NEW PLAYERS: I wrote a Beginner's Guide to Dungeon World

Oh, hm. I hadn't thought about that. There's minion font subsets embedded in the pdfs, but it could be my stuff doesn't read it properly. Or it could be a DW curse hanging over me, when I try to dl their pdfs it fucks up. Like the druid turned into garbage between the storage site and my screen. Dunno!

As to the other things:

I actually don't mean to criticize the Worldbuilding section, I think that's fine. Also fine to have the three questions I called out in a campaign front write-up. The GM should be thinking about it, for sure. I just mean to say they're not stakes. Answering a stakes question should immediately give you character decisions.

I also considered mentioning that first page of text. Honestly, it's a tricky thing. You are far from alone in your response to DW. People have been saying "oh my god, this is what I always wanted D&D to be" for years, over all sorts of "indie" and "Forge" games and "storygames" and the whole "Forge diaspora" thing. And it pisses people off, sometimes. Sometimes just a little bit, sometimes actually a whole lot. Like how grognards.txt pisses people off I guess. It's possible you might never run into that, but in case you do, it's probably better you know about it in advance.

Honestly, the D&D comparison is a thing that Sage mentioned during the early draft stages, too. We decided that it was fine because this is 100% fan-made and I tried to make it clear that this was just my sole opinion, not the game's stated goal or anything like that. Dungeon World is the game that I expected when I bought that red box.

Again, thanks for the fantastic advice!

First, a huge  thanks to everyone involved in putting this together.  I found it really helpful and especially loved all of the examples drawn from actual play.

A couple of observations:

1) In the example Front, you say that the island was only settled by Humans about 5 years ago (and the implication seems to be that only Lizardmen lived there before that time), but in the questions to ask players, one of them refers to a character having been born and raised on the island.

2) In the extended example of play, you refer to stone-carved frescoes.  I know this is  a little nit-picky, but technically frescoes are paintings done in wet plaster.  Maybe you were going for something like a bas-relief?

But, yeah, extremely useful stuff and may help push my group over the line into playing DW as our next game.

John

Hahaha, that's sort of an oversight on my part. I was thinking it would be for Lizardman characters, like to show that you might want to ask questions specifically tailored for your players. Explaining it would've been nice, huh?

I'm glad this inspired you to try the game, though. It's pretty great; obviously I'm pretty taken with it. Have you guys done ApocWorld?

No, we haven't played any *World games as a group.  I ran a short demo session of DW at the local gaming meetup a couple of months ago (using the 2-hour demo scenario that Jason Morningstar did), but that's all the experience any of us have.

John

No, we haven't played any *World games as a group.  I ran a short demo session of DW at the local gaming meetup a couple of months ago (using the 2-hour demo scenario that Jason Morningstar did), but that's all the experience any of us have.

Cool, have fun running DW! I've not been a player yet, but it's a total blast to GM.

This is great!

All I can do is nitpick. :)

Maybe turn off hyphenation (and set your justification settings accordingly). Stuff like:

did-
n't

is pretty rough.

I'm also turned off by that first page. This is a cool introductory text for people new to DW, and I think by comparing it to Moldvay the way you do, you only alienate people who love Moldvay. It doesn't help, far as I can tell. We don't need to know why you wrote the thing.

But yeah -- great work! Love this guide.

EDITED TO ADD: Oh! Also, I agree about the "ask the characters, not the players" thing, too. It's a bit of a gray area, but sticking to character-centric POV is definitely my preference for DW.

I really didn't mean for it to come across as a criticism of Moldvay, I seriously just meant "Dungeon World is the fast & loose adventure game that I always expected D&D to be when I was a kid." :(

So, serious question Scrape: what does your opinion of D&D add to the incredibly good product you have here that explains DW to new players?

Even if you remove people's opinions and feelings, what does it add to the product?

EDIT: and, again, on a personal level D&D isn't supposed to be "fast & loose". Expecting that is like saying, "I expected D&D to play like Fiasco". Anyway, ignore this opinion part. The important part is above.

Yeah, see, the problem is that I wasn't trying to express my opinion on D&D at all. In fact, I still haven't, hahaha! It's not that I think D&D should be anything, it's that as a child, picking up that red box with zero preconceptions, I was expecting something like Dungeon World. That's what the anecdote was about.

But either I didn't make it clear or the topic is just too loaded. So yeah, I'm gonna remove it before it goes up on the site because it's not worth the distraction from what the conversation should be about, which is this awesome game.

New version will be up soon with minor corrections. Thanks again for the great feedback and suggestions! Super appreciated.

In the Sample Campaign Front, it looks like the Grim Portents are listed under the wrong Dangers.

That is, the Grim Portents for:
- the Dragon seem to be under the Magmin
- the Dragon Cultists' under the Dragon, and
- the Magmin's under the Dragon Cultists.

O, and this frickin' amazing brilliant work! Very helpful and tidy.

In the Sample Campaign Front, it looks like the Grim Portents are listed under the wrong Dangers.

That is, the Grim Portents for:
- the Dragon seem to be under the Magmin
- the Dragon Cultists' under the Dragon, and
- the Magmin's under the Dragon Cultists.

O, and this frickin' amazing brilliant work! Very helpful and tidy.

Haha! I was wondering how long it would be until this forum noticed! Somehow that got all jumbled during some round of editing, I dunno.

The new file is live as of now, for anyone who's curious. Typos and a few errors have been changed, along some minor content changes (revised Stakes questions, stuff like that), along with the PASSAGE THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED. If you've already read and digested the first version, it's probably not worth re-reading.

Huh, for some reason I'm unable to edit the OP? Never had this problem before, but until I figure it out, the new file is here:



And the direct link to the pdf version can be found here.

I just wanted to say a big thanks for putting this together. My excitement level was already pretty high for Dungeon World -- been about a year since I've gotten to play.

But reading the guide has me even more excited! And actually makes me kind of confident that I could run the game and do it justice (running *W games intimidates me for some reason.

Again: thanks!

You only have a limited time to edit your posts here. I thought it was originally less than an hour, but I think it's set to about a day or something, now. After that, only mods can edit posts.

But either I didn't make it clear or the topic is just too loaded.

It's not you. I know exactly what you mean. It's just too loaded. The new version is excellent, though.