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Messages - Jingo

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16
Dungeon World / Some Spell-related Questions
« on: August 31, 2011, 12:52:23 AM »
Some magic/spell related questions. I'm using the print-layout version.

Invisibility
Level 1, Ongoing, Illusion
Choose an ally: nobody can see them. They’re invisible! The spell
persists until you make a move or dismiss the effect.


So, it says choose an ally. Is that supposed to include or exclude the castor? If the castor is included, perhaps this could be written as choose yourself or an ally.

---
Another question.

Cast A Spell (Int)
When you release a spell you’ve prepared, roll+Int. On a 10+, the
spell is successfully cast and you do not forget the spell – you may
cast it again later. On a 7-9, the spell is cast, but choose one:
  • You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a
spot, the GM will describe it
  •The spell disturbs the fabric of reality as it is cast,
take -1 Ongoing to Cast a Spell until you Prepare
Spells again.
  • After is it cast, the spell is forgotten. You cannot cast
the spell again until you Prepare Spells.


The second bullet item:

The spell disturbs the fabric of reality as it is cast,
take -1 Ongoing to Cast a Spell until you Prepare
Spells again.


Is the GM actually supposed to apply an effect that "disturbs the fabric of reality"? Like, "Sure, you're fireball goes off, but something unexpected happens... it starts raining droplets of flame as well. Soon the trees around you are catching on fire. What do you do?". Or is that phrase just intended for flavor text for this -1.

Personally, I think it'd be fun (ie fantastic) to have a "weird" magic effect happen with that result, and going with the Agenda to make the world fantastic, I should probably do it, but was curious about the author's intent.

17
Dungeon World / Re: Breaking down doors
« on: August 29, 2011, 07:58:32 PM »
Initially I would think the Bend Bars, Lift Gates move that the Fighter has would be used for this. If you don't have a fighter then I would default to Defy Danger using (str) as the stat. Stinks that you don't have a fighter. :)

On a failure, you would probably want to ensure some alternative way of opening the door. Maybe they make too much noise and they hear goblin voices down a side passage and they find an alternate way in. Or maybe a hard move (it explodes and causes damage--a spell being triggered on a forceful entry)

18
Dungeon World / Re: Some General Questions
« on: July 15, 2011, 02:35:02 AM »
Thanks everyone.

Ran my third session recently. I think the Summon Lesser Monster spell needs some clarification. Here's the spell:

Summon Lesser Monster
Level 3, Ongoing, Summoning
A monster appears and aids you as best it can. Choose the type of
monster by choosing 1d6 statements from the list below, the GM will
tell you the type of monster you get based on your choices:
  •The monster is intelligent
  •The monster is not reckless
  •The monster is happy with you
  •The monster follows one command
  •The monster is a vicious combatant
  •The monster is charismatic
  •The monster has some useful adaptation
The creature remains on this plane until it dies or you dismiss it.
While the spell is ongoing, you take -1 to Cast a Spell.


Questions:
The main question I have is how much control does the Wizard have over the monster? The spell just says it aids the Wizard as best it can. Can it aid the wizard if the wizard doesn't give it a command--choose that item from the list? I suppose it would since the spell says it does aid him, but it has to understand the situation well enough to aid him. 

One of the items in the list is "The monster follows one command." Does that need to be in there if the creature will aid the wizard anyway? Can the Wizard take items that more than once? And what is one command? Can their one command be "Follow my next 100 commands?"--which is basically what The Wizard did. He said, "Do whatever I say from here on out."

I think changing the spell to something like this would be more fun as it leads to the potential of magic gone awry:

Summon Lesser Monster
Level 3, Ongoing, Summoning
A monster appears and has the potential of aiding you.

On a 10+ choose the type of monster by choosing 1d6 statements from the list below. On a 7-9 the GM chooses 1d6 choices from the list below. The GM then tells you the type of monster you get based on the choices:

  •The monster is intelligent
  •The monster is not reckless
  •The monster is happy with you
  •The monster follows only one two word command, like:
   "Guard me!" or "Attack that!" or "Follow me!" (you can take this item multiple times)
  •The monster is a vicious combatant
  •The monster is charismatic
  •The monster has some useful adaptation
  *The monster is uncontrollable until subdued.
  *The monster emits an unforseen magical side effect at some point.
  *The monster lashes out at the caster and companions.
  *The monster remains on this plane only if destroyed (despite the description of this spell.)
  *The monster is playful and friendly with you and desperately wants to show it's amiability first and foremost.
  *The monster will aid you, but only if you first ____________.
 
The creature remains on this plane until it dies or you dismiss it.
While the spell is ongoing, you take -1 to Cast a Spell.


Another question that arose from this situation is with regards to Monster vs Monster combat. For example, in our session, the wizard was engaged 1 on 1 with a Worg in a burned out shed following a goblin attack on a farmhouse. He cast this spell, succeded, and in a blinding flash of light, he rolled a 6 on the list, and I determined a Blink Dog came to his aid.

But then I wasn't sure how to proceed. How do I determine who would win the Monster on Monster combat? The Worg or the summoned Blink Dog? True, the Worg was wounded already after a couple of magic missles slammed into him and the Blink Dog gives much greater damage---but you never know. After all, the chars roll dice to determine randomness in how successful their moves are. Should the summoned monster do the same? Or is it just GMs call? I ultimately just said the Blink Dog won out, since he wasn't hurt yet and was a stronger creature, and in one bite took down the Worg.

19
Dungeon World / Some General Questions
« on: July 12, 2011, 06:30:28 PM »
Played my second session with my kids the other day. Some things that came up:

Research Move. The party traveled to a port city on a wide river. It had a good sized library. The Wizard wanted to research all kinds of things--mainly I suspect to just try to get XP. But it did fit with his bookish character. If INT is a highlighted stat for that session, couldn't a wizard just spend all his time in quiet contemplation and thereby get XP? Is there a required amount of time for how long the research should take. It just says "some time". Seems like there should be some limits or some sort of restriction. The Wizard's Research and Ritual moves allowed him to reach 3rd level while the others barely crested 2nd level at the end of the mission.

Continuing with Research, how would someone who isn't The Wizard research something in the library. The fiction could be the Thief for example goes to a library and says "I want to read up on how to make poisons." If they don't have Research skill can they not research? Would it be Discern Realities instead? Sorry, not sure how to handle moves that could reasonably performed by another class.

Prepare Spells Move. Similar to above, any guidelines on how long it takes the Wizard to prepare his spells? It just says, "When you spend uninterrupted time in quiet contemplation...."Is it quicker for lower level spells and longer for the higher level ones? Is this 5 minutes per spell? 2 hours?

Animal Companion. The Ranger has an animal companion. She chose a cougar. How much damage does it give in combat? Same as the Ranger?

Summon Lesser Monster. Does the Wizard get the exact creature from the monsters section? What constitutes a "lesser" monster, as opposed to a greater one? What's the dividing line? Does it have a limit on amount of HPs or anything?

Thanks! We had fun playing.

20
Dungeon World / Re: Moves and Holds
« on: June 28, 2011, 12:54:36 AM »
Thanks for the good responses folks. I appreciate the game examples. Those are fun to read. I'm so used to the standard systems out there where you roll to see if a player spots something, for example, rather than just moving the action to something interesting. It sounds like a really fun concept/system. I've only played once as a player (but that was over skype but our frequent disconnects sort of ruined the game).

What's the link to your PbP game, Michael? I'd like to read along if possible.

21
Dungeon World / Re: Moves and Holds
« on: June 25, 2011, 06:15:00 PM »
Some other questions on Moves... I'm sure I'll have more as I continue to wrap my head around this system.

1) How would a character do something that's a move belonging to a different class? For example, a Fighter who wants to move stealthily but Stealthy isn't a class move that's available for him. Can he still move stealthily? After all, in the fiction a player would say, "I don't want the guards to see Grog the Barbarian, so I smear my chainmail with mud so it doesn't gleam in the moonlight, and stealthily move past them, keeping to the shadows." What would the GM do? Would this just be Defy Danger or something else?

2) How would you determine something passive. Like, if a character is aware of a enemy sneaking up on him? The fiction is, "I'm staying up, standing guard, while the party sleeps." What move would they use? Would it be Discern Realities? The move says, "To Discern Realities you must closely observe your target and interact with it in some way – or watch someone else do the same.
You can’t just stick your head in the doorway and Discern Realities about a room. You’re not merely scanning for clues – you have to look under and around things, tap the walls and check for weird dust patterns on the bookshelves. That sort of thing.
" Is that enough fiction for the move?

3) Regarding your comments, about a Move always being risky and doing something interesting to further the situation. How is "Spout Lore" or "Discern Realities" a risk? The only way I could think of these having a risky result is if the GM rolled the dice for them and didn't show them the result and that way on a 6- he could maybe give them some mistaken information. Suppose the PCs are rolling (which according to the rules, they are) and they get a 6-, what would be something a GM could do that would make using these moves risky? 



I'm sure I'll have more as I continue to investigate the system.

22
Dungeon World / Gm worksheet?
« on: June 24, 2011, 07:45:13 PM »
The PDF makes reference to filling out your GM Worksheet after a session but I didn't see any printable worksheet? Is there something official that's in the works? Or is this just a diff way of saying, get out your own notebook and take notes.

23
Dungeon World / Re: Moves and Holds
« on: June 23, 2011, 11:58:31 PM »
Thanks for the clarifications. Those help!

24
Dungeon World / Moves and Holds
« on: June 23, 2011, 02:22:10 AM »
I understand the concept of a move. But I'm not sure how quickly or how often something can be retried. Some players may try to abuse this, using the same move over and over just to get XP when rolling their highlighted stats. Perhaps this could have a rule if there isn't one (I checked but couldn't readily see it).

Regarding Holds. If you get more than one Hold, (like on Defend, for example). How quickly can those be spent? Can you spend all three whenever you want, right away--all three, instantaneously, for example? Or are there rules that govern that? Perhaps some clarification could be added.

25
Dungeon World / Ran my first Dungeon World
« on: June 19, 2011, 01:56:37 AM »
Hi all. First timer. I wanted to give some feedback and join the adventure's guild. First some background. Long time roleplayer and sometime gamemaster, but not familiar with this system. I  mainly run d20 styled games. As a full-time dad with little time to get together for face-to-face group of the old gaming buddies, I usually end GMing for my 13 year-old boy.

He was asking to play an RPG that was something new and where it didn't take an hour to make characters. So, we gave this a shot. I didn't really have anything prepared at the time, but I broke out a PDF of Dungeon World I had sitting around when I was a player of an earlier game.

He decided to play a befuddled aged wizard character, and after he examined his whopping 4 hit points, he also decided to make a second character (a fighter) and play both.

I eventually took over the Fighter character to help improve social interaction, but he would play it like a hireling--giving it orders and so on.

The adventure setting took place in a small village a few days journey from real civilization and the adventure hook was him seeing something suspicious pass by outside his window on a dark and windy night.

We got bogged down a little on figuring out how well could his character spot something that was hidden. We thought perhaps Discern Realities move, but the wording is "When you closely study a situation..."

But his char wasn't closely studying it... He was just glancing out the window to get a better look. So, I guess it was hard for us to break away from the standard d20 "make a spot check" type roll. Eventually I just told him what he saw according to what I thought would be most fun and just ran with it.

One of the cooler aspects was his Contact Spirits spell which he employed to figure out who or what it was that passed suspiciously by his window. I like how the spirit decides the questions it asks itself on a hold. We enjoyed role-playing that out and it added a lot of flavor to the game. The spirit, in fact, instead of just answering the questions and leaving, would try to bargain with the wizard to see what it could get out of it for providing information.

The spirit told him someone had tied and that launched off an entire investigation scene and the plot thickened from there.

It was decidedly light on combat since he was playing a wizard char so the adventure was largely investigative with him tracking down the murderer which turned out to be a small boy in the village, which in turn wasn't really a small boy but only a shape-shifter type creature that had taken the form of the real boy. He killed the shifter when the murderer's treachery was revealed and the boy attacked him, and blasted it out the second story window of the boy's room with his magic missile spell with all the villagers.   

We liked how quick it was to make a character and the speed of the game. We had played Tracy Hickman's XDM previously and wanted something fast, but with a bit more structure. This seemed to fit the bill.

Some things that I think would help the game:
  * Give more examples of things. Combat for example. I know there aren't rounds or initiative, but he got a little upset when things started to happen without him because he didn't speak up when I paused to let him say something. Maybe take a typical encounter and describe the moves that would be used for different things as a party of characters works through it.

  * Explain what a hold is better. It took us a while to grasp what a hold really was. Give some additional examples.

  * There are things that are mentioned but aren't explained in the PDF. For example, Make a Stand or Pull a Stunt are referenced in some moves or spells (like Sanctuary for Cleric) but the rules don't explain these elsewhere (at least not in the version we had). I still don't know what they are. There may be others.

  * Maybe provide some optional rules for running an undersized party (maybe even 1 on 1) games if such variations are available.

All in all we had a fun night an will likely grow our oneshot into something larger. Thanks for the good work.

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