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Topics - Convict

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Dungeon World / Dungeon World / Wheel of Time Hack
« on: July 18, 2012, 03:35:32 AM »
This is a hack to use Dungeon World Rules in a Wheel of Time setting. Any comments would be much appreciated. Very much a work in progress. Can expand on any points if needed.

Classes:
Gleeman – Essentially same as vanilla Bard, Arcane Art rebadged to Gleeman’s Music.
Wilder – a heavily rebadged & somewhat modified Cleric. More on this later.
Armsman / Blademaster – Vanilla Fighter.
Warder / Oathman (ie Defender of the Stone, Queen’s Guard, Whitecloak etc) – Modified Paladin. Mostly similar, but replace Quest with Oath (basically a rebadge, an oath of fealty), replace the divine aspect of Lay on Hands with a rousing speech, same effects.
Woodsman / Wolfbrother – Basically vanilla Ranger. For story reasons would insist that the animal companion is a wolf, but I know that everyone who picks this class in my groups will do that anyway.
Wanderer – Vanilla Thief. I’ll need to rebadge the poisons.
Initiate – Heavily rebadged & somewhat modified Wizard. See below.
Noble/Commander – I’m going to grab Antisinecurist’s Noble from here and rebadge anything I need to.

Not sure if I’ve missed out on any iconic classes here. I think most of the characters from the books are covered? There is a lot of basically multiclassing described in the books, but I don’t want to delve into that too much because in my experience it just leads to headaches and min/maxing.


Backgrounds:
Replaces Races. For simplicity’s sake I’m making them independent of class choice. Let me know if any are particularly over or under powered.

Borderlander – Shadowspawn Hunter (+1 to hit & dmg vs Trollocs)
Cairhienin – Streetsmart (+2 to parley in urban setting)
Domani – Seductive (+2 to parley in seductive setting)
Ebou Dari – Duellist (+2 to hit when using dagger vs dagger-wielding human)
Illianer – Mercantile Background (+2 to Supply & Recruit rolls)
Midlander – Luck of Heroes (+1 to Defy Danger when risking self for others)
Tairen – Gambler (+2 to Carouse rolls)
Tar Valoner – Diplomat (+1 to parley with someone from another culture)
Taraboner – Educated (+1 to Spout Lore)

Channelling (Magic):

Ok, this is where I think the d20 WoT RPG really struggled. I like the way spells in DW are generally much more flexible than in D&D, so most spells I’m just going to simply rebadge as weaves (ie, Cure X Wounds becomes Healing, Cause Fear becomes Mirror of Mists etc).

Embrace the Source: A free action for Initiates, while Wilders basically have to do a Cast a Spell check to get over their block. This is the largest advantage for female initiates over female wilders.

Hidden Weaving: Basically I want Wilders to have some way of masking their weaving from regular people as something mundane (ie, how Nynaeve made people think she was mad good with herbs when she was in fact Healing). Perhaps where possible 7+ they successfully cover the weaving, 10+ they get +1 forward?

Cover Profession: again for wilders, I want them to be able to pull some benefit from their cover profession, ie Village Wisdom, soldier, whatever. Not sure how to handle it mechanically though.

Iconic Weaves:

I think most weaving can be handled by the Wizard’s ritual mechanic. Severing/Stilling, Bonding, large weather manipulation, major healing etc. Just handle it as required. But the following weaves are things that will come up I reckon:

Arms of Air – this is a major one, and I know from past games that players are way more inventive at using this weave than Robert Jordan. If it’s not designed well can be totally game-breaking.
Warding – rebadge the various cleric/wizard spells that do the same thing.
Lightning – 5th level?
Fireball – same as vanilla Wizard spell.
Earthquake/Riven Earth - 3rd level?
Shielding – really not sure how to handle this, and it’s really important.
Travelling – what level would this come in at? 5th?

Things I need to work on:

A Madness mechanic. I know I will have players who will want to be male channellers.

Balancing the weave list for Wilders & Initiates. Would it be a disaster if I just merged the two spellbooks?

I don’t really have any way of dealing with the Five Powers (air, fire, earth etc) and the various Talents (Cloud Dancing, Illusion, Earth Singing etc) as described in the books. I really don’t want to overcomplicate the channelling system, but…

Like I said, comments & criticism appreciated.

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Dungeon World / AP: First time running the game
« on: June 25, 2012, 07:21:18 PM »
Ok, so I ran DW for the first time last night. It was with a new group of friends (one was an experienced roleplayer, the other 3 were new). We played over Google+ hangout, using Tabletop Forge & a Google Docs spreadsheet for the character sheets.

We started with Jason's Spider-Witch adventure, just to get a feel for things. In about 2 hours of play, we managed to roll up our characters and defeat the Goblins. We'll tackle Florimel herself next session I imagine.

The good:

Character creation was a breeze. The players picked up the 2d6 mechanic well, and the last breath move was a lot of fun. Overall, the players really enjoyed themselves, and are super keen for our next session monday. I was pleasantly surprised how well the game played out over video chat. Honestly, I can't think of many other systems where you could go from a completely fresh start to 1/2 through an adventure in 2 hours.

The bad:

As the GM, I'm not sure I get how combat is supposed to run and I'd appreciate help. I've only ever used strict turn-based systems before, where I will draw up a quick initiative grid and everyone gets one turn a round. But I understand DW isn't like that. I tried to follow  the system as best I could, and this is what happened:

1. Players enter room, Goblins square off on other side, getting ready to charge.

2. The Fighter says he will stand in front of the group, shield ready to protect the Wizard (Defend). The Thief wants to slink into the shadows to set up a backstab (Defy Danger dex?). The Cleric wants to cast Magic Weapon (or whatever it was), and the Wizard wants to cast Magic Missle at one of the goblins.

Now, the players want to do this all at once, and realistically they could. But I picked the fighter to resolve his first.

3. Fighter rolls an 8, gets 1 hold to defend the Wizard.

4. Thief is successful in his defy danger, is now hidden in shadows attempting to flank the goblins.

5. Cleric casts his buff on his warhammer.

6. Wizard casts MM, rolls a 7. Chooses to draw attention to himself. This is where is gets screwy (for me). In response, three of the goblins charge the wizard. One is knocked off his feet by the Fighter's defend move, the other two beat the wizard with their clubs. Was I supposed to roll anything here? Do the goblins just automatically hit, and automatically do X damage?

7. The Fighter and Cleric start hitting goblins, and the Wizard starts trying to cast invisibility on himself (was never succussful, ends up dying lol). I don't have turns as such for the goblins, they just get to hit the players whenever they roll <10 basically.

8. At this point, the thief has been sitting patiently, waiting for his 'turn'. I had to break up the flow of the combat with the other guys to deal with him.

This is my issue with how I was running the game. While most of the group daisy-chained their actions & reactions together very nicely, anyone who was away from the main group (even if they were only a few meters away in the shadows), seems to miss the train. I'm also unsure when I'm supposed to use any of the GM moves. When there's a lull? Cause with my group, someone is always wanting to try something.

Anyway, while the players had fun, I'm getting a strong 'you're doing it wrong' vibe from how I'm running combat in the game. Does anyone have any links to decent actual play video or podcasts? I think I need to see this actually play out.

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