REVIEW: Dungeon World

I've also been reading through Dungeon World (affiliate link) (find it free at Sage LaTorra's GitHub repository or, for text-only and frugal printing, at Adam Fairweather's GitHub repository.) I've so far been super impressed with it, and wanting to know more about it, I searched out it's origins. It's based on what appears to be much lesser-known game by a different publisher, Apocalypse World (affiliate link.) (no freebies which I could find)

Dungeon World focuses on the narrative, on the story. The rules stay out of the way. They're designed that way. The rules are triggered by the fiction. They also drive the fiction. When the rules are triggered by a PC's action, rolls get made and the results cause the story to move forward, sometimes with interesting twists and turns.



Probably one of the most interesting aspects of the game is: the GM does not roll dice. The job of the GM is to ask questions and present interesting situations. Over and over and over, all throughout the rules, the GM is encouraged to focus on the fiction. Narrate the action in such a way that the story always moves forward.

Goofing around with Inkscape

I've been playing around with Inkscape for the last couple of days. I traced some some old style hexmap icons and used the boardgame extensions in inkscape to create a grid to lay them on. This took about 30 mins to put together, mostly due to duplicating and placing and resizing to fit stuff and and and

Anyway, here's the result.

One of the super-cool things I can do with Inkscape that I can't do with other grid-based editors is keep the underlying terrain around in a sensible way. Hah. Try that with Hexographer.

REVIEW: Dungeon Crawl Classics

I've been reading through a borrowed copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics (affiliate link) by Goodman Games. Note that I have not played it. This is a review based on a reading of the rule book only.

If you have played Dungeons and Dragons Basic/Expert/Champion/Master/Immortals Edition or Cyclopedia Rules, you've played Dungeon Crawl Classics; sort of. Like D&D BECMI and CR, you get race-as-class characters in a swords and sorcery type setting.

The juice is in the differences.

The first major difference is zero-level characters. The game strongly recommends every campaign to start with zero-level characters, suggesting each player create 3-5 of these wimpy mooks and wait for attrition and experience points to determine which they play through the campaign. I must say, this is super cool. I really very much like this.

Character generation is pretty much entirely random. See previous paragraph. Each of those zero-level mooks created is pretty much entirely random. Random stats and background and bonus thing. That's maybe not so great for games where players pretty much create one character to play. In this game, with lots of mook-PCs in the mix, it's fabulous.

Wizard duels! Rules for wizard's spell duels is super-neat. I really dig it. The rules are simple and very playable and this would be an awesome thing to steal for use in other games.

OMG, tables! More than half the page-count is tables. I'm not kidding. Cool random character creation background and bonus tables. Really neat critical hit and fail tables. EACH SPELL has its OWN table to tell you what the results of a casting are! There are so many, and they're all so very different, they're pretty much not memorizable. Interrupting the flow of play, of story, to look up tables is bad, bad, terrible. Now, many of these tables are pretty nifty, the fact there are so many of them and not just one core sort-of universal table thing which can be easily printed for super-quick_doesn't-interrupt-story-flow_lookup is, in my opinion, unforgivable and basically makes the game un-playable, as written. Your mileage may vary. It's probably pretty hackable to ditch many or most of the tables, but then you may as well play D&D BECMI or CR or Labyrinth Lord or, or, or.

That's pretty much all I took from reading the game. Fortunately, the zero-level character thing and the wizard's spell duels thing are fairly easy to steal and adapt to other games. As far as I'm concerned, everything else is trash. Fortunately, I borrowed the book to read it.

$39.99 for a 480 page rulebook, hardbound, is not at all a bad price, but I'm glad I didn't pay it.
$24.99 for a 480 page rulebook, PDF, is a horrible price and I'm glad I didn't pay it.

All that said, it's an Open Game License product, but, apparently nothing in the core book is released as OGL material. Maybe you can, but I haven't found anything even close to System Reference Document available for free download, or for purchase, anywhere. What does that mean? I don't know. Maybe they actually mean something closer to the EABA Open Supplement License.


***

I've also been reading through Dungeon World (affiliate link) (find it free at Sage LaTorra's GitHub repository or, for text-only and frugal printing, at Adam Fairweather's GitHub repository.) I've so far been super impressed with it and, wanting to know more about it, I searched out it's origins. It's based on what appears to be much lesser-known game by a different publisher, Apocalypse World (affiliate link.) I'm cheap and I couldn't find a non-torrent freebies (couldn't find any torrents, either) so I bought a copy. I'll review these two games at a future date.

New D&D 5e game starting

We decided to play a little D&D 5e. Rather than play in Forgotten Realms, we'll be using a GM sandbox setting which the players (that means me) know very little about other than lots of arid plains.
Characters were generated by rolling 4d6, drop lowest, in order of Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha and choosing race+class based on what we think would be most fun using those numbers. Zero attribute shifting was allowed. However, if totaled attribute bonuses wound up negative, player could choose to roll a whole new set of attributes. We are beginning at 3rd level.
With big Dex and Cha, I chose to play a Bard and, just to make things interesting, I'll be playing a Dragonborn. Isaac settled on a Human Druid and we're waiting on a couple of new-to-us players to sit down and generate characters.
This will be an interesting experiment to see if we get a decently well-rounded party. Character generation in this manner is a throw-back to the 1970s where it was recommended to roll in order of attributes and choose accordingly. It mixes things up pretty well. We will certainly have less "optimized" characters, but what's fun about power gaming, anyway?

Jimmy Beam

Just a quickie character for Risus: The Anything RPG. Use him how you see fit.

About Jimmy 
Jimmy grew up in an asteroid mining family but found that dull, so he joined the space marines and learned to fight. He was issued a lovely laser rifle and fell in love with that little toy.

Nowadays he flies his little rocket ship all over galaxy, a trouble “shooter” for hire; rescuing distressed demoiselles and cats in trees and occasionally, sometimes, very rarely, doing something important.

Cliches

Marksman 5 
Space pilot 1 
Swashbuckler 2 
Gambler 2

Description 
Suave, debonaire, beautiful hair! Always wears leather “bomber” jacket. Keeps his laser rifle, "Nancy", handy at most times.

Play-by-Tweet RPGs

First, there was the traditional everyone-sits-around-the-table game. Those were fun and still are. This is probably still the most common way to play an RPG. However, not everyone is able to find a local gaming group to play with. Alternatives were devised and have been gradually improved upon, in terms of interactivity and "features" such as map posting and stuff.

Then there were play-by-mail games, where turns are taken every couple weeks and everything is handled through the postal service. These have largely fallen by the wayside, but there are a few still running.

Next came play-by-email games, where turns are taken every couple of days and everything is handled through an e-mail list. Still common, though it seems to have moved away from traditional e-mail groupings and more towards Yahoo! and Google groups based games.

Around the time AOL released their chat client, play-by-chat came into being. Live interaction, yay! But, all the other difficulties of e-mail still existed plus factor in differing time-zones and attendance issues.

Then there was play-by-post games, which are basically play-by-email games but hosted within a web-forum somewhere. As far as I'm aware, this is the single most popular way to handle remote RPG games.

Now, the new kid on the block is play-by-tweet. The game is hosted at Twitter. The 140 character limit per post is actually a good thing because it keeps people focused on the action, where it belongs. Hashtags can be used for a variety of stuff. Private messages between participants are exceeding easy. The problem? Same as e-mail: everyone has to subscribe to all other participants in order to get all the action. Everything is sort or scattered about and there's no hosting of files for maps, player handouts or character stats.

What's next? Answer: Google Wave. All the advantages of chat/irc/twitter without the downsides. Who will be first? :)

>break<

There are currently two play-by-tweet games I'm aware of: @0eRPG and @MasterDungeon, both using freely available retro-classic class-n-level fantasy games. Really. Tunnels and Trolls is much better suited to PbT, I think.

Maybe I'll start a game. More later, if I do.

First time GMs, this is for you...

A recent post to the Savage Worlds Yahoo! group saw a brief flurry of activity today. I have taken the liberty of posting the relevant bit and my response. Names and dates have been removed to protect the guilty.

=== cue original equerry ===

> Hello,

>

> Well, the time has finally come and I am nervous. I'm trying to get

> ready for my first game and would love some tips for the game. How

> should I prepare? What should I focus on?

=== end querry ===

+++ begin response +++

It doesn't matter what you focus on. You, invariably, forget something seemingly important.

It is NOT important and here's why:

1-- If it's rules, you can wing-it or look it up. Winging it is faster.

2-- If it's character sheets, you can always use a Mk. I Generic sheet (blank piece of paper)

3-- Pencils? Who needs 'em anyway. They're an excuse for people to maintain lazy memory functions!

4-- Dice? Hah! Rock-Paper-Scissors rules!!!

5-- Bennies? Phooey! You have a pocket full of pennies, nickels and dimes right?

6-- Cards (for Iniative, etc)? Bah! Those're for sissies, anyway. Make something up. Chits drawn from a hat or bag, dice rolls, who can do the most pistol-squats without hold onto something for balance... Whatever.

7-- Miniatures? You're kidding, right? Do you remember how to imagine things? This is, after all, Make Believe, isn't it?

Just remember that you WILL somehow screw up. Admit it (most importantly to yourself and then to your players) and just play right on through it. DO NOT GO BACK AND "fix" A MISTAKE. Just roll with it. It will help you remember how to handle it better next time.

If you and your players are having fun, you are doing everything right even if it's not "by the book."

+++ end response +++

Are YOU a first-time games master? Be sure to read the part of my response that's clearly highlighted. Tape it to your bathroom mirror and the edge of GM screen. It's the absolute most important thing you will ever read when it comes to being a games masster, garaunteed.