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Topics - watergoesred

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Dungeon World / Building Monsters with the Metamorphica!
« on: July 24, 2012, 05:52:09 AM »
Taking inspiration from Ego at The Log Book Project and his alien creations, I'm playing with Johnstone's inimitable Metamorphica as a "really intense monster-designing machine".

I'm more interested in a Dungeon World monster more than an alien from outer space. My first shot produced the Spiniphant (a.k.a tusked tumbler.)

Here it is in it's full glory as a DW stated Monster. Next post I put details about how I used the metamorphica. Or check out my G+ post here


Northern spiniphant (a.k.a. tusked tumbler) 
Small, Group
Tusks (d8 damage, 1 piercing) Close, Messy
10 HP  1 Armour

Calm and plodding creatures, Northern spiniphants are slow to react and not particularly social; preferring to feed off the winds that blast and tumble them across the stony tundra; preferring to exchange tales with the wind than with stiff bald bipeds. They have twelve limbs or thereabouts, oriented all around their body. Combined with their copious and eerily prehensile hair, they look like dread-locked soccer balls; albeit with huge tusks that emerge from their hairy depths when scratching frozen moss off a rock. Or when you punt one between two rocks and break some of its legs. and you notice the tusks of its gang flying at you in a screaming blood rage—screeching across the sky like savagely pointy meteors with great red-brown manes and trails of hair and legs. That is until your eyes are blinded by muddy brown light, and blood, and you run and they pursue and pursue and run 'til you die or they do. Instinct: to roam
- Leap great distances
- Flash muddy brown light, disorienting and blinding


Greater northern spiniphant (a.k.a. fucking huge tusked tumbler) 
Large, Solitary
Tusks (d10+1 damage 2 piercing) Close, Reach, Messy
14 HP  2 Armour

Unless you're a stone giant, hopefully by now you know not to kick one. Instinct: to roam
- Leap great distances
- Flash muddy brown light, disorienting and blinding
- Capture and strangle with masses of knotted prehensile hair?

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Dungeon World / Adventure starter - Blackmoore
« on: July 10, 2012, 03:13:16 AM »
Inspired by mease19's dungeon starters and the new steading rules, I've created: Adventure starter - Blackmoore

This grew out of my misremembering the name of Battlemoore during a Bloodstone Idol adventure. It's packed with fictional triggers. You could use it as place to begin a new adventuring party; to flesh out a resupply stop at a steading between the real adventures; or combine it with some Adventure Fronts to have some sweet urban adventures.

It was damn fun to make! Enjoy!

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Dungeon World / Party glue
« on: July 01, 2012, 09:02:41 AM »
1) John Harper warns what people frequently do wrong in World of Dungeons is start out saying "Everyone make characters and I'll come up with something that will work for everybody."
Quote from: John Harper
Never do that. Tell them what their PC group is about (and revise as needed based on what the players think). Tell them to make characters that fit that group concept.

I like to start with, "You are a band of desperate thieves and cut-throats with no job prospects or connections, forced to delve into monster-infested ruins to scavenge for coins to survive. Many of you will not survive. Those that do may become rich!"

But it could be, "The church of the Hawk-Headed God has conscripted dangerous criminals -- that's you -- into exploring the ancient, sacred tomb-city recently unearthed by an earthquake, in exchange for pardoning your various crimes."?

2) Dndwithpornstars warns sandbox games need roguish and not upright heroes. Upright heroes act to preserve the status quo and so need a plot; they're inherently reactionary. Whereas, roguish heroes' drive to challenge the status quo works extremely well with sandbox games, like Dungeon World.

I've used both these warnings to compile following list. I hope you find use for it.

Why should a handful of individuals with varying skill-sets come together and trust each other enough to travel cross-country, delve into dangerous places, and fight monsters side-by-side?

Money
  • Poverty - climb out of the gutter any way they can
  • Indebted - owe money, fealty or favour to same person/organisation
  • Heist - working on a really big con/theft/deception
  • Mercenaries - bounty hunters, field assistants, brigands...
Desperation
  • Disaster - life-changing, e.g. village destroyed, ongoing war, famine,...
  • Survival - fleeing death and destruction or finding shelter and sustenance
  • Escape - fleeing persecution: slaves, gladiators, prisoners, criminals,...
  • Coerced - bullied into furthering goals of or entertaining <blackmailer/kidnapper/god>
  • Conscripted - hoping for a pardon, citizenship,...
Ambition
  • Common enemy - Bring down the <something or one you don't like>, revenge
  • Rescue - loved one, princess, persecuted people
  • Reavers - shared love of pillage and plunder
  • Pilgrimage - holy journey(s)
  • Knowledge - Uncover the mystery of something: ancient and forgotten, personal and unnerving, dangerous and growing
Duty
  • Diplomacy - representative of different factions on a mission
  • Religious - serve the same religion
  • Crusaders - Crusade against <distant threat or monster type>
  • Family - characters all related; tradition; inheritance conditions
  • Company - members of guild/clan/military unit
  • Revolutionaries  - Unite the land against <force for status quo>

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Dungeon World / Ask questions - Cues, tips and tools
« on: May 30, 2012, 12:18:16 AM »
One idea I had is using the Extended Character Concept Generator, from Deeper in the Game, as a cue for questions to ask player characters. For example, I imagine looking at and then saying

"You're a mercenary right, from down South. But what's your reputation round here? What have you done to earn that?"

"What social status can a follower of the Veiled One expect? Do you think that's right?"

etc.

Extended Character Concept Generator
A (personality trait) (profession/role) trying to (goal) despite her (flaw).

She wants to become (profession/positive trait), achieve (social status), overcome/move beyond (past trouble, mistake, tragedy). She believes in (ideal or personal credo) and can’t stand people who (believe other credo/behave in a certain way). People know her as (reputation) and expect that she will (achieve/fail/become something).

She is a part of (social group), is expected to obey (authority figure), assisted by (friend/group of friends), is opposed by (rival group).

She wants to earn respect/love of (NPC), see (NPC2/rival group) get their just desserts for (dirty deed), help (NPC3) deal with (problem/flaw), fulfill (promise made) for (NPC4), and protect (NPC5) from (personal flaw, danger, other NPC or group).

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Dungeon World / HP, damage and the fiction
« on: May 27, 2012, 09:14:26 PM »
How do folks embed damage dealt, either to PCs or by them, in the fiction? That is, how do you describe the loss of HP, the effect on the world made by the damage?

Do you just wing it? Or do you have lists of injuries categorised in terms of injury-mechanism (weapon-type, falls, drowning, etc.) and intensity (2 damage vs 12 damage);  even if those lists are in your head?

Do you narrate HP loss solely as bodily injury and stress, or do you also include mental stress, loss of heart, failing skills, slowed movement?

How do you narrate in armour and being thrown about, without treading on the toes of specialised tag effects like +Messy, +Piercing, or +Forceful?

And do you differentiate descriptions of injuries from damage and from taking a debility? Like, when a debility makes your ears ring and vision blurry; do you keep those fictional elements only for debilities? Or are debilities somehow more severe--like deeper wounds or hits that have acupuncture-like precision--or more complicated--like infections and an accumulation of straws that break your back? Or do narrate debility effects the same as other standard HP damage, it's just this time the blow to head has more mechanical reinforcement?

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Dungeon World / Bloodstone idol: Actual play and questions
« on: April 18, 2012, 08:25:17 PM »
Last night I ran my first game of Dungeon World Basic. I'd run a few sessions of Apocalypse World maybe a year or more ago. So I had the basic gist of how the GMing and the players moves worked.

There were three players, all better versed in Apocalypse World but also new to Dungeon World. We had
- Hawthorn, evil cleric of the secret god;
- Hob, a neutral fighter with a big hammer; and
- Marlow, a neutral thief

Character creation went smoothly enough, though there was some confusion about whether load calculation (e.g. 7+str) used the Strength base score (e.g. Str 17) or the modifier (e.g. Str +2). We went with the modifier (e.g. 7+2) but the rules looked  ambiguous to us.

I used the Bloodstone Idol adventure from the red book, starting in the forest looking at the Hall entrance. The action started quickly, with the help of a few failed rolls, and quickly devolved into a brutal fighting, backstabbing and volleys maelstrom in the forest. The fighter died for a time and was writing up a Paladin, only to realise he hadn't subtracted his armour from the damage in took going toe-to-toe against a berzerk lizardman. The goblins took the opportunity to kill the few straggling lizardmen that we missed.

The group cut a deal with the goblins to kill the lizardmen and were lead into the hall. The group followed the goblin to the rope "bridge" across the idol room. They decided not to risk it, but the presence of the idol unleashed a cure light wounds from the cleric's mind.

Some trap checking, laying dead to rest, falling down stairs, exploding fireflies, running from fireflies, resting, getting mesmerised by the menagrie illusion, the group ended in at the base of the idol against more lizardmen. We ended our first session there.

This fight was pretty satisfying, with all kinds of mishaps and antics arising quite naturally from the player and gm moves. I'm not a fan of the static damage for monsters, as the players consistently had pretty poor damage meaning monsters even with similar weapons were constantly outclassing them in terms of damage.

Everyone levelled up, though it was the thief first--with his trap checking--followed closely by the cleric--with all the defying danger and discerning reality--and then the fighter a little later, maybe because fights tended to be over quite quickly and he never rushed to parley.

One issue was the fighter accidently picked a racial and signature weapon move that were identical. We corrected it but it would be good if there just was no such overlap to have to avoid.

Another thing was dealing with what a "trap" was. The thief rolled 10+ trap expert on the zoo of monsters illusion. I gave him his answers as I figured finding traps involves percieving irregularities in the environment, essentially what's needed to discover this zoo is an illusion. I didn't however allow that he could disable the illusion with a tricks of the trade because he just doesn't have the magical knowledge. But I'm no 100% sure on that call.

Lastly, an issue came up about GM moves. The thief managed a back stab move on a Lizardman who was baiting and taunting the fighter. The Lizardman was severly hurt, but not out, so the fighter took a swing at him. And failed his roll. This is when the issue arose: I said that the Lizardman ducked under the blow and stabbed the thief for 4 damage or something. And the thief player thought this was unfair because he hadn't failed any rolls. I said that the Lizardman was enraged by your dishonourable attack and the fighter had failed his roll and so given me a golden opportunity. The thief's player thought that if the thief got hit he might as well have not rolled 14 on his backstab. I ended up just forecasting the lizardman's imminent spear thrust, which I think ended with the thief losing his rapier and the fighter ending trapped under the dead weight of thoroughly pummelled lizardman.

So my last question is: are golden opporunities, like in failed rolls, meant to only apply to the player's character who failed the roll? Is doing otherwise unjustly punishing players? I'm not convinced it is unjust, if the fiction is followed, but I'm interested in other's opinions.

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Apocalypse World / [Rules question] Hocus Fortunes
« on: October 14, 2010, 06:13:15 AM »
1. So with the Hocus' "followers are involved in successful commerce. +1fortune." The +1fortune just means that the Follower's have fortune+2 all-the-time. It's not a surplus right so it doesn't come and go depending on the Fortunes roll.

2. What if the Hocus' followers
  • are dedicated to you... replace want: desertion with want: hunger.
  • aren't really yours, more like you're theirs. Want: judgement instead of desertion.
Is want: desertion replaced twice? That is would the followers have both want: hunger judgement? Or can want: desertion can only be replaced once and the followers only have one of these wants?

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Apocalypse World / Changing Hx when none of the PC's met
« on: September 29, 2010, 01:48:24 AM »
This comment about Matt Wilson's character prompted me to ask this.

So, first session ended and none of the PC's had met or even came close to influencing each other. Everyone decided not to go through with picking a character who knows theirs better or worse. Afterward, I gathered from the text that each player has to pick, no excuses.

Any thoughts on how to sell this to the players? Apart from saying "it's the rules". I guess I'm looking for a way to fictionally justify demanding improving or degrading Hx.

How about saying they heard stories of the other character's actions, perhaps during the break between sessions? Or they remembered or forgot stuff about them? Or they put two and two together, you know they came across something that made them suddenly go "*snap* that's what's driving that mofo"?

Actually, they're not half bad. I might give them a shot. :P

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