JackerCon 2013: DW - The Lost Temple-City of Xtylos
Jul 21, 2013 2:14:52 GMT -8
Post by HyveMynd on Jul 21, 2013 2:14:52 GMT -8
If I had of played in this I would have found it difficult not to metagame.... let's just say I am quite familiar with HyveMynd 's source material......
And damn - I really wanted you guys to get to the end. Because... well - I can't tell you
Ah! I completely forgot to mention that this adventure is based on a published module. I was stuck for ideas, saw the module, read it, and thought it was pretty cool. I'd meant to give a little spiel before we started about "if you've played/read this module before, please don't say anything, blah, blah, blah...". Oh well. The way Dungeon World games usually end up completely different due to player input, I thought I would be rather safe.
The game was a blast as usual. Thanks to all my players, and thanks to everyone who tuned in to watch. And just in case other people want to watch the replay, here's the link:
This game did solidify a few things about Dungeon World for me, however.
First and foremost, I doubt I would ever run Dungeon World with more than four players at one time. The amount of downtime between a player's "turns" in this session was about the longest I'd ever want it to be. I like the action to be fast, and I like hammering players with rapid-fire "What do you do?" questions. In other games, I'm comfortable skipping people's turns if they take too long to decide their character's action. But in DW, that just ends up screwing me. If characters don't make Moves, they don't generate fiction for me to push the narrative forward. And without that fiction, I can't really throw new problems at them, and the whole thing grinds to a halt. So yeah, four players max for Dungeon World games.
Second, I'm kicking myself for not coming up with better set-up questions for the scenario. That's something I have to fine tune before running this scenario again at Gateway 2013. I'm definitely keeping the "What is the sign of the Apocalypse" question. That really helped, because I can just slap whatever the answer is onto anything I think is important, and the players will instantly pay attention to it. Plus, putting that symbol onto the armor of the 10' tall dudes instantly says "these guys are trouble". But I think I dropped the ball on the other ones. I'm open to suggestions. Especially from you maxinstuff, as you're familiar with the adventure.
Lastly, and this is a bit technical, I didn't make up a Grim Portents for the scenario. This was a mistake on my part. Grim Portents are a chain of events that imagine "what if the heroes don't intervene". Kind of like a flowchart or a timeline. It's something the players never see, but it helps keep the GM on track. Whenever the GM thinks "What should I do next?" the answer is usually to tick of another Grim Portent, and then tell/show the characters the effects.
I thought the power level was pretty balanced. People were getting banged up (and poor Tim died, sort of), but the enemies you went up against weren't unbeatable. Drab blowing his horn and alerting the entire army of 10' tall warriors around the temple would've been a different story though.
Again, I had a great time running the game for everyone. If you have any feedback, that would be great. It can only help me improve the scenario. If you want to provide feedback but are worried about spoiling the end of the scenario maxinstuff, feel free to send me a PM of send me a message on G+.