I definitely get the concern about multiple Lay on Hands rolls getting repetitive. We're working to make Make Camp a clearer healing option, so that, if they have the time, thats an obviously better choice. Lay on Hands is designed to be kind of an emergency bandage, not a replacement for real healing. It's a tricky spot to hit, as we don't want the Paladin to be equal to the Cleric in healing (then why play a cleric?), but it also has to be useful with a single roll.

Thanks for sharing your experiences, its definitely on our radar to look at.

That's a good point about the imbalance there. Those should definitely be the other way around.

As far as more options, that's something I've thought about, but I need to think of some good ones. I don't think there's too many more straight mechanical things we'll add, Armor is already too high most of the time, but there's potential for other bonuses.

First off, thanks for playing and posting!

The exact pace of XP comes down to how you play, and how you play to your alignment. We figure 7-9 XP per session is pretty typical, with second level being in range in the first session. If everyone is tending to get more or less than that, no problem.

The vagueness is intentional, actually. Most of the alignments will prompt discussion, and that's fine. The wizard's Good alignment is probably a bit straightforward, and it's definitely something we'll look at. Off the top of my head, I might suggest "When you use magic to protect or defend an ally ..." There aren't many spells that directly do that directly, but there are many ways to indirectly do that via magic. I'll mark this alignment as one of the problem spots and hash it out with Adam, he's great at alignments.

Yeah, the forum setting would definitely make this harder. Defend is a tricky little move, since it kind of lets you step into the middle of another move.

There's at least two cases here:

There's the softer move of "show signs of doom," where you say something like "the orc skullcrusher starts charging toward you, building momentum to swing his huge hammer, what do you do?" If, fictionally, someone's nearby who might be able to attack him, they might be able to, it really comes down to the fiction. If this was, say, the first the players have seen of this orc, they were just exploring until now, they can probably try to bring him down before any damage occurs. Defend definitely gets in the way, but a Hack and Slash might be appropriate too.

There's also the harder "Deal damage according to the threats present" move, which Hack and Slash can't do anything about, but Defend can. This is where you say something like "the skullcrusher heaves the hammer over his head, swinging it straight down onto your arm..." Defend specifically lets you step into the middle of that move and interrupt it, Hack and Slash doesn't let you do that.

Nice timing, Adam and I were just talking about treasure, equipment, and all that.

First of all, there are some obvious useful items we haven't included yet, scroll being an obvious one. Those will get added, which will give some higher cost options for all that gold.

Your conversion from original D&D modules sounds about right, and we'll eventually put together some guidelines. We don't want to be too prescriptive, but I also have the same problem - with this made up currency, is 100 gold really a good reward? We'll probably structure this like the Barter charts, "1 Gold is the going rate for..."

I'd suggest dangling one or two magic items per adventure as rewards, and then adding others as you see fit. If you're designing a dungeon, add an item or two that they may not get to, or have to do extra work for ("offer an opportunity, with cost"). Whenever possible, make magic items interesting - there are already a few examples, but we're working on better ones. A magic item should almost always have a move associated with it, flat bonuses are a little boring.

It's important to note that magic items aren't explicitly needed, like in some editions of D&D, but they are fun. Give them strange esoteric moves, give them sentience, just don't give them away because you feel you have to.



Might as well also offer a preview of what we're thinking for "encumbrance." (Quotes because saying that word brings to mind horrible charts and bad rules, but we want to make it awesome.)

There should be some suggestion of how much the players can carry, in particular since that plays into carrying ammo for the purposes of moves that may deplete it. We could just say "whatever makes sense," but I honestly have no idea what makes sense for a fantasy warrior to be able to carry while fighting.

So we're thinking each class will have Slots (bad name, I know, we'll come up with a better one) and items will have Weight. Weight defaults to 1, so if an item doesn't specify a Weight it's 1. Light things are 0, heavy things are 2, unwieldy things are 3, and so on. A dagger or wand is Weight 0, a short sword is Weight 1, long sword or axe is two, some huge hammer is 3.

A character can carry total weight up to their Slots (+Str?) no problem.

When you make a move with too much weight (over your Slots, under Slots + 2), you're hindered, you take a -1.

When you make a move with way too much weight (Slots + 2 or over) you have a choice: drop an item and make the move at -1, or automatically fail as if you had rolled a 6-.

The Wizard has 3 or 4 Slots, the Fighter and Paladin have 7 or 8, everyone else is somewhere in the middle.

You can't get too carried away with Weight 0 items. GM's call, but in general more than your Strength score (not mod) in Weight 0 items counts as Weight 1.

Yes, I think so. I should probably, ya know, put that in the rules somewhere. :)

After mighty striving we have vanquished the Iron King by tricking his undead dragon into breathing its coldfire upon the seat of his power. I am released from the foul ghoul rot, but now I've gotten myself cursed from picking up the Iron King's foul blade. Oh well, at least we left with some gold in our pockets.

This may be the most Dungeon World paragraph ever written.