|
GodFish posted:I have a friend whose pretty new to tabletop games (their only experience as far as I know was about two sessions of a 3.5 campaign until it imploded when the DM tossed them into a hopeless fight and then brought in some 'super cool npcs' to save the day and everyone got sick of it), but they asked me about running a single player dungeon crawl for them (they pretty much want hack/slash/traps and loot). I've only ever really played AD&D, 3.5, Pathfinder, Monsterhearts and Fiasco, so I'm not sure what system to suggest. Ideally I'd like something that has a smaller entry barrier than D&D, and if combat flows a bit better than I've usually seen it go would be nice too. It gets recommended a lot, but this is pretty much what Dungeon World is designed to do. Making characters is quick and easy; the Bonds encourage people to talk to each other during chargen, and the rules in play are pretty straightforward. Plus, you can look through it for free and that's a plus: http://book.dwgazetteer.com/ Edit: I guess bonds don't matter for a solo game, but you could have the player make one character and then find/free others during the dungeon crawl to give the game more of a Baldur's Gate feel.
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 04:37 |
|
|
Yeah, Dungeon World is absolutely what you'd want in this case.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:15
|
|
|
This is actually something I've been thinking about lately, so what a convenient segue. All the folks I've played Dungeon World with are experienced with our awful hobby. Some of them had some problems adjusting to the basic premises of the *World games. Has anyone played AW or DW with a complete novice, and how did they handle it? Smooth sailing or terrible terrible trainwreck?
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:21
|
|
|
Thanks for the quick feedback, I thought of Dungeon World but I figured it was more character interaction focused like the other *world games I've seen are. That'll teach me to write something off before I read it  I'll probably go with Dungeon World, but Scarlet Heroes looks pretty cool too. Some of those adventure guidelines should be useful even if I don't use it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:24
|
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:Has anyone played AW or DW with a complete novice, and how did they handle it? Smooth sailing or terrible terrible trainwreck? In my experience, total newbies tend to have a much easier time understanding how fiction first works, compared to people who grew up playing D&D. That said, you can break people out of the D&D mould by running them through a game of Fiasco a few times beforehand; most people I know grok it afterwards.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:31
|
|
|
I've never used Dungeon World to introduce complete newbies to roleplaying, but I did use it to play with people who were familiar with and generally disliked D&D. For them, the whole fiction first thing was a godsend that totally made a difference in their experience.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:35
|
|
|
GodFish posted:Thanks for the quick feedback, I thought of Dungeon World but I figured it was more character interaction focused like the other *world games I've seen are. That'll teach me to write something off before I read it Scarlet Heroes is good to look at to pick out solo/small-group mechanics even if you decide to go with DW in the end. There are a lot of cool things that ease potential problems (like avoiding player death). The idea of doing a Baldur's Gate-type thing sounds really awesome, actually. You can start by having the GM control the companions, then make like one-sheet playbooks for the player to use if they want more control. Hmm...
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:11
|
|
|
Rulebook Heavily posted:One is the Ghost Dog RPG, which I haven't found for sale anywhere in years. Haha I found this at a random used book store in San Antonio a couple of years back. I almost picked it up purely because I couldn't believe it existed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:11
|
|
|
GodFish posted:I have a friend whose pretty new to tabletop games (their only experience as far as I know was about two sessions of a 3.5 campaign until it imploded when the DM tossed them into a hopeless fight and then brought in some 'super cool npcs' to save the day and everyone got sick of it), but they asked me about running a single player dungeon crawl for them (they pretty much want hack/slash/traps and loot). I've only ever really played AD&D, 3.5, Pathfinder, Monsterhearts and Fiasco, so I'm not sure what system to suggest. Ideally I'd like something that has a smaller entry barrier than D&D, and if combat flows a bit better than I've usually seen it go would be nice too. I feel kind of boring and unoriginal for suggesting Dungeon World, but seriously. Dungeon World. EDIT: haha, didn't realize there was a whole other page of people suggesting Dungeon World when I posted that. Oh well, I stand by it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:23
|
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:This is actually something I've been thinking about lately, so what a convenient segue. I can't say I've introduced it to any complete novices (so far) but I did introduce it to a guy who'd played only about 3 sessions of 3.5 D&D 6 years ago. It seemed to click pretty quickly, but then one of his complaints about D&D was always that it felt overly restrictive with what you could do. He did stick pretty closely to actions that were within his moves (the Thief) rather than adding stuff to the fiction as much. So I'd say that went okay. MotW and DW both clicked really quickly with my usual group, but the games honestly fit my usual GMing style pretty closely. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I ran another game of DW for a group consisting mostly of old school fans of D&D (since second edition), and it worked pretty well. I had one player get a little hung up on what was on the sheet for the Druid's shapechange move versus what I felt made sense for the fiction at the time, but that was about it. They got a big kick out of it when they started describing aspects of the monsters and environment and then seeing those details worked into the game. (They made a large boar into a giant, legendary boar called One-Tusk; they introduced an Obsidian Golem; they fleshed out most of the cosmopolitan society of the island where the adventure took place.) Sionak fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Apr 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 23:04
|
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:Has anyone played AW or DW with a complete novice, and how did they handle it? Smooth sailing or terrible terrible trainwreck? They don't really do "fiction first" all that well and they definitely prefer to stick close to a "clockwise around the table" initiative system (maybe because of their board gaming background), but DW has definitely been closer to the "smooth sailing" end of the spectrum. We've had a lot of really memorable sessions and quite a few group memes come from that original campaign. The new campaign is still feeling like it's in the beginning stages, but they all dove right back in. It's also really helpful that you don't really need to take anything home as a player like you would in D&D 4e. Levelups are quick and everything you need to know is right on your playbook.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 23:19
|
|
|
So I just bought Double Cross since the PDF's out now. Someone needs to run this, it's amazingly anime, while also looking fun, thematic, and not broken.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 00:54
|
|
|
New thread!
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 06:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 04:37 |
|
|
palecur posted:Better Angels is very well suited for that, since every player plays two characters: their human and someone else's demon. So even if your human isn't in the scene, you're probably playing the demon of a human who is, or t'other way round. For an archetypal party-of-five: "Shadowguiding" is one of the best things to come out of white-wolf.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2014 03:29
|
|
