DragonCon 2012

I'm running 6 sessions of Dungeon World at DragonCon. I'm planning to use The Temple of Ungu to launch the action and see where it goes from there. After the first session, any table full of return players is going to keep going with their characters. Tables with some new and some returning will get to choose if they want to cold start or not.

Wish me luck, and if you are there, come and play. If you want in on generic tickets after the specifics sell out, please mention this post. If you are enough of a DW enthusiast to be reading forum posts, a crowded game with you will be better than a normal sized game without you.

I'd love to see you there.  Name's Scott.

Hi, I'm Kristi! I've been lurking around this forum a bit since pledging to the Kickstarter. I was hoping to sign up for the Sunday 1pm game, but I didn't realize pre-registration ended last week! Hopefully I can register at the con, but if  I end up with a generic ticket, I'll be sure to mention your post. I'm very excited to get a chance to play the game!

Printing and printing and printing now, but really excited. I ran a test drive for friends that hadn't played to simulate a con situation. Character creation took longer than I thought, so I'm going to pregen characters and tell people they can modify details if they see a better choice on the playbook. Main thing is starting with stats assigned, I think that saves a lot of time in a convention scenario even if everything else is chosen at the table.

Good Luck Chris! I hope it all runs swimmingly :)
Make sure you keep an evolving campaign map, and a 'hall of fallen heroes'. We want to hear all about it!

That was by far my most fun time running a game at a convention. In the end, I only had return players at the last session, and even then it was only 2/5 people, so I ran Temple of Ungu 6 times. I wish I had audio recording of all the crazy stuff I either heard or found myself saying. I especially liked the explanation that a character couldn't get Goblin Pox because his mother made sure he played with the other kids with Goblin Pox when he was little. And the paladin serving the harvest god Fara-Ming. And the Desert-Forest (still scratching my head over that one).

I think I won over some converts to Dungeon World, and the larger world of Indie Games. I think Dungeon World is a great gateway drug to that world. If you buy into the analogy of story games as musicians jamming, the tropes inherited from D&D give you a backbeat and set of chord progressions that everyone knows, and everyone can jam over. Great fun.

Character creation get quicker as you get more familiar with running it (as a GM). I didn't time myself at GenCon, but I managed full pregen and short game in 2 hour slots. It also depends on the style of game you run (e.g. high energy pulp action vs slow-paced and atmospheric dungeon crawl). Did you full pregen character or partially-gen them?

I made all decisions in pencil and allowed anyone wanting to the opportunity to change them. That seemed to be a nice compromise. I was surprised how popular the 'grab and go' approach was - few people changed anything.

The only real snags I hit were mismatches of expectations. There was a table with one person wanting a fantasy setting that takes itself seriously, and three piling on puns and anachronisms. My last table of the con was the toughest - there were 5 players at the table, representing at least 3 different creative agendas. I don't think the kinds of problems that table had can be addressed in game design, so it's more a hazard of throwing random strangers together than a problem specific to Dungeon World.

The two players who did more than one session were very surprised with how differently everything played out. I tried to explain that it is a situation to handle in your own way, not a script of encounters handled in a set sequence.

The only time things got clunky / wonky in handling mechanics seemed to center on A) the lack of a formal initiative system or B) rolls to aid or hinder another party member. Before I derive any criticism for the game from that, I'll have to go back and see if there is something I misread in the actual rules.

Speaking of actual rules, I read them front to back between my test drive game at home and the con games. (OK, maybe I skipped most of the monster definitions). I had the pdf on an ipad for reference, and in 6 games, I pulled it out to search the text twice! I did have double sided basic moves sheets printed, and a GM cheat sheet prepped, but still - that is amazing. I think you have a very consistent and intuitive (once you've grokked it) rules set.

One of the beauties of games Powered by the Apocalypse is that all the most commonly needed rules are right there on the character sheet and the move sheet. I think it helps that the GM/MC moves are all narrative as well.