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 We have an Apocalypse World IRC: #gonzo on synirc So what's Apocalypse World and why should I give a poo poo? That's a drat fine question. Let's talk about why. In the beginning, there was the Apocalypse  Apocalypse World is a post-apocalyptic RPG designed by Vince Baker. It's based around a very simple concept: The Conversation. quote:THE CONVERSATION At first glance, AW looks like most RPGs. There are classes (called "playbooks") that define each character. When you want to do things that are covered by the mechanics, you roll 2d6 and add a stat. There are weapons and health mechanics and such. What differentiates Apocalypse World from most other games are the Moves. "Moves" are all the things that characters do that require mechanical backing, such as combat or trying to maniupulate an NPC. Some are available to everyone, and others are class-specific. When you want to do something that's covered by a move, you roll 2d6 and add a specific stat (which are rated from -1 to +3). Unlike most other games, there isn't a flat pass/fail spread. Instead, there's a tiered success mechanic. If your total is a 10 or better, then you're good. If you roll a 6 or less, then you fail. But if you get a 7-9, then that's a partial success, and the player gets to pick how that partial success is going to play out; sometimes you have to pick options off a list, other times you may not get as many options as you'd like. Only got a partial success when trying to grab something out of your opponent's hands? Then what happens? Do you get hurt? Lose your grip? Get tangled up with him? Whatever happens, it's up to the player how things turn out, not the GM. Then the GM (called the Master of Ceremonies here) plays off that; he has his own set of moves that are never rolled, but are just ways for him to respond to the player's moves. And when the MC makes his move, it's up to the players to determine how they react. Everything in AW is about the back-and-forth. The players do something, then the MC responds, then the players make a move back, and back and forth in what is probably the smoothest gameplay you're going to find. What's most impressive about the AW system is that it gets out of the way. It only shows up when needed, and even then is only there for a moment or two until the move is resolved at which point it slides out of the way until you call for it again. It's like the best English butler you've ever had. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that. There are stats that measure your relationships with the other characters, that actually have mechanical weight. There are social mechanics. Every playbook has something unique about it; from the Battlebabe's custom weapons to the Hardholder's control of his territory, everyone is awesome in their own way and that awesome is backed by the mechanics. I could go on and on, but instead I'll point you towards my pretty in-depth review, which also contains a few "limited edition" playbooks sprinkled throughout. So wait, is it an indie game or a story game? Yes. AW takes elements of both; while the classes and core mechanic are "traditional", the way they're interprited is more story-gamey. Another advantage of Apocalypse World is that the mechanics are very transparent. Not only is it very clear how the mechanics work, the book spends a good amount of time telling you how to take the moves apart and build them into new moves specific to your own game and characters. In fact, the ease of modification has lead to a community of people hacking the game into new shapes. These games are "Powered by the Apocalypse", and so far three of them have reached publication. DUNGEON WORLD  Dungeon World is the dungeon-crawling fantasy game using the AW engine. Taking its cues from early D&D, Dungeon World takes the base AW mechanics and mixes them with the standard D&D tropes and concepts, like classes, hit points, and Vancian casting. What you get is an incredibly playable game that uses indie-style mechanics to generate a pretty old-school experience.  Dungeon World has not been fully released yet, but it recently finished an incredibly successful Kickstarter and is currently in it's last beta rules & proofreading phase before it goes to print. Basically, if you don't give a poo poo about D&D Next and don't want the crunch of 13th Age, then this is the game to go with. MONSTERHEARTS  Monsterhearts is the game of supernatural romance and teen drama bullshit. The players are all monsters who go to the same school, and focuses on the teen drama and forbidden loves that erupt when you place a bunch of horny teenage monsters in the same homeroom. Playbooks include the Vampire, Werewolf, and Ghost. Each has their own baggage, and each is sexy in their own way. The mechanics in Monsterhearts focus more on the relationships than normal RPG action. It's about sex as a lever over other people, and the kinds of relationships you get when your hormones are raging up and your entire world consists of maybe a dozen people your own age. Oh, and you have to drink blood to live. You got forced to watch Twilight and you know you can do better? Now's your chance to prove it. MONSTER OF THE WEEK  Monster of the Week works off a very simple premise: there are monsters out there, and it's yout job to hunt it down and kill it. Take the role of the Chosen, the Professional, the Wronged, or the Mundane, jump in your van, and solve mysteries to defend the innocent from those things that go bump in the night. The Cool New Mechanic here is "Luck"; everyone starts with a pool of Luck, which can be spent to turn a roll into a 12+ or to neutralize an incoming attack. But just be careful: Luck is a limited resource, and when you're out of Luck, well...if you wanted a long life, you wouldn't be fightin' monsters, would you? This sounds awesome! How do I get a piece of this action? Apocalypse World is available from the The Indie Games Unstore in print & PDF. Dungeon World will be available from Dungeon-World.com once it's complete. Until then, the text of the game is up on a public GitHub. Monsterhearts is available from Buried Without Ceremony, and is also available in print or PDF. Monster of the Week is available from Generic Games, where you can order it direct or from Lulu. If you’re interested in other hacks, make sure you hit the official AW hack forums (which also contain the official Dungeon World, Monsterhears, and Monster of the Week forums), or just hang out in this thread. Okay, I got the books. What else you got? Useful resources and files: The Monster of the Week LE playbooks courtesy of Danoss. When you post in this loving kickass thread, roll +Weird. On a 10+, you get or give an awesome idea, or start writing a hack. On a 7-9, you ask questions and get enlightened. On a 6-, you accidentally post in the D&D Next thread. Thanks to Rasamune for the thread title Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 01:19 on May 29, 2015 |
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Aug 14, 2012 02:16
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Links and poo poo Barf forth apocalyptica: The official AW forums, also contains forums for the various hacks. anyway.: Vince Baker's blog. Lots of design theory here. SyntaxError: Sage LaToya's blog. He's one of the designers of Dungeon World. Within the Devil's Reach: Three introductory adventures for Dungeon World. Chris Goodwin's list of AW hacks: A list of all known AW hacks and versions; thanks to Story-Games.com. Useful Files The official Apocalyple World playbooks The limited edition AW playbooks Dungeon World GM cheat sheets Evil Mastermind's AW playbook collection: Everything I've got except The Grotesque. How to get The Grotesque in exchange for a Good Deed. Is he going aggro, seizing by force, or just trading harm?: A useful flowchart for telling which move you should be using. Required Reading, or at least useful to help understand the AW games. Guide to Hard Moves: a good introduction to the idea of "hard" and "soft" moves. Seize By Force is a Peripheral Move: On the difference between "seize by force" and "going aggro". Simple World: Joe Mcdaldno's guide to creating simple AW hacks. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Aug 14, 2012 02:16
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Star Wars hack for Apoc World. Y/N?
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Aug 14, 2012 03:01
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InfiniteJesters posted:Star Wars hack for Apoc World. Y/N? Y. If you wanted to make new playbooks, you could just use the classes from the old d20 Star Wars games as your guidelines. You could rework the "psychic maelstrom" moves from AW into a "when you use the Force" move.
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Aug 14, 2012 03:07
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Evil Mastermind posted:Y. BRILLIANT! I was considering using DW as a base instead of AW but I disliked the idea of using hit points. OTOH given that DW has bases for different races whereas AW has everyone more or less baseline human by default, maybe DW would be a better base and take some of the cues from Star Wars d20 and other such things like DW itself did from D&D and family. It just wouldn't do for my Jawa Jedi to have nothing special on anyone else. 
InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Aug 14, 2012 |
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Aug 14, 2012 03:15
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"Number Appearing" is such a neat-looking supplement for DW. The whole concept of playing as the monsters against the heroes raiding your home is cool to see fleshed out, but I especially like the Compendium Classes. They look flavorful and its great to see examples of them since the DW prelease doesn't have any.
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Aug 14, 2012 03:16
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ThreeStep posted:"Number Appearing" is such a neat-looking supplement for DW. The whole concept of playing as the monsters against the heroes raiding your home is cool to see fleshed out, but I especially like the Compendium Classes. They look flavorful and its great to see examples of them since the DW prelease doesn't have any. Numbers Appearing posted:Ettin of any class: When your two heads loudly and lengthily debate you can get a second opinion and take +1 to Spout Lore. Bwahahaha!  Oh man, I know what my next character's race is gonna be.
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Aug 14, 2012 03:29
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I love this ettin move from Number Appearing:quote:Ettin of any class: When your two heads loudly and lengthily debate you can get a second opinion and take +1 to Spout Lore. Now I want to play an intellectual ettin who gets into academic debates with himself.
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Aug 14, 2012 03:30
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How long could an Apocalypse World campaign practically continue?
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Aug 14, 2012 03:52
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Hiro Protagonist posted:How long could an Apocalypse World campaign practically continue? As long as people are interested in exploring the world and the relationships between their characters, I'd imagine.
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Aug 14, 2012 03:59
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Hiro Protagonist posted:How long could an Apocalypse World campaign practically continue? There is technically an "upper limit" to advancement in AW, since you can only take each advancement once. Still, there are 16 of them, and one of them is "retire your character to safety". So from a mechanical standpoint, sooner or later you're going to run out of things to boost. But AW isn't a game that's about advancing levels; it's about what happens to the characters. AW can keep going until you get sick of the characters (or they get wiped out). It's really meant and designed for long-term play.
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Aug 14, 2012 04:04
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Mors Rattus posted:As long as people are interested in exploring the world and the relationships between their characters, I'd imagine. Some people have mentioned on, if I recall correctly, StoryGames that Apocalypse World campaigns longer than 12-16 sessions can be a bit rough. The advancement mechanics start to break down, not drastically but noticeably.
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Aug 14, 2012 04:06
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Mors Rattus posted:As long as people are interested in exploring the world and the relationships between their characters, I'd imagine.
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Aug 14, 2012 04:08
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So I'm going to attempt an AW campaign with a cyberpunk background to it. Not going to change the mechanics, but just the fluff. I know the Maelstrom is going to be replaced by the the bulk of humanity and what computers are rolling being in one giant network at all times. Megacorps run everything and I'm going to shamelessly rip off Cyberpunk V3 in that the true history of what happened before the apocalypse is the one with the most up-votes on the net(and most likely held there by the corps). That's all I got so far.
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Aug 14, 2012 04:09
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Another acceptable thread title would've been, "to post it, post it." I really love the First Session Worksheet from AW, and I wish more games had something like it. It's got sections for notes and different conflicts that can build into longer stories. And it has a nice list of possible NPC names - something that would've come in handy for almost every first session I've run. There are a lot of good chapters or essays out there on running games, but AW's not only made me go :aaaa: "Why haven't I seen this before?" but really sold me on the whole game. I haven't got my group started on it yet, but I can't wait to get a game going. Our games tend to be very character focused, so I think it'll be a good fit. There's also so much you can do with it, since the book doesn't have any multi-chapter explanation for the apocalypse. I've thought about using a zombie apocalypse - the psychic maelstrom could be mass consciousness of the zombie horde itself, inescapable even in your own mind. Sionak fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Aug 14, 2012 |
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Aug 14, 2012 07:09
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Theoretically you could keep an AW game running forever with sufficiently immortal players with sufficient interest in exploring the story and the relationships between the characters if you made liberal use of the "Create another character to play simultaneously" and "Retire this character" advancements Fake Edit: I'm about to start running my AW PbP. Any advice on adjusting the game to the differences between PbP and real life?
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Aug 14, 2012 07:40
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There's an option where you choose another playbook and start advancing through that, so as long as you survive and continue advancing through playbooks you can continue pretty much indefinitely. Also, my buddy and I have put a fair shake of work into Bushido World: A Rokugan Hack. It's looking pretty cool so far, but it's still in very early stages and could frankly use some input from people that aren't me. Edit: pbp will lose some of the collaborative immediacy of in person, which is a big part of AW. To compensate, use the extra time you have between judging a situation and speaking on it to really polish the consequences and interrelations of character actions, and polish the "barfing forth of apocalyptica" into a grimy coating that permeates everything. On the plus side, the extra time means you'll probably be much better at choosing the best MC moves for the moment and at using fronts well (which I suck at). SlimGoodbody fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Aug 14, 2012 |
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Aug 14, 2012 09:46
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I'm currently MC-ing a game of AW, and we have just finished our 4th session. Things are going pretty good with a lot of nice action and even some PC vs PC-drama, but there are a few things that are bothering me that I thought you guys might be able to make more clear to me. The first thing is: If my PCs want to be able to deal damage in a fight that has already started (people are shooting at each other and stuff), is their only way of dishing out pain using the "take by force"-move, or can they use going aggro? What about acting under fire? Surely a character in a situation with bullets flying through the air can act under fire when lining up his sniper rifle to shoot at the enemy, and thus would be able to deal harm? Secondly: There's a hoarder in play. He is acting under fire (ongoing) because he didn't steal a certain thing from another PC that I wanted him to. Turns out he is way better at acting under fire when trying to do something, than say, taking something by force. Is it supposed to be this way, and when can I make him stop acting under fire? When he finally steals the item, or just when I as the MC wants him to?
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Aug 14, 2012 10:17
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InfiniteJesters posted:BRILLIANT! You do both. Ditch the sex moves from AW. Use DW's race moves (each playbook can be one race out of a few choices and each race gives a unique move per playbook it has access to). Suddenly, you have the best of both worlds!
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Aug 14, 2012 10:43
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waqii posted:The first thing is: Remember, moves are linked to certain types of actions; that's the whole idea behind moves. Trying to hurt someone is different from trying to line up a shot in the middle of a firefight. In that situation, you'd have the player act under fire first, then make a move in responce, then have them seize by force. quote:Secondly: Why is the Hoarder acting under fire, by the way? I don't see anything about that in his playbook, unless I'm looking right past it.
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Aug 14, 2012 14:21
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I've not got that much experience running AW, but I disagree that hurting someone is always Seizing By Force. Acting Under Fire always seemed a better fit for me for the situations where you're just trying to get into a good situation (a sniper, for example), and once you've done it I'd just allow you to do your harm. Not to mention that Going Aggro is a very obvious way to hurt someone too. In fact, the way I'd run it there's a trifecta of ways to hurt someone: Seize by Force when you're in open conflict and you just want to march up to them and end them. Acting Under Fire when you're trying to get the drop on them in some way. Going Aggro when you're giving someone an ultimatum and don't particularly mind if they get hurt. Remember, as an MC you can always Deal Harm as Established. If the PCs have established that they're in a position to do harm, you can let them deal it, no problem.
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Aug 14, 2012 14:29
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Flavivirus posted:I've not got that much experience running AW, but I disagree that hurting someone is always Seizing By Force. Acting Under Fire always seemed a better fit for me for the situations where you're just trying to get into a good situation (a sniper, for example), and once you've done it I'd just allow you to do your harm. Not to mention that Going Aggro is a very obvious way to hurt someone too. In fact, the way I'd run it there's a trifecta of ways to hurt someone: Not to get into a "but the RAW  " argument, but "deal Harm as established" is an MC move, and MC moves work differently than player moves. If the MC does something, he doesn't need to roll, but if the PCs do something then they need to use one of their moves.That being said, if you've got someone dead to rights, gun to their head and they can't get away, then yeah you don't need to roll the move. But if there's any doubt to the outcome, then they should be rolling.
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Aug 14, 2012 14:43
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Evil Mastermind posted:The breakdown you have for sieze/act/go aggro is actually the breakdown in the book. What I'm saying is that if the player does [a move], and puts themselves in a position where they can deal damage, the MC is allowed to respond with "deal Harm as established". The move doesn't say you can only use it against PCs, after all. The PC has rolled one of their moves, and in response the MC uses one of their moves. Simple.
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Aug 14, 2012 15:37
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Evil Mastermind posted:Why is the Hoarder acting under fire, by the way? I don't see anything about that in his playbook, unless I'm looking right past it. I wanted to play more with the whole "your hoard is talking to you" so just when the Hoarder got to borrow one of the other PCs crowbar, I told him that the hoard-voice-in-his-head wanted to keep it. He gave it back and was then suffering the drawbacks of not doing what his already quite hungry hoard wanted him to, so it was kind of a custom move. I'm really just trying to make the hoarder a bit more interesting, seeing as we haven't really played with the hoard being a talking, "living" phenomenon, and if anyone has any good ideas on how to make it more interesting for the hoarder then please tell me! Thanks for the answers by the way. They cleared a couple of things up for me, but I do agree with Flavivirus on a couple of points.
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Aug 14, 2012 15:49
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Added a few links to the second post for Dungeon World stuff.Flavivirus posted:What I'm saying is that if the player does [a move], and puts themselves in a position where they can deal damage, the MC is allowed to respond with "deal Harm as established". The move doesn't say you can only use it against PCs, after all. The PC has rolled one of their moves, and in response the MC uses one of their moves. Simple. Yeah, but it seems to me that would up the deadlyness of combat and reduce things to "okay, we've established we're in a firefight, so we just deal damage without having to roll". I prefer the idea of putting that uncertainty into combat, because that's what makes the PCs have to choose things off the list for seize by force. I honestly would like to see how this would affect combat, though.
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Aug 14, 2012 15:53
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Evil Mastermind posted:Added a few links to the second post for Dungeon World stuff. Ah, I can kinda see where you're coming from. Personally, I'm kinda of the opinion that so long as you've done a move with the intent of getting a particular outcome (i.e. Acting Under Fire to get into a perfect sniping/backstabbing spot) there's not really any reason to then make them Seize by Force too. All that I'm saying here is theory, though; in play, the appropriate move tends to rise from the context, and I can't say what'll be most appropriate until it happens. Saying you must Seize by Force to hurt someone is all I'm arguing against.
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Aug 14, 2012 16:21
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Flavivirus posted:Ah, I can kinda see where you're coming from. Personally, I'm kinda of the opinion that so long as you've done a move with the intent of getting a particular outcome (i.e. Acting Under Fire to get into a perfect sniping/backstabbing spot) there's not really any reason to then make them Seize by Force too. quote:All that I'm saying here is theory, though; in play, the appropriate move tends to rise from the context, and I can't say what'll be most appropriate until it happens. Saying you must Seize by Force to hurt someone is all I'm arguing against.
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Aug 14, 2012 16:33
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I've always viewed Seize By Force as being the most extraneous of the basic moves. It's very much 'stand there, trade damage'. It's something the Gunlugger does because the Gunlugger is hardcore and insane, but the other playbooks will probably want to Act Under Fire to get to an advantageous position or sneak up on someone, and then either put a bullet in their head using 'deal Harm as established' or Going Aggro, if that makes things more interesting. This quietly pushes the Battlebabe into slinking through shadows or doing weird acrobatic poo poo in order to force the fight to become asymmetrical so that they can use Act Under Fire and Go Aggro, while the Gunlugger just marches into the enemy camp and starts Seizing By Force on everyone in the general area.
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Aug 14, 2012 16:35
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For those of you who want to read up on Dungeon World, someone made a web-readable book pulled right from the GitHub. So now you can see what all the fuss is about.
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Aug 14, 2012 16:40
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Evil Mastermind posted:Added a few links to the second post for Dungeon World stuff. I accidentally ran a starter AW game this way. Mass combat was insane, with the mobs of combatants ripping each other apart, while the combat PC's waded around and murdered everything. Worked out pretty great when the threat level was low.
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Aug 14, 2012 18:32
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Evil Mastermind posted:For those of you who want to read up on Dungeon World, someone made a web-readable book pulled right from the GitHub. So now you can see what all the fuss is about. Thank you for this. I was trying to decide if I wanted to drop the money for a PDF version of one of the books so I could see how interested I was, and being able to read through even a mod of Apocalypse World for free is a big help. I'm definitely finding it interesting so far, though if I ever ran a game it'd be PbP and that does seem like it'd be a lot harder to do than traditional.
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Aug 14, 2012 19:55
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If I absolutely had to play online, I would use something synchronous. Hangouts, maybe, or at least IRC.
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Aug 14, 2012 21:30
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I've been running Dungeon World over IRC, and the biggest trick is riding herd on everyone. I don't mean that in a bad way; but since AW games don't use initiative mechanics, it's easy to get into a situation where everyone's trying to do a move at once, but doesn't realize that everyone else is typing too. I found that having people do some sort of "I'm typing" symbol like ~~ is useful, because it's a quick way to say "everyone hold up, I'm doing something". I haven't tried over G+ or Roll20 yet, though. I should give that a shot.
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Aug 14, 2012 21:34
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We had a Google Hangout game that just ended. It worked out pretty well; the biggest problem was people zoning out during the game.
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Aug 14, 2012 21:34
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The *World games (ApocWorld and DungeonWorld) are literally my all-time favorite RPGs. They are just so, SO good at moving a story along and there is no such thing as a pass/fail mechanic. That's the biggest difference to me: every time a PC fails, something interesting happens, there's never a "oh you failed the lockpicking roll, looks like you're stuck" moment in a game. Do you need to climb a wall? There is no "climb check" in these games. Instead, the move could be "When you Avoid the Wandering Guards, roll +Cool," or in Dungeon World, "roll +Dex." On a 10+, you made it. On a 7-9, choose one: ...you get where you want to be. ...you are not seen. On a Miss, neither. The whole "10+ = Perfect Hit / 7-9 = Hard Choice / 6- =Bad Things Happen" move structure just so pefectly lend itself to telling a cooperative story. When I first explained this to my gaming group, which was brought up on D&D 3.5, it was like a lightbulb going off. The idea that you DO NOT ROLL DICE unless it leads to a meaningful consequence is such a simple idea but not many games hardcode it like Apocalypse World and its iterations. It was also the first game I read that had a cohesive gamestyle where every move and rule served to reinforce that game style. Just last night, I was running a Dungeon World game and one of my players decided to kill a captive goblin. They were like, "what do I roll? Do I just roll damage?" And I was so happy to be able to say, "No, slitting a helpless goblin's throat doesn't require a roll and isn't dealing damage. You can just kill it. It's dead." I literally just sold off all my old D&D and Pathfinder books and have sworn to never play another epic fantasy beyond DungeonWorld. It just does everything I could ever want a game to do. I said this before in another thread, but after I read Dungeon World, I realized that this was the game I thought I was buying when I picked up that Dungeons and Dragons box set so long ago. These are real and true RPGs the way they should be- So far I have only run these games- never played them- but the whole "play to find out" ethic that it espouses means that I spend ZERO prep time and still come out with awesome, AWESOME player-driven adventures that everyone loves. I cannot recommend these games enough!
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Aug 14, 2012 22:46
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Scrape posted:Words There are so very many people in the 5e thread that should just play DW instead.
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Aug 14, 2012 22:57
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Evil Mastermind posted:I've been running Dungeon World over IRC, and the biggest trick is riding herd on everyone.
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Aug 14, 2012 23:01
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As to playing online, I've never tried it. The *World games seem to really sing when they're in a face-face setting, especially because there are no combat rounds or anything. Apologies for a long post, but I wish someone had laid out the following helpful hints for me when I first started reading these books and playing these games: In fact, for anyone looking to start a game, here's some hopefully helpful advice that I found out over the past few months: -There is no initiative order, so just make sure you give everyone a chance to shine. I go around the table and say "What are you doing" in turn. Occasionally, you'll go out of order, like, "Brennan, Mikael was protecting you but now the goblins have swarmed him. What do you do about that?" Even though Brennan just went. Then he'll be like, "I push them off!" and I go, "Okay, we'll get back to that in a second. Lisa, you see all this happening but you've still got that weird creature in your face, he's lunging straight at you, what are you doing about that?" -An unforeseen benefit of having no initiative is that there are fewer bored players "waiting their turn," because they never know when some crazy poo poo is going to effect them and they'll have to react immediately. It keeps everyone engaged, I've found. I also had a player (a very 3.5-loving player) ask me if drinking a potion would "waste his turn." That's a sad artifact of 3.5 in my opinion. Explain to your players that they can 100% drink their potion and STILL be awesome; it will go a long way when trying to convert some more traditional players -The fiction trumps any rules, and the two are sort of inseparable. When a hill giant deals massive damage and you're like, "he breaks a few ribs," this is not just flavor. That PC has broken ribs and he will be wheezing, taking rests, and needing attention. It's not just hit points, it's ficiton. -The biggest challenge I had at first was running combat- we are so programed to follow the "PC attacks, then the enemy attacks, etc" way of doing things. But it's not so here. Usually I begin to describe an enemy's attack and then give the PC a chance to respond. The enemy's damage depends on the PC's response and subsequent roll. Remember, as the MC/GM you have the ability to just "Deal Damage" as a Move, but that is lame and dumb. The best way to run an attack is to be like, "Scooter opens fire, bullets are zinging around you, what do you do?" If the decides to jump behind cover and rolls 10+(a full success), he's fine. If he rolls a 5 (a miss), he takes damage from Scooter, determined by weapon, and he's doesn't make it to cover. If he rolls an 8, maybe he leaps behind cover but one of Scooter's bullets hits him on the way. Deal damage as the result of a player's roll, not on your whim. -Finally, and both ApocWorld and Dungeon World lay this out, but I made a big sign on my homemade GM screen that says "Fiction Trumps Everything." One of my players was debating whether his DungeonWorld character should take a shield or not. He was like "it's only +1 armor..." and I thought about it and replied: "Sure, it's +1 Armor, but it's also a shield. You can carry things on it,you can block portals with it, you can keep the hail off you in a storm, and most importantly, you can block an attack. Don't worry about the armor, worry about whether or not your warrior would carry a motherfucking shield." And that sold him on it, right there.
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Aug 14, 2012 23:10
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mllaneza posted:There are so very many people in the 5e thread that should just play DW instead. Yeah, I posted like twice in one of the 5e threads trying to tell them that DW does everything they want an epic fantasy game to do, but to be honest it was off topic. I maintain that I was correct, but it wasn't really about 5e. It is seriously, seriously, such a fun game and every homebrew I run now is going to be based in the *World system. I've made a Shadowrun hack (When you Hack The Matrix for Answers, roll +Wired...), and I'm working on a one-shot ZombieWorld hack (When you Struggle with a Walker, roll +Desperation...). It works so well for so many things. EDIT: to be completely fair, though, there are a few things that *World does NOT excel at: realistic combat, and "leveling up." Characters start powerful and learn new tricks, but they don't get tougher or ever reach god-like status, if that's your thing. *World is simply amazing for storytelling, inter-party conflicts that remain fun intead of frustrating, and moving a story along in unpredictable ways. If you want tactical, realistic combat, do NOT reach for ApocWorld. Scrape fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Aug 14, 2012 |
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Aug 14, 2012 23:14
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Scrape posted:
Well, some classes in Dungeon World CAN get tougher, namely the Fighter who gets better at making the most of his armor, but I see your point.
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Aug 14, 2012 23:22
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