AP - Moldvay to DW

So our Moldvay Wednesday group made the transition to DW yesterday. Throughout our Moldvay game I drifted the skill checks to DW still moves pretty seamlessly. I was explicit about what I was doing so no sneakiness on my part.

One thing that made the transition easier was to rewrite the playbooks. Basically we have two new playbooks. One for the Dwarf and one for the Elf. The Thief more or less stayed the same. I'll get my crudely made up playbooks posted in the next few days (also I have a DW tutorial I am still typesetting, oh and some ODD playbooks).

The pitch is still the same. A vast underexplored wilderness sprawled out before the characters. Ruins dotting the landscape. The focus of the game is on exploration and survival.

Up next:
The players and their characters
My questions, their answers

 

Early on in the DW creation process, before Sage and I were working on a single unified game, I toyed around a little with a Dwarf, Elf and Halfling set of playbooks.  Mostly, though, they got chopped up and used for the Fighter, Wizard and Thief books and some of the racial moves.

Crudely made-up or no, I'd love to see the DW tutorial you're putting together!

All right. I'll see if I can get it together by the weekend.

The players (sorry no full names for them):
B: Ladyfriend, played primitive DW with me, ran Murderous Ghost, and played Moldvay. Speaks AW and DW. In our Moldvay game her dwarf's second weapon was "I Spout Lore". Really, it's on her sheet

R: Fellow grad student, played 4th edition D&D

L: Fellow grad student, only played CRPGs.

B is playing a Dwarf fighter (using a hacked playbook) out to revenge the slaughter of her clan.

R is playing a Thief (mostly straight up DW thief) with mixed motives

L is the elf (seriously hacked playbook) who is the laziest elf ever. Only cares for amassing wealth and sorcery so he can retire ASAP.

Akooser, I want to transfer to your program.

@mease19 drop by anytime ;) we take all sorts

Well the thief was mightily hungover from a night of debauchery. This left Drugar and Limnar to venture out to find gold and most likely death.

Drugar  (dwarf) and Limnar (the world's laziest elf) set out for the Broken City 2 days NW of FarReach (yeah the names suck at the moment). Hoping to conserve food on the journey(Undertake a Semi-perilous soon to VERY perilous journey), Drugar tracked supplies and Limnar forged the path to the city. So this left the scouting role at a 6 (hmmm tasty 6).

The first day passed uneventful and darkness fell on our brave (but silly) not-so-much heroes. Drugars' watch passed and Limnar posted second watch. Sometime during the night the grassed parted violently in front of Limnar (setting up for a hard move). A giant, rotting boar burst forth, desecrating the ground beneath it. The air was filled with rot, flies, and maggoty slobber. Both of out heroes dove out of the way (Defying Danger) and failed. Limnars' shield fell and was crushed beneath the boar and Drugar drops her hammer into the grass.

Up next:
Rotting Boar Staredown
The lazy elf stops being lazy for a moment
Drugar fails her clan and grandfather who forged her ancient hammer

EDIT: Can't spell and left some stuff out, so tired

Wow, time slipped away from me. Silly school.

Going to wrap up this report before we play again today!

Limnar distracts the boar with a round of magic missiles as Drugar scrambles for her hammer. The boar bears down on Limnar as the Drugar lightly taps (1 HP) the beast on the butt with her hammer. Limnar elegantly tries to get out of the way and is knocked to ground instead. The boar rears up to crush Limnar with it's massive bulk. At the last minute Limanr pulls out the Floating Disk spell and hides underneath it. The boar weighs more then the disk can talk and the spell starts to fail. Drugar runs up close and swings her hammer at the boars head. A glancing blow peels off some rotting cheek, exposing corrupt bone ans sinew. The boars fetid tusk swings into Drugar rending maille, dwarf flesh, and bone. Maggots and vomit spill onto Limnar's failing disk.

*Note - early on in the encounter I describe the grass rotting around the boar and the earth actually roiling and putrefying underneath the boars feet.

Limnar attempt to fling the disk one way while he rolls the other to avoid the boar. L rolled a 2 on his Defy Danger. I laughed. Limnar escapes from under the disk but the boar rolls over on the Drugar pinning her and snapping tendons.

Drugar wails on the boar with her hammer at close range while Limnar blasts it again with magic missile. The boar recovers, kicks Drugar before heading towards Limnar.

Limnar volleys another magic missile at the boar blast holes in it and Drugar flings her hammer before collapsing to the ground. Drugar's player B rolled a 2, more giggling from me.

The hammer hits home and goes through the collapsing rib cage of the boar, deep into the heart.

Drugar bleeds for awhile and complains of pain. Limnar dusts himself off and looks for a place to nap.

The boar rots away leaving behind skin, bone, a gooey hammmer, and a handful of strange gold coins.

The coins resemble the coins found at the Library which come from the city they are heading to. The hammer, mightily artifact of Drugar's clan now has the tag +tainted.
Oh and Drugar grabbed one of the tusks to use as a weapon.

We leave our heroes wounded, tired, gross, and a few hours from the city.

More reasons my ladyfriend is awesome

The boar from our last session
https://plus.google.com/photos/115723089379701254750/albums/5752978477257815409?authkey=CJmvqvaKibLqIA


That's my lady's dwarf cowering in the lower left.

Finally getting around to putting together the Moldvay DW hack.
The elf class is here but the spells aren't yet.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1suXvkjCqXPKUY8aowx4HlnqIhiPVxxgr8KR4CWwz6K8/edit

So far behind. Stupid PhD...

From two weeks ago... Spectacular failures.

Limnar and Drugar enter the ruined city. Limnar recognizes it as an old elven city. Drugar fails to figure out anything about the stonework (this lasts through the session and into the next).

They poke around the city looking for items to loot. There is a custom move for this. So they both blow it and stumble head long into some sort of undead jerky hound. Drugar goes running after it (I described the city as a jumble of buildings at all angles) and trips. The hammer goes flying off. The jerky hound grabs Drugar and shakes her like so many elves. This reopens her previous wounds and inflicts terrible damage. Limnar attempts a rescue but falls on his face tripping over broken stonework. His swords skitters away.

DM note: At this point both had rolled snake eyes twice in a row.

Drugar makes an attempt for the hammer and swings at the jerky hound. While Limnar blasts the hound with magic missile. The hound shatters, undead jerky everywhere. Our brave but completely incompetent heroes gather their weapons and look for a place to hide. Limnar carries to Drugar to the only green place in the city. They found an overgrown garden still intact. After several successful rolls they hunker down for the night.

So Dungeon World. It's a lot of fun. Basically if you can have a conversation with another person you can play. Right now our two heroes fled the undead infested, ruined city for the relative safety of town. Our game starts in 1.5 hours!

Observations:
Play flows nicely back and forth between me and the other players. This is good. Sometimes we don't fill out the fiction as much as we should and jump straight into the mechanics. Gotta slow down a little here. It's cool watching the world unfold as we play. I didn't have a particular map in mind. As I ask questions and the players Spout Lore and Discern Realities we add stuff to the map and the fictional space.

Transition from Moldvay:
It's very smooth but DW Principles for the GM to follow conflict with Moldvay's Principles. Several things drop out fast. You lose the mapper and caller. There isn't a real need to map in DW. I think you could arrange it so this matters. I am slowly hacking together a DW-hack based on Moldvay. I want to see if this actually works without messing up the Flow.

In some ways Burning Wheel and Dungeon World share similar design philosophers with regards to dungeons. Get to the interesting stuff, skip the mapping.

I invoked a Moldvay Principle of relating information about the world and dungeons impartially (sometimes Drugar makes me laugh, with the bad dice rolls and all).

Sage did the Principles of Moldvay here:
http://www.latorra.org/2010/09/28/the-principles-of-moldvay-dd/
So I am going to use those as a starting point for hacking.