It was New Years weekend, most of us had been drinking heavily, and we didn't start until midnight, but I think my first attempt at running DW turned out pretty good.
This was just going to be a one-shot, so I game all the PCs on advance to put them at 2nd level. All my players were experienced gamers. Some have played fancy-pants story games with me before, others had never played with me at all, and one guy I had never met.
Our Brave “Heroes”:
Trixie Thistle – Halfling thief. Played by my wife, who has played a lot of story games with me.
Uri – Human wizard from the great nation of Lenningradstania. His player was great in our past AW game. He played Uri with a crazy Russian accent. I told him he could make one-and-only-one “In Soviet Russia” joke.
Ivy Thistle – Cat-eyed Halfling Druid from the Whispering Plains. Trixie's distant cousin. My wife's best friend, she played ACKS with us last year.
Jonah – Human ranger with his pet eagle Vox. A friend of ours for many years, this was our first time gaming together.
Gregor – Human fighter and wielder of the ancient flail “Kelzig.” One of my oldest friends, he's played a lot of games with us. After many years he's still not entirely sold on these story games things.
Willem McBride – Elf bard. A friend of some of the other players, I had never met him before. He was a really swell guy, but the poor dude was very drunk and wound up falling asleep about two hours into the game. He was excited to play and wants to look into DW more.
Aside from a couple of my players massively over-thinking things, chargen went pretty smoothly. Filling out the Bonds was easily everyone's favorite parts. Even the guys new to story games loved it, and their eyes lit up as they wove together a cohesive web of relations and back story.
Not too long ago, Jonah had escorted Ivy (along with Gregor and Trixie) across the Wastelands to the Dark Tower, wherein Gregor saved Ivy's life, Gregor found a strange blue gem, and Trixie stole said gem from Gregor. More recently, Trixie has colluded with Uri the wizard to sell the mysterious blue gem, which may or may not be cursed. At some point, Jonah had also encountered Uri's mother and discovered that Gregor the fighter is actually the wizard's father (something neither of them suspect). Meanwhile, Willem the bard has heard many tales of Uri's romantic prowess and has come to see if the legends are true.
That was all just from the bonds stage, and I'm sure I missed some other details. The game started with the party in the small town of Maplehedge, nestled between the Whispering Plains and the Darkening Forest. That night, a bolt of blue fire streaked through the sky and into the woods, causing a massive explosion. Morning comes, and a massive tower of jagged blue crystal rises from the forest. Evil clouds swirl around it, blocking the sun. The crystal tower glows a fell blue light—as does the blue gem Trixie stole from Gregor! What's more, the miller's house has been ransacked. The family is missing, and Gnoll tracks lead back to the forest and towards the tower.
Plenty motivated now, the heroes Undertake a Perilous Journey through the forest towards the tower. Halfway there, Jonah and his eagle spot an Ogre making camp in the lee of a large stone. The party and the monster spot each other at the same time, and we have ourselves our first fight.
While the ogre charges forward, Jonah fires a volley of arrows at the monster, expending a lot of arrows. Trixie coats her arrows with Serpent's Tears and weakens the Ogre, but in order to get an effective shot she has to move into the monster's reach. Ivy transforms into a cougar (moves: claw & bite, run fast, climb trees)and leaps onto the ogre, spends all her hold to slash and claw the ogre, then transforms back into a halfling. The ogre grabs Ivy by the hair and swings her around like a flail, smashing her into Gregor and knocking the warrior away from him.
Uri botches his first attempt at Magic Missile and stuns himself as a flash of unformed magical energy bursts from his hands. (I chose to give him the Stunned condition and knock him prone rather than have him loose the spell). Jonah tries to jab the Ogre in his arm with his spear to get it to drop Ivy, but fails his roll, hitting and hurting the druid instead. Willem the bard sings an inspiring song to restore the wounded druid. Unfortunately, Willem's song is too inspiring, and the ogre himself feels refreshed (Willem rolled a 7 on Arcane Art).
Ivy is still in the grasp of the ogre, so she turns into a deadly plains scorpion (Moves: poison you, hide, glow in the dark) and prepares to sting the ogre. She's still grasped in the ogre's hand. To the other heroes it looks like she's magically disappeared. Uri finally gets a magic missile off (his missises look like little soviet-era rockets and leave little mushroom clouds when they hit), and blasts the ogre in the side. Gregor finally gets a solid hit in with his flail, and the beast goes down.
The victorious party scours the area, looking through the ogre's camp and checking the for signs of other monsters. Trixie finds a chest hidden under a pile of skins filled with coins and shards of blue crystal that glow like the blue tower and their gem. Uri fails his spellcasting roll for Detect Magic and gets stunned again by the influx of magical energy. Apparently the crystals have some powerful mojo! The ogre's camp also shows signs that he has some friends camping here with him.
Ivy and Jonah reconnoiter and spot two more ogres heading towards the camp. Thankfully, there is a river gorge between the camp and the ogres spanned by a single rickety bridge (“What here is useful to me?”). The party convenes at the bridge where Ivy turns in to an elephant (trample, break stuff, trumpet) and starts to destroy the bridge while the ogres throw rocks at them from the other side. Jonah and Trixie shoot arrows at the monsters. Uri botches YET ANOTHER spellcasting roll and another magic missile explodes in his hands. Now he's lost the spell and he's “shaky” on top of his previous “stunned.” He's had too much raw magic flowing through his body. A couple well-placed arrows send the ogres running, and the heroes decide to Make Camp and let the mage recover.
It's been a couple hours already, and I can already tell that we're probably not going to actually get into the tower for this one-shot, so I skip over any Take Watch rolls. Dawn comes, and the clouds from the tower have spread, blocking out the sun and casting the forest into perpetual twilight. As they approach the tower they encounter a lot of blasted trees, upturned boulders, and scattered debris. Eventually they come to a huge impact crater. The blue crystal tower stands in the center. There is only a single opening –at the base of the tower, surrounded with glowing alien script. In front of the opening is a pack of demon-worshiping Gnolls. The Miller family lays unmoving in a wooden cage atop a massive pyre. A Gnoll Emissary in man-skin robes chants in front of a crude altar then brings a burning torch towards the pyre and the captive humans. Four Gnoll Hunters kneel in homage, while a massive Gnoll Alpha with two battle-axes watches over the whole thing. None of them notice the PCs.
Trixie the thief sneaks her way into the gnoll ceremony, positioning herself behind the Emissary. Ivy transforms in to a mouse (hide, skitter, find cheese),sneaks over to the pyre, and begins to gnaw at the ropes holding the cage together. Jonah makes a Called Shot at the Emissary, hitting him in the head and stunning him before he can set the pyre alight. The battle begins!
Trixie Backstabs the Emissary, hurting him and shredding his man-skin robes (“reduce their armor until they repair it.”) Gregor engages the Hunters, crushing skulls with his flail and fighting his way towards the Alpha. Uri finally manages to get a spell off successfully and nukes another hunter, but makes himself a target. Arrows fly at the mage and he Defies Danger to duck for cover. Unfortunately, his backpack of books snags on a branch, and rather than lose his valuable tomes, he takes two shots to the back. (Hard Choice: You can get to cover, but you'll lose your books.)
By this time, the bard's player is asleep. We decide that Willem got too drunk and couldn't continue. Reality informs fiction informs reality.
The Emissary jabs its torch towards Trxie's face, the flames taking a sickly green color. Jonah fires another shot at the Emissary in an attempt to knock the torch out of his hand. He does, in fact, knock the torch out of the gnoll's hand, but it flips through the air and lands on the pyre. Flames spring up! (The player failed his Volley roll, so I gave him what he wanted, but made things worse.) Trixie rolls away and stabs a Hunter.
Ivy the mouse is now surrounded by flames. She transforms into Ivy the elephant and stomps out the flames then busts open the cage. Gregor engages the Alpha while Jonah drops the last Hunter. The Alpha drives his twin axes into Gregor's shoulders while the fighter's flail smacks the gnoll in the head, dislocating its jaw. The gnoll attempts to rip Grogor's arms off, but the flail Kelzig has a hidden spike in its shaft (Signature Weapon, versatile: close and hand). He jams the spike into the goll's neck, and the mighty beast falls.
Ivy drags the unconscious, bloodied, but alive Millers to safety while Uri and Jonah fire at the Emissary, weakening the shaman. Gregor leaps in to finish the gnoll. The Emissary drives his jagged flint knife into Gregor's open wounds while the fighter bashes him to death. The battle is won!
It was after 4am at this point, so we stopped there.
I had a blast. Overall, I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Ivy loved playing a super-versatile shapeshifting juggernaut of effectiveness. (She never failed a shapeshift roll, so I never got to hit her with the side effects of morphic abuse.) Jonah's player liked the easy mechanics, but he felt that the characters were too stereotypical. I explained that the game was, yes, designed play up classic D&D tropes, and if we had a longer game he'd see how the character would grow and make itself distinct. He understood that and said that he'd be willing to play DW again, except that all he's played for the last year has been medieval fantasy and wants to try a new setting.
So, I think Jonah, Trixie, Ivy, Gregor and I are going to try a season of Monsterhearts. After that, I'm going to push for Dungeon World again, because I really really loved it. In the mean time, I'm probably going to lean on my SKype group to let me run Dungeon World for them.