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Post by kurtpotts on Mar 20, 2017 13:21:17 GMT -8
First Impressions: Dungeon World is tons of fun and drives creativity from the players and GM, but getting used to using moves instead of freeform RP was a challenge.
World Building: We started out by picking playbooks. I had a Bard, Wizard, Ranger, Cleric and Immolator. Char gen took about an hour because I had everyone do each step in turn. This was partly because I hadn't read all of the classes yet. Unlike D&D where everyone wants to play a half goblin half bugbear, all the players chose human.
I had them pick stats first so they could use that as a guide if they got hung up on the descriptions. The Wizard didn't like the ugly body descriptions and went with svelte instead. Whenever they had trouble choosing an option we just skipped it and let their other choices inform it. For instance the Cleric wanted to create a Chaotic alignment, but after choosing the Suffering Precept he decided on Evil.
Next we started the world Q&A. This was with a group I trusted so I decided to go into the game with no prep and see what happened. My first question was to the Ranger. What lands do you range and why are they beautiful? Her response was "Plains, with hills and forest." OK and why are they Beautiful? "They a growing a lot" Awesome they are Lush and Fruitful. She was happy with that interpretation of what she said so we moved on. Bard, What is the name of the town you are travelling to? Emray she replied. At that point I pulled out the dry erase note cards and had the players write Emray on one and place it in the center of the table. Then I asked the ranger to place cards for Plains, Forest and Hills around the city where they existed. We found out that Emray is in the middle of the forest.
Next we asked the Wizard Why Emray is a place of power and what ritual she would like to perform there. She responded a well of magical energy guarded by dragons. Awesome now we have dragons and The World Spring. She forgot about the ritual part so I asked again what ritual she would perform there. We find out that there is an Orgy Ritual being performed in the forest and she wants to use it to summon a succubus. At this point I'm pretty sure the game will write itself and that Dungeon World is the best game ever.
The bard chose Legends of heroes past as her Bardic Lore and is on her way to Emray to get the story of an Aging Knight who is rumored to have slain a dragon. I decide that the Knight came to Emray to seek a fountain of youth north of the forest. Now the bard has a reason to go to the World Spring with the Knight.
The Immolator needs to spread dangerous ideas so he decides that he's going to convince everyone in the town to head off into the forest. And the Cleric is heading here to use the healing properties of the World Spring to save the dragons which have become ill.
About an hour and a half in and Q&A is Done!
More to come...
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Post by Wakefield on Mar 20, 2017 13:39:09 GMT -8
Sounds like you had a fantastic first session! At the risk of drawing universal hatred, I would think Immolators would be pretty quick with char gen.
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Post by kurtpotts on Mar 20, 2017 13:42:03 GMT -8
Sounds like you had a fantastic first session! At the risk of drawing universal hatred, I would think Immolators would pretty quick with char gen. Oh yeah they have almost no options and a weird ass grab bag of powers.
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Post by kurtpotts on Mar 20, 2017 14:00:15 GMT -8
First Scene: I feel like my first scene was a little weak which lead to the problem of the group not wanting to leave town. We started off with them approaching Emray. They see the guard at the gate keeps looking into the woods to the north and getting more and more agitated. Then they hear belligerent shouting coming from the forest. An old man is yelling at the guard to fetch him some cloths. He is a knight and this is embarrassing. [Show signs of an impending threat.]
The bard perks up and goes to investigate. This is the Knight she's looking for and he is stark naked. She offers him her cloak and to escort him home. [Parley with cloths as leverage] He is very thankful as he doesn't remember last night. The Immolator takes his chance to convince the guard to leave his post and investigate the woods on his own. The immolator has an ability to discover what someone truly desires by looking in their eyes. Something that is really useful when you want to parley with them and need leverage. He succeeds with the use of a bribe and the group is off to the Knight's house.
In the Knights house the Knight goes upstairs to get dressed. The bard looks around for evidence of him fighting a dragon. [discern realities] She finds a shrine to a Noble house with a possible secret compartment, but can't figure out how to open it. [Highlight a class ability] They don't have a thief so it remains hidden. The Ranger also looks around and finds a map with three routs through the forest. It appears that last night was the Knights third journey into the forest. [Show signs of an approaching threat] He makes them breakfast and says that he heard rumors of a well spring north of the forest and he believes it is a fountain of youth. The bard uses her ability to ask the guy what it will take to get his story. He says he'll gladly share his story if they help him get through the forest. He asks if they are ready to travel they should go now. The bard really wants to find a place to use her hospitality move. He says they can stay with him, but it is still early and they should just go now to find the fountain of youth! Nah says the bard lets go see if there is an Inn that will give me hospitality. The wizard pipes up that she wants to find a library to research the dangers in the forest. He says that there is a strange girl named Belle who has lots of books. They all decide the Knights quest can wait another day so they can look around town a bit. The bard, ranger and immolator head off to the inn and the wizard and cleric set out in search of Belle's house.
And scene more to come...
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 20, 2017 17:22:39 GMT -8
This sounds like an awesome first session so far and am looking forward to seeing what happens. Like any game, it does take a while to internalize the rules. For DW it's internalizing the move triggers so you can point out when players trigger them. I keep a print out of both the Basic Moves and the GM moves next to me while running the game to remind myself of stuff.
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Post by kurtpotts on Mar 28, 2017 11:32:37 GMT -8
Back to the recap!
As a note from one of my players. Apparently I made it sound like whatever is happening in the forest happens at night which is why they chose to wait out the day in town. So they had as much time as possible to make it through the forest.
Scene 2: Beginning with the Bard, Ranger and Immolator at the inn. First thing the bard asks the bar maid if she can speak with the owner. She heads off to get the Innkeeper and the immolator wants to discern realities. He rolls and gets three questions. One of which is what is not what is seems. Well there is a merchant eating his breakfast but he is carrying weapons unbecoming a simple merchant and leathers can be seen peaking out from under his tunic. One of the questions lead him to believe that the barmaid had a bruise on her cheek and she was shying away from the merchant. Of course the Immolator decides he needs to go insult this man and provoke him into attacking him. Sounds like a Parley and the leverage is he's an asshole. He succeeds and the merchant/bandit attacks him dealing damage. I didn't figure he should be allowed to defy danger here as he had just given me a golden opportunity to stab him. Now it's burning brand time. The bandit goes down in one hit from his fiery weapons and out walks the Inkeeper.
Cut to the Wizard and Cleric. They are walking around searching for Belles house, but most of the streets are empty on account of the vanishing into the forest with no memory thing. The wizard manages to find an old woman who is selling some herbs and ask where Belle's house is. She gives her directions and the wizard asks if she can just ask her for some herbs. Of course she can and does. The old woman replies that she needs to sell the herbs to eat and gives her a price. The wizard didn't take coin so she is out of luck. That's a shame replies the old woman and heads off to her stand. At this point the wizard notices that the cleric is missing. He had failed a discern realities really hard and knocked on the wrong door triggering a trapdoor. He proclaimed to the table "Found the thieves guild." So now that's cannon. The room is pitch black but he's got the light spell so he's fine. A quick prayer to his deity... Hey cleric how do you pray to a god of suffering? "Well," he says, "There is a little hook at the bottom of my holy symbol and I pull down piercing my hand." That's awesome, but it's gonna make him bleed. He got an 8 on his spell casting and chose to draw unwanted attention. Now 3 rats have the scent of blood and are after him. With the small room now bathed in light he want's to discern realities again and rolls a 12. Obviously he should be on the lookout for the rats about to attack. There is a dead guy in the corner with an adventuring pack that seems pretty useful and there is a small hole hidden in the wall where he can just make out some eyes watching him.
Cut back to the Inn. The Bard is trying to convince the Innkeeper that he should give her free room and board if she plays in the inn, but he is more interested in the dead guy lying on the floor. The immolator proclaims he was attacked and this is all just self defense. He doesn't seem to be buying it until the bard goes to work. This is all just a misunderstanding she proclaims as she defies danger with her charisma. Boxcars! Well he was a bit of a prick and he'd been rough with the barmaid. he buys it on the condition that they deal with the body. The immolator thinks that's a fair trade and heads out back to sacrifice the bandit to the flame. (The bandit is now a member of the thieves guild thanks to the cleric.) Now I wasn't sure how this is supposed to shake out for the immolator. Does he need to roll to conjure the flame with burning brand or control it with zuko style. I just had him roll his burning brand which he failed and burned himself. In fact he failed three times suffering quite a bit of damage as he kept choosing to harm himself instead of set the inn on fire. Probably should have just given it too him, but he did get some xp so he was happy about that.
Cut back to the Cleric in the basement He decides he's going to intimidate the guy watching. As he is a cleric of suffering he ignores the pain of the rat bites with his wisdom and parlays with the guy behind the door. He's super creepy and reads this awesome poem prayer about pain and pleasure. I figure this young kid who got the shit job of guarding the trap basement isn't to strong of will and he's willing to do whatever he asks. At that point the Wizard finds the trap door and calls down. He says everything is all good and to climb down so she does. The kid behind the peephole opens the door and at the cleric's request deals with the rats. They ask if he knows where Belle lives and if he can show them. Anything to get rid of this guy he thinks and shows them the way.
Cut back to the Inn Satisfied that they have locked down lodging they decide to go look for the others at Belle's house.
More to come...
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Post by kurtpotts on Mar 29, 2017 8:47:11 GMT -8
Scene three: Will she be wearing a blue dress the wizard and cleric muse as this terrified thief leads them through the small provincial town towards Belle's house. Decidedly no, she is wearing yellow.
Belle is sitting on the porch reading a book and quite happy to have guests. She invites the wizard and cleric in to see her library and offers to let them read anything they like. The wizard wants to find info about what's happening in the forest. I think I had her discern realities to find a good book, but now that I'm reviewing it she probably should have rolled spout lore. Either way she rolled a 3 and became engrossed in 50 shades of Emray. The cleric still happy with how well creeping out the thief went decides he wants to teach Belle all about suffering and pleasure. Belle is always up for a new adventure so parlay with new experiences as the collateral. Turns out she wants some proof so they head upstairs to "Pray."
Enter the others The bard, ranger and immolator approach Belle's house and find a young thief standing on the front porch muttering to himself. The Bard springs into action with some straight talk to trade an honest answer. I don't recall what the bard asked, but the thief wanted to know how to convince the cleric to let him go. Pretend to believe she shot back and they all head inside leaving him to practice his speech. They find the Wizard reading a romance novel a little flush, but otherwise fine. The ranger decides to discern realities. She's looking for anything valuable. She rolls really well and discovers there are some magical books, but they seem to be cordoned off and they might be dangerous. She wants to inspect them further so I have her defy danger with int and she fails. She asks if her owl would be any help so I offer a choice. Your owl sees you are about to grab something dangerous. She can swoop down knocking the book out of your hand, but she will suffer any ill effects you might receive. She decides she can take a hit better than the owl and waves off the bird. As she reaches out to the book it leaps into her hand flying open and draining much of her strength. She now has the weak condition. Some time passes and the cleric and Belle emerge from her bed chambers having communed with the god of suffering and looking all the better for it. The bard decides they should head back to the inn and skip ahead to the next day. The thief jumps in to proclaim his faithfulness and ask if he may go. The cleric tells him to go and remember what he learned placing his hand on the thief's shoulder and casting fear. The thief runs away in terror.
The next morning They all awake to a commotion in the dining area of the inn. The immolator had slept on the hearth so he wakes first. It is three thieves all looking for a dead ally. The immolator chimes in that he disposed of their friend and they should walk away. They instead advance on him. He summons his fiery weapons giving them pause and proceeds to slay them all in one spectacular show of burning might. The tavern is a little scorched, but otherwise unharmed. He gathers up the thieves weapons and forms the metal into a bust of himself. He hands it to the barmaid and says if anymore come back to tell them who killed their friends hopefully saving them from any retaliation.
End session.
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Post by kurtpotts on Mar 29, 2017 8:56:20 GMT -8
Spoilers for my playersSomething I forgot to mention. The bard also looked through the books and spouted lore. She rolled a 7 so I gave her something interesting but not obviously useful. There was a story about LeNox a villainous poisonous dragon said to lurk in the forests to the north. At that moment LeNox became my main villain. She is poisoning the world spring to spread a blight remaking the world in her image. As the blight grows so does her power. He end goal is to remake the world into an Underdark style poisonous mess that she rules over as the lord of Dragons. Here is the front I put together. I'd love your guys thoughts.
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Post by jazzisblues on Apr 3, 2017 10:37:04 GMT -8
Recognizing when rp events trigger moves is in my opinion ALWAYS the trick with internalizing any PbtA game.
JiB
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HyveMynd
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Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
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Post by HyveMynd on Apr 3, 2017 18:02:06 GMT -8
Hi kurtpotts. I think that Adventure Front looks fine. I don't have a lot to add other than the Grim Portents seem a bit short. I don't mean the number of Grim Portents but their content. If I were running this as a module I'd want more description crammed in there. But that's not really a problem as YOU know exactly what they mean. This is totally personal preference, but I like to stick to the Types provided in the book.
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Post by kurtpotts on Apr 4, 2017 8:07:07 GMT -8
Thanks HyveMynd, I have a couple weeks before I'll get to run the next session of this but I will for sure report back with how it goes. I might even have enough time to write up the Maenad and LeNox as custom monsters.
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