Barf Forth Apocalyptica
powered by the apocalypse => Dungeon World => Topic started by: JBMannon on March 21, 2012, 09:24:22 PM
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I really like the new Steading mechanic because it adds in a bit of the fundemental scarcity that AW has but I feel like it is missing something. One of the things that makes Fronts really pop is grounding them firmly in people. I think that is what Steadings need too, people who can represent the tags placed upon the town. By giving a tag a person to be it's example you get a better idea of who lives in this town. Not only that but you give a face, someone specific for the party to interact with when they want to make a change in a Steading. It is probably going too far but I keep thinking that the tags could each be treated like an inverse Front, something good that could happen if only someone got involved. That seems like far too much work but it would probably work best as a focus thing. When players are focused on Y aspect of town X then fill in this information. Just a long and rambly thought.
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I like your long and rambly thoughts Josh :)
Sage says:The conditions above detail the most basic of interactions between settlements, of course the presence of your Fronts and the players mean things can get far more complex. Since tags are descriptive, add them as needed to reflect the players' actions and your fronts' effects on the world.
I'm thinking as we make steadings, and determine their tags, I'm going to generate NPCs at the same time, ask the players and use the answers, that sort of thing. Then the hooks are not just events and places, but people attached to those tags.
For instance; Wealthy: What mundane items are sold near where your digs are? Who makes the most gold out of all this? What do they think of you? Why are you a threat to them?
Or Arcane: Someone in town can cast arcane spells for a price. Who is this? Where do they live? What is their relationship with the ruling class? What have they asked of you lately?
That sort of thing. I'm pretty excited. I have ideas for tying player bonds to these NPCs too, thus generating XP opportunities. So much coolness in the steading rules.
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Noofy,
As always you take my incoherent straw and spin gold out of it. I think having NPC centric questions associated with each tag with the instruction "Ask a few of these:" would be helpful.
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Steadings aren't supposed to be grabby per se. Adding NPCs is a great idea but they aren't AW-style NPCs with motives and needs and their own agendas. They're simple townsfolk.
The idea is to make steadings a resource to the players. Making that resource more flavorful is certainly a good thing, but be wary of making the Steading too much of focus. There's a reason that only one tag (Notable) refers to a single person. The classes aren't particularly well-suited to play in a Steading, and generally Steadings aren't the most interesting thing.
noofy's questions are good, but I'd probably only use one per tag at most. Arcane doesn't have to be one person, it could be a small conclave of students or even a tradition of hedge magic amongst the elders. Giving too much detail to them sets the wrong expectation. The Arcane tag (no matter if it's a person or a group) is there to make the Steading a useful place to the players, not to make it a source of adventure. Steadings play into adventure primarily by being threatened in some way.
That threat can, sometimes, be internal. If the Assassin's Guild becomes a Front then sure, there can be adventures in a steading. But the point is not to make Steadings generate fronts, its to give Fronts something to endanger.
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It seems like a steading could also represent a neighborhood or district in a larger city that the PCs find safe with fronts from other areas of the city.
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Yes! I'm actually adding a section to Advanced Delving about re-skinning or rewriting Steadings. Marshall has already suggested some great stuff like merchant caravans.
Steadings as written could certainly work for neighborhoods of a city. In fact that has me thinking of a collapsed metropolis where undead and other creatures roam between the few neighborhoods that still stand. That's taking it to the extreme, you could even just have it be more like home turf: in Knock Alley you're generally safe, but in other neighborhoods they know you're not from around here.
I think the World chapter isn't going to talk about that kind of stuff, mostly because I'm a really big fan of presenting one way that's know to work and then (maybe) presenting alternate methods in another place. If a few different interpretations are all presented in the same place people are likely to get confused, it weakens the presentation, and some of those may not work as well.
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One other thought: we're walking a thin line here because if we don't present it right people are going to make hanging out in steadings the game. We know we have to be careful about this, so we're working to make it extra clear.
Steadings are like your supply lines. They have characteristics for two reasons:
To distinguish them (otherwise you'd just get everything you need from one little vilalge)
To make the dominoes fall (so that when orcs take a village the world feels it)
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Gangs of
New York Dungeon World.
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One other thought: we're walking a thin line here because if we don't present it right people are going to make hanging out in steadings the game.
But Tonks the 8th Level Wizard and Brancino the 7th Level Sometimes Head of the thieves guild, have been using a Drow fortress deep under the vastness mountains as their 'steading' for the last few sessions as they explore ever deeper into the underdark, trying to uncover the bubbling resonance of ancient magic that plagues the very planes of existence. (I want to introduce Planescape) Hanging out in this particular supply line has been fraught with peril and a front onto itself.
If you go with Sage and Adam's particularly poignant resource analogy, then I like to make all of 'Dungeon World' seen in this light. I like to threaten the PC's security, as they increase in level (and power), their more significant resources (including whole steadings and what they offer) come under even greater threat from impending doom. The PC's have nowhere safe anymore. I'm a fan of them engaging in adventure, not sitting around in their respective hang-outs in town, chillin'. Safe is when they retire from play or are dead.
I like the idea of mobile steadings (like caravans or sailing ships), that's so cool!
When it comes to NPC's its only our preference to populate the world so densely. We like character interaction, it has sort of become habit after playing AW to name every significant NPC, and if they aren't named well they just aren't significant to the story and thus fade from the scene. I wouldn't suggest everyone play this way! The steading rules as written are awesome as a more detailed (fictionally tagged) resource for the PC's to use and lose, that give additional cues for the 'new' steading moves.
Our style of play however is very focused. Years of playing burning wheel have made me 'cut to the chase' and antogonise the player's goals as a matter of course. I am adverse to 'filler' scenes in my GM style. It has to matter y'know? Thus the steadings become not so much 'home' fronts (like in AW), they are Dungeon Fronts, with their own kind of dangers.
So if the players want to hang in the steading, the steading becomes the dungeon. The same way is if the players want to take the story to the wilderness, then the wilderness becomes the dungeon.
Make maps (as a group) like crazy, that's all I can say! Relationship maps, town maps, wilderness maps.... If you have maps of a place then its significant to the group. No map for a steading? Not needed? Then its just as the beta rules outline: a line of supply for the players to engage with so they can get back to the dungeon.
I've been using these two wonderful generic maps by Brandon to fill in the steading tags for our towns of Dingledale and Port Blackrock
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9BR0n7Yl944/S_Fi1CezlcI/AAAAAAAAA6g/KqP12VrWI84/s1600/smalltown_1.jpg)
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rTWRDRwmVBQ/Ta2weP8HEuI/AAAAAAAABEI/8PNvCTxYVvM/s1600/Nenlast_post_ii.jpg)
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I wouldn't phrase it as "if the players want to hang around the steading." I'd say "if there's a front active (things to be done, dangerous to be faced)" then sure, have city adventures.
The point of steadings is that if there isn't something going on there you just make a few moves and return to the dungeon. Those moves set up important fictional stuff, but they're not really adventuring.
Sewers, catacombs, forgotten lower levels to a city: those are all great! Those are dungeons, totally.
The steading system is not designed to do city adventures or set up political intrigues or whatever, because that's what your fronts are. If you happen to want to make a front that takes place in the city, do it.
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A few related things:
You still totally portray NPCs in a steading, they're just not, by default, antagonists. They're nit really out for anything unless you make them.
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Oh totally Sage, I wasn't trying to portray something counter to your concept of the Steading in the new rules, nor say that the way we've been playing is 'better' or more satisfying. Its just different.
I'm just excited to have all these new tags to hook into, having used an abridged version of the holding rules from AW up until this point anyway, so to have the new steading rules codified and tied to their own set of special moves is wonderful. Thank you!
That said, I'm heading to Sydney for work this weekend and hope to hook up with some old friends (3 of them) who had played RPG back in the day at University, but haven't since (like 20 years ago!). I pitched DW at them and they seemed willing to give it a try, so I'll play with the new beta as written :)
If we get through the first session then I'll use the steading / wilderness creation rules as a group and see what we come up with, It should be fun!
Thanks for talking about your ideas and thoughts on the rules as you introduce them Sage, it makes a world of difference to seeing where you and Adam are coming from.
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I tend to let the player's focus determine the game's focus. If they focus on the Dungeons, play the Fronts to the hilt and make that fun. If they focus on the town though I will make that just as interesting. I think the main thing is to make sure that you put your Fronts in front of your players, not way off where they will not care.
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No problem at all!
We're not blocking city adventures, just making the clear and easy path "go out on adventures, come back to town." Which, tying to the original post, is why we aren't too concerned about them being grabby.
As Josh says, the important thing is making your Fronts oppose the players (which they do pretty much by design). The Steading system actually helps with that, as trouble in some far off village may lead to problems closer to home.
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I just think that if you are going to threaten Steadings with Fronts it would be good to have clear ways to boost Steadings as well. That was where my inverse Fronts idea came from. Their "Impending Doom" would be something positive for the Steading and their "Grim Portents" would be external forces (likely tied to existing Fronts) that are keeping the "Impending Doom" from happening. This keeps them engaged in going out into the world while at the same time giving them an investment in coming back.
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Sorry for the sidetrack, but Noofy:
If you want to collaborate on Planescape, I consider myself something of an expert on the subject and actually own all the 2e materials. My first DW campaign will be set entirely there. Happy to help and bounce ideas off each other.
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We've gotten a few ideas from people about making Steadings more active. Some people want them to be more positive, only kept in check by the fronts and such. Some people want them to be actively deteriorating.
Marshall suggested a good example to me of what we're thinking with Steadings: think of locations from Lord of the Rings. You head off from your nice safe home in The Shire, get to a seedy but civilized inn, stop by Lothlorien, etc. Some of those places have built in problems or things going on, but for the most part they're respites from the ongoing journey. Sure, the elves are all headed across the sea and all that, but Lothlorien is mostly just a safe place.
Steadings fill that role. When Helm's Deep is under siege it's important to defend it because it's a resource AND it contributes to the safety of Gondor.
Steading and the rules on how to update them exist primarily to reflect back at the players their choices. You put the safety of Greybark over that of Torsea? Well now Battlemoore doesn't have fish to eat since Torsea doesn't have enough boats. That means it's vulnerable, who's going to take advantage of that.
I worry that making Steadings active things, with goals that they might achieve, puts too much with the GM. That's part of why, without the players or fronts, Steadings will tend to a steady state (where not much changes). This is by design: without the players or the fronts, the world is boring. It's the canvas that the fronts and players paint on.
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That said, we'll totally see how this plays out over a few sessions. We just don't want the fronts and steadings to be so actively opposed that the GM doesn't need the players.
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Its serendipitous that you should elucidate your thoughts Sage :)
We just had a session where all we did was 'create' Dingledale, Port Blackrock and the city of eternal glass (Drow citadel) as a group activity following the steading rules.
The player investment was massive. We already have many fictional constants about all three of these steadings already established. But to 'tag' them in this way? To locate them in the wider scheme of (the hitherto unknown) world? Magic. Pure Magic.
We found it just enough. Not too detailed, not too sparse. I asked questions as I thought appropriate and wrote down all the stakes I was interested in. We seemed to create connections between the steadings almost like 'bonds'; adventures waiting to happen, that if the players did nothing would either resolve on their own or retreat back into the small measure of safety that Sage references above.
We used Brandon's wonderful maps as backdrops, and ended up with a 'regional' map full of unanswered questions and mysterious dungeons too (which we didn't have before - other than an impermanent one made in the dirt at our campsite). The relationship map filled out a little, a few more NPC's and potentially player flagged adventure opportunities presented themselves.
We have a whole host of new dangers, Impending Dooms aplenty and many quests and adventure possibilities - some dynamic, some interdependent, others lying dormant - just waiting for the adventurers to insert themselves (or not) into a developing situation. In short, I will not need to do much prep for the game (other than write a few grim portents and detail the dangers and monsters for many many sessions to come!
I thoroughly encourage this 'session' as Sage suggests somewhere after your first few sessions. Make it group orientated if you like, it in some ways was very reminiscent of the initial situation and world burning sessions of Burning Wheel. Heady stuff :)