Yesterday I ran my first game of Dungeon World for a group of four players. A couple of the guys had played D&D before, while the other two had not played RPG’s but had more experience in strategic board games. Overall the game was a breeze to run – and it was the most improvised RPG session I’ve run to date. I’m not a great improviser, but I let the players help me out in this session, and together we created a story that flowed like Oil of Tagit.
I also suffer from a tendency to over-prep, and tried to reign that in for Dungeon World. But I still mapped and fleshed out a complete dungeon level with two Fronts; not to the level of detail of Bloodstone Idol, but close. As it turned out, more than half the game took place in the barely sketched out city (Vangbad), and was totally improvised.
Roster:
Walton the Fighter – His claim to “fame” was that he had married the ogre princess but then had to kill her. I can’t wait to integrate that into the game!
Rook the Halfling Thief – He and Walton have a series of cons running in Vangbad.
Gunther the Dwarven Cleric – A Cleric of Sidmier, the god of civilization, with sad eyes, strange hear, and a flabby body dressed in a habit. His religion is insular and cultish, and values offerings of rare and exotic materials and knowledge.
C3P0 the Wizard (don’t ask) – Has a bond with an NPC in town, Sister Selena, who is with the temple of Venes, the goddess of love. He demurred when asked about details of this “bond”, saying only that it was “personal”.
This brings up one twist that I threw into the character creation process. I gave each player the choice of establishing one of their Bonds with a random NPC instead of another player. I had 20 random NPC’s briefly described, and they rolled 1d20 to see who they had the Bond with. This was nice to get them integrated into the city as well as with each other.
I used the Wizard’s Bond with Sister Selena to throw some “Signs of Doom” out to the players. She’d been having disturbing dreams about people in the city who were not what they seemed, walking around with masks that only she could discern. These masked people then made a two day march to a shunned site, the Deathhole, and marched grimly down the hole into the blackness below.
I fully expected to start the action right at the dungeon entrance, but the players had a different idea. Rook, the Thief, started describing a scene where he and Walton had scaled the back wall of a two story tavern building. He was now trying to open a shabby safe in the upstairs room. Long story short, with the Wizard trying to create a diversion and Walton blocking the door, they swiped a few gold pieces and bottle of fine whiskey from the safe. They managed to make their escape before the bartender’s mother could get into the room to see what the commotion was.
The brazen group that they were, they then strolled right into the front entrance of the tavern, which we called Marlowe’s. The fighter won an arm wrestling match with Vlad, the bartender, earning a few more coins. Afterward, the Wizard spied Vlad pulling one of the levers on the tap, which opened a secret panel behind the bar. Vlad quickly closed it, hoping no one had noticed.
C3P0 the Wizard cast his Contact Spirits spell, and a motherly old spirit admonished – “you should help those poor people down there!” They came up with a plan to distract Vlad and sneak into the room beyond the secret panel, but the whole thing degenerated into a brawl, with Walton clocking Vlad and rolling 4 stun damage, knocking him out cold. The other patrons then started swarming the PCs, but C3PO caused magical Light to issue forth from his staff. These yokels, not used to seeing magic, were sufficiently impressed to back away, allowing the group to open the secret panel and venture down into the root cellar below. Soon they heard the loud click of a very big padlock seal the door behind them.
Down in the root cellar, they confronted four men armed with swords, blocking the way. Further beyond, four bodies laid against the root cellar walls, some of them snoring. Some Discern Realties and the players noted that a couple of these armed men were dressed as city watch, and it was certainly strange that any of the watch should be standing guard in the root cellar of a tavern. One of the four guards calmly told the PCs that no, there was no bathroom here, go back up. When the PCs pressed them about the bodies laying against the wall, swords were drawn and a swift battle ensued. Walton’s signature axe, Telula, cleaved one of the guards in two, beheaded another one, and all four were quickly defeated with minimal harm to the PCs.
Able to now examine the bodies, it turned out two of them were dead (consequences of a miss on a Discern Realities roll). The other two were out cold and could not be roused.
The PCs were about to try and Make Camp down here, but were interrupted when the padlock snapped open, and Vlad’s mother poked her head in. “You better get out of there now, I’ve called the watch!” But when she stepped down and saw all of the bodies on the floor she became quite fearful and agitated. Vlad then came in behind her, and when he saw the scene, he had a complete emotional breakdown, saying “it’s all over now, they’re going to kill us all.” Long story short, Vlad had been forced to collect victims for a mysterious group known as the Order of the Worm. He’d slip some poison in a likely drifter’s drink, then collect the bodies in the root storage for later pick up. He was quite sure that if he refused to participate in this activity, the Order would kill him and his family. He seemed particularly worried and afraid of the black cloaked man who always came in the carriage for the pick-up. Something was very “off” about this man, who never showed his face, and Vlad doubted this man’s very humanity.
I then revealed another Grim Portent. I had planned to reveal these Portents in the dungeon, but decided to go with the flow and work them into the unfolding city plot. Vlad told the players to examine the back of slain guards’ necks. Walton nonchalantly picked up the severed head, and saw the gruesome stitched-up incision at the back of the neck, following all the way up along the back of the head, concealed by long hair. He promptly pulled the skin away, and saw a long vertical seam in the skull itself. Using his axe he carefully split the skull apart at this seam, and what he found inside shocked everyone. A writhing, foot long maggot occupied the otherwise empty cranium. When Gunther Sanctified this abomination, it sizzled and dissolved into a steaming pool of ooze.
In the scenes that followed, the players decided to take the two survivors, Vlad, and his mother to the temple of Sidmier for safety. They told the temple priest about their plan to enter Deathhole to get to the bottom of this threat. The temple was hesitant to offer any aid, but finally relented in allowing Vlad and his mother sanctuary, but instructed Gunther to seek out the old library of the twisted sage that was rumored to be among the dungeon levels beneath. He was to bring back as many volumes of secret knowledge as he could find there.
And so finally, after spending the night at the temple, the group undertook the Perilous Journey to the site of Deathhole dungeon. First they tried to use their grappling hook and rope to descend directly into the vast sinkhole, but found they didn’t have enough rope. Regrouping, they were then accosted by a small pack of hungry Leucrota. They slew two of the animals quickly, before the last one sprinted away. Close to this encounter site, they discovered some old tracks next to an improbable grouping of three boulders. Gunther used his Dwarven ability to speak with the stones to learn that this was a secret entrance to the dungeons below, and that it had been recently used by “those who are not what they appear”.
An interesting scene in the twisting tunnel leading down played out, when the Wizard rolled a partial success on his Light spell and decided to be put in a spot. As a consequence, I had him turn around to see the snarling grin of that last Leucrota that had stealthily followed them down the tunnel, right in his face! The player running the Wizard then came up with a brilliant idea to get himself out of that spot. It started with a variation of the Spout Lore move that I used pretty consistently in this game. In this variation, the player simply states a fact about the subject in question, and doesn’t make the roll+INT until it comes time to test that assertion in play. So, C3P0 spouted off about the Leucrota’s favorite prey, a certain type of deer. He then cast Prestidigitation to create the illusion of that deer making a call from outside the tunnel entrance. While it might have been pushing the envelope with the cantrip, it was such a clever idea that I rolled with it. Anyway, he had two chances to fail with this plan. If his Spell Casting roll failed he would be toast, and even if he succeeded in casting the spell, he still had to roll to see if his knowledge about the Leucrota was accurate. As it went, be succeeded in both rolls, and the beast quickly lost interest in the Wizard when it heard its favorite meal outside!
After a seemingly endless journey down the dark tunnel, it finally opened up into a huge cavern covered with fungus of all shapes and colors. I had saved one of my moves from an earlier failed roll, and decided to spring it on the players now, as a Sign of Doom. They were confronted by five strange humanoid worm men who charged to attack. The melee was quick and brutal, and the players found themselves in a fungus cavern with five slain Moggits at their feet.
Gunther “recognized” some of the fungus as a Dwarven crop, the “red spotted Mushrooms” and claimed that they could be used as Rations. OK, a Spout Lore roll would have to be made when that assertion was tested. As it happened, Walton decided to chomp into one of them on the spot. The roll came up an 8, so, while yes, they can be used as Rations, there will be some complication that I’ll reveal at a later time (mwahaha).
It was getting late at that point, but I wanted to leave things off with a little cliffhanger. Since I’d noted on my map that there were 15 Moggits tending the gardens here, the players looked up to find that the other 10 had closed in and were now surrounding them, slowly advancing.
The session was a blast. The mechanics really worked well to help us all develop a story that flowed very well, and was definitely off any rails. If anything, I had prepped the dungeon a bit too much. More sparse notes on each room would have served just as well. And hell, the first ¾ of the game didn’t even take place in the dungeon I’d mapped and prepped. But the development of a Front allowed me to still tie the threat into the story that did develop, and guide it to a degree. A very satisfying experience overall, and the group wants to continue with Dungeon World and keep this campaign going!