olly asked "What does that look like, exactly?"
Apparently saying a little prayer to the gods is best done with halfling pipeweed, and the pipeweed makes you remember your ancestors and how disappointed they are with you. You remember your parents (and Runnan's parents are dead) and their parents, who are also dead, and their parents and so on, and they are all disappointed with you. You get a little high and the effect is also that you get a +1 bonus on Defy Danger for 30 minutes if you do something stupid.
And now, this is a Thing in this world. Every time we smoke pipeweed we will remember our ancestors and how disappointed they are with us and get bonuses on stupid actions. Olly let us decide these kinds of things several times.
At the end of the little dungeon we found an ornate tomb.
"So whose tomb is it? Runnan, this is in your lands, so you probably know who it is." Olly said.
I was on a roll by this time.
"Oh yes, it's the tomb of [some halfling name or other]. He was a King who was known for being a peacemaker. But the stories vary. One type of person would tell you he would broker a peace between the peoples. And another person would agree and say that this king did this by making pieces from the people fighting. By chopping them into pieces. So he was a piecemaker, and a peacemaker."
A stunned silence followed, while Olly was trying to make sense of this, or possibly trying to write it down for future use on our very own Dungeon World Campaign.
In the end we opened the tomb and we found the treasure Barion was searching for.
And we didn't loot the tomb.
Barion, Intelligence 8, and Runnan, Intelligence 9, discussed what to do. We could take the treasures, but Runnan thought that would be wrong. Barion suggested we take the treasures back to the village, and display them for the people there, as they would know how special the treasures were because everyone in the village knew about this king, whereas he'd never heard of him.
Ah, back to the village. Um. No, can't go back to the village with Barion. So we decided instead to leave the treasures there. And if any halflings would want to come here to view the tomb, that would be fine. And we shouldn't disturb the peace of such an important king. Or his piece, even.
"Didn't you come out here to find treasure?" Olly asked Matt's character Barion.
"Ah, yes but I did find treasure." he said. "In the end, the most important treasure was the friend I found along the way."
The session was hilarious, and despite the rocky start I laughed a lot. I won't be writing out our sessions in full like I do with Traveller -- logging one campaign is quite enough, thank you very much -- but I am really looking forward to the next one.
