Hey Gang,
I know Vincent usually has a media-ography  section in his games, and many of his HBO watching angst has been shared with us via google+ and oh, how we love that level of personable opinion, its so great! :) :)
Anyways, are there any other films / TV / Books that inspire your Dark Ages?

I'll start:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eb-EBdwRtk

The lovely heritage move from Mr. Walton's Dark Heart of the Dreamer is one of my favourites and we've taken to replace the standard race moves as a basic move when you create a new character, even in a 'vanilla' game of dungeon world.

When you create a new adventurer, decide on your species, ethnicity, and cultural heritage, choosing anything or any combination of things that sounds interesting to you and the other players.
For example, I might play a marsh-dwarf witch who has some spiderlord ancestry.

Then, pick 2-3 heritage moves to start with, selecting from the “monster moves” that best match your heritage. No matter where or whom you come from, in someone’s eyes, you and your family are monsters.

I pick the Dwarven Warrior move “Drive them back,” the Spiderlord move “Enmesh in webbing,” and invent a move based on the character’s training in wilderness survival, “Scavenge for food and medicinal plants.”

At the beginning of a session or when you invoke your rights of blood and tradition (however you do that), roll+Wis. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 2. On a miss, you still hold 1. (but I get to make a hard move) Spend this hold 1-for-1 during play to make a heritage move, just like that.

When you gain new appreciation for your heritage, add a new heritage move or change an existing one.

Asari Spurnheart, our dark elf paladin of Lolth for instance, took:
*Inflict pain beyond measure
*Use the dark to advantage
from the Dark Elf swordsmaster monster and
*Pass on divine knowledge
from the deep elf priest monster.

This has revolutionised our games! The lovely interpersonal meshing between bonds, heritage moves and alignment moves is gold. In our game, Asari uses her heritage move pass on divine knowledge in combination with I am the Law for wonderful scenes. In one instance compelling the Grumble, the Dwarven fighter's priestly hireling that lolth will devour all in the darkness and he best placate her with the 'gifts' of treasure that he found. He backed away and fled the underdark with Thor (the fighter's) gold and treasure. The found him later cocooned in webs, waiting to be digested by cave spiders. This triggered Asari's alignment xp stricture; Cause suffering for its own sake. Awesome.

Try it, its wonderful.

Mine hasn't arrived yet and I'm getting slightly nevous since other folks around the world seem to have recieved their bundles...

Anygood news down under?

Maybe you know, maybe you don't but in the OSR blogosphere, Doug of [url]http://blueboxerrebellion.blogspot.com[url] has some awesome dungeon design prompts for his Dungeon Teller game that work wonderfully well with Dungeon World. For your lonely GM fun or making it up with collaborative story telling on the fly!

A mad lib style dungeon 'on the fly' prompter. Make maps like crazy!


A handy 'setting' generator chart. Have the characters Spout Lore or Carouse and choose from the options...



Or how about an instant adventure path, with fronts, dangers (and their instincts) all laid out in a relationship map?



Stuck for ideas out the layout of your new steading? Try the Chitty City Tool! Make sure to ask lots of provactive questions and use the answers!


Or even as a your players start exploring and uncover rumours. Stuck for an evocative location? Use the Chitty World Building Tool :)



Insta situation or Impeding Dooms Chart.


I Love his 'Wondermorphs'! They are so epic and the illustrations just beg for questions about the dungeon.


His Villian-o-matic is pretty nifty too :)

Hey Gang!
Since some of you asked, I transcribed notes from my notebook on our recent 'sandcastles, schliech and seaweed' game on the beach whilst camping a few weeks ago. It involved two high level characters (a Wizard and Thief), a swathe of NPCs, Kingdom level moves and PvP leadership and diplomacy at an epic scale.

I stole shamelessly from Greg Stoltz's Reign Company Rules, but he wanted us gamers to use it that way, so since I bought and paid for the hardcopy I see no foul.

Hope it is of some use to you folks, we had an absolute ball with it!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QxJTstB7QM5GUEIGWaHGEyEOXSkQI1RB7PjgVfreZ7Q/edit

Hi everyone,
This thread is in response to P2's problems that (he?) has with the Beta 2 playbook. Specifically that he feels the Bard's beginning moves of Charming and Open and Any Port in a Storm are not particularly useful or 'iconic' to the class. Bards are his favourite character and the moves obviously don't speak to his concept of what a Bard should be. He prefers the concept of multi-class dabbler and the opportunities that signifies as a Bard 'diversifies'.

His response made me sit back and mull it over. I haven't played DW with a Bard in the group yet, though I really like the concept and implementation. Any Port in a Storm (in its old NPC-focused iteration) has long been used as a model for our group as the DW equivalent of the Burning Wheel Circles mechanic. I personally, really like the new version though, as it encapsulates any change in the town, and what with the new steading tags! Woo Hoo! If the GM is liberal in their use of the ask questions and use the answers principle, can support all manner of player authorship. In my mind, this is the iconic Bard move. But that's just my preference for what the Bard should encapsulate.

To me, the classes are the first 'flagged' choice that a player makes. They are unique, varied and not repeatable. They make me as a GM sit up and take notice. Why do you want to play the Bard? Why do you want to create your own signature weapon? Why to you want to cast spells? Why do you want to use deadly poisons?

They are very specific fictional (or in some cases mechanical) cues to the player (and thus me) on the type of story they want to tell. The smaller choices during chargen; look, stats, bonds, gear, and move details focus these flags and make my job as GM even easier. I know what the players want the game to be about.

Once that broad iconography is established, the fiction develops via the focus of these flags. But what if the initial playbook moves aren't what 'flag' you as iconic, or envisage the class the way you want? Is making a custom 'multi-class dabbler' move going to satisfy that discomfort?

I'm hesitant to 'hack' the playbooks most of all. Muddling their moves with others, focusing largely on the mechanical iteration instead of the powerful fictional potential of moves, dropping a move you feel is 'useless'; all seems backward to me. Heck, just playing with the basic moves as per the villager playbook leads to wonderfully disparate and 'iconic' characters based on the moves players (and GMs) make in the story and the resultant fictional choices.

It has made me seriously ponder the significance of the choices that Sage and Adam have been making. I've been 'hacking' DW ever since it first developed, as have most of the playtesters and folks giving this grand game a shot. Despite the old story games adage of 'don't hack the hack'. This feedback process however,has tempered the development of the game and the 'vision' that Sage and Adam (and Tony!) have  considered over the last 2 years. As the final iteration draws ever closer I think I'm going to leave well enough alone.

Like with any other RPG, I'm going to use the Flags as written. Rather than replace, discard or modify I'm going to encourage folks to play the game with what is on the page for a good few sessions instead of ripping it apart at chargen. Just because there is a chapter on Advanced Delving, doesn't mean you need to use it straight away before the players have had a chance to 'flag' their intent with the choices given to them already.

I'm embracing the Bard as is. I think its a wonderful, balanced class and hope that someone decides to play one this weekend so we can all see what type of stories we can craft with the moves as written.

In the interests of writing new bonds as per the Beta XP rules and end of session move, I thought it best to give a collected list of all the bonds written for all the versions of the game so far.

The idea being to spark players and the GM to write new bonds using these concepts as inspiration. I'm aware that usually the bonds will be very specific to your particular game, but if you have any more that your group has written, please feel free add them to the list!

*I have a long-standing bargain with _______________.
*I sang stories of _______________ long before I ever met them in person.
*_______________ is often the butt of my jokes.
*I am writing a ballad on the adventures of _______________. *_______________ trusted me with a secret.
*_______________ does not trust me, and for good reason.
*_______________ has insulted my deity.
*_______________ is a good and faithful person; I trust them
implicitly.
*I worry about the ability of _______________ to survive.
*I am working on converting _______________ to my faith.
*_______________ owes me their life.
*I have sworn to protect _______________.
*I worry about the ability of _______________ to survive in the dungeon.
*_______________ is a weakling, but I will make them tough.
*I have worries about the soul of _______________. *_______________ has stood by me in battle and is one of my closest friends.
*I respect the beliefs of _______________ but hope they will someday see the true way.
* _______________ is a brave soul, I learn much from them.
*I have guided _______________ before and they owe me for it. *_______________ is a friend of nature, so I will be their friend
as well.
*_______________ has no respect for nature, so I have no respect
for them.
*_______________ does not understand life in the wild, so I
will teach them.
*I stole something from _______________ and they don’t know it.
*I stole something from _______________ and they found me out. *_______________ knows incriminating details about me.
*_______________ and I have a long con running.
*_______________ will play an important role in the events to
come. I have foreseen it!
* _______________ is keeping an important secret from me. *_______________ is woefully misinformed about the world; I
will teach him all that I can.
*_______________ refuses to let me explore the full depths of magic.
*_______________ has been the subject of my experiments before, and hates me for it.
*One day _______________ will stop laughing at me. One day...