Sunday, July 1, 2012

"Dungeon World", my own way

So, Dungeon World is, basically, using the rules from Apocalypse World to recreate the world of Dungeons & Dragons, right? Then, if I designed Dungeon World, here's what the playbooks would be:
  • The Adventurer — you go dungeon-delving for fame and fortune; the exact way you kill monsters (sword-fighting, spell-casting, arrow-shooting, god-invoking, back-stabbing, shape-shifting, kung-fu, etc.) depends on the options you take from the playbook.
  • The First-leveler — you're young and eager and you wish you were as cool as the Adventurer: survive long enough and that may happen.
  • The Leader — of an adventuring party (a small, but very powerful, gang).
  • The Henchman (not gender-exclusive: you can be a henchwoman, henchqueerperson, etc.) — you earn your living by being around adventurers a lot.
  • The Mayor — could be a council leader, town elder or whatever, and they're sort of like the Hardholder, in that they're responsible for a town and her citizens, probably with a militia to wield for that purpose.
  • The Baron — you control land and a manor, possibly an actual castle, and lead an armed gang of violent people; also Hardholder-ish, but compared with the Mayor you've got different responsibilities and loyalties.
  • The Merchant — a barkeeper, innkeeper or shopkeeper, possibly a craftsman like a weaponsmith, you've got an establishment sort of like a Maestro'D's.
  • The Thief — comes with a guild, but with no warrant that the guild is their friend.
  • The Wizard — not your average adventuring wizard (we've got that covered already), but the kind of wizard who owns a wizard's tower; optionally, your tower may include a dungeon.
  • The Sellsword — you fight for coin and kill for a living; maybe you've got your own mercenary gang of which you're the captain, or maybe you're a solitary assassin from some dark cult.
And here's a basic move:
When you go adventuring in a dungeon with your brave fellows, roll +a currently highlighted stat. On a 10+ choose 3, on a 7-9 choose 2:
  • you are not wounded
  • you didn't use up rare or valuable provisions (such as magic item charges, a potion…)
  • you didn't give your adventuring fellows +1Hx with you
  • you got a rich loot
  • you got an even richer loot
  • you gained a useful magic item
  • you gained a powerful magic item
  • you gained a permanent magic item
  • bards are singing of your deeds
On a failure, you are stymied during your adventure, and the MC will zoom in to that situation, showing you being cornered, embattled, imprisoned, hunted, perplexed by a puzzle, or worse.

— § —

Now, the serious part. Please, don't think that the point of the above is to slander the real DW for not focusing on the aspects of D&D (or AW) that I right in this moment I'm thinking are more funny. Rather, I meant to illustrate a point I recently made on Lumpley's blog concerning player-vs-player conflicts in AW. Well, or maybe the joke pulled my leg and it became an end in itself.

4 comments:

  1. Thumbs up! Secondo me però il playbook "dell'avventuriero" non dovrebbe rappresentare UN avventuriero ma un intero party di 5-6 razziatori psicopatici assassini, o magari un insieme di "leader+party" alla maniera del chopper di AW.

    Oppure! Si potrebbe "automatizzare" il comportamento di un party di avventurieri creato e gestito collegialmente usando mosse tipo quella che hai descritto sopra, e i playbook dei PCs rappresenterebbero tutte quelle magnifiche categorie corollarie (henchmen, datori di lavoro, osti, negozianti...) che di solito sono relegati al ruolo di comparse.

    Siccome questo era maybe a joke gone too far, questa risposta è "far too far" immagino, però ci diverte anche così quando si è relegati a NULLOPOLI.

    Salumi & Baci

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    1. Mio caro/povero esule in Nullopoli (che è certamente molto oltre Eboli, nonché oltre la Linea-dei-Lupi), l'approccio che proponi col tuo primo paragrafo è certamente quello che volevo incoraggiare con il playbook del "Leader", ma in effetti temo che la denominazione sia un po' debole.
      Comunque, a quando l'organizzazione di una NullCon?

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  2. I saw a link to this from lumpley's blog, I'm sure it's pretty out of date. I don't know if you intended this as some kind of parody, but I find it very appealing, actually. I would play this game! It sounds much more interesting than Dungeon World to me.

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    1. It's not a "parody" in the sense that I would *not* actually play this game: in fact, I too would rather play this hypothetical game than the existing Dungeon World.
      OTOH, it's not a game I have any real plans to develop… even if it wouldn't be too difficult: it would just amount to a huge writing project in terms of new lists (playbooks, etc.) for a very close AW reskin. The game itself, I would contend, would play almost identically to AW — which was the purpose of writing this piece in the first place, if any.

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