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Messages - sage

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526
Dungeon World / Re: Handling Hirelings
« on: February 16, 2011, 04:10:52 PM »
Some thoughts from John Harper, Jonathan Walton, and Twyla last night:

-The nameless, gear hauling hirelings that you shove into traps are relics of a deadlier D&D.

-If you want to have people just carry stuff, Parley and money are probably fine.

-Telling a hireling to go into the next room and fight something without you is probably fine as just a time for a GM to make a move. Same as if the players asked what happened in a fight between some random NPCs.


Hopefully I'll have time this weekend to get this stuff written up.


527
Dungeon World / Re: Handling Hirelings
« on: February 15, 2011, 01:55:13 PM »
That's some great information, Phil. And I tend to agree, but I know some people have used hirelings as "the local militia" or something, and I was pondering if that could be supported too.

Here's what Adam and I are thinking right now:

First of all, we're thinking DW groups should be a bit more like AW Gangs. i.e., grouping enemies shouldn't just be a damage math shortcut, it should actually mean a warband of goblins is a thing, though it can be broken up into individuals. This plays into what's below, because there might be the opportunity for a hireling to be a group.

Hirelings have a level, HP, damage, and maybe armor. They also have a Skill, a Cost, and a Personality.

A Skill is a move or two that reflects a PC class or a useful NPC role, like Adept, Tracker, Priest, etc. Skill moves usually modify player moves, for example adding healing to Make a Camp when you have a Priest. There may need to be some actual moves that players get access to, for things like tracking and picking locks, but they won't work the same as the PC moves.

Cost is what that hireling demands for services. It can be gold, but that's a little boring. Some hirelings may demand honored recognition, arcane secrets, new discoveries, etc.

Personality works a lot like Look does. There's a list of Personalities, you choose one (or make one up, if you feel like it). Things like Surly, Devout, Mischievous, Lazy.

Order Hirelings works like this: When you enter a dangerous area with hirelings, or start a session in a dangerous area with hirelings, roll+Cha. Take -1 for each hireling beyond the first. On a 10+, the hireling provides their Skill, and you owe them their Cost, take note of it. On a 7-9, the hireling provides their Skill only if you pay them their Cost first, including any owed. On a 6-, in addition to anything the GM does, the hireling provides their Skill only if you pay them their Cost first and then refuses to serve you again.

You can only order hirelings of lower level than you.



The one thing that's still bouncing around in my head is: can you order your hireling to go over there and fight that thing while you hang out? If so, how is that handled? Does the GM just make a move?

I think hiring a warrior to defend your wizard is covered, there could be a Defender skill that basically lets you make the Defend move in some way. I'm thinking more about "Hey, we're making camp in this room, can you go next door and take care of those goblins that are still there? They seem pretty easy."

528
Dungeon World / Re: Handling Hirelings
« on: February 14, 2011, 12:27:41 AM »
That's a good point, wightbred, and something that I've been messing with as I try to write these ideas up for the rules. Currently the rules I just wrote are good for the assistant, but not as good for the specialist.

I'm still pondering what exactly that means for the design, but thanks for putting labels on some ideas I hadn't quite nailed down. The divide between the two, and the need or lack thereof of specialists, is providing some food for thought.

529
Dungeon World / Re: Handling Hirelings
« on: February 13, 2011, 06:53:23 PM »
Good thoughts all around. I do think that hirelings need something more, both to clarify what they are and what they can do.

Warning, this post is a bit rambly. This is the kind of stuff that goes in the emails between Adam and I all the time, but Phil's ideas really prompted it, so I think it belongs here:

My instinct is to not allow them all the basic moves of a class. That means getting a hireling is like getting a whole character, at low levels. It's also a little weird, since NPCs don't have moves like PCs do.

Maybe there's a list of NPC moves, to reflect "class," kind of like NPC classes from 3E? So there's a priest move that allows a little healing, an apprentice move that allows a wizard spell, a warrior move that does something fighter-y. Order Hirelings could specifically be to get access to those moves. Kind of like Surplus.

The issue of when to roll Order Hirelings has also been bothering me, and allowing hirelings to have abilities will just make it worse. Currently, it's a little hard to tell when a new Order roll needs to be made. Maybe it's "When you enter a dangerous area with hirelings, or start a session in a dangerous area with hirelings, roll+Cha." On a hit, the move gives you access to the hireling's move in some way. And maybe those moves are predicated on player moves, so the Priest heals extra damage whenever you Make Camp, and the Fighter adds damage whenever you Hack and Slash.

Given that, maybe the Hireling always grants that bonus, the move just decides what other baggage comes along with it.

This does tend to make hirelings a little more fleshed-out as people, which I'm not sure is the goal. So far, I had been thinking of hirelings as a mass of nameless whelps who have no appreciable skills. Cannon fodder, essentially. That's tough to design for in the AW framework. Making each hireling distinct would be much easier to handle, and nail down a lot of the mechanical effects, but it means having a gang of hirelings is not as supported.

530
Dungeon World / Re: Hit points and Harm Countdowns
« on: February 09, 2011, 07:41:33 PM »
Yeah, let me know how that works for you. I've been spending some time thinking about healing in general, so I'd like to hear how a healer-less group plays.

531
Dungeon World / Re: Hit points and Harm Countdowns
« on: February 07, 2011, 10:32:17 PM »
That's some great stuff, and I think it'd work fine. The reason we haven't yet added something like this to DW is because giving your heroes permanent conditions just because they got beat up doesn't feel very D&D. Magic, sure, that can leave you hurting. But just because those goblins nearly took you out at first level doesn't mean you're going to spend the rest of you career scarred.


532
Dungeon World / Re: Using more of 4e?
« on: February 03, 2011, 08:08:32 PM »
Those are some great ideas! Funny thing is, John Harper and I were talking on Tuesday, without having seen this thread, and came up with some very similar ideas. I've already sent Adam some new basic moves, hopefully I'll show them off in a new version next week sometime.

533
Dungeon World / Re: After-Action Report
« on: January 14, 2011, 02:06:34 PM »
I'd love to hear Tony's take as well. Adam and I have brainstormed some of how to break down different types of helpers, mostly for the purposes of what moves apply. In combat they give the same bonus (added damage for whoever they're fighting for) and can take damage in some way we'll figure out.

534
Dungeon World / Re: After-Action Report
« on: January 10, 2011, 04:34:25 PM »
Some great thoughts all around. Some of these are issues we're actively working on, some are new things we'll definitely take a look at. Taking a few things from Jason's original post and responding to them:

Clarifying combat is something that's still a work in progress, but I think we're nailing it down. Groups and hirelings are slightly sticky points, you're right. There is no rule for hirelings taking damage, which is something that we need to address as some recent changes make hirelings a bigger part of the game. Sorry to leave you stranded with no help on that front.

Willing Hirelings are just something that hasn't really come up much, and I can see how the move conflicts and the way the rules are written conflicts with how you want to handle it. Order Hirelings mentions "dangerous, degrading or horrible" orders, which is meant to convey that this is something the hirelings don't want to do. If they already agree with the order, or if the order is not particularly bad for them, there's no roll. As long as the hirelings are helping in combat, they add to damage.

My first instinct about the Thief being able to get away without consequences is that the move works as intended, but now I'm questioning that. I just made a minor change to remove one option on Thief Skills, so that a 10+ does mean everything happens without a hitch. The "only takes a moment" option is a little fishy anyway, taking more than a moment seems like it should arouse suspicion (which is another choice) or it's just a way to keep someone out of the action for a bit. That does mean that now a 10+ lets the player choose all options. Anything but a 10+ though I stand by, we considered making 7-9 give two choices but it made the thief feel a little over-competent for a first level character. As the Thief moves to two pages, there are some moves that help a higher level thief feel more competent.

I've actually made that damage mistake a few times, making a fight a non-challenge. This is largely a rules guidance problem, as a lot of the existing monsters don't deal enough damage (or the PCs have too much armor, depending how you look at it). Thomas also has a really good point that DW has so many more tools for creating trouble than low HP that having a nearly invulnerable character isn't the end of the world.

Could you expand a bit more on "directly providing challenge?" I'm not sure if that's something I've been doing and just hasn't been codified by the rules.

The reverse spend on Parley is modeled on the AW Skinner's Hypnotic move, but scaled down a little bit. The intention there in my head is that having the GM spend the hold makes the NPC seem more like a real person, and Parley less like mind control. That way there can be real mind control, through spells and other moves, that feels like something more than Parley.

It sounds like a little more clarification about how badass characters are is in order. Some issues seem like we just have different ideas of how competent characters should be at different levels, which is maybe something the text needs to explain a bit. How do we think of low level characters? They're more competent than say 3E starting characters, but not as badass as AW characters.

535
Yeah, the DW 7-9 moves do have consequences or choices, but we try to write them all as still being successes fundamentally (or at least allowing success, with damage or something as a consequence). Taking damage as part of a 7-9 on Hack and Slash doesn't mean you didn't beat up the other guy, it means your guard was a little down, or you didn't even bother to block and just smacked 'em.

536
Dungeon World / Re: Clarifying "Make a Stand"
« on: January 07, 2011, 06:59:36 PM »
Sorry I missed out on this thread, some thoughts:

We'll make Hack and Slash clearer. It's for times when you're in danger as well. I think I'd count shooting a melee combatant who's not coming at you and isn't attacking a friend and you're not trying to do something weird as just doing damage.

You're right about some potential funkiness with high levels and Hack and Slash. I've got some ideas on fixing that, but I'll have to think about them a bit more.

Making Hack and Slash, Pull a Stunt, and Make a Stand truly fit D&D-style combat has been a challenge, so please ask questions. It's better we figure this stuff out now.

537
Dungeon World / Re: Removing the last unnecessary escalation?
« on: January 07, 2011, 06:35:31 PM »
Lots of great ideas here, wrightbred. Let me make sure my co-author, Adam, sees this.

538
brainstorming & development / Re: dedicated hack forums
« on: January 07, 2011, 06:32:29 PM »
Could the Apocalypse D&D forum be renamed to "Dungeon World" and have me added as a moderator? Tony and I have talked about it, and DW is pretty much just the continuation of ApocD&D, which Tony isn't working on at the moment.

539
Dungeon World / Re: Sage's AW-style principles for non-Apocalypse D&D
« on: January 07, 2011, 06:29:18 PM »
Thanks! Making those posts was really enlightening to me, and has helped a lot with Dungeon World development.

540
Thomas, that sounds great! So many things just sounds prefect: the tower, the sneezing powder, wow!

The 7-9 result usually depends on the move, it'll say what happens. The way moves are structured, that often means the player has a choice between succeeding with complications, or not succeeding but no complications. In general, Tony's advice is spot on: make a little trouble for them, or force them to make more decisions. (Tony's advice is usually spot on, he started Dungeon World back when it was Apocalypse D&D.)

Calling for rolls is cool, but I usually phrase it like this "So, it sounds like you're Undertaking a Perilous journey, right?" If they say "no" then I try to clarify, to make sure we're on the same page. Did they not know the wind was near bowling them over? Did they take some precautions to make the journey not perilous?

Since the reason for rolling is in the fiction of what's happening in the game, there's kind of a GM-Player agreement there: the GM says the world's conditions justify the move, the player says their action fits as well. Either side can kind of call for a move by saying they think one applies, but it's all in the agreement.

The roll to help is just +bonds. Your ability to help someone (in DW at least) isn't about your skills, it's about how well you know the person.

Prep is something my co-author Adam and I are working on. We're aiming for a structure a bit like AW, with a prep-free first session and then Front-like development after that, but we have some of our own twists on that. Stay tuned.

For a single session game, I usually open up things at the entrance to a dungeon, either using one of Tony's Microdungeons or making it up on the fly. That's probably how I'd start a longer game too. Our current thinking on what happens past that is you look for threats in the dungeon that were not entirely resolved, and make those into Fronts.

As far as making your moves, the idea from AW (which may not be fully in the DW text, thanks for playing a work in progress) is that you also make your Moves when everyone looks at you and you don't know what to do, or when they hand you an opportunity. So that should give you a few more chances to announce future badness and all that good stuff.

Thanks for playing, and please feel free to ask any questions you've got.

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