Can any fa/tg/uys redpill me on dungeon world...

Can any fa/tg/uys redpill me on dungeon world? My friend just suggested we try it out but I mainly see it used in shit posting here. Is that warranted? Or just a coincidence? Is it a fun game?

Other urls found in this thread:

fudgerpg.com/about/about-fudge/fudge-overview.html
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

> Is it a fun game?
depends

So basically Dungeon World is neckbearded nostalgia for AD&D before it became simulationist in 3.x.

Pros:
- easy and intuitive to set up and play.
- gaining XP from failing rolls is pretty interesting
- lots of interesting party interaction dynamics

Cons:
- very few options and very lite on rules
- very little granularity (e.g. the TN for hitting anything is the same)

So, it's akin to a rules-lite version of D&D where it's more focused on the dungeon delving to allow for more organic roleplaying rather than being a system capable of handling many diverse situations.

I personally don't like it, but I'm an autist who liked 3.0's city population system, and I can understand why people could enjoy Dungeon World, for sure.

Narrative bullshit. If you want something simple and generic (generic as in 'can be used to run just about any setting) try Savage Worlds.


>very lite on rules

It actually has a lot of rules, they just don't do anything well.

Read it, play a session or two, and form your own opinions. You have nothing to lose.

I like it so I might be biased, but I think the problem the majority of the haters has is not that they think is bad: is that it is moderately different (well, considering some shit I've played) from the other games they've ever played and think are the only form of rpg possible.

At this point I think that while I honestly think it does* what DND has ever promised and never delivered, Veeky Forums should try other good AW games. AW itself is always good; the best I've ever played is Monsterhearts. Night Witches seems pretty gud.

*=not perfectly, for sure.

You should totally play Dungeon World. It will help you better appreciate real D&D when you get back to it.

Dungeon World is a poor implementation of PbtA. It completely ruins that Apocalypse World had going for it.

If you want a good PbtA fantasy game, try Fellowship.

>If you want a good PbtA fantasy game, try Fellowship.
Not OP but what does it do better?

And do you have a link?

Seconding these three, who sum it up pretty well.

> redpill me on dungeon world

I love you

i will take this into advisement
yeah i just got my hands on the pdf of it

y-you too

Also curious, what's so great/different about Fellowship? The author did a couple sweet playbooks but never tried any of his standalone games

I do have one small caveat with this:

>very few options

This is only if you just use the core rules only, with no third party stuff and you don't build anything yourself. The game's designed to be easy to homebrew rules and stuff for, it even has a section of the book to walk you through it. It's kind of expected that you customize the game with new moves and stuff for your campaign world.

It also has a massive library of stuff made by other people that you can expand it with.
Want more classes? There's a fuckton of 'em.
Want multiclassing? Get Class Warfare.
Want more wilderness stuff? Get Perilous Wilds.
Like to do a funnel game where 0-level characters go through a meatgrinder and the survivors become level 1? Get Funnel World.
Want to do a more OSR style game? Get Freebooters on the Frontier.
There's a ton of stuff out there.

>Fellowship
I will try fellowship if it's an anime game

I've heard it called more of a Tolkien game.

the silmarillon is pretty anime, I'll give it a try

Honestly the Silmarillion is shit, let's be honest. Elves wreaking shit and then crying over it.

>redpill me

I'm sorry you seem to have visited the wrong board.

It is absolute dog shit.

You can do it's job better with your own house rules then ever bother cracking the book open.

>You have nothing to lose.

You can lose things every day. OP could lose his friends over this.

It's a questionable merging of the PbTA system and OSR in some areas, but if you have a D&D group that obviously cares more for RP than the rules it's serviceable. I prefer to amend it with Perilous Wilds, but if you want to run it I would say play one session with the plain rules to get a hang of it before you start hacking it.

I prefer Blades in the Dark and The Sprawl myself, though.

>Losing friends over a bad game

You know user, there are people who befriends decent, adjusted human beings out there.

Elaborate on this two, I'm interested. PBTA? Other shit?

If you're interested in the system, play Apocalypse World instead.

If you're interested in the idea of a lighter system, try Savage Worlds or another lighter game.

Although the DM handbook has pretty solid and great advice that can be considered very setting agnostic. If Dungeon World has a single worthwhile factor, it's the DM guide, although its terminology takes some getting used to as the terms they use are oddly keyworded and not precisely made clear and explicit, leading to it being somewhat confusing.

If OP loses his friends because they didn't enjoy one game, then they weren't very good friends in the first place.

>when you bump a shit thread to ensure it stays alive

The game uses a unified 2d6 system where only the player ever rolls.

You can literally play the game entirely using the 'Defy Danger' move. You don't even really need a character sheet or any stats you just describe and roll 2d6. That's it.

When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity, say how you deal with it and roll. If you do it

by powering through, +Str
by getting out of the way or acting fast, +Dex
by enduring, +Con
with quick thinking, +Int
through mental fortitude, +Wis
using charm and social grace, +Cha

On a 10+, you do what you set out to, the threat doesn’t come to bear. On a 7–9, you stumble, hesitate, or flinch: the GM will offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice.

You defy danger when you do something in the face of impending peril. This may seem like a catch-all. It is! Defy danger is for those times when it seems like you clearly should be rolling but no other move applies.

Dungeon World is garbage.
If you want a game that feels old-school, play one of the dozens of good retroclones out there. If you want something narrative that's actually good, play Apocalypse World.

>Losing friends over a bad game

I've lost a few friends over D&D. As well as Overwatch.

The claim isn't that strange.

Good for you! You lost some real shitty acquantainces. I hope your actual friends are better than that.

Eh. I don't bother with D&D or that other game, to my better judgment.

Remaining friends want to play Shadowrun but I feel that shit is a wee bit too intense for me to jump into. D&D was just the proper level of difficulty, whereas Shadowrun's character creation process makes me want to gouge my eyes out with the sides of my mattress

You're biased.

I've run plenty of systems, and DW is basically babby's first RPG, and that is all it can ever be.

>I've run plenty of systems, and DW is basically babby's first RPG, and that is all it can ever be.
not that user but so whats better? and why?

If you like or love crunch then Dungeon World won't be a good fit. If you like roleplay and improve then Dungeon World will be a better fit. Simpler isn't always bad. It is a good system for introducing younger players or complete newbies to RPGs provided you know the system well enough to run it.

That depends on your taste.

The problem with DW is that as a previous user pointed out, the system is designed to make you 'roleplay' through narrative action but hinges everything on a single dice mechanic that encourages minmaxing and power/ability choices that focus on your one or two good stats.

So what you end up with is a game where the supposedly open narrative is forced into very narrow uses of the player abilities, and the GM is forced into the role of a preprogrammed rll arbitrator that could be as easily fulfilled by a computer. Even if the GM wants to include anything resembling plot, the players narrative takes precedence and the GM is left with nothing more than a repetitive litany of"you drop your sword, you manage to injure it, you piss off the noble, you successfully win, you have a problem, you fail and something worse happens".

Any player or GM with any imagination whatsoever will realize you can do this with any system, ever. DW isn't new and unique - it's literally a 450 page guidebook on how to play FUDGE.

And if you don't know what FUDGE is, you should look it up. It's infinitely better than DW at what DW tries to be

fudgerpg.com/about/about-fudge/fudge-overview.html

It can be fun, but it is not a good game by any stretch.

Its stated mission is to be a love letter to D&D written in the PbtA framework.
It does so by completely missing what makes Apocalypse World work and stapling on some token D&D-isms that fail to evoke the source material in any meaningful way.

Just play Apocalypse World: Fallen Empires instead.

it's creator said that the game was made for people who want to play original or 1st ed D&D but didn't want to learn any of the rules, take from that what you will

It's a good starter system for both GM:s and players.

Some of the math isn't that great though, which leads to weird imbalances, and some classes are too fluffy in their mechanics (druid for instance).

sounds awesome enough

>PBTA
Powered By The Apocalypse (engine)
I.e. The system that makes Apocalypse World run.

>GM is left with nothing more than a repetitive litany of"you drop your sword, you manage to injure it, you piss off the noble, you successfully win, you have a problem, you fail and something worse happens".
For a start, that's a list of different things, not a repetitive one.
Secondly, it's supposed to supplant the bad GMing trend towards all failures being just "Nope, but you can roll again next turn." with an occasional "Nope, never try again."

>GMing trend towards all failures being just "Nope, but you can roll again next turn."
Is that really a thing? Only group I've seen do that were a punch of guys who really only cared about playing the most powerful build instead of role playing.

Never played DW but what that guy seemed to be trying to say is that ultimately it leads the GM into chanting, "failure, success, failure, success, circumstances resulting in... failure" that is driven by player abilities... Contrasted to the narrative resulting more from outside the box thinking from both the DM and the players in other systems.

It's a very common GM mistake, yeah.
Having played a few pickup games at my FLGS, I met more than a few GMs who were pretty unimaginative about that sort of thing.

Don't all RPGs lead to that? Generally checks either succeed or fail, and there either are or are not additional consequences.

The GM doesn't HAVE to make the players roll, if he thinks the outcome is obvious. He can also just offer a hard choice, straight up, if he likes.

>Any player or GM with any imagination whatsoever will realize you can do this with any system, ever. DW isn't new and unique

They also seemed to be conveying you never really have to use your sink stats, leading to more powergamey "roleplay".

Any GM can do this with any system. Few do. Few systems have any support or encouragement for it in the book. DW isn't perfect, but at least it tries.

I also don't understand what you mean by not using your sink stats, that's patently false.

it's good for one-offs and short adventure campaigns, but it doesn't scale well and the base dice system is wonky, slightly.

Honestly this is more a problem in other systems than it is in DW. Other systems actively discourage players by design from initiating actions relating to their low/sink stats. Whatever your character is terrible at you avoid like the plague as it's never worth the risk. The rest of the table is just going to berate you for trying to sneak in full plate on top a -4 dex while lacking skill ranks. Only the face gets to talk, only the rogue gets to so on and so forth. Go outside your spec and you may as well shoot yourself in the foot.

The only (small) saving grace that DW gets over other systems is that it isn't as swing-y and you get to mark XP if you fail so there's at least some incentive for your character to attempt something they haven't mastered.

As for a player using whatever stat they please in response to a Defy Danger, that isn't how it actually functions. The rules still require the player to work within the fiction of the situation and to have that dialogue with the DM. If the PC gets caught in the path of a rolling boulder in a narrow passage it doesn't matter how monstrous his WIS, INT or CHA are. None of those would be appropriate and even then the DM still retains the ability to veto invalid or otherwise 'gamey' suggestions. This goes for any move, including the narrative world building ones.

Fellowship is just as much hot garbage as DW. It still falls into a lot of the same pitfalls without actually fixing the main problems.The former is just more rigid about its' narrative diarrhea than DW is.

...

As someone that has run a Dungeon world campaign and been a player, it's not very good. I got really excited at first when playing it. However the failure spiral, lack of interesting mechanics, and an over-abundance of rules and guidelines in a supposedly rules light game makes the system feel stale quickly. Especially after you read apocalypse world, you realize how cheap an imitation DW is.

Dungeon World is a less good version of Apocalypse World. Shoehorning ten levels of crap into the Apocalypse World framework (where there's no such as Armor Class, escalating saving throws, etc.) produces a steaming mass of mediocrity.

Huh, through this whole thread I see a lot of people say "Dungeon World is not as good as Apocalypse World" but not any reasons that aren't "I don't like X." No broken mechanics, no rules that don't function, just variations on "I don't like AC" or "I prefer inter-player drama."
It's all subjective reasons.

>you can't even go over in detail why Dungeon World is bad for the 9000th time, must mean it's actually good

cmon we've had this thread up in some form or another for years

Majority of the "DW is just a shitty version of AW " people would still hate AW by the exact same token if they knew anything about the original system, but it's just shitposting and parroting memes at this point. It should come as no surprise this game has garnered a very special, motivated group that likes to false-flag shitpost it up the board and back. Even fellowship fag up there is a copypasta that shows up without fail anytime DW is mentioned.

Just like how we have for every system, everyday?

Yes, Dungeon World is a functional game. It just isn't a good one.
And the main problem in conjuction with AW is that it took its mechanics without their function. It is utterly non-functional as the AW hack it was conceived as.

It's just not good especially when you compare it to the game it aped its success from.

What *mechanical* problems of DW get brought up you could also levy against AW?

>XP rate is uncontrollable and with a cap of 10 levels you hit it as early as 4 sessions sometimes
>Bonds are treated as a useless afterthought while Hx is an integral part of the game that has a major impact on play
>The Interfere option never, ever has a reason to be used because AW was designed for the party to be in competition while DW is co-operative
>HP is stupid high for PCs compared to NPCs, but it still gets decimated after a few bad rolls unless the GM pulls punches
>Caster supremacy
DW has good ideas, and good GM advice that can be applied to any game (much like Lazy DM or any other guide to running campaigns). The abstraction of travel between "signposts" is strong, the equipment is a good lightweight equipment system, and like any edition of D&D the supplemental classes are better than the core.

>Caster supremacy
Dungeon World has a caster supremacy option? I've never played it so this is actually me asking because I hadn't heard that one before.

re casters and supplemental casters
Whenever someone tells me they're set on playing DW I generally advise them to swap out the Wizard and Cleric for the Mage and Priest.
Means less jarring vancian casting makes it harder for a party to rely on magic to solve all problems

Its the tutorial of the RPG world. After you do it once, you shouldn't need to do it again.

Druid is OP as fuck

>XP rate is uncontrollable and with a cap of 10 levels you hit it as early as 4 sessions sometimes

How in the everloving fuck are you getting 125 6- rolls in 4 sessions? They should be less than half your total rolls, so that's at minimum 62.5 rolls per session. That's crazy.

>Bonds are treated as a useless afterthought while Hx is an integral part of the game that has a major impact on play

Because you're not supposed to be fucking with each other's heads all the time, that's a genre difference.

>The Interfere option never, ever has a reason to be used because AW was designed for the party to be in competition while DW is co-operative

You can still get into a disagreement, and Interfere lets you handle it.

>HP is stupid high for PCs compared to NPCs, but it still gets decimated after a few bad rolls unless the GM pulls punches

You answered your own nitpick: combat is asymmetric, so if players had HP like NPCs they'd be dying constantly because things don't cleanly go back and forth in "I attack, you attack" fashion. Players need more HP by design, and yes, shit gets decimated after a few bad rolls. That's intentional, too, it gives you a buffer, but means you can't ignore danger because it can pile up on you and wreck you if you're not careful.

>62.5 rolls per session.

Assuming 4 players, that's 250 rolls per 4 hour session, 62.5 rolls for each hour, or one roll every 57 seconds.

Not the 4 sessions guy here, but is rolling a 6- really the only way to get XP? I thought there were other ways.

A few at end of session. Up to three for group achievements, one for fulfilling the alignment goal and one more for resolving a bond.

XP are one of my favorite comparison points.

>primary gain condition
DW: rolling a 6-
AW: rolling a highlighted stat, up to once per stat per scene

While Apocalypse World's system allows the players and the GM to reward each other for making Moves that they want to see and thus steering the session into an interesting direction, Dungeon World simply rewards failing and failing often. The incentive here is to faff around and botch rolls when the stakes aren't high. Not exactly desirable.

>No. needed for improvement
DW: 7+Level
AW: 5

AW's improvements occur at a steady clip. DW's level-ups get slower over time, both because of the increasing XP requirement and because of mandatory stat increases making the already swingy gain condition less likely.

>advancement length
DW: min. 10 levels; max. 10 levels
AW: min. 5 improvements; max 14 improvements

Players of Apocalypse World are given the explicit option to retire or class change their character starting with their 6th improvement. But they can potentially take as many as 14 improvements before having to take either of these two. Compare to that DW, where characters basically "expire" when they would hit level 11, which, thanks to the far more unreliable XP gaining method, may happen for one character far sooner than for another.

>>XP rate is uncontrollable and with a cap of 10 levels you hit it as early as 4 sessions sometimes

Dude, you literally can't level up more than 1 level per session.

Aside from the fact that as the other user said, 125 6- in 4 nights of game is very poor bait.

The condition for the Level Up move is:
>When you have down time (hours or days) and XP equal to (or greater than) your current level + 7
So you can, in fact, level up more than once per session.

>redpill me
>dungeon world

>botch rolls when the stakes aren't high.

>rolling for trivial shit

Bad DMing, bro.

There are situations in which stakes are high enough to warrant a roll, yet not so high as to warrant passing up XP.

And yet the DM still makes a move when you fail a roll. Intentionally trying to fail rolls is courting disaster.
The incentives are set to avoid rolling wherever possible, not to try to fail rolls. The latter only happens if the DM is a carebear who doesn't follow the rules and make moves against the party when he should.

No, the XP system incentivises failure. Because that is what gets you XP and lets you advance your character.

This is a common houserule/misunderstanding thing. As the SRD says, you get XP right now for 6-ing a roll. However, most GMs get you to tally your fails and then award XP for them (and other XP gains) at the end of each session.

So it's true that RAW you level whenever you meet the conditions, a large portion of tales will only have one level-up per session.

DW GM here. If I get one hint you're intentionally trying to get stakes up to roll dice then fail for XP, I'll Hard Move your ass to death in short order. Worse, I'll make your guy crippled and retarded.

It's intended to relieve the sting of failure, and only slightly.

>DW GM here.
Of course you are.

Thank you for that.

I don't know how I'd go about proving it to you.

Or do you mean to say my style offends you? In which case, how do you deal with people gaming the system to their advantage outside the spirit of the game?

Hey look it's the real reason people don't like DW, the smug GM.

DW encourages the players to be rolling as many dice as possible period. It's antithetical to the other PbtA games, and combined with spell casting means not only are Wizard and Cleric extremely strong they tend to level up much faster too. The -1 to spell casting makes it even more likely to boost XP gain.

There are a lot of problems in DW, and the leveling is definitely one of them - not retiring characters in 4 sessions bad, but my cleric joined at level 1 in a level 3 party and by level 5 was the XP leader.

>Hey look it's the real reason people don't like DW, the smug GM.
Get fucked, crybaby.
>DW encourages the players to be rolling as many dice as possible period.
No shit, doing stuff is good. The XP is hardly a lure though. It's counterbalanced with the fact that if you 6- a roll sometimes it's your ass.
>It's antithetical to the other PbtA games
Brie and crackers is antithetical to other after-dinner options, what's your point?
>not only are Wizard and Cleric extremely strong they tend to level up much faster too
Granted, but I don't use them.
>-1 to spell casting makes it even more likely to boost XP gain
Assuming your GM doesn't blind, cripple, curse or kill you.
>my cleric joined at level 1 in a level 3 party and by level 5 was the XP leader
Enjoy your good fortune, chum.

>Is out of responses
>Start attacking the other user
Typical DWer.

>Nonsensical arguments
>Cry when called out
I'm glad you're not typical.

>Brie and crackers is antithetical to other after-dinner options
People do brie and crackers after dinner? I always had it at parties when it was out for snacking on but the party didn't involve dinner.

Pros
>unified dice rolls for everything excluding damage
>difficulty values / target numbers rarely change
>easily homebrewed or hacked
>absurd modifiers rarely encountered
>attributes soft capped, nobody can be good at everything
>restricted multiclassing enforces niches and co-operation
>works well for low to mid-level adventurers

Cons
>melee and ranged combat rules are poorly balanced against each other
>core rulebook classes are pretty terrible, better to use homebrewed ones
>discern realities is poorly designed and exploitable
>defend starts off terrible but ends up the best method for dealing damage for most classes, ironically enough
>players deal too much damage

Cheeseboard is a classic dessert option for those with a less acute sweet tooth. Same sort of thing as ordering coffee after dinner rather than a pudding.

Oh man, I am all over coffee after dinner. Back when I was in highschool and college it was the only time I drank the stuff. Now it helps me not fall asleep at work.

I guess I've always thought of cheese plates and such as either pre-dinner or party food that you eat instead of a sit-down dinner.

The irony in this post is palpable.

Can we go back to stomp this shit attempt at game?

No.
Seriously, it'll change your life. If you're hosting, invest in a good selection of cheeses from a specialist. Like, a good mature cheddar, something sweet and nutty from Holland (I like Emmental but there's options), maybe a bit of Austrian smoked cheese and a bit of brie too. Stilton if you like blue cheese, as well. Plus some water biscuits or maybe go French and get good bread. Thin slices, plus bread, plus a good after dinner coffee blend and even some Lotus caramelised biscuits? DAMN that's some good eating after dinner. The key is variety and small amounts, take them on a tour with it.