Dungeon World Questions?

I have mainly experience with playing Pathfinder, DnD and some light Cyberpunk. My DM was going to do pathfinder but decided to use Dungeon World. Has anyone played? Did you enjoy yourself? Reasonable complaints?

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It's fun. A lot lighter and fluff-focused than D&D/PF, but I think that makes it a lot better. One thing that trips people up is most of the rolls are on the player's side: the GM only really breaks out dice when something is harming a PC.

I've run a short adventure of it. It was ok, the players didn't find their character options too interesting though and I didn't really like its version of fronts so we eventually moved on to other systems.

It's probably worth giving a go, but do a one-shot before commiting to a campaign.

The DM is very experienced so I trust him. We also ran into the same problem that characters were a bit boring. He's running it with a cyberpunk setting since he found a Shadowrun hack for it. He's pretty good about us using 3rd party stuff and knows enough to make sure things are balanced.


I chose to play a gunslinger that acts as a vigilante in the poor areas of the city. Basically just making the mysterious stranger.

Abandon the core playbooks and use basically any third party playbook. Seriously, the biggest problem I have in the system is with the core palybooks. They could not have fucked up PbtA worse.

The GM advice and rules are terrific, so make sure the GM pours over it and makes sure to go with rule of cool for moves. The most important thing to remember is the basic conversation:
>Player: I do X
>GM: (thinks about consequences of action, if cannot come up with one and it's a reasonable action) Yeah sure, .
>GM: (can't think of a possible outcome for failure, but its' a pre-written move) Roll, . (Gm banks failure for a later move)
>GM: (knows the failure condition) Roll, .

It's pretty easy, and works best if you move fast.

>He's running it with a cyberpunk setting since he found a Shadowrun hack for it
at that point why not just play the Sprawl, it's a PbtA game designed for cyberpunk in the first place

Idk man. I'm just letting him do his thing. It's hard enough to get a group of people together as is.

Also, the Gm needs to remember that failures **suck**

Even partial success are meant to have more severe penalties than DW generally was written. They are what make the game interesting, you are always trying to overcome the next hurdle.

>It's fun.
Meaningless statement. "It's fun" can be applied to literally anything. This is why "fun" is so annoying: not because you shouldn't have fun as one of the goals of your RPG experience (not the only goal, but one of them), but because as an end rather than a means, it is utterly useless as a descriptor. It does not explain WHY a game is good, or whether or not it will be good for certain groups / games.

>A lot lighter and fluff-focused than D&D/PF, but I think that makes it a lot better.

Pathfinder Core Rulebook is 500-something pages. Dungeon World Core Rulebook is 400-something pages. I wouldn't really call that a lot lighter.

>One thing that trips people up is most of the rolls are on the player's side: the GM only really breaks out dice when something is harming a PC.

Only utter retards get tripped up by that. Seriously? Also I find it funny that the GM "breaks out dice" at all. In Apocalypse World I am pretty sure the GM *never* rolled, except maybe for the Harm moves, but even then I think those were rolled by the players. In any respect, the Harm moves were FAR more interesting as they gave explicit results for how harm affected the PCs (dropping something, stumbling, being unable to do something important because of your wound) and also served as minor randomization for the damage (-1 / +1 harm). Whereas Dungeon World just reduces it to straight HP meat points because that's how le epic D&D does it so it must be a good idea.

cont. from above

The Dungeon World developers had no fucking clue as to half of what made Apocalypse World good, so they bastardized it and tacked it onto a genre it doesn't really work for (except it kinda does work for dark fantasy, i.e. Apocalypse World Fallen Empires which is actually a competently made game). Dungeon World reminds me a lot of d20 Modern: the developers thought "oh look here's a cool system, let's try tacking it onto a genre it doesn't belong in and throw in a lot of shitty rules that don't fit, and made a bland system that "works" and "is fun" but really isn't that good from a design standpoint. The only parts of Dungeon World that are good, are taken straight-up from Apocalypse World. Pretty much every mechanic in Apocalypse World is superior in execution to those of Dungeon World. The only problem with AW is the fact that sex is involved, which turns off a lot of immature players who can't handle that, and the fact that post-apocalyptic is not nearly as popular as heroic fantasy, because one is about tough choices and drama and politics and the other is about wanking off to your super-tough paladin who can wrestle a literal dragon omg.

>Pathfinder Core Rulebook is 500-something pages. Dungeon World Core Rulebook is 400-something pages. I wouldn't really call that a lot lighter.
I mostly agree with your arguments, but this one is just bullshit.

Weight is volume times density, both in terms of actual physics and in this particular context. Dungeon World does not have significantly fewer pages than Pathfinder, but it spends a lot more of that page count explaining moves in fine detail, providing examples for mechanics and procedures and describing mechanically very simple NPCs.

Also, the book wastes space in a serious manner with massive amounts of whitespace.
And half the book is monsters.

book.dwgazetteer.com/ Makes the rules far more accessible.

>see "fun" in quotes
>immediately know that this is copypasta

I love it. It's my favorite game to GM. My problems with it stem from where it inelegantly mashes D&D stuff into a system that doesn't support it.

Basically what this post said, except that I still like the game.

It's not though.

Sprawl's cool but it's got some problems. Failure is a lot less OK in a mission-based framework, which makes the game really, really unforgiving. It's also not very good for fluff play between missions which is where a lot of people have fun in cyberpunk games.

Eh, fair enough. But the idea that Dungeon World is "rules light" is just stupid. It's rules-medium at best. People call games like Savage Worlds or 7th Sea rules-medium games and they have less rules than Dungeon World does.

Hey Virt. How's your cat?

I think it's much lighter than Savage Worlds simply by not having modifiers. You never look something up in PbtA and every roll is the same.

Can you fit every common and situational rule any given player might need during the game in full detail and reasonably large print onto a maximum of 6 DIN A4 sheets (no duplex) for Savage Worlds or 7th Sea?

No, but you can't fit all the class moves for Dungeon World on that sheet of paper either. Situational rules aren't the only form of crunch.

check this vid. in fact, the entire channel is to be checked out.
youtube.com/watch?v=meov7EG163c

>You never look something up in PbtA

Hmm well there are still tags, class moves, fronts / GM shit, bonds rules, etc.. The moves are not the only rules. One class might only use a few of them but that's still printing out several different sheets unless everyone is playing the same class.

Situational modifiers barely qualify as crunch if they are just basic shit like "-1 to hit in darkness," you can fit those modifiers on a little sheet of paper easily.

2 sheets of basic/advanced moves, 2 sheets of class moves (and character creation details), occasionally 2 sheets of spells. That's all.

I've played a one-shot recently. It's a short time to actually have an opinion about the system, but anyway.

>Did you enjoy yourself?
Yes. Some things I liked about it:
- character creation is fast and actually means something. You're thinking of your character's motivations and background along with filling out the sheet, it's not separate from mechanics. I've spent so much time with builds that it was a relief for me.
- players have freedom to add elements to the setting and are encouraged to do so.
- describe what your character does, not what power/mechanic/rules fuckery you're using. Of course if you're playing a druid you'll say "I change my shape into an aardvark's" or if you're a wizard you'll say "I cast Lightning Bolt", sometimes it's inescapable; but it feels good to say "I run my hands lightly over the plaque, looking for a hidden button" instead of "I roll Perception", or "I hold out my holy symbol and yell to the orcs, 'turn back! By the light of Pelor, The Burning Hate!'" rather than "I roll to intimidate".

I understand these are things that a good group does anyway, but in Dungeon World it's actually part of the rules and I like that.

>Reasonable complaints?
If the GM lets it get out of hand, players who talk loudest and fastest will be the only ones playing while other players (like me) consider what their character would/should do.
Again, not saying that's not part of a GM's job regardless of system, but Dungeon World doesn't have initiative or turns or apparently any other mechanic to help the GM make sure everyone's playing, not just whoever's sitting right next to him.
Your DM is very experienced, so that shouldn't be a problem.

All in all, and again I only played a oneshot, Dungeon World didn't quite fulfill its promise of "it's the game you imagined when people first described Dungeons and Dragon to you". But I see that tries to get there and I think with a group that already knew each other it might have been just that.

It is now.

>If the GM lets it get out of hand, players who talk loudest and fastest will be the only ones playing while other players (like me) consider what their character would/should do.
It's pretty obvious gm directs the dialogue, so he can and should give the same attention to all the players. In standard d&d it's the same because rounds work only for combat, not social interaction, exploration, ecc.
I think the "free and clear" step is implemented in the dw manual.

Powered by the Apocalypse is one of the few good narrative systems.
Dungeon World is either the worst or second worst PbtA implementation.

Narrative systems don't lend themselves to dungeon delving, but Dungeon World outright doesn't try.
If you /insist/ on playing a narrative system, grab Torchbearer instead.

Really though? If you want a light dungeon crawler, pick up AD&D or Bx.

Ah! If you want a light(er than 3.pf) dungeon crawler that won't feel alien to 3.pf players, consider Dungeon Crawl Classics.
All these systems (even Dungeon World, god know why) are available in the /osrg/ Trove if you'd like to try-before-you-buy.

>the "free and clear" step is implemented in the dw manual
What does that mean?

>Dungeon World is either the worst or second worst PbtA implementation.
There is a contender?

have you heard of a little game called Tremulus?

How does compare Dungeon World to the Cypher System?
For what I read about Dungeon World it seems that they are similar in a lot of ways.

I have heard the name, but I don't know what it is about or how it fucked up.

They are not similar at all. Where'd you get that from?

Mainly the "gm doesn't roll" and "rules light but not really"

I don't know if the name name is correct.
It's a step made famous by Howard. When there the party has to take action, the gm asks everyone (clockwise, age order, alphabetic order, doesn't matter) what they intend to do and let them organize a bit. The narration can continue when everyone is on board.
More or less the point is to listen to every player and avoid escluding people from event in games without codified turn/round.

I think they are similar in the sense they are considered narrative driven alternatives to standard dnd.

That's about as meaningful as "uses six-sided dice".

>I have heard the name, but I don't know what it is about or how it fucked up.
It's an Investigative Lovecraftian Horror game which fails to have either decent investigation or horror mechanics. One major problem is that they kept many of the basic moves the same as in AW, this means that not only is the ability to 'read' people or situations pretty simple making it very easy to identify dangers or untrustowrthy people but also the combat moves are kept the same. So a game from a genre about disempowerment and fear kept the same combat system as an action game. The investigative mechanics are also just boring, usually boiling down to 'roll to find information' until you solve the mystery. There's also the fact that learning parts of the eldritch truth is basically just a buff and the sanity system is boring as shit.

Wow. Okay, that sounds even more terrible than Dungeon World.
I mean, Dungeon World is bad, but it at least sort of functions in its intended capacity because the genre disconnect is not THAT harsh.

It's a shitty Played by the Apocalypse game but it's a good version of D&D is basically my experience. Where they do stuff like completely destroy the elegance and point of the playbook since you can't just jump into the game with just having the playbook and the MC quickly explaining shit to you.

>same combat system as an action game
But is Apocalypse World an action game? Isn't it supposed to be about interpersonal drama? Well, at least that's what the pasta says; I know I shouldn't trust it too much or maybe at all.

*Powered by the Apocylpse

>But is Apocalypse World an action game? Isn't it supposed to be about interpersonal drama?
You act as if those were mutually exclusive.

>you can't just jump into the game
why?
seems pretty straightforward to me.
furthermore being used to dnd, the impact to dw was lower than aw.
what do you need more that aw ignore?

It sounds mutually exclusive to me. I mean, a game can be about talking things through or about blowing things up, but not both.

You can talk things through AND blow things up. In either order. Or simultaneously, if you really want to drive a point home.

>a game can be about talking things through or about blowing things up
Character is explored through actions. How someone chooses to engage with the conflicts which arise in their life is when their nature is revealed. In that, 'by blowing shit up' is an equally valid response.

For example let's say you've got a Chopper who's rolled into a town and, with his gang, basically taken the place over. The Gunlugger doesn't take kindly to a gang-member abusing some townsfolk and mows a bunch of them down. The Chopper responds to this by 'sending a message' by having someone the Gunlugger cares about kidnapped and tortured.

That conflict and how they both engaged it tells us more about the basic natures of those two characters than them sitting down and talking about their feelings would.