Dungeon World

I'll give you a (You), why not.

BUT OP! OP, you mustn't LISTEN to the HERETICS that plague Veeky Forums, for they speak of CLOISTER REALMS, and use the same story, over and over. It's like they never could get people to play their terrible excuse of a system!

Oh I know there is, it's the later.

Apocalyps World and other PbtA systems suffer the same issues of Dungeon World. Avoid them like the plague.

FATE is probably your best bet. There's also GURPS lite and ultra lite; they're far from great, but they're still better than PbtA/Dungeon World.

Would you like me to list Dungeon World's innumerable major flaws, or it's handful of nail-in-the-coffin tier flaws?

Hit me with the flaws.

see

I'd prefer you listed Apocalypse World's flaws.
Thus far I've heard nothing but good things about it, and am planning on running it after my current campaign finishes up.
I got really keen for some weird mad max action. What's wrong with it?

It's a mediocre hack of Apocalypse World that emphasizes D&D tropes. The system is lightweight and easily modified, and it has a bland oatmeal flavor of fantasy attached to it. It's nothing particularly special, and it does a disservice to Apocalypse World by being more popular than it. Unfortunately, its mediocrity is propagated by legions of dumb fanboys who tout it as the Second Coming of Gary Gygax ("it's what you thought D&D would be before you read the rules").

It's not brilliant. It's not terrible. It's a middle-of-the-road kind of game that attracts retards: the Critical Role of indie games, if you will.

MY thread is best

Almost everything has already been said in the other thread (which I didn't create, because fucking hell, why do there need to be so many threads for Dungeon World – I do like it but still).

>Mostly objective concerns
The dice are bad. 2d6 roll high, needing 10 to succeed and 7 to half-succeed, is a wildly swingy system, especially if you are trying to put more importance on narrative than usual. People like to forget that characters in stories tend to succeed an awful lot at their actions; never does the pirate swing from the chandelier but miss the jump and land on his ass. After all, nothing kills a story like a chain of unlucky rolls, so having the ability to mitigate that is important.
Unfortunately, PbtA is fucking awful at this. You only have a +2 bonus in your best stat, which can maybe possibly become +3 if you’re playing a splat that allows it. At least FATE has a more reasonable distribution (+5 to your best stat on a dice scale on 4d3 instead of 2d6).

This is further exasperated by the way Moves are set up. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest issues with Dungeon World, because it’s such an obvious solution. The problem with moves is that they’re always set up with a good option at 10, a shitty option at 7, and a failure for everything else. If there were some moves that, say, succeeded on a 9 and half-succeeded on a 5, that would be a good improvement on the rules. In particular, this is relevant in situations where conditions might make things more difficult, or in situations where PbtA suggests that you use multiple rolls to simulate difficulty. It’s poor and lazy design to have all the moves fit in the same cookie-cutter format.

It’s not always what PbtA does or has that makes it bad, but also what it doesn’t have. Like situational modifiers. You know, one of the most basic aspects of every other RPG ever made. Make it easier to ply the black market at in shitty neighborhoods than in the fancy parts of town.

>Personal concerns
The writing is fucking awful. The class descriptions are one of the most pretentious things I've ever read. The layout is horrible. post limit.

Interesting points. I don’t agree with all of them but I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on Blades in the Dark, partially because it’s the latest big indie-darling hit to use the PBtA system and partially because it’s a PBtA system that eschews the standards 2d6 system for a d6 dice pool.

>I got really keen for some weird mad max action.
Play Savage Worlds. That system was fucking built to do Mad Max, and unlike PbtA it's rules are fun to play with in and of themselves.

I do not know much about Blade in the Dark, but from what I've seen, it's an improvement over PbtA and avoids a lot (but far from all) of that system's holes.

Not the same guy, but Blades is probably the Apocalypse World system with the most finesse simply because it actually has an inbuilt system for the difficulty of tasks.

It doesn’t have difficulty modifiers to rolls in the standard sense, but before any roll is made the GM has to declare if what you’re attempting is a “Controlled,” “Risky” or “Desperats” situation, and the game has explicitly listed consequences for failure in any of those three scenarios. To cop ’s complaint, groundwork in the fancy parts of town would be a “controlled” roll, while the black market dealings would be under “risky” circumstances.

Actually I double checked the rules and the GM also CAN just call for one less die if the player is under circumstances they’re particularly disadvantaged at, so the game also just straight up has regular -1 situational modifiers too.

It says so in the book? Page?

>The problem with moves is that they’re always set up with a good option at 10, a shitty option at 7, and a failure for everything else. If there were some moves that, say, succeeded on a 9 and half-succeeded on a 5, that would be a good improvement on the rules.
You're a moron. You know you could just apply a +1 or -1 modifier to rolls, right? You know that's listed as an optional rule in the both Apocalypse World and DW?

the 10/7 -> 9/5 was an example, and not the entirety of what I was trying to convey. There are no moves that, out of the box, break the established mold for moves. For example, the are no moves that have more than three states (success/half/failure). You'll never see anything like, say, a haymaker-punch move knocking someone out on a 12, stunning them on an 11, knocking them prone on a 9, staggering them on an 8, and failing completely on a 5. Even though the system is perfectly able to accept such a design.

I've seen a system that has a special case for a 12 (though I can't remember its name right now) and another game which has a special case for a 2 (Deniable).

Under "The Action Roll." Page 11 in the most recent quickstart rules, and whatever equivalent page in the full rules. -1 Dice if you're up against veteran or significantly well-prepared opposition.

Now I remember why Blades is my favorite PbtA system - not only does the "Controlled, Risky, Desperate" system actually put a system to the really nebulous "risk" of rolling that other PbtA games posit, it also is the only one that has room for normal-ass situational modifiers in its ruleset.

I really hope future PbtA games adopt dice pools over the 2d6 mechanics because its very clearly allowed for a more robust rules set.

Now that I get a chance to look at the circumstance/risk table myself, it really does feel like something every Apocalypse World game needed to be a more complete ruleset

some moves do however have different levels of goodness/badness on the 7-9 and 10+ result, for example, some moves essentially give you a success on 7+ and a bonus at 10+, others still have a negative at 10+, it's a subtler difference than the one you're talking about but it is there in a lot of the better designed PbtA games.

Has anyone mentioned the Quantum Bears yet?

Interesting. It doesn't say so in the book. Ctrl+F for "-1d" doesn't show this in the digital version either.

Only point where you get -1 dice is if you have a level 2 harm, according to the book.
If you were fighting against a veteran/elite/well-prepared opposition as a GM I'd just give you "Desperate/Limited" or even "Desperate/Zero".

Actually, this all seems somewhat off … What version is this? The latest one should be 8.1

The official rules reference for players over here
evilhat.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/blades_sheets_v8_1_Rules_Reference.pdf
has a completely different Desperate-Table too.
The way we've played it before, when you roll a 6, even on a desperate roll, you do what you want.

Ogres. They were Ogres.

Dungeon World is the oil and vinegar salad dressing of RPGs. You take D&D and PbtA and shake them together real hard and then use it before it separates instead of sitting there pondering how much sense it makes exactly.

It can be better, but the time and effort needed to come to grips with the best practices discovered long after the game came out may not be worth it when you have other options. Otherwise you are looking at basically a kludged together D&D storygame, which is alright but nothing spectacular.

Hmm... on the one hand you have this guy and on the other hand you have this guy Is it too easy to succeed or too hard? I don't get it.

My group had a lot of run with Dungeon World. We've played like a dozen systems over 16 years of gaming together, and it breathed a lot of new life into our games.

That said, it's closer to an improv game to a "real" game of Dungeons and Dragons. I would not play it with people I didn't like or know well.

Has anyone mentioned the Quantum Ogres?

>Is it too easy to succeed or too hard? I don't get it.
The hard stuff is too easy and the easy stuff is too hard.

"Quantom Ogres" are just DW's version of the random encounter roll you are supposed to make every few turns in the dungeon.

I'll take that as my license to shill.

Except I'm being honest about it. Don't be bothered by the modern animu art, I ran a game about venerated adventurers hunting a dragon and it was beautiful.

>The hard stuff is too easy and the easy stuff is too hard
I could not have said it better myself

You are literally wrong.
Dungeon World is almost certainly the best fantasy RPG currently on the .
Only possible exception is Torchbearer, another absolutely brilliant system.
Dungeon World can do absolutely anything you want it to.
It takes the Powered by the Apocalypse mechanic to it's its ultimate potential.
It also removed the shitty edgelord setting and sex moves of Apocalypse World.
The moves system is fast, strong mechanic that enhances the story instead of limiting it (the way that D&Ds babby simulationist mechanics try to)
Dungeon World is for adults with real responsibilities who don't have time for autistic charops.
Really, if you are a mature roleplayer, you will recognize the power of the dungeon world engine.
There is no caster supremacy, no charop bullshit where people ppwergame. Powergaming is impossible in dungeon world.
The game is entirely focused on a great roleplay experience.
Without initiative to slow things down (which is outdated and arbitrary anyway), combat is fast and furious while having the feel of an old school game.
This is part of why Dungeon World is so highly recommended by OSR folks.
So in other words, it's a really good, really versatile game that is definitely worth trying out.

dungeonworldsrd.com

>Apocalypse World and other PbtA systems suffer the same issues of Dungeon World.
How? Apocalypse World is great. Vincent Baker is a cool guy, he's actually creative unlike the jew nu males who hijacked his system for shekels while streaming and shilling on patreon. Apocalypse World is actually a whole system and world you can pick up and play. It's hard to run and it only does the "sandbox multiple plot threads character drama gritty violence" genre well, but it's a good system for that.

It's in the back of the book. You're not supposed to use difficulty modifiers because the game isn't about task resolution it's about "playing to find out" and the mechanics are not meant to have any real association with reality. The problem is that Dungeon Word related PbtA to D&D, and the two playstyles are completely incompatible. Dungeon World is bad for D&D style campaigns. Wrong feel, wrong system. Might work for some kind of dark fantasy but the hit points are so pussified I wouldn't even bother with that.

Is this copypasta? Am I being memed?

>It takes the Powered by the Apocalypse mechanic to it's its ultimate potential.
Nothing?

You're both idiots. Read about the actual game instead of parroting Veeky Forums memes. Most of which at misinformation anyway.

dungeonworldsrd.com
dungeonworldsrd.com

The character descriptions are pretentious garbage already. Why keep going?

They really are

How are they pretentious?

They're really not. Stop samefagging.

Although that's part of the game's modularity,
You can easily homebrew what you want by following that basic template. I get what you're saying in that it doesn't provide enough granularity if you're looking for crunch, but in my experience it hasn't hurt the games I've run with it.
Now I don't believe in the idea of using one system of rules for any and every campaign I'm looking at you GURPScucks, and I would wouldn't use this system for anything other than what each hack is built for. But, AW and games like the Sprawl and even Urban Shadows play very well.

I think the main problem with dungeon world is that it's too derivative, taking the superficial charms of PbtA (the 'fail forward' moves, evocative playbooks and general inprov-focussed tone) and shoehorning it into Dungeons & Dragons without and real considerations of the aspects I listed.

In a way, it's a microcosmal representation of everything wrong with Reddit.

Read them yourself. Every single class description is just "Are you a tough enough dude to hit yourself in the dick with a hammer," but more long-winded and pretentious

DW is the reddit of pen and paper.
>Easy to run, but shallow.
>Tries to be deep by encouraging "narrative" over gameplay.
>Characters level up, but aside from magic access rarely feel more powerful.
>Community full of pc/sjw/triggered by everything fucks.

Overall, DW is babby's first rpg, and is best suited for one off stories instead of campaigns. Just don't reject the DM's "X card" fuckery, or they'll ban you.

I have read them. They don't say that at all. You're just angry cause they at better written than your shitty 3.5 babby classes.

2d6 is less swingy than d20

Most people who hate it have never played it or came at it with expectations and ran it wrong, like this retard here who doesn't understand the mechanics are not geared towards difficulty because the fictional positioning is what determines the consequences.

>"generic" game
>slaps anime front and center

You must have a much higher tollerance for pretentiousness than me, user.
Hmn, I wonder why that might be...

Did I fucking mention d20 once in my post, user? Did I mention any d20 systems? No? Then it's not relevant to the conversation.
2d6 is swingy, especially if you only have potato-tier modifiers.

You are so goddamn stupid. A bell curve with an average result of 7 in a narrative system that has partial success from 7-9 is in no way swingy. The rolls are for a move-based resolution system, not a task resolution one.

A partial success is not a success, it's breaking even. And you already have a 40%+ chance of rolling a 6 and failing outright anyway.

THATs the smoothest bait I've ever seen

>bell curve
>2d6
You're fucking baiting, aren't you?

Yes, Dr. Retardo, because the system wants you to only partially succeed so the situation will develop and escalate, instead of just getting shut down by a perfect success. A failure also drives the situation forward, as it has the GM make a move themselves.

What do you call this, genius? A triangle? It's a bell curve by definition.

It shouldn't, because that's a fucking terrible way to simulate a narrative. Protagonists succeed way more than 60% of the time, especially if they're heroic protagonists and especially if they're fantasy heroic protagonists.

An absolute value curve? 'Cause that don't look like a Gaussian distribution at all.

The best narratives have a give and take that escalates the situation, moves the pieces to a point of high-tension, then releases with a victory or a defeat. You don't understand what the system is trying to do.

Look at the %s, not the dice.

No, the best SCENES have give in take. That's because the best scenes are climaxes, and they're tense exchanges back and forth success and failure.
Whole narratives from start to finish, though, are a very very long string of successes.

still a triangle
anydice.com/program/20

Have you never read something long-form enough to see the way the give and take warps the narrative? To keep the story meaningful, it's important to know when to flip the situation and do it regularly.

it's absolute shit.
It's one of /tg's and Reddit's niche favorites that everyone seems to shill, but nobody seems to actually play.

>It's bad because people like it

City of Mist has the concept of making a core move "Dynamite!", giving it access to the 12+ result.

Of course the give and take warps the narrative. It's the part of the narrative with the most impact. But, it's far from the most common part.
Compare it to driving. The part of driving that most affects what destination you end up in is what roads you turn left or right at. And yet, you'll still go straight at 90% of the intersections you pass through.

Regardless, it seems we've reached the point of the argument where there's no room for it to continue in its current form. We're looking at the same evidence (the average novel), and coming to different conclusions.

Unless, of course, you want to shift the argument to a different example, like quests. That's something I'm perfectly able but very much do not want to do.

>Did I fucking mention d20 once in my post, user? Did I mention any d20 systems? No? Then it's not relevant to the conversation.
It's from Dungeons and Dragons.

Oh is it now? Aesthetically or mechanically?

The game that Dungeon World is ripped from.
It has the one d20 and all the different modifers that you are used to.
That's why when you see a game with less numbers you get angry.

But factually the d20 plus all your modifers to hit an arbitrary DC is actually more swingy than the 2d6 plus stat to hit 7+.

>That's why when you see a game with less numbers you get angry
That's some very impressive mind-reading you've got there, user. You're wrong, though. I like RPGs that use their numbers right, regardless of how many numbers are present. Exalted uses its numbers well, so I like it. DnD uses its numbers poorly, so I dislike it. PDF related uses its numbers fucking phenomenally, so I love it. Apocalype World uses its numbers badly, so I hate it.

>Exalted uses its numbers well
Way to invalidate your entire argument.

More "objective" analysis I see.

YEAH it is a triangular distribution, bell curve is 3d6 (imb4 swarmed by gurpscucks)

1e and 2e use their numbers badly. 3e is a significant improvement, though. They kept the good foundation of the storyteller system, greatly strengthened the stunt and execelency subsystems, and got rid of all that Perfect Defense bullshit. Also, they stole their combat system straight from Disgaea, or so I'm told.
But, if you want to go in detail, I'm being 100% honest when I say I'd love to hear an overly long and in depth explanation of it's flaws, and how it uses it's numbers poorly. C'mon, I wrote one for you. The least you can do is write one for me.

There's a reason I said "mostly objective concerns." There's no such thing as true, 100% objectivity.

I absolutely agree, but I think I want different things when I'm playing and RPG to when I'm passively consuming a narrative. Even in the context of consuming fiction I also think lots of people forget that breathing room will make highs higher and lows lower; compare Star Wars IV to VII - they basically have the same plot but VII has way less "quiet" moments, and the ones it does have are shorter and then everyone is in a chase scene or combat scene again. I think that constant tension ultimately takes away from the film.

So in my (admittedly very limited experience) PbtA games tend to push escalation in terms of narrative stakes a bit too much for my tastes.

If things always escalate then the tension goes out for me. My DM wanted to run Blades in the Dark and I had an issue with how every action the PCs took filled the alert clock in the example of play, because I wanted the bad thing that happened to the players to be more related in fiction to what they were doing with the roll that didn't crit success.

To me the problem is that knowing that clock will inevitably fill up because any roll could (not just stealth rolls) means I'm no longer worrying about whether or not the guards will realize we are there. They will. They always will. There is nothing we can do about it so there isn't much point to getting invested in the idea we might actually be able to avoid it.

I tried to explain this to my DM and he basically accused me of being gamist trash that wanted something I could "win against" more than a good story.

Maybe that is true, but I still think knowing shit will always go sideways takes away the impact when it does.

>Stole from Disgaea
Dissidia. The dice are the worst part of 3e, and you are a moron for using it as an example.

Can I have more than 19 words on why the dice are bad, or are the dice just bad because they're bad?

See here is the thing. I think in just about any game failure often moves the situation forward anyway, outside of combat at least.

If I fail to pick the lock on the magistrates office then I have to find another way in. I could try to bribe the maid, attempt to pickpocket the key, or just smash the door in. No matter what the situation has changed. I don't need my failure to pick the lock to all of a sudden mean I hear the conversation of guards approaching round the corner or the housekeeper to walk in on me trying to get in for the situation to have move forward.

I will give you that other games don't have partial success, and a full success will just give you what you want, shutting bringing the situation to a close. Thing is most games have you roll for more discrete actions than PbtA games do, so one perfect success doesn't really shut it down either and during the course of a scene you will often have ample opportunity for cock ups to occur.

I think PbtA games are sort of written to mechanically to stop shitty DMs doing shitty things like making players roll for too many actions, especially in situations where failure is meaningless. Like, in the example of the

Magistrate's office above say the building was empty as he was visiting another area or something. Then a good GM would say we have enough time to pick the lock and just say we got in without a roll.

But maybe if the building were only empty for that night, and the lock was enchanted or of exceptionally high quality... well then maybe we would have to make the roll to pick the lock. But we wouldn't have to roll to just bust the door down, but doing that would make it obvious we had broken in. If we don't care about that then the story just flows forward with no rolls, if we do care about that then failure is meaningful inherently.

If you want a dungeon crawler play old school D&D or a retroclone thereof.

If you want a PBTA game, play literally any other PBTA games

... And? There's anime of pretty much every sort in the world, my friend. What makes it invalid for a generic system then?

What kind of artstyle should a "generic" system have? There are no hard rules in game design.

If Adam help make it, it's likely just Burning Wheel lite with a lot more 'faggot' added to it.

It's psychological from the standpoint of the reader trying to understand what he's reading.
It's a first impression thing and a disconnect from content and presentation, if the very first thing I see is weeb Battle Royale with trope traits, then I see "Misfortune", and now I'm expecting grim schoolgirl combat.
Then the rest of the text starts saying generic and "tabula rasa" it blows the setup. Think like "Your character is a blank slate", obviously not because we are making anime schoolgirls or something, what? and i'm waiting for the flavor that never shows up.

Goddamnit, not this thread again.

Dungeon World is mediocre. It's not the salvation of tabletop gaming people claim and it's not utter trash like others insist. It's just thoroughly okay.

Pros
>Task resolution is fast and easy to understand
>Six fairly balanced attributes with low modifiers
>Moves are pretty simple for the players and GM to learn and use
>Monsters are dead simple
>System is hard to exploit
>Tags on weapons, armour, etc. are pretty nifty
>XP on failure is pretty cool, if easily abused
>Easily to homebrew (I made a Mass Effect ruleset using DW as the baseline)

Cons
>Some Classes, Moves, and Advanced Moves are significantly better than others
>The book is long, poorly laid out, and information is presented poorly
>Fronts are worthless and in my opinion can easily sabotage new GMs
>Few abilities that give players control or influence on the setting/story which is contrary to the intent the game sets forth
>Every task is equally difficult by default, no sense of escalation against tougher challenges or opponents
>Lack of initiative means the loudest, most spotlight-hogging players do the most
>Characters reach max level very quickly, longer campaigns are tough to run as a result
>Modifiers rarely go up, vertical progression is almost non-existent, so high-powered games are near impossible