Am I the only one that thinks most of these recorded play sessions feel clunky?

I like listening to the sessions but the way they flow just makes me cringe.

Edit: I love the commentaries on this.

The PCs doing the roll is something I do in any game system. It really comes down to if they make the roll then they can be pretty sure there's nothing notable about what they're searching. But if they fail the roll then they just won't know.

I also frown on PCs checking up on another PC's searches when that player fails a roll. It's meta-gaming.

Your Victorian house should be stocked full of a lot of flavor and features. The players should be a little overwhelmed with what they can search in any given room. Fireplaces, paintings on the walls, book shelves, chairs, rugs, couches, lamps, old desk, piano, etc. Here their choices matter more than the rolls, which to me is how it should be.

I make it a habit to always promote the mundane in my games. I have a deck of cards I use to check for random events. If I draw a face card something happens with the suit determining if it's an innocent thing or something important.

Once while they were driving someplace I came up with a face spades card, so I translated that into a driving check to avoid a fallen tree. While they were down repairing the truck a face hearts card brought in a friendly NPC who stopped to check if they needed help. Once on their way traveling to a sea cave a face hearts card came up so I had them encounter a pod of manatee.

They just never know(and neither do I) if what's happening to them is some significant event or just random life happening. I find that by doing that I can present details and encounters which are important and the players approach the situation more realistically.

Keep the discerns very specific. For example, the Throne Room of Doom in a dungeon might have scuff marks on the floor, several tables with old food trays on them, tapestries on the walls, the throne, 2 doors, and 2 large carved pillars by the throne.

Players have to pick an item or feature and discern that. My secret door might be under the throne but they'd only have a chance to discern it if a player searched the throne.

In very very old school D&D players had to describe what they did. You couldn't just go into a room and "roll perception". You had to find the hidden lever by describing exactly what you were searching.

Another example, a hidden passage in a library triggered by pressing the eye of of a stuffed animal head above the fireplace.

The hidden passageway might be in the bookcase and a player may notice that by examining the book case(scuff marks on the floor), but there's no way to find the trigger unless someone examined the moose head above the fireplace(one of the eyes has finger prints on it).

The key with this is to always provide details even if they point to nothing. That way the players never know if a detail you're sharing is something important or not.

What are you saying, low level characters are too powerful for even the most ancient of dragons?

Personally I think you need focus on the qualities of the monsters, not the stats. The most ancient of dragons might have Scales like Hardened Steel Plates where normal arrows and swords would just bounce right off.

The Necromancer Lich of Korath might only have 10 or 12 hp and no armor, but have the quality of a Living Corpse which makes weapons as effective against him as they would be against an actual corpse. An arrow through the head just wouldn't slow him down any.

Against the dragon the party might have to find the Dread Arrow of Thalis, which was reknowned to be able to pierce any armor and against the lich they might have to figure out ways to totally destroy him. Maybe fire, maybe just bury him alive, maybe they could charm a dragon who's attacks are Messy(would tear the lich from limb to limb), etc.

I think you're really going to have to tailor the monster power to your group. For example a group of level 2-3 min/maxer players against that dragon could drop it in 3 blows.

Warrior with merciless attacks, Paladin on quest with setup strike attacks and buffs warrior +1d4, Cleric heals warrior(and gives +2 damage), Bard arcane arts on warrior for another +1d4 damage, Warrior with merciless, scent of blood and other buffs will now do d10 + 4d4 + 2 excluding any other damage perks.

On average the above 3 blows would do a total of 16.5 damage against an armor 5 opponent with the warrior being healed 1d8 to 2d8(possibly more). And there are a lot of other combos that could be used. Wizard can empower a fireball, thief can specialize in backstabs and so on.

But on the flip side you could have a level 5 party that just isn't slotted for piercing armor or setting each other up and they'd really struggle against that fight.

So you'll really need to tailor things to your party. For module conversions I'd focus on the story behind the module and heavily adjust as needed. The nice thing is that DW is really easy to tweak. If your party is the NBA dream team you can always increase the hp on the enemies or just harry them and knock down resources before they hit that final foe.