Preparing for Play
I’ve played Dungeon World a couple of times (and other AW-based games numerous more) and had great fun with it but never ran it before. First time running any Apocalypse Engine game, actually. I scoured through forums here and on Story Games, read most of the rules, and opted to base the game on Marshall Miller’s excellent Dungeon Starter, The Goblin Hole. Three friends were willing to play so we gathered at my place for (what turned out to be) a 7:30-1:30 game on a Saturday night.

I printed Moves sheets and Equipment lists for each of them and put them into plastic folios, accompanied by a set of polyhedrals. I spread out the Character Sheets in a fan on the table. For myself, I had some rules pages printed out and the rest on my iPad. I had a bunch of adventure inspiring printouts along with the Goblin Hole (all unnecessary) and a pad of paper. I surrounded this with a good old-fashioned DM screen and put a little 3x5 card reminder for the players on it with a picture of an eye labeled, “What do you SEE?” Felt a little weird not having any dice but I came to enjoy the freedom from rolling - left me to focus on the story.

I used some inexpensive poker chips - white and yellow for 1 and 5 XP respectively, red chips when I “earned” a move I could make against them (I saved a few of these up for the finale), and blue for Holds that players might earn. They worked perfectly and I will continue to use them in the future.

Speaking of XP, I was liberal in handing it out. I had the express goal of letting the players experience a level increase both for the mechanics and also for the sheer pleasure of advancement. We don't get to play enough to warrant being stingy so I tossed poker chips out for great role playing and funny moments.

Starting Off
Dale, Russ & Steve showed up shortly thereafter and were immediately absorbed in the character sheets. Which is to say they had the desired effect. After a short bit of discussion, Dale chose the Wizard (“Rath”), Russ picked the Fighter (“Eldar”), and Steve opted for the Ranger (“Halek”). Character creation breezed by (note: they all put their 8 in Charisma, which will be important later) and they chose Bonds. I then launched into backstory-generating questions to deepen their connections and they drew a preliminary map of the lands surrounding their town. When I asked for a hostile humanoid race their nation had just concluded a war with to the East, Russ very obligingly offered, “Goblins.” How convenient!

The Game
To be honest, I was a little nervous with just two sheets of paper in front of me as my adventure. I now know I had everything I needed. Our backstory Q&A rolled seamlessly into my asking the intro questions. “Whose idea was it to come here,” etc. Because I was eager to get them into the action, their first scene was getting past the sleeping feral dogs guarding the entrance. Halek’s intrepid rat, Talus, did much of the scouting for the party and was quite an asset. (Much better than a cougar, for crissakes.) They proceeded deeper into the Goblin Hole, Rath and his companions seeking some mystic power source rumored to be in the depths below.

The Impressions, Custom Moves, Things, and Monsters sections provided more than enough fodder to fuel the entire evening. I sketched out about three sections and left the rest to narration and “What do you see?” questions.

A poisoned metallic well, a giant rats’ warren, the debris pit, all went along relatively smoothly, though we were puzzled by how Weight worked crossing the debris. Chain mail weighs 1 but each Healing Potion weighs 2? I learned later it’s still being worked on. We fudged through just fine.

Particularly amusing to me was Halek encountering the talking skull of a starling, suspended in the middle of a cavern by a string. When it insulted him, he smashed it to smithereens, despite Rath’s protestations. Funny moment. I added some color by having Rath notice the shadow of a starling appear on Halek’s face for a moment after smashing the skull... and then slowly fade, sign of a possible curse or something.

Breaking through to much older construction (Dwarven, naturally - wanted to change up the environment a bit), a tense scene evolved that included a deep pit with a narrow walkway, stinging nettles on the wall, and the log trap waiting in the shadows above for a character to blow his roll. I ratcheted it up by sending a goblin patrol to investigate. Our heroes dispatched them handily with arrows, magic, spear, and Eldar’s expertly thrown head of a pitchfork (impaling a retreating goblin set on raising the alarm). Eldar then triggered the log trap but avoided toppling into the pit.

Then came the rabbit hutches. Fascinating. We had some fun play ensue after Halek freed all the rabbits (great alignment play on Steve’s part) and Rath donned the rabbit totem. The rabbits immediately arranged themselves around him, expectantly. He sensed he could draw mystic energy off of them and wanted to use that to do a mystical scan for the magical source in the dungeon. I gave him the option to take +1 or +2 on the roll, which would either knock the rabbits out or kill them, respectively. As he was pushing his awareness out, he rolled a 7 so I told him the source was close but some malign presence was now aware of him, a presence controlling the source.

The next scene was finding local village kids in cages, also with signs of having been used as “magic batteries,” drained a bit of their life essence (and also sick and infectious). Halek had to free them, too, and the freaked out kids clung to them and refused to leave. The heroes tried to reason and Parley but the low Charisma scores came back to haunt them (much to my delight). These kids were NOT getting back in the cages or going anywhere by themselves. The heroes reluctantly proceed with six kids in tow.

The Finale
It was pretty late by this point and I wanted to get them to an end game situation so they  crossed a rope bridge in mist under a hail of goblin arrows and got into the goblin king’s throne room, complete with drained, wasted goblin king on a throne. Halek put an arrow between his eyes but I got to make a hard move and I went a little crazy. The throne was a trigger for the entire floor caving in, dumping everyone down but Halek (lost his bow to keep from falling) into a mystic chamber below. Most everyone had to make ugly choices - fun for the climax.

As the rubble tumbled and dust fell, I had the big baddie, an Ogre Magi, drop down from far above, suspended by wrists, ankles and waist with chains, spread-eagle, cackling and muttering in an alien tongue. Clutched in his hand was the powerful scroll Rath had been seeking. His body was covered in arcane tattoos and his top-knot billowed in the magical cyclone he was creating, threatening to rain chaos and destruction down on everyone for miles around and unleash untold forces of mayhem.

On reflection, I have no idea how I came up with that rather stupid set-up but I saw it vividly in my mind and just went with it. No one complained.

In a cinematic one-two-three punch, the heroes took him down. Halek leapt out onto the Magi’s back and - rather than trying to gut him - took Rath’s screamed advice and lopped off his top knot. (Genius add on Dale’s part.) This pulled the mystical plug on the Magi and enabled Eldar to throw his precious spear and impale the Magi. I pulled one more move, however (was working with the Orkaster moves) and had him contact a powerful being. As he died, his spirit was sucked up in an oily inky cloud and disappeared. We left the dramatic conclusion with the harried escape from the imploding Goblin Hole with the sick kids to our quick narration and imaginations. It was late, remember?

Thoughts
I’m hooked like a junkie on Dungeon World now. Speed to play, co-creative elements, focus on story and narration rather than tactical maneuvering, bonds, low prep, all of this is good stuff. We did find the weights section confusing and I will spend more time having the players detail their bonds to each other and rationale for adventuring next time. I want them to do brief scenes illustrating their chosen bonds so we can go deeper with them. I fell into the typical linear, “next room, next room” progression and will work hard to move scene to scene instead in the future, get immediately to the good stuff and call for quick interstitials to a) develop Bonds and relationships more and b) better pace the adventure.

I’m still learning the rhythm of MCing but thoroughly enjoyed it as a way to run a game. I feel a bit new to it but excited to study the rules in more depth and get the hang of it. It works for me.

Final thanks to Adam, Sage, Marshall, and Vincent for providing the great material for us to have such fun. Greatly appreciated!

That description of a dragon in full swing got me a little freaked out. Nice job, stras!! A good reminder something that powerful is more like a force of nature rather than a tree to be chopped and chopped with your sword until it eventually falls over. Yeah, the dragon has 16 hit points. Good luck getting close enough to it to do any damage. And not because it's a well-designed, thoughtfully balanced piece of mechanics. Because it's a f***ing huge pissed-off murder-minded DRAGON.

It's also a great reminder to respect all your antagonists, big and small. Each one deserves a bit of thoughtful narration and sensitivity to its role in the fiction. Bring the wonder back into the game, my friends. It's there, it's always been there and always will be, thank god. It's why most if not all of us fell in love with the hobby to begin with.