Dungeon World - Any opinions?

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Dogbert
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Dungeon World - Any opinions?

Post by Dogbert »

Has anyone here read/tried Dungeon World as to be able to provide a brief review with pros and cons?
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Post by Omegonthesane »

I think there was another thread about this, but I can't be bothered to dig it out.

I had the chance to try Monster of the Week, which IIRC is also based on the Apocalypse World engine. It was barely a system, really - the RNG was capable of generating results of "you succeed, no problems", "you succeed, but", or "you fail, and something goes wrong", which at least is good enough to resolve the most common dispute (do I manage it or not?). It also had something of a "one stat to rule them all" problem - not so much that there was a Best Stat universally, but many and varied abilities had the effect "roll <presumably better stat> when making a <common variety of not-that-stat> roll", encouraging min-maxing, which is exacerbated by the way you gain XP by... rolling one of two stats, one selected by the GM and one by your party, who if they're not yet fed up of your shit will probably pick your best ability that you're trying to make everything run off.

Sadly I'm in no position to determine how much of that exactly applies to Dungeon World.
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Post by Chamomile »

I will say that the XP gain in Apocalypse World and its hacks definitely strikes me as by far the weakest part of the system. As a general rule everything else is basically a thing where they're trying to have just barely enough rules to settle disputes and all of them more or less work. That's pretty far outside the kind of game the Den usually enjoys, but I think it's got an elegance to it. The sex moves are really weird and seem shoehorned in, though. Sure, sex is a natural part of any human experience, but I don't see any satisfying meal moves or empty bladder moves. Generally speaking Apocalypse World is kind of like well-written flash fiction: Surprisingly compelling for its length and squeezing every last drop out of a very limited amount of words/mechanics. Apocalypse World also has a strong message of "the rules are there for a Goddamned reason and you should follow them" which is very refreshing for a game that appears to be a brainchild of the Forge.

Dungeon World is a clumsy but workable hack. It's got a bunch of extra rules that are haphazardly ported from early editions of D&D (AD&D and earlier, mostly) and stapled on, which means that it's losing Apocalypse World's original main selling point, which is that every single rule is completely necessary to the game. It's still a good deal better than actual AD&D or, God help you, second edition, and if you're with a group that's fun to game with already you'll probably have plenty of fun, but it's not nearly so good as Apocalypse World itself or some of the better hacks.
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Post by Username17 »

Warning, I haven't looked at Dungeon World. At all. It's a hack of Apocalypse World, and that is all I cared to find out. Because Apocalypse World is not so much a game as "the MC tells you a story and periodically there are quicktime events". It's got a simplistic event resolution, where things are either "good", "bad", or "in between", but that isn't actually enough to handle events without heavy magic teaparty or arguments or both.

Most problematically, if you sneak into a [place] looking for [clues], the amount of declarations the player gets to make about what happens if they roll a good result is not enough for them to get into the place undetected and find clues. They get to basically declare one or the other, at which point it's still MC railroad town whether you get captured and/or find important clues even having succeed in that die roll.

Apocalypse World isn't really a game, it's an MC power trip thinly disguised as a game. I assume all the hacks of it are much the same, because they are advertised as such.

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Post by Chamomile »

FrankTrollman wrote:Most problematically, if you sneak into a [place] looking for [clues], the amount of declarations the player gets to make about what happens if they roll a good result is not enough for them to get into the place undetected and find clues.
I dunno what the Hell Frank is on about. Assuming you use the read a sitch move to set up your sneaking in and roll a 10+, you then get to ask "where's my best way in," "what's my best escape route," and "what's my enemy's true position," and you can drop the escape route one for "what should I be on the lookout for" if you want. Then you get a +1 for acting on any of that information.

To actually sneak in, you'd either arbitrarily succeed because of your awesome sitch-reading skillz or else you'd act under fire, which is Apocalypse World's all-purpose "do stuff in a dangerous situation" move. To quote the book exactly: "On a 10+, you do it." That strikes me as fairly unambiguous. If you succeed on the roll to avoid bad stuff, the bad stuff is avoided. There is no catch or decision to make. For actually searching for clues, there's no move tailor-made for that. Apocalypse World is not especially about mysteries. It's about shouting, shoving, and shooting. As a kludge, you might use read a sitch again, or else seize something by force (though that assumes active violent opposition, not sneaking around). You could also assume that the roll to act under fire covered finding clues without getting caught, and if you get a 7-9 the MC might make you choose one or the other.

There isn't a single one of the basic moves in Apocalypse World (or Dungeon World) that works the way Frank describes it, because there isn't a single move that's intended to cover both sneaking into a place and searching for clues. Those are either two distinct actions, or else both covered under the act under fire move, which explicitly gives your character total success on a 10+. Maybe he's reading a different pdf than mine.
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Post by Dogbert »

So basically you -roll dice- to see if or how much XP you gain?? I think that criteria alone tells me enough about the game's philosophy to steer clear from the game.

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Post by Chamomile »

Dogbert wrote:So basically you -roll dice- to see if or how much XP you gain??
No. You gain XP when you roll a good attribute check.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Chamomile wrote:
Dogbert wrote:So basically you -roll dice- to see if or how much XP you gain??
No. You gain XP when you roll a good attribute check.
This. The problem comes when you have multiple ways to make rolls that shouldn't be that attribute check in fact be that attribute check.

Granted, that was partly because Monster of the Week (and I believe Apocalypse World) let you spend two of your level-ups as any class dumpster diving for an ability from any other class, so e.g. every Monstrous character has Weird +3 so is going to take the Mundane* ability where they can investigate using their Weird stat by plot contrivance.

* Yes, they have a Mundane class, yes it has an ability that keys to the magic stat. I dunno, it was meant to simulate Buffy knockoffs where the only magical thing about Giles and Wesley is the fact they studied.
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Post by Chamomile »

Omegonthesane wrote:Granted, that was partly because Monster of the Week (and I believe Apocalypse World) let you spend two of your level-ups as any class dumpster diving for an ability from any other class, so e.g. every Monstrous character has Weird +3 so is going to take the Mundane* ability where they can investigate using their Weird stat by plot contrivance.
Both Apocalypse World and Dungeon World have these moves and advancement options and their experience systems suffer for it horribly. As with most RPG XP systems, I recommend switching to an arbitrary quest-based system or handing out an advancement whenever it seems appropriate.
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Re: Dungeon World - Any opinions?

Post by silva »

Dogbert wrote:Has anyone here read/tried Dungeon World as to be able to provide a brief review with pros and cons?
Havent played Dungeon World yet, but Ive been playing Apocalypse World lately, and it became the default system to my group (we adopted it to our Shadowrun campaign).

The game is designed toward simplicity and quickness of play (you create a char in 5 minutes, prep adventures in 10, and resolve combat in another 5), BUT with an important twist - the players choices will drive the gameplay, not the GM with its pre-packaged plot. In fact, the system even has mechanical feats that guarantee this pleayer-oriented gameplay, and is written from the bottom up assuming your playstyle is a radical sandbox one. It contains some of the best advice and tools for sandbox gaming Ive seen, BTW. Just for you to have an idea, one of the games central GM mantras is:

"Dont prep plots! Its forbidden to prep plots in this game!"

Thats it, basically. If you like sandbox gameplay with fast and simple rules, and with abstract mechanics that puts player choice at the center of stage, you will be in heaven. Its the "Fallout 2-PC-Game-choice-consequence gameplay" in Tabletop form, really. If you dont like this playstyle though, stay clear from it. As my Shadowrun group already played sandbox-style, it fitted as a glove.

EDIT: oh, and take a look at the playbooks (the game "classes" equivalent) here. They tell a LOT about the game.
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Post by mean_liar »

Frank's read on it is wrong. As an opinion, he's welcome to it but he also hasn't played the game.

In my few experiences with Apocalypse World the overwhelming problem is hyperactive player agency, rolling +lots and dictating the action a hell of a lot more than the MC could handle.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

FrankTrollman wrote:Because Apocalypse World is not so much a game as "the MC tells you a story and periodically there are quicktime events". It's got a simplistic event resolution, where things are either "good", "bad", or "in between"
If you stopped here you would've had something. This is the case as someone who plays and enjoys Apocalypse World hacks. Even that's not completely right; it's more "everybody plays Magical Tea Party and sometimes there are quicktime events". Moreso than MC cockwaving, what mean_liar says is more correct in practice.

Most problematically, if you sneak into a [place] looking for [clues], the amount of declarations the player gets to make about what happens if they roll a good result is not enough for them to get into the place undetected and find clues. They get to basically declare one or the other, at which point it's still MC railroad town whether you get captured and/or find important clues even having succeeded in that die roll.
The "good" version of the sneak into [place] looking for [clues] roll gives you three of "what is [clue]", "how do I get into/out of [place]", "how do I avoid [threat]" along with "what is about to happen in [place] with [clue]" and some other shit. Now, even if you are the clue guy, you have a 41 and a bit percent chance of that outcome and an 83.33 percent chance of having to pick one. If you get a +1 to your clue stat, the chance to pick three goes up to 58 percent. And the MC only gets to wave his cock in your face on the clue move if you miss. Now shit like Go Aggro (Intimidate) or Seduce/Manipulate (what it says on the tin) is subject to MC cockwaving even on a "good" roll, but social systems devolve into cockwaving on someone's side in general.

Dungeon World breaks the sneak into [place] and look for [clues] moves into two things regardless of roll, so your point's valid there.
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Post by silva »

What Frank has difficult to get is that, even if the GM has some "magical tea party" when players miss the rolls, this is subordinate to the fiction/context in which the players have putted themselves in through their previous choices. In other words, the GMs "magical tea party" must be fitted in a very specific scope that was itself stablished as a consequence of the players previous actions too.

I would even go farther and say that player agency in Apocalypse World tend to be higher than more traditional rpgs.
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Post by phlapjackage »

Necroing because I've recently played and needed to get all of my thoughts on the subject out of my head and onto "paper".

So, recently at a casual board game group meetup one of the guys suggested starting a game of DungeonWorld. I didn't know anything about DW other than what I read here on TGD, so I said what the hey. Here are my thoughts and observations after 2 sessions of DW.

- 3d6 in order for stats...hmmm not a fan but this is going to be basically a beer-n-pretzels game so I'm not really bothered yet.

- Making multiple characters at the start and being 0th level with no classes yet...again playing to that OSR feeling. Again it's telling me to not really invest in any one character and so it's even moreso a beer-n-pretzels game.

- Rolling for character traits and personality and bonds and such...wow so much OSR. It's feeling like this game is 100% intended either for total newb players or players who fap to D&D1

- On the bonds front, I guess this is a good idea in terms of emphasizing that the group should be a party and not just a bunch of strangers (unless that's the game you want to run, and then...). But again, this seems like it's for total newbie players. Forcing a gaming style on you in the belief that you can't do it on your own without a formalized system to ensure you do it.

- One of the players complained that they didn't "know what to do" in the game. This player was a gaming novice, not a complete newb but not a ton of experience. They kept asking what their character abilities were, and found it frustrating that the game lacked more concrete things like skills or powers. I think DW is a little too "in the middle" in terms of rules-lite...not enough rules to satisfy crunchy-rules-lovers like me, and too many rules to really be a story-game or rules-lite, which ends up confusing those players without enough exp to be able to differentiate this game from their other experiences.

- Another player (a total newbie) complained that there was nothing going on. The MC I think is a little inexperienced, or he's trying to follow DW guidelines really strictly. For new players, the idea of having to come up with things for their characters to do, or coming up with things that are happening in the game world, it's a little daunting for new players. I think new players need a more structured (railroad-y) story.

- XP earning is fucking stupid. It's encourages metagaming to the Nth degree and for something important like character advancement (in terms of abilities), its way too MTP. Worse than even classic D&D advancement. "Did you realize your bond"? "Did you confront your phobia"? So instead of, you know, organically trying to play this character, I need to be thinking in terms of what will earn the character XP, because XP is a real thing that a character needs. I just ignore any of the XP prompts, if the MC decides I didn't earn XP then fuck it.

- I remember reading someone saying AW/DW is one of those games where you want to avoid rolling dice, because that's the only time things happen. Yeah, I found that out the hard way. Fucking trying to find a trail through the woods, roll a 'partial success', fall into quicksand. What the fuck ?!!??! Another time, same character, 'partial success' to avoid an attack turns into the character still taking damage and dying. I think of all the rolls I've done in both sessions, in total only maybe 1 roll was an unmitigated success. Yay?

- So basically, 'partial success' = failure in my view. Not only related to what happened to my character above, but the general idea of what a roll of the dice means. Bad things happening to your character on a partial success really means failure. Which on a 2d6 roll, with stats 3d6 in order and almost no bonuses for a starting character, means almost every roll is a failure. It's not fun, it's not interesting...it's frustrating. I don't want to roll the dice in this game, and that's a very bad thing. It should be exciting to roll the dice, but instead it's something I dread. And I think a few others are starting to feel the same way.

- The MC not rolling dice thing is dumb. It just forces the resolution onto the player. SOMEONE rolls dice to decide an action, but in DW it's always the player. You can't avoid rolling dice even though you know it's a losing proposition to do so. Oh, the orc attacks you? Roll to defend/dodge. Same difference as the orc rolling to attack, except that my character has shitty stats because 3d6 in order and now basically anything less than a 10 on 2d6 is a failure.

- Is the "gain XP on a failed roll" supposed to make you feel better about failing? "You failed but at least you got XP!" No...just, no. So much stupid wrapped up here. It encourages metagaming to roll and fail for things that aren't important, and when I do roll for something important and fail I don't give a fuck about XP, I just care that I failed the roll.

Overall, DW seems like a game that can't decide if it wants to be a storygame or not. Too many rules keep it from being rules-lite, yet it doesn't have enough rules to help guide new players or satisfy experienced players. And the rules it does have don't seem useful or interesting, but merely frustrating. The fact that I dread rolling the dice is a huge thing.
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Post by Chamomile »

RAW (going by this SRD), Dungeon World has an attribute array, not 3d6 in order, starts at level 1 with classes, and allows you to pick bonds. Someone's forcing even more OSR into this than it showed up with, and it suffered badly for what it had in the first place.
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Post by phlapjackage »

Chamomile wrote:RAW (going by this SRD), Dungeon World has an attribute array, not 3d6 in order, starts at level 1 with classes, and allows you to pick bonds. Someone's forcing even more OSR into this than it showed up with, and it suffered badly for what it had in the first place.
Yeah, that would makes things a little better. But so far my main beef is with the resolution system (and XP earning system).

The probability curve, it's too small with just 2d6. Even using the stat array, almost every "move" (god I hate that parlance) has a really high chance of failure because 2-6 is a failure and 7-9 is a partial success (=== failure in my book). The game becomes about trying to crib together as many +'s as possible, and only using abilities/stats to roll where you have high bonuses, because your chance of failure is super high otherwise.

And that using abilities/stats things seems a little phony too. When I try to defend against the orc attack, I can try to block with the chair next to me (Str) or dodge out of the way (Dex) or whatever. The game tries to present it like it's this great empowering system that lets the player decide the story. But basically every action you take is one where you are going to choose to do it to favor your highest stat bonus. It's a false choice. Because rolling without using your highest bonus really, really sucks.
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Post by Username17 »

phlapjackage wrote:The probability curve, it's too small with just 2d6. Even using the stat array, almost every "move" (god I hate that parlance) has a really high chance of failure because 2-6 is a failure and 7-9 is a partial success (=== failure in my book). The game becomes about trying to crib together as many +'s as possible, and only using abilities/stats to roll where you have high bonuses, because your chance of failure is super high otherwise.
Not only are 7-9s failures, but on many moves and in many examples in the *World books, 10+ can also be a failure. Many actions getting a 10+ just gives you a finite number of declarations from a list - but some of those declarations are just specific ways you don't fail spectacularly. For example, you can spend one of your declarations on the Carousing table on "You don't end up cursed or enslaved." Indeed, I highly suggest using one of your declarations on that one, because otherwise you're waking up on a slow boat to Maztica. But while you are allowed to block Mr. Cavern on specific ways you might fail, you can't block them from declaring that you failed generally. The MC is left with the ability to declare faillure on your part in any of a number of ways. And they are probably going to.

Back in the original Apocalypse World, one of the very few examples in the book is a character losing the entire mission because they rolled an 11 on a Read A Sitch roll and the MC decided that the new information was "There are an arbitrarily large number of enemy goons coming and you automatically lose. Time to run." Dungeon World is very explicitly cut from the same cloth.

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Post by shlominus »

could someone provide the exact quote of this example please? i have a hard time believing this to be true.
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Post by Username17 »

shlominus wrote:could someone provide the exact quote of this example please? i have a hard time believing this to be true.
Sure:
Apocalypse World wrote:Bran doesn’t like the way things are going, so he takes a quick
look around. He hits the roll with an 11, so let’s see. Tum Tum
isn’t his biggest threat, Tum Tum’s psychically-linked cultistbodyguards
are. His enemy’s true position is closing in slowly
around Tum Tum’s temple, where they’re talking. And if things
go to shit? I think his best escape route would be to take one or
the other of Tum Tum hostage. (Bran’s player: “Aw fuck.”)
Extra enemies added resulting in mission failure and the new mission "escape with your fucking lives" on a success. That's the Anus World games in a nutshell.

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Post by momothefiddler »

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And before you ask, no, this is not just revealing an enemy that was there anyway. Turns out, that's not even a thing in this game. Start here. There was an earlier discussion but I couldn't find it.
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Post by shlominus »

even considering that those enemies were not there before (something that could be challenged and not the way i read it, but it's beside the point really)...

nothing in the example says that the mission is fucked. "if things go to shit" is obviously far from "things go to shit". while it's weird and a bit railroady to tell the players that taking a hostage would be the best course of action, nothing about this example says "your successful roll failed the mission". mooks "slowly closing in" is not the end of the mission. the players could stay and fight, they could finish whatever they were trying to do before the mooks arrive or they could think of something else entirely. a player noticed a complication/threat. that's all this quote is about.

such hyperbole is a bit too common here in the den.

if there really were no mooks before the roll, then i agree, that would be fucked indeed. maybe not as badly as you claim, but still quite fucked.
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Post by Username17 »

shlomious wrote:if there really were no mooks before the roll, then i agree, that would be fucked indeed.
There really are no mooks before the roll. That's how the entire game works, and people doubting that is how it works is really fucking tiresome.

Yes, Anus World is "that bad" and people who haven't read it should not pipe up with arguments from incredulity until they have.

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Post by shlominus »

like i said, this is beside the point, my point being that your claim that "a successful roll ended the mission" is not true and that exaggerations like that are not helpful.

i doubt you will accept that, but maybe some others guilty of the same behaviour might. :)

i'm not arguing that *world games are good/bad, i don't care about that at all.
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Post by Username17 »

shlominus wrote:like i said, this is beside the point, my point being that your claim that "a successful roll ended the mission" is not true and that exaggerations like that are not helpful.
Stop being a too-clever concern troll.

Listen, asshole, I know you're probably jizzing in your pants thinking you got a good chance to take people to task for hyperbolic statements so you can get your centrist shitweasel vibe going and finally nut off having found a way to castigate both sides for being unreasonable. But you don't. You have a chance to shut the fuck up and accept that Anus World is in fact guilty of exactly the thing I'm accusing it of in exactly the manner I am accusing it of being guilty or you have the chance to claim otherwise and be ridiculed for being fucking wrong. That is the chance you had, and now we can all facepalm because you fucking took it.

*World games are not like traditional RPGs in the sense that encounters are neither pre-defined nor generated by tables. Further, enemies don't have numbers. They don't run out of hit points or whatever. There is specifically and explicitly nothing "fair" in any traditional sense about an encounter. When the players are in a confrontation, the enemies are defeated when and if the MC says they are in response to the actions and rolls of the players. The MC doesn't roll dice at all.

So the Bran vs Tum Tum example is that Bran is in a conflict with Tum Tum and Bran's player chooses to make a perception test. Bran's player rolls an 11, which the game tells you is unmitigated success. The MC then has the opportunity to declare what the character perceives, and chooses to have them perceive that the quantity and power of the opposition has increased substantially and it is no longer possible to win the confrontation as previously described.

That's it. That's the whole example. The player gets total success on an action, and the MC responds by telling the player that enemy has gained infinity hit points and the mission as previously described is an automatic loss. I know that's very hard to accept, because that's so bullshit that it's literally offensive. But that really is exactly what it says and really is exactly what it means.

And that's beyond all the shit phlapjackage was talking about where "success at a cost" almost invariably has the "cost" be "you don't succeed." Even if you do succeed at a task, the MC is encouraged to define those successes in terms of you being defeated in a larger sense. It really is that bullshit. That's not hyperbole, that's just what that fucking game is.

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Post by shlominus »

shlominus wrote:i doubt you will accept that, but maybe some others guilty of the same behaviour might. :)
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