Dungeon World 'Lite' (Help New GM)

(Skip to Bold for questions)

So, having gotten my hands on the pdf (finally), I have been really excited to try and get a game together for DW! My group has agreed, and given how open the toolset is I (maybe mistakenly) encouraged the players to be as open-minded as possible when coming up with character ideas, and really reaching for some high-fantasy stuff. I told them to put their character ideas out there before touching anything in the actual ruleset so that they could get characters that they have actually visualized, and could therefore better be roleplayed and participate in the narrative, helping to escape the D&D 3.0 slump within my group.

We actually come from a background of Vampire: The Masquerade and some other really dark games, yet one of my players asked me in all seriousness how heavy I wanted the game to be because we all have become a bit jaded with the intensely macabre vampire game. He then proceeded to ask me if he could play a Moogle from final fantasy: more particularly, a bard. Now, on face value I don't really have a problem with this and I went ahead and approved him for it, but stemming from this encounter I had a few questions that I hoped everyone could help me with.

First: how would a DW adventure 'lite' work? I just finished the 'Dragon with 16 hp' article and am trying to picture this character in a situation that involves serious danger, what are some tips for the kinds of ways I can keep danger/excitement in the game without it devolving into silliness?

Second: Was I wrong in allowing such a character (Moogle)? I figured I would slap on a racial move on him that would more or less make him immune to scenery damage and call it 'Too Fluffy To Hurt' or something like that, in flavor of these little creatures that get whacked around all the time but don't really seem to ever get hurt by it.

Anyways, maybe this is a bit too vague but I am looking for some direction, I want to run a pirate-esque high fantasy roleplaying game, and had originally envisioned the first game with them all at the hangman's noose and needing to make a daring escape! Does this need to change or is it alright? It doesn't bother me to have a 'lite' game, it would be a nice change, but can I still keep the drama?

Thanks in Advance!

Edit: Clarity in both title and a ridiculous run-on sentence.

I have no idea what a moogle is, but I would highly recommend you just pick playbooks and go through the character creation process. The character stuff can come from the GM questions during Bond creation. Give your player the Bard playbook and during Bonds, when the Player answers "This is not my first adventure with X" drill down. Ask oh, so you had another adventure with X? Where was this? What happened?" Then turn to X and ask a question like "Why were you on this crazy adventure? How do you feel about what went down?"

Starting at the hangman's noose seems fine.

I'm confused by some of your questions because it seems like you're going for silly with a move like "too fluffy to hurt," but then you want to avoid silliness.

Thanks for the reply, I am going to try to clarify; my post above is pretty jumbled up, and yours is helping me clean up my questions.

I don't think that giving him a background is going to be any trouble, and I really don't mind the game being an over-the-top game, but I want to know ways that I can reel in the silliness at times for a dramatic moment, or at least instill caution or fear in players even if the game has a silly line-up of misfits and strange characters. I guess it isn't so much a Dungeon World issue as it is I don't really know at what angle to attack this from, I'm really just a fish out of water when it comes to high fantasy. I have played a little bit of D&D 3.5, but am largely a storyteller for vampire and things like this. Will allowing a character that is pretty silly into the game hamper my ability to tell a gripping story as things progress? I know to some extent only actually playing will fully answer my questions, but I was hoping I could find some help in getting tips for a lighter feel without giving up the substance of roleplay.

I hope this helps clear things up, sorry about that.

Thanks for the advice on bonds, developing that should help me a lot in establishing the players amongst one another. Another detail might be that I plan on running for three players, with an inconsistent fourth in the mix.

An obvious way to avoid high fantasy and silliness is to tell your players, up front, that you're shooting for serious low fantasy.  The rules are really robust and you can totally play DW as serious fantasy.  Just ask them to support that tone and occasionally remind them.  Also, make harder hard moves, make them make harder choices.  Don't put their happy kingdom in peril, give them a chance to evacuate some children from their occupied ghetto.

Just for reference, this is a Moogle?

@noclue: Yes, that would be it! I wasn't sure about image posting, thanks for doing so. (I can barely handle forum chat!)

@mease19: Cool okay, so it sounds like you're saying I need to make it a point to increase drama in moments to help with the issue. Running a lower magic game could also help, at this point I have a ranger, cleric, and bard, supposing that they were the few among the 99% of nonmagical folk that could work as well to help frame things. Thanks, I will definitely talk this over with my players regarding drama and see whether or not he is actually interested in playing this character seriously or not.

No prob. What does "immune to scenery damage" mean?

Oh! It was just shorthand for any damage you would take from inactive scenery, i.e. from being thrown into walls, falling/leaping from a rooftop, any damage that would normally be caused by non-hazardous scenery. Things like spike traps, lava, and obviously hazardous materials would do damage as normal. Essentially, I drew from the idea of pets in anime and various cartoons where they can fall endlessly or get punted into a wall, and walk away with little more then a bump on their head. At present I have it set up as a cha+roll check, 6- take damage as normal, 7-9 Reduce the damage to one quarter, sustaining minor injuries, 10+ damage is negated.  That's the basic idea I had for the move when I set it up, but that at least shows the intended effect given situations. In other system terms it would help deal with subdual damage and/or different types of blundgeoning damage. *shrugs*

Well, if it's a racial move, then it would be easier to say "You're too fluffy to die. You are immune to damage caused by the environment." Racial moves are typically something that you can just do, it's not a roll.

Cool, thanks a lot for that correction. I editted it to read something like: "You're too fluffy to die. You're immune to scenery damage not caused by an obviously dangerous environment (i.e. lava, spikes, or poisonous gas)." If it seems too powerful I may rework it to reduce every roll on the damage check to 1.

I like it! The clarification is good; it makes it so they can't have lava baths or stuff like that.

Keep in mind that this is also a moogle:



Final Fantasy XII and the Tactics Advance games use that model, and they're basically tinker/forest gnomes with white plush pasted on top the serial numbers.

If that's the moogle your player has in mind, see what they think of this racial move:

Hurdy-Gurdy
Your instrument is a part-mechanical creation that gets away from you now and again, for good or ill. When you create an arcane musical effect and roll doubles, the effects apply to everyone or are otherwise wide-area.