Geeklists for Dungeon World Basic Roleplaying Game

GeekList: The Mountains of Madness - 1P Adventure

RPG Item: Dungeon World Basic Roleplaying Game [Average Rating:8.17 Overall Rank:324]

Cameron Suey

(entropyblues)

United States
San Francisco
California

I paid imaginary currency for you to read this. Let's both appreciate this moment....

Apparently, I need to like more games that start with E.

Tiraan "Tick" Elsus
Elven Wizard
Combat -1
Fortitude -2
Reflexes +1
Willpower +3
Hit Points 6
Sanity Points 4

Equipment: Rusty Longsword (+0), well-worn Tunic, some old Leather Boots and 2 gold pieces.

29 comments [Hide]

Posted Fri Jan 6, 2012 6:33 am

Piero S. P.

(Gorgoneion)

Italy
Turin

"If our gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well." - L'Eve Future

Prelude - The Tavern
The barkeep, Sama, has been busily serving patrons this fine fall day. The harvest festival is nearly upon the town and the locals are getting in their last cozy visits to their favorite watering hole before tourists flourish here and take the place over for a week. You’ve already been mistaken for a harvest-goer by more than a few locals. You look around and see a few friendly faces among the crowd. Perhaps one of them would make a fine adventuring partner on your journey. Then again, it may be best to go this alone. That choice remains yours. In the meantime, one well-dressed halfling patron, who may have had more than his share of ale, comes up to you and offers to play a simple game for a wager. He describes the game as follows:

~ The Barbarian Dice Game ~

“You see, it’s easy. Even a child can play! This game requires us to cast these strangely shaped gaming pieces which the gods call ‘dice’. I’ve got five such pieces, one with four sides, one with six sides, one with eight, one with ten and one with twelve. For some reason, Barbarians are fondest of the 12-sider but I’ve no idea why. Anyway, we roll all five dice each and we compare results. For every like-sided die that you roll higher on, you get a point. Whomever has the most points is the winner. You, fine friend, break all ties. How can you lose?! What do you say? Shall we wager?”

You may decline to play or you can wager 1 or 2 gold. This game is available to both you and your adventuring partner separately if playing in a 2P game. The choice is now yours. If you decide to wager and play, please use the geek-randomizer to roll five separate rolls: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10 and 1d12.

Posted Fri Jan 6, 2012 9:46 am
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Show 24 more comments...

Cameron Suey

(entropyblues)

United States
San Francisco
California

I paid imaginary currency for you to read this. Let's both appreciate this moment....

Apparently, I need to like more games that start with E.

Wizard, HP=1, SP=4, Gold=3, Equipment=standard

Black spots swarm in his vision, Tick knows this is the end, unless he can make his way to the summit. He can feel his limbs dying beneath him, and all he can do is walk the path, one last step at a time...

Fortitude 1d20-2 = (16) - 2 = 14
Fun while it lasted!

Posted Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:22 am
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Piero S. P.

(Gorgoneion)

Italy
Turin

"If our gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well." - L'Eve Future

You take a deep breath and summon your reserves, but the cold is too much! By the time you have reached the summit, you stand exhausted, unsure how you will recover! You suffer 1 HP damage!

You have died facing the Mountains of Madness. But let no person doubt your heart and conviction. The mortal shell which you call your body has given out. While the spirit remained willing it cannot do so without help from the flesh and blood which drives it. As light fades to black you think back over your adventure and can’t help but smile. Bravery and valor were yours, dear adventurer. And nothing can take that away.

Your adventure has concluded, brave adventurer. We want to thank you for playing The Mountains of Madness. Within a few days you will receive all microbadges and geekgold due - please be patient. In the meantime, we invite you to kick back at the Tavern of the Falling Leaves for some stories both brave and bold. You can enter the tavern by clicking here. The design team and GMs that brought you this adventure feed off of the stories told in the Tavern - so please feel free to contribute to the post-adventure fun! In addition, we would love for you to rate this adventure - you can do so by visiting the official Mountains of Madness RPG entry and at the bottom you can ‘Add Information’ to give it a rating and comment.

~Finis... Or Is It?~

Posted Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:34 am
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Piero S. P.

(Gorgoneion)

Italy
Turin

"If our gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well." - L'Eve Future

Wow... I believe you were horribly unlucky!! Thanks for playing!

Posted Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:34 am
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Cameron Suey

(entropyblues)

United States
San Francisco
California

I paid imaginary currency for you to read this. Let's both appreciate this moment....

Apparently, I need to like more games that start with E.

Gorgoneion wrote:

Wow... I believe you were horribly unlucky!! Thanks for playing!

I'll say so! RPG'ing is harder without my loaded dice

Thanks for the game!

Posted Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:44 am
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GeekList: vestige's Aspirational Iron Review Geeklist - 2012 Edition!

RPG Item: Dungeon World Basic Roleplaying Game [Average Rating:8.17 Overall Rank:324]

Steven Robert

(vestige)

United States
Altadena
California

I'll approach this as a D&D player looking to learn more.

0 comments

Posted Thu Dec 22, 2011 5:55 am

GeekList: My top 10 RPG acquisitions of 2011

RPG Item: Dungeon World Basic Roleplaying Game [Average Rating:8.17 Overall Rank:324]

The Harnish

(MJ Harnish)

Germany
Duisburg
NRW

Cult of The Harnish Leader

Positives: I love the concept of the game and have had a lot of fun running it as one-shots. At its heart, the game has awesome potential and it's the way I want to play "old school" D&D nowadays. For $5 for the PDF you cannot go wrong.

Negatives: I think the translation of the Apocalypse World mechanics (conflict/scene resolution) used in Dungeon World (task resolution) are flawed and do not work nearly as well, as written. The game also falls flat in terms of character advancement because of the nature of how the highlighted stats are used in DW (again vs. AW) and its attempt to stay faithful to old-school D&D's leveling system.

0 comments

Posted Fri Dec 9, 2011 7:37 am

GeekList: What was your favorite RPG acquisition of 2011?

RPG Item: Dungeon World Basic Roleplaying Game [Average Rating:8.17 Overall Rank:324]

Steven Robert

(vestige)

United States
Altadena
California

To be honest, I'm not sure I love this game. But it sure does make me think about how "indie" design principles can improve the venerable "kill things and take their stuff" game. It's a thought-provoking read packed into an impressively compact rule set. The very fact that I'm not sure what to make of it says a lot about just how innovative and interesting it is.

(To be fair, I've never read Apocalypse World; if you have, this one likely won't blow your mind as it did mine.)

Other contenders: the Tome of Adventure Design and Microscope.

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Posted Wed Dec 7, 2011 11:09 pm

The Harnish

(MJ Harnish)

Germany
Duisburg
NRW

Cult of The Harnish Leader

Conceptually the game is awesome. Mechanically it's flawed though because while AW uses the mechanics to resolve conflicts or even whole scenes, DW is using the same thing to resolve tasks (action by action) which doesn't work nearly as well - the GM ends up with too many moves. Advancement also doesn't work very well because they've tried to marry AW's step-by-step approach with trad D&D's levels, the result being not nearly as satisfying as either. There's an awesome kernel to this game but it requires hacking to make it work well for long term play in my experience.

Posted Thu Dec 8, 2011 10:47 am
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DMSamuel

(lorddillon)

United States
Ithaca
New York

Out of curiosity, MJ, Do you think that they have realized this and are trying to adjust.update/fix the system so that it addresses those problems?

Posted Thu Dec 8, 2011 7:15 pm
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The Harnish

(MJ Harnish)

Germany
Duisburg
NRW

Cult of The Harnish Leader

I think they have to some extent but they're so far along in the design process and so married to the idea using AW to play D&D that I'm not sure they can/will do anything about it. I've talked to a number of other DW players/GMs and they've all had similar issues. The big one is the task vs. conflict resolution difference: as a GM running DW I end up with WAY too many moves and ultimately you end up just killing players arbitrarily because you run out of alternatives (you can only knock their swords out of their hands or signal impending doom so many times before you have to hit them with damage). The game can be "fixed" by the GM on the fly but shouldn't have to do that straight out of the gate. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people who've playtested the game have been doing this unconsciously (and thus not playing the game as written) or have only been running one-shots where a lot of the problems don't crop up. Also, players won't generally notice the problems, only GMs.

Posted Fri Dec 9, 2011 7:26 am
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GeekList: 2011 Ranked RPG Items (Last Update: March 28, 2012)

RPG Item: Dungeon World Basic Roleplaying Game [Average Rating:8.17 Overall Rank:324]

Rishi A.

(Rishi)

United States
Alexandria
Virginia

0 comments

Posted Wed Nov 2, 2011 4:22 pm

GeekList: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Enjoy Reading Games I'll Never Play

RPG Item: Dungeon World Basic Roleplaying Game [Average Rating:8.17 Overall Rank:324]

Steven Robert

(vestige)

United States
Altadena
California

The current indie darling meets D&D - how could I resist? I didn't exactly get what I expected, but it was still a fascinating read.

Metagame structure can enhance the in-game narrative.

To me, the most striking departure from other games I know was the concept of "GM moves," which codify how the GM forces the narrative along. At first I found these sort of overbearing - they are in some ways obvious (introduce a twist) and in some ways very restrictive (because the GM can't act at will). But then I realized that this codification allows the players more freedom of action and hence more input into the direction of the story: the GM is indeed restricted from setting too much in motion behind the scenes, so that the players' story is central. I'm still not entirely sure I like that approach, but it is at the very least an important prism through which one should approach even traditional GMing, if you want the players to maximize their agency.

(I really first encountered this idea with the Player/GM turns in Mouse Guard, but DW takes it to a new level for me.)

1 comment [Hide]

Posted Sun Oct 9, 2011 9:22 pm

William Hostman

(aramis)

United States
Eagle River
Alaska

Gaming in Greater Anchorage area, Alaska since 1978. Looking for Indy-willing RPG players in Eagle River (or willing to drive to Eagle River). Geekmail me if interested.

Yes, this really is what I looked like when I uploaded that avatar. Not that it's quite current anymore.

For a different approach to this, you should check out Burning Empires....

Oh, and BE is intended for campaign play... so you might be able to convince them to let you bring it to table. Mechanically, it's a slightly reduced set of Burning Wheel rules.

Posted Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:11 am
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GeekList: Vestige's RPG Reading List

RPG Item: Dungeon World Basic Roleplaying Game [Average Rating:8.17 Overall Rank:324]

Steven Robert

(vestige)

United States
Altadena
California

Finished!

Why do I do this to myself??? Probably because this one is much more appealing than Apocalypse World.

1 comment [Hide]

Edited Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:32 pm
Posted Wed Sep 14, 2011 8:49 pm

Jeremy Friesen

(FullTinCan)

United States
Goshen
Indiana

Dungeon World and Apocalypse World are notably different from other games that I usually play. I felt a little lost thinking about how to play this. However, once someone with experience (Jason Morningstar none the less) ran it, it clicked. Make sure that players are choosing their choices quickly and not deliberating over losing the spell, taking -1 forward, or drawing unwanted attention. It is not in the decision where the story is told, but in the response to the decision.

Posted Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:33 pm
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GeekList: What was the last RPG book you bought?

RPG Item: Dungeon World Basic Roleplaying Game [Average Rating:8.17 Overall Rank:324]

Brian Cooksey

(Vaklam)

United States
Nashville
Tennessee

My wife informs me it has arrived. In Nashville.

I am in Atlanta.

Oh, well. I'll get to see it tomorrow night.

2 comments [Hide]

Posted Fri Sep 23, 2011 3:27 am

Chad Bowser

(cjbowser)

United States
Kernersville
North Carolina

My copy arrived a couple days ago. It looks pretty awesome...

Posted Fri Sep 23, 2011 5:56 pm
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Brian Cooksey

(Vaklam)

United States
Nashville
Tennessee

I'm home now! I've flipped through it and I agree. It looks great so far. I also like all the extras I got with it. I'm wearing my Thief button now.

Posted Sat Sep 24, 2011 1:17 am
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