First Play of Dungeon World

Cobbled together what I needed from the Gazetteer website while waiting for the rule book to get published again. Now, I've been playing AD&D with my kids, friends from the old days, and their kids for the past two years and after finding about about Dungeon World decided to give it a spin. My kids are eight and nine and had two friends over also aged nine and the event can simply be dubbed as magical. The kids had avoided playing magic users in AD&D as the one spell at first level just soured them. The tweak to wizards in Dungeon World just... well made wizards impressive in their eyes again. The descriptions of those normally dull and drab magic missiles became wreathing lightning and slashing claws of pure magic.

Character generation took about two hours as the kids sat around describing their histories together. The kids were familiar with classes from AD&D experience so had no issues really picking their favorites. A druid, a bard, a ranger, and a wizard took form as I listened and jotted down a few notes. Then the revelation hit that they were all playing elves. A few more notes to myself followed as the boys explained their alignment choices to each other. The stories came to conclusion and they looked to me.

I read a massive Feng Shui vibe from Dungeon World and dropped they right into the middle of the action.

I described the central temple to Gruumsh One Eye (as I will always have a love for Greyhawk) and how Shargunas Bloodwringer, a sword dedicated to slaying elves, lie upon the altar. They had disrupted the orcish ceremony to dedicate a new warrior to wield the blade against the elves and the party was determined to fighter their way through and liberate the weapon back to their elven freehold and hopefully stem the tide of war between elves and orcs.

"How did we get there?" asked my youngest son.
"You tell me," I replied.

Whereupon I was regaled with tales of the druid turning into a bear and scaring off some of the guards, the wizard using Prestidigitation in conjunction with the bard's songs to confuse other guards, and the ranger and bear managed to sneak through the temple in the confusion. And there they were, ringed and outnumbered by some very angry orcs. And, as they say, it was on.

Breaking down the action would be difficult as the kids went wild with their descriptions. During AD&D sessions the kids were much more dependent on me interpreting the dice roles but suddenly they were taking more narrative control. When the druid was surrounded, if only because the bard took a leap off the temple altar to finish off the Orc berserker destined to wield the elf slaying sword leaving to fend for himself, he shapeshifted into a mouse to skitter between the feet of the orcish press of warriors. The groans as the ranger failed his volley roll and found his sniping position located as an orc has stealthily flanked him and kicked him from the wall he had been unleashing a deadly torrent of arrows. The druid had the idea that he might take up the Bloodwringer himself and use it against the orcs and failing his discern realities move found his hand scorched as he gripped the blade and found out the hard way, "No, you don't try to wield a weapon dedicated to your race's destruction against its makers."

I'll tell you what, the kids were adventurers in AD&D but a single session into Dungeon World and they were HEROES! They've had great times playing AD&D since summer started but this one session overshadowed a lot of the normal play. They feel epic in stature and have grasped Dungeon World quickly and easily.

This was the experience I wanted to bring them with AD&D and Dungeon World brought it to the table and spiked their imaginations to an even higher level. On behalf of myself and the party of kids that are still denying Gruumsh his will on behalf of the elves I thank Sage and Adam for bringing this game to me.

I just really need the rulebook as I hated nipping off to check things on the computer. Print copy please!!!!

I can't think of a better endorsement for DW than the fact that it made the kids feel like heroes!  Awesome post, thanks for sharing it.  I ran DW for an old friend and his 11 year old son last weekend, and had a similar experience.  It was the boy's first RPG experience, and he couldn't stop talking about it all weekend.  DW really does bring back some of that old magic from when we first discovered RPGs (36 years ago for me).

Did two more sessions last week. My oldest son took over Game Master duties for the kids and he ran through the most compact version of B2 Keep on the Borderlands I'd ever seen. Overall the kids had a good time and practically ran me into the kitchen so I washed dishes as I heard "Roll +Str and Roll +Con" come out of the dining room. So... the torch is passed on thanks to Dungeon World. Of course the druid shape shifting into a rhinoceros as the wizard climbed onto his back and riding into the orc chieftain's lair was a bit over the top as the rhino mounted wizard started lobbing magic missiles... The wizard wanted a +1 going forward for the move and I shrugged saying, "It's cool for certain but what's the advantage? I'm not the game master on this one, ask the game master."
It was amusing to watch my son game master as he gave out a lot of soft moves for failures. Softer than even I would and I'm certainly a gentle game master in my middling age. It was just a blast to w atch the kids grasp onto Dungeon World so easily. The Caves of Chaos really became the Cave of Chaos as the party slaughtered its way through kobolds, hobgoblins, orcs, and jumped straight to the evil temple. Can't say much as my hazy memory of first running the Caves when I was nine of ten was about the same.
In the end, the party defeated the evil high priest and beheaded him. The druid took the severed head out to the wastelands surrounding the caves and buried it whereupon he thrust a spear of wood into the grave and caught it ablaze proclaiming the area cleansed of the foul evils the priest had brought upon the land. Yeah, this was an eight year old declaring the end of the module. Of course my oldest had the caves collapse in on themselves and as the smoke and debris rose to the sky it formed the visage of the evil high priest declaring the party hadn't seen the last of him.

Good stuff to be certain. I went ahead and ran A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity for my other group and that one will have to wait for a little bit to gather my reporting energies.

That's so awesome Bob! Yay! Can't wait to hear more of their adventures and the development of their characters and the Dungeon World you are creating together :)

So, we're two sessions into what is loosely A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity. Mind you, this is probably the first time I pulled out my map of Greyhawk and spread half of it across the table to give players an idea where the slavers had been raiding and where the Council of Six was directing them from versus the headquarters located in the Pomarj.

The assembled grouping-
Van Isle- human wizard that has developed some interesting magical problems over the two sessions
Janis- dwarven fighter who is ready to be done with this slaver business as he has some ancestral weapons to track down
Hycorax- elvish druid who is really forgetting that shape changing ability in lieu of that elemental mastery perk
Bjorn- dwarven cleric that is still finding his faith and hasn't started pulling his beard over said faith enough yet
Celinas- elven ranger that was touted as the best archer in the area... Not much for archery so much as kicking a poor pseudo-escaped slave down a sewer trap to his death

Part of the fun of converting these old modules is well... Butchering them as well. I let everyone know from the outset that the boring, empty rooms would be excised and mention of rooms would likely only matter if there was something interesting involved. We discussed the approach to the slavers den as I glossed over their employment by the Council of Six and we hedged out whether they wanted to work a frontal assault or enter the secret passage they'd learned of when they assaulted a group of slavers before the game began. They decided to go for the stealth option despite the characters not being... well... particularly stealthy or having that stealthy frame of mind either. This starts them off at the secret door that is the traditional beginning of the tournament module.

There's talk of detecting traps (old AD&D habits die hard after all) to which Janie, dwarven warrior of Clangeddin Silverbeard replies, "We don't have a thief so we're wasting time checking for traps!" And he opens the door...

And springs the trap that consists of a spring loaded board with nails swinging towards him. Well, the module says it would swing over someone of dwarf or halfling height but Janis laughs. "My reactions are quick! I was opening the door with my shield arm so I bring my axe about and sever the board as it swing towards me." Well, reactions are quick roll+dex? Nope, stubborn dwarf so roll+str and he gets boxcars.So we describe the board getting cut and the end pinwheeling off as Janis grins commenting, "We don't need no stinking thief."

More to come in a day or so.

Ghouls on a ledge and tightrope walking



Creeping through the passageway the party finds a door, blasted, beaten, barely on its hinges. Do they listen at the door? Carefully check for traps? Spend two hours preparing for what might be on the other side? Hell no, it's Dungeon World! And, yes, they are ambushed by the ghouls hiding on the ledge after they quickly figure out this room had been blasted by a fireball spell sometime within the last hundred years or so. The party found themselves entangled with the ghouls full well guessing that a hack and slash failure would no doubt leave them paralyzed and a meal for the hungry ghouls.

At this point Van's player asked what exactly his magic missiles looked like when he cast them.

"I don't know, it's your spell. You tell me."
"Can it be a stream of acid?"
"Sure."
"A fan of flames? Crackles of lightning?"
"Yep, change it to suit you, your mood, and what's fun at the moment."
"So what makes a fireball different?"
"More damage and a narrative effect of having an area attack."
"So a fireball could be a lightning fork or an acid globe, right?"
"Whatever arcane imaginations you can conjure. Within reason with reason defined as crossing that bridge when we get to it."

Now, this narrative exchange becomes somewhat important later as such arcane flexibility comes at a price when it's time for hard moves.

The battle was short, sweet, with smiles around the table. The dwarven warrior had no issues decapitating ghouls as his dice were hot, his armor was equally hot. The druid smashed heads with his shillelagh, the dwarven cleric did similarly well with his mace. Which I'll discuss him not turning undead in a moment. Van, poor wizard, found his first magic missile and that 7 rolled was a hard choice already. "First encounter, I need this spell, and we've just started so I don't want that -1 going forward. Put me on the spot."

What became the staple of Van's spellcasting was when things went moderately wrong his spells are released with a deep atttention drawing boom and tell tale flash of blue arcane energy. While he roasted one ghoul with fiery pinwheels the rest of the ghouls pretty much dropped interest in the rest of the party and proceeded to dog pile him. The party then had to go about pulling the ghouls off the beleaguered wizard and finally they vanquished the creatures. After the encounter I asked Bjorn's player why he didn't try to turn the ghouls. "Ghouls are undead?" Well, funny how we've been playing for two years, trashed countless ghouls and their ties to the negative plane were never mentioned. I just took it for granted but well, now he knows.

After the battle they came across the notoriously difficult blasted room with no floor and a plank to carefully cross. Alas, two hours of roping each other together and a string of rolls? Janis, dwarven warrior volunteered to cross made his roll+dex and off they went. "Do the rest of us have to roll?" Bjorn asked. "If the mail clad dwarf can make it across the balanced plank between the two sides I believe he's proven it's both wide enough and strong enough to support anyone else." Yeah, five minutes for the carefully balanced plank.

More to come eventually.

A bag of oily rags and a hard choice...

The more time that passes the more the memory of events fades so I really have to step up the program to get the Slavers adventure caught up.

A honey seet smell, flies in abundance, and a pile of oily rags in the corner of the room. MST3K jokes about Crow's oily rag collection aside as apparently I was the only one remembering that episode so the description was at least taken seriously. Janis decided to poke the pile with his axe and only made a marginal success on his defy danger so he found him partially entangled in acidsoaked tendrils as the sundew exploded in activity. Bjorn desperately tried to free the his struggling dwarven comrade and found himself also wrapped by tendrils and pulled directly into the bizarre plant. Acid damage was taking its toll as Van blasted away with firey motes and successfully caught the plant creature alight. Rules-wise he rolled box cars twice in a row on his magic missile spell casting and did maximum damage both times. A potentially very tough encounter became something of a cake walk after that. Still, exciting for everyone involved. I ask myself what Hycorax the druid was doing during all this and I want to say he was doing the mouse scouting routine and decided to find a hole to hide in.

With the odd monster incinerated the group psuhed onwards and found a branching passage. One direction smelled awful, very awful... Noise hair curling awful, as anyone that knows module A1 it would be the sewers that are under the ruined temple for no adequately explored reason. The party decided to avoid getting steeped in sewer water for the moment and followed the less sinister smelling passage finding yet another branch. Following a route they found a doorway that opened to an overgrown garden, well cemetary but that never becomes apparent. I figure this is a good chance for the druid to shine and he does indeed sense immense corruption among the flora here and rather than confront the source of the taint decides to close the doors back and declare the place far too dangerous to enter.

Checking the other passage the party locates the stables and a group of orcs sitting around makeshift tree stump stools lousing up guard duty as orcs are prone to do. The ambush was quickly organized and then completely thrown to the winds as Van blew his first spellcasting roll and made the group's presence known as his spellcasting backfired resulting in a mystical explosion of sound and hurled the spellcaster backwards. At a disadvantage for Van's foul up the party ensued in a slashing, gritty melee with the orc guards and managed to cut them down but not without taking a variety of injuries. At this point they decided since there was an outer gate as an escape path in case things went badly that they would make camp in the hayloft.

Lurking the hayloft was a doppelganger that was posing as a slave. Now, as the hay rustled Janis was pretty quick of the mark and hurled an ale bottle at the source of the rustling and rolled+dex with box cars and well... The escaped slave took an ale bottle to the brain pan and Janis' intent was to kill even if he groaned when he realized it was a slave. The slave's head shattered and the party immediately began berating poor Janis for his hasty actions until... They noticed the green ooze leaking from the slave's head. Okay, game master confession I don't know the ecology of the doppelganger and always wondered what the hell the Slave Pits were doing teeming with these jokers anyways. For all the years I've played AD&D, though, if you kill the old cloaked doppelganger they always give away that they were not what they seemed. So, yeah, everyone gathers around the corpse thinking this is obviously not right. Van throws down his speak with dead spell and I ask if the spell description states the spirit must speak the truth. Van's player says it's kind of ambiguous in that regard so I say, "screw it he'll answer". They find out yes, this is a doppelganger and was shape shifted into the form of an escaped slave and so one roll+dex and the party figures out the doppelganger presence and Van speaks itinto being that where there's one doppelganger, there's always more. And yeah, that comes into play again down the line.

More to come....