A couple weeks ago, I hosted an event via Meetup.com at the local library as "Welcome to Dungeon World." Due to some logistical issues with turning off the invites, I had eight people RSVP'd before I could close off the event! I felt bad un-inviting people, so I said "screw it, we'll figure it out in play."
Prior to this Meetup, I had never played DW before. I was dying to try, though. I've been playing RPGs for over 20 years, and I had NEVER seen something like this before. I HAD to try it.
It was a little nerve-wracking at first, the idea of not having an adventure fully planned, AND having eight people for a game that is typically capped at six. Even the players seemed a little leary. For the starter, I decided to have the players in the midst of the climactic final battle between the assembled forces of Good and the legions of Evil. I decided a dragon would be leading the forces of evil and commanding them with a powerful artifact called the Orb of Command. I would have the players attempt to capture the orb, and/or slay the dragon. That was ALL I had planned.
With eight players, all eight of the core classes were in use. I held a draft to pick classes, then we made our characters as a group. The bond discussion was, in a word, great. Many of the players had never met each other before, and they were already putting together bits and pieces of stories and personalities for themselves and others. All just by putting peoples' names in blanks, Mad-Libs style. Normally, I have to work hard with the players to figure out their backgrounds, why they're adventuring, how they know each other, etc. Here, it all just flowed.
One guy, the Thief, showed up late, and I had already written him off as a no-show when the game was about to begin. Rather than kicking him out, I sat him down, gave him the Thief sheet, and told him he was unconscious. And, like that, the game just began: I split the group in half. One half was holding a hill, surrounding the unconscious and defenseless Thief. The other half were inside a guard tower, watching in horror as a legion of kobolds tried to break the door down.
Always remembering to "portray a fantastic world", I had a calvary of elves riding unicorns come to the hill. They brought fresh unicorns for the PCs there, and told them to see General Stonecore behind the front lines, he had a very important mission for them. They proceeded to go on a unicorn chase as the enemy calvary...goblins riding wargs...came after them. I had a flying calvary of griffons come in for the players in the guard tower, but remembering my principles of danger, ruled that the griffons couldn't land because of hill giants flinging boulders at them. They could only swoop one-at-a-time, and the PCs had to try and jump onto them.
The biggest laugh of the game came next, as the players, battered and bruised, showed up to General Stonecore, who greeted them with "I have a vital mission for you all, and you are truly the best warriors in all the land." This, after the thief fell off a unicorn, the cleric nearly killed himself botching a heal spell, and the mage spent most of the unicorn chase dangling upside-down from his mount, blasting magic missiles at the wargs.
So the mission was to get to the dragon's stronghold and either capture or destroy the orb, and either escape alive or take down the dragon with them. Well the PCs make it all the way up and through the stronghold, sneaking through the dragon's egg chamber and scaling the walls, until they get to the top of the stronghold. The Paladin gets it in his head to use I Am the Law on the dragon. The Paladin used that power earlier in the game to try and get a kobold commander to release some prisoners, and I choose to simply have the commander attack. Not wanting to do that twice, I decided I would have the dragon try and talk the PCs out of fighting. I had the dragon say that he was, in fact, the good guy, he didn't want to have to kill everyone, but that General Stonecore was corrupt and would seek to bring ruin upon the land. I then had him conjure a knife made out of one of his fangs and said that if the PCs would take the fang dagger and use it to kill the dwarven general, he promised to stand down.
Nobody in the group believed the dragon and attacked. Nobody, except the Bard. While half of the party was trying to pry the Orb from the pedestal, the Paladin and Fighter were taking on the dragon head-on. The Bard's player used his Bardic Knowledge and asked me what he knew about the General and his deeds during the war. I turned the question back on him, "Well, what DO you know about him?" I resolved some of the other action while I let the bard think it over. When I got back to him, he said that he knows that the General was guilty of some atrocities during the war, and that he believes the dragon is telling the truth, that it was the dwarf who started this war and the dragon who's trying to end it.
"Um, WHAT?" said the Paladin.
The Bard scoops up the dagger and says he will assassinate the general! The Cleric, hell-bent (no pun intended) on talking some sense into the Bard, tackles the Bard before he can leave. The dragon scoops both of them up into one of his claws and flies off. The Paladin and the Fighter jump onto the dragon's back, still trying to slay him.
(By the way, the cleric prayed for guidance before the fight. I ruled that his god would enchant all the players' weapons to be capable of harming the dragon, but only if the cleric sacrificed his own weapon and swore not to attack anyone for the rest of the quest. He agreed.)
Meanwhile, the Orb of Command was successfully pried off the pedestal by the Ranger. The Druid takes the Orb and intends to drop it into a nearby volcano; the Mage thinks it should be brought back to the Good guys and studies by the mages' guild. This turns into a fight between them, the Ranger taking sides with the Mage. Chaos ensues, the bowling-ball sized orb rolling all over the stronghold roof before falling into the moat down below. Needless to say, all three dive over the edge after it.
In the sky, the dragon is simultaneously fighting off griffons while trying to buck the Paladin and Fighter. The dragon succeeds in bucking the Paladin, who's caught by a griffin. The dragon tells the Bard to kill the Cleric with the dagger. The Bard refuses. The dragon manages to successfully put the Bard in his other claw, and then flings the Cleric to his doom. However, another griffin swoops by and saves the cleric, again.
The dragon makes it to the frontlines, drops the Bard, and then turns around to go back to the stronghold. The Paladin urges his griffin to go back to the stronghold, looking to get the Orb before the dragon gets back to it. The Fighter loses his sword, and so without a weapon dives off the dragon onto another griffin, going down to the battlefield to get it back.
The Bard, convincing General Stonecore of victory, reaches in for a congratulatory hug...and slits his throat. The dark magic of the fang dagger allows him to teleport back to the dragon. They both escape to the mountains.
And so, the adventure that I didn't have planned and was expecting to be a fairly straight-forward fantasy romp that shows off Dungeon World turned into a tragic tale of betrayal and the horrors of war. And if the Paladin had not tried I Am the Law on the dragon, the dragon would not have spoken, and the adventure would have taken a very different turn. How frickin' awesome is that?