The Map

One of my PCs in the Dungeon World game has gone looking for trouble, so I have trouble prepared.  Assuming all goes according to plan (which is a notable assumption in this group), the Terrible Old Man has a treasure map to some long-forgotten treasure.  The treasure will go unrevealed until the PCs speak with the Terrible Old Man, but for the time being, the treasure map may be useful.  I made it in Hexographer; it's based off a revised version of the Sorrowfell Plains map.  Interested parties might be able to use it in their own campaigns, if you need a random treasure map; I tea-dyed parchment-looking cardstock and burned the edges to give it a weathered look.

Click to enlarge.

Review: World Wide Wrestling

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to play World Wide Wrestling: The Roleplaying Game by Nathan D. Paoletta.  (I've previously encountered the author via Annalise, although I've only skimmed it.)

Professional wrestling is not a part of my background, but I know a fair number of people who enjoy it.  (By-and-large, they're gamers, and they like wrestling for the same reasons they enjoy role-playing games — action and soap opera, in equal measure.)  As with a lot of things, I've absorbed portions of it via osmosis — time spent around friends who watch wrestling, jaunts on TV Tropes or Wikipedia, and the inevitable absorption of pop culture detritus that all minds accumulate.  I probably should have done a bit more research beforehand, but this isn't a terrible game to enter cold.

World Wide Wrestling is an attempt to model professional wrestling in all its chaotic glory, both in and out of the ring.  It is a *World game — Powered by the Apocalypse, as they say — putting it in the camp with Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Monsterhearts, and the like.  The mechanics should be familiar to those familiar with *World games, but I'll give a quick run-down:  Your actions are governed by a list of broad "moves" that define what you can do.  If there's any certainty or randomness involved, you roll 2d6 + some stat.  You fail if you roll 6 or lower, get an incomplete success with a roll of 7-9, and completely succeed on a 10 or higher.  In addition to your stats, you have bonds with your fellow PCs; these bonds form the core mechanic, as increasing your relationships to other PCs is the primary means of leveling up.  It's a fast, light system designed to simulate narrative reality.

Of course, it's been hacked from the core system.  You have four stats: Look (how well you perform), Power (governing feats of strength), Work (how skilled you are at the technical aspects of wrestling), and Real (how well you balance the role you're playing and how good you are at breaking kayfabe and making it work).  You're still trying to improve those relationships (called "Heat," and working almost exactly like Hx from Apocalypse World), but improving your relationships is a direct result of working with a person (be it in a match, cutting promos, whatever).

The biggest change is the wound and advancement system.  You can get injured — accidents do happen — but you're not going to die in the ring; injuries just take you out until you heal.  Instead, the "health" and "experience" mechanics are folded into a single system, called "Audience," which measures how well-received you are by the public.  Certain factors (like increasing your Heat with another wrestler) increase Audience; when you hit Audience 4, you gain an advance (which lets you take an additional move, increase a stat, or gain some advantageous relationship like a manager or tag-team).  If you end an episode at Audience 0, though, you're fired (character "death," essentially).  There are a couple of other methods to gain advances, but that's probably the most straightforward and common one.

The Gimmicks — "playbooks" in other *World games, and character classes in other games — are all wrestling tropes, and focus as much on the actual actor and the wrestling character the person portrays.  (As an example, the playbook I'm using is "The Wasted" — a drug addict, you're pretty adept at flashy stunts in the ring, but you're also a walking threat to kayfabe when you're using.  Which is frequent.)

One of the other differences is the increased import of player-versus-player in this game.  Succeeding at a wrestling maneuver grants bonuses, but also grants narrative control.  Narrative control typically shifts back-and-forth a couple of times during a match until the GM calls for the finish.  As per pro wrestling, outcomes are fixed (although some unruly types can "throw" matches, as happened in the first match), but it is still possible to grow one's audience even if one "loses."

As with other *World games, the GM doesn't roll anything.  The hot potato of narrative control passes as normal, but if the PC loses, the GM accepts it and narrates for a while before returning narrative control to the player.

Amusingly, most of the players present had limited wrestling knowledge, but we still seemed to get into the swing of things as the game progressed.  (Most notably, the quickstart has a list of wrestling moves on pages 8-9.)

About the only complaint about the system is the back-and-forth of the narrative.  The fact that poor dice rolls can prevent a player from describing actions is a bit of a pain, although "narrative control" could just as easily mean collaborating with your opponent and holding final veto rights.  I'm guessing it varies among play groups.

All-in-all, it's the kind of quick, story-driven play I've come expect from *World games.  It seems like a solid system for the genre, likely better than trying to model it with d20.

Artifact April #13: The Sickening Blade [Dungeon World]

[Dungeon World]

Close, Reach, Ignores armor, +1 damage, 2 weight

The Sickening Blade appears to be a long sword made of some pale material roughly the consistency of metal but warm to the touch.  (Proper analysis would reveal it is some manner of strange bone melded with starmetal.)  In truth, the Sickening Blade is actually some extraplanar protuberance of some Far Realm creature.  At will, the blade can elongate into an ivory tentacle, striking foes up to ten feet away.  Wounds inflicted by the Sickening Blade tend to abscess, requiring healing or surgery lest the victim gain debilities before dying horribly.

It is believed that the Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks holds the Sickening Blade in their gladiator barracks for special bouts against creatures immune to normal weapons.  How they obtained the blasphemous blade is unknown.

Artifact April #11: The Chronicle of Vun the Damnéd [Dungeon World]

[Dungeon World]

0 weight

The Chronicle of Vun the Damnéd is a leather-bound journal detailing the adventures and researches of the apostate magus, Vun the Damnéd.  Vun the Damnéd was a wizard who pacted with foul things and took up the path of the warlock after a chance meeting with the infamous Gingor the Seeker.  He merrily pacted with multiple entities across the planes, dabbling in demonology, infernalism, necromancy, and the foul lore of the Far Realm.  (Although not mentioned in the book, this activity likely has something to do with his mysterious disappearance.)  When you consult the Chronicle on forbidden arcana, take +1 forward to your next spout lore check on an appropriate subject.

In addition, the book also contains the complete litany necessary to enact the Liquescent Aspect of the Weird God, as well as the location of the Weird God’s secret fane on Khaldun.

(Parties interested in further information on the Weird God are directed to pages 59 and 109 of Carcosa by Geoffrey McKinney.  Naturally, if you wish to include the Weird God in your own campaign setting, The Chronicle of Vun the Damnéd will tell you where his secret fane is located.)

Happy Thanksgiving from the Wendigo!

In honor of Thanksgiving in the United States, I offer you a Compendium Class for Dungeon World: The Wendigo!  Based on the D&D 4e monster of the same name (detailed in the Demonomicon), the wendigo is a demon that possesses people who become cannibals.  Willing cannibals can channel the power of the demon such that they retain control of their faculties.

It's my first Compendium Class, so feedback is welcome.

So, without further ado, The Wendigo!

Review: Dungeon World

This is probably a little less structured than my other reviews, more properly being "rambled thoughts on Dungeon World," but there you have it.  (The fact that I haven't blogged in two months likely contributes.)

For those not in the know, I have been running a Dungeon World campaign every two weeks for two months; today is session number six.  Having had a few weeks to ruminate on the subject, I've started forming some thoughts on the game.

(Also, if you're interested, you can read the whole thing online.  So you can easily take it for a test drive before purchasing.)

Dungeon World hits a lot of notes I enjoy in gaming.  I enjoy quick task resolution, modular complexity, and modular character ability, and Dungeon World has all those in spades.  Roll 2d6, add your modifier, and compare against a set range of numbers.  Boom, task resolved.  Likewise, you can easily hack it, so it can be as rules-heavy or as rules-lite as you'd like.  Finally, since it's heavily narrative, you can be as gritty or as high fantasy as you'd like with it — maybe each attack roll kills hordes of mooks, or maybe each roll represents a single, desperate struggle against one guy.  It's your call, really.

Coming from a variety of wide-open, traditional RPGs, though, the prescriptive basic/advanced move list is a little different, at least at first.  (I personally prefer the simpler task resolution in World of Dungeons.)  Beginning GMs will likely spend time trying to delineate whether a given action falls under a given type of move; it's a small learning curve, but a notable learning curve nonetheless.  Likewise, it's not as granular as many traditional RPGs.  It can handle the mapping and resource management tasks of classic D&D, as well as that Oregon Trail feel, but it certainly doesn't do it in quite as structured a way — if you're expecting to map a dungeon 120' every ten minutes, this is going to be quite different.  (You're probably just going to manage a rough sketch in vague, narrative time.)

Likewise, it does narrative combat rather than tactical combat.  Since I started with World of Darkness, narrative combat is old hat to me, but it's still a very different animal than D&D's regimented combat system; even classic D&D's abstract combat requires a certain amount of tactical acumen (unsurprising, given D&D's wargaming pedigree).

Overall, Dungeon World is very good at providing a quick, action-movie feel to the somewhat staid world of fantasy role-playing games, but lacks the granular rules that sometimes add a little panache to the affair.  It won't handle resource management and dungeon mapping in a way to which you're accustomed, but that might suit your needs.

For me, I'll certainly use it sometimes — it's great for beginning groups, particularly since it's a little forgiving in terms of combat, and the fast resolution mechanics mean it's also great for one shots — but sometimes I want that complexity to give the rules a little more shape.  Additionally, the emphasis on narrative and intraparty relations does not suit every game, although it certainly covers a wide variety of them.

Dungeon World: Bread and Circuses

Running the first actual session of my new Dungeon World game tonight, so we'll see how that goes.  The characters are all enslaved gladiators.  We did character creation last week, with the following results:

Ashraf Scarscale, The Battlemaster

Evil kobold battlemaster

Croitus, The Necromancer

Evil alligator-man necromancer

Dhavita, The Medic (picture updated 9/14/2014, 5:41 PM)

Good dhampir medic.

Nobody, The Barbarian (picture updated 9/14/2014, 10:45 PM)

Chaotic eladrin barbarian

Resh Burntscale, The Skirmisher

Neutral kobold skirmisher

Southie, The Brute

Chaotic dwarf brute

That's the setup — we'll see how it goes!