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Dungeon World

Dungeon World

Now that you have played it - what is your review for the role-playing game "Dungeon World" by Sage Kobold Productions?

World Dungeon

Dungeon World was the third roleplaying game I'd ever played, but the only one I played for any length of time. My other experiences with roleplaying have been with the roleplaying game Swansong, a Western Fantasy based on skills as the core mechanics. I also played 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, and about 4 sessions of 5th Edition.

Dungeon World was not like Swansong, and while it has the same core stats as Dungeons & Dragons, it plays very differently. Firstly, in order to play, you need only your character sheet and two other sheets of paper showing the basic and special moves. Every move is based on the roll of 2d6. Before rolling the dice, you must describe what your character I'd doing. On a 10+ (After modifiers) you do what you wanted. On a 7-9, you do what you wanted, but there is some kind of consequence for your actions. For example, if you use the Hack and Slash move, you deal your damage to the enemy, but the enemy also gets to deal their damage to you. On a 6-, the GM tells you what happens, and you're not going to like it. This gives the GM an opportunity to use some of his moves, which are linked to the world itself, such as changing the environment around the players or separating the party. Whenever a player fails a roll, they also gain one XP.

There are three ways a character can gain experience in Dungeon World. The first has already been discussed above, by failing a roll, and giving the GM the opportunity to make a move. This mechanic I quite like as it says something about life. In life we gain experience by failing, learning from our mistakes lest we do not repeat them. The second way to gain experience is through the resolution of bonds. At character creation, each player has a set of bonds a with names blanked out for example, one of the Druid bonds is: (Blank) doesn't understand life in the wild. I will teach them all that I can. If at the end of any session, both the player that made the bond, and the player character that they made the bond with agrees, they may resolve that bond and mark one XP. Also at the end of every session, each player looks at their alignment. Every alignment has a directive that players must achieve during the course of the session
The alignments are Lawful, Good, Neutral; Chaotic and Evil, but not every alignment is available to every character (Paladins, for example can only be Lawful or Good). The final way you can get xp is through the end of session questions. At the end of every session, as a group, we answer three questions: Did we learn something new or important about the world? Did we overcome a notable monster or enemy? And Did we loot a memorable treasure? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then every player marks xp for each one answered yes.

Stats are not bought or rolled in this game. Every character starts with the same set of 6 stats, which they can distribute as they please among the six attributes. At character creation, you also must make choices about your starting moves and equipment. This equipment is varied from healing potions, weaponry and adventuring gear or bag of books. While the previous 2 are pretty self - explanatory, I'd like to talk about the adventuring gear and bag of books here. The adventuring gear allows you to, at any point, pull out ant mundane item from your adventuring gear (Which has 5 uses). For example, you come to the edge of a deep chasm. You may pull a ripe or climbing equipment out of your adventuring gear. Mark off one use of the adventuring gear and add it to your inventory. The bag of books works similarly, but is linked to the Spout Lord move (Based of your intelligence) whenever you spout lore on something, you can pull a book on that subject out of your bag of books, and get +1 to the roll. Wizards and other spellcasting classes choose starting spells at this point and players decide their characters alignment and bonds, discussing it with other players.

So that's Dungeon World. While in the same sort of medieval fantasy setting as Dungeons & Dragons, the focus of the game is much more on the narrative, one of the Game Masters principles is to portray a fantastic world. This shows the more narrative outlook of the Dungeon World ruleset and how it asks the players and Game Masters to think about the game. The aim old of this game is cooperative storytelling, and the rules are set up to take advantage of that.

Edited: rossaldinho on 21st Jul, 2016 - 9:27am