Dungeon World at Gateway

There were three games of Dungeon World at Gateway. I ran one on the schedule and one off using the AG rules & playbooks, and Mike ran one using the Red Box rules & playbooks. They were all a blast for new and experienced Dungeon-Worlders alike. More details can be found in my con reports.

I love that Dungeon World plays the way I always wanted D&D to. Now I have plans to revive a recent 4e urban resistance campaign using DW and grab the Fighting Fantasy books so I can activate my real nostalgia with DW!

There was a thread here tin which means of awarding XP was discussed but I can no longer find it. At any rate, we played with XP awards:

• For making checks
• For activating bonds
• For killing monsters

I started off in the first game marking XP for bonds and monsters:
Marking XP for bonds was definitely cool. It really brought bonds into play in a big way. It was harder for some classes though (I'm thinking of the Wizard, who has three bonds which are all somewhat adventure specific), so they might need to be re-jigged in some cases.
Marking XP for monsters (according to level as discussed in that thread) definitely had a D&D vibe for me as GM,. "How much XP do we get for the lizard men?" Awesome. But it diverted attention from the moves to the outcome, I think to the detriment of the moves.

Mike marked XP for checks and bonds, and this is what I switched to halfway through the second game I ran. I really like the move focus that marking for checks gives and definitely don't see it as a jarring vestige of Apocalypse World as John Harper said (from memory, apologies if I have the facts wrong).

Nope, John pretty much said that :)

Glad it went well! XP fo monsters is something I've been thinking about a lot. It's certainly very D&D, but it's also a little GM-centric for DW. It feels too much like GM permission to level up which really isn't a part of DW.

If you're not already part of the Adventurer's Guild, shoot us an email at gm@dungeon-world.com and we'll add you. (And if you already sent a request and we haven't got back to it, sorry, we're a little swamped, we'll catch up soon.)

Yeah I sent a request to your other email a couple of weeks back, and one to that address yesterday. No hurry, I'm in Colin's group, so I have indirect access to all the juicy stuff.

I just took a look at the game request section for Nerdly Beach Party in a couple of weeks and just about everyone listed Dungeon World, so I think Colin and I will be getting our DW GMing fix there for sure! I also have a game on the schedule for Big Bad Con (Oakland), and we have big Sekret Planz for more DW action in the L.A. area (and in New Zealand this summer) if there are any other Adventurers in those areas in need of some action!

I was the mischievous halfling thief in Monday's game. The game was boatloads of fun and I think even the most passive player had fun. I really liked tying bonds to XP it really brought them into the game in a big way. We discussed that bonds should provide XP when you play your bond and when you play someone else's bond with you, giving them a great opportunity to earn XP for themselves.

Giving XP for checks seems to be a good way to encourage active behavior in game, but each class should get XP for it's main stat, plus one additional randomly to encourage some variety in moves.

I was less enamored of XP for monsters. It's definitely a call back to D&D, but it rewards behaviors that are going to happen anyway and shifts attention from the cool combat that just happened to boring maths.