So let me say first off that running DW was one of the most fun I have ever had while playing a tabletop RPG. I really enjoyed the way that DW requires roleplaying instead of merely rolling dice, and it worked much better than I ever could have hoped with my group. Last night was my first time ever as a DM, although I’ve been in a player in tabletop RPGs before. I was nervous about improvisation, so I had a dungeon “prepared”, but I didn’t use a word of it. My players kept us in action constantly. I know I made plenty of mistakes in handling some of the situations that arose, but it sounded like everyone had fun so I definitely consider it a success.
First I’ll describe the characters, which were a Mage, Priest, Templar, and Bard (I used the Alternative Playbooks since they looked more fun). The Mage, a neutral human, had the spell focus “The Clock.” I realized later that I allowed him to do a few probably OP things, like performing a resurrection by turning back time. I don’t want to ruin the Last Breath move or make the game too easy by at-will resurrection, so I will have to come up with a solution about that. Next was the Priest, a lawful human, who was played by someone completely new to RPGs. We decided that he was a priest of Cthulhu, which in this world was a doomsday cult that wasn’t taken seriously, much like Scientology. The Templar, a lawful dwarf, chose to be in the cult of Cthulhu as well, and we decided that he was protecting/fostering the Priest, who was a new initiate into the religion. Finally, the Bard, a chaotic human, had grown up in the cult of Cthulhu as well and had strong ties to both the Priest and Templar.
I used the starting prompt that I found somewhere, “You’re in a swamp and have just buried a sword into the chest of the king’s nephew. Why, and what did the scroll he dropped say? What member of the king’s household saw all this?” The Templar immediately said, “I saw that he had gills, and I stabbed him.” We worked out that gills were a sign of an enemy cult, the cult of Dagon, and the Templar was sworn to kill anyone in that cult on sight. The Mage decides that he can fix the mistake by reversing time if the rest of the party wants. Everyone agreed, because they wanted to either convert the nephew or find out more about his cult. I let the Mage essentially resurrect the nephew, which might have been allowing too much, but it sounded like it would be a lot of fun.
The Mage rolled an 8, so I allowed the nephew to resurrect, but he was going to have a gigantic hole in his chest from the sword thrust, which is going to be very conspicuous. The Templar held down the nephew so he couldn’t run away. During this time the Mage picked up the scroll that the nephew dropped, which he realized was a gigantic land deed, and by decree of the king whoever held the deed owned the land. The Templar used his Inquisition move on the nephew and found out that the nephew was bringing the deed to the Greyjoys, a neighboring island kingdom. It was a secretive deal that the nephew didn’t know much about, but something serious was going down. The players also found out that the nephew’s father was the high priest of Dagon, and the king did not know. After questioning (torturing) him, the Templar stabbed the nephew again and killed him. The Bard began composing a song on the spot about the twice-dead nephew of the king, but everyone else told her to stop singing or someone else would hear.
Next, the players dealt with the member of the king’s household that ran away. They decided that she was a fat midwife who couldn’t run quickly. The Mage casts a slowing spell on her from a distance, and got a partial success, which I ruled meant that half of her body was slowed and the other half wasn’t. So she was run/limping away, probably tripping all over herself. The Bard ran after her and was easily able to drag her back to the party. At this point, the Mage says he’s bored of the rest of the party and wants to put himself into stasis for 10 minutes, basically projecting himself 10 minutes into the future (we ruled at this point that the limit of his at-will time magic is 10 minutes in the past or future). He succeeds.
So the Priest decides that instead of killing the midwife, he’s just going to make her crazy using an invocation (madness is the domain of Cthulhu!) so that no one believes her story. I mean, it’s already ridiculous, right? Random travelers stab the nephew of the king in cold blood, resurrect him, torture him, and the kill him again? Unfortunately, the Priest fails his check. I rule that he succeeds in causing the midwife to become mad, but she is also transformed into a hideous monster, basically something that looks like an Illithid. Battle time! After the party trades a few blows with the monster, the Mage reappears and says “Seriously guys!? I’m gone for ten minutes and you summon a demon? Guess I have to clean up for you again…”
A few more hijinks occurred, such as the Bard breaking her rapier and the Mage using time magic to repair it. The Templar eventually wrestled the monster to the ground, but the Bard tries to get one last hit in, fails, and accidentally kicks the Templar in the head. This would have usually rendered him unconscious, but he triggered the move Unrelenting and finished his objective of choking out the monster, before he passes out from the kick. The Priest asks for healing from Cthulhu, succeeds, and I rule that all party members regain all their HP, although the Templar will have an Intelligence disability for a little while from the kick to the head. The Templar’s clothes are covered in blood from stabbing the nephew (twice!), and it is past the ten minute limit for the Mage, so he can’t regress the clothes back to the way they looked originally.
The party decides that they are going to bring the land deed to the Greyjoys, as the nephew had originally been intending to do, and investigate what this secretive deal between the two kingdoms might be. They head down the road toward the next town. It’s getting late, and they find an inn. The innkeeper notices the Bard and invites her in, for free room and board. The Bard says she’ll perform some of her best songs if the innkeeper allows her friends to stay for free, along with some new clothes for the Templar. She rolls a Parley and succeeds.
Everyone has a few drinks in the inn before the Bard’s performance. The Mage sees one of the bar wenches put something in another customer’s drink. The drink didn’t belong to any of the members of the party, but the Mage goes over and talks/flirts with her anyway. After some impressive failures from the Bard’s performance, the Priest’s failed attempt to Lead the Flock, and several more failures, everyone in the entire inn is severely upset at the party and is blocking the door. The Mage drunkenly yells, “HEY! That LADY put SOMETHING in THAT guy’s DRINK!!!” and points at the bar wench, all at the worst possible time. The Templar tackles him and tries to calm everyone down, saying that the party was just going to leave peacefully. There were a few more successful rolls, so I allowed the party to leave the inn, but it was dark outside, and the town was small, so that was the only inn.
They decide to continue walking down the path, even though it’s dark. After an hour, they decide to sleep on the road. The Mage says that he’ll try to condense their sleeping from eight hours to two hours, using a time bubble. He fails the roll, so I tell him that he’s unsuccessful but thinks he cast the spell so well that it condensed eight hours into one minute. No one is on watch because the Mage is convinced that he cast the spell so well. The Bard asks, “Well, is this road dangerous anyway?” And I said, “I don’t know, what dangers did you hear about from the people in the town?” The Mage says, “Wights.” So I went with wights.
Cue a dark, sleepy battle with wights that invade the camp. I won’t go through all the details, but battle is just so much fun in DW. I made each failed roll snowball spectacularly. The Priest got wrapped in his bedroll while trying to get out, and he was stabbing the wight in front of him with his trident (instead of spikes the trident had tentacles for the Cthulhu theme) from inside his bedroll. The Bard tried to roll away from the wights and ended up rolling all the way down the hill. Eventually the party decides they are overpowered, and they are barely able to grab most of their stuff as they run away.
The end goal of the party is to get to a port town so they can travel to the island of the Greyjoys. We decided that the port city of Greatport is about two day’s journey away. I trigger the “Undertake a Perilous Journey” move. The trailblazer fails his roll, so I tell him that he tried to take a shortcut through the mountains that will actually take double the time. The quartermaster fails his roll, so I tell him it will take double the rations to make the journey due to the difficult terrain. This means that each party member must have eight rations, which they didn’t have. The Templar says that he hides how many rations he has from the party and shares his food so that they have enough. This triggers the Unrelenting move, and he will take a disability when they reach their objective.
The scout in the party partially succeeds on his roll, so I tell him that he sees a narrow mountain pass ahead with a watchtower on top of the pass. The Priest asks Cthulhu whether they should brave the pass or not, but he fails his check. So I tell the Priest that he was so intent on his prayer that he just kept walking into the pass alone. The rest of the party quickly follows. They’re committed. I won’t go through all the details since this is already really long, but they see archers above them that begin shooting arrows. After some spells, invocations, being hit by arrows, running, being cut off, and singing to the enemy, the party makes it through the pass and eventually to the city of Greatport.
Some minor adventures in Greatport occur. The Mage and the Priest visit a brothel. The Templar collapses in an inn with the Bard. After resting for a long time, the party tries to find a ship that will take them to the Greyjoys. Unfortunately, there are rumors of war between the Greyjoys and the kingdom that Greatport is a part of, so no ships will take them directly there. They also have no money, having used it all to buy lodging and more rations. The Templar and Mage argue with a ship captain (going to another port that’s closer to the Greyjoys) that they can protect the ship from sea monsters if attacked. At this point, I give the players a choice: do they want a sea adventure or a dungeon adventure? They can either loot a local dungeon to make enough money to have an uneventful sea journey, or they can have free passage on the ship but something dangerous is going to happen. The players opt for a sea adventure.
I still triggered the “Undertake a Perilous Journey” move, even though it was reasonable that the ship’s crew would be scouting, trailblazing, etc. The Priest, as the party’s scout, rolls a partial success, so I tell them that they see a Kraken writhing in the water in the distance, and they have enough time to decide to either divert the ship to another port, farther away, or to try to get past the Kraken. They mentioned sea monsters, so I was going to give them a sea monster! The Templar intimidated the captain into attacking the Kraken. And thus started the sea battle. Again, I won’t describe everything, but there were cannons (we decided that gunpowder existed but was very rare, so they only had three shots), the Kraken trying to wrap itself around the ship, and the party members desperately trying to swipe at it as they passed (no one took ranged weapons). Eventually they drove the Kraken away but did not kill it.
And finally they arrive at another port city, from which they hope to get to the Greyjoy kingdom. At this point we called it a night, since we had been playing almost six hours without realizing it. All of the players loved the system and want to continue playing it at least another week. We already have some great plot hooks: the king’s brother being a high priest of Dagon and potentially infiltrating the throne, the land deed that might give the party untold wealth but also might expose that they killed the nephew of the king, war between the Greyjoys and Greatport, and a secretive deal between the Greyjoys and the “local” king. I am even more amazed that this was literally all improvisation, most of it from the players themselves. I’m truly excited to see where the story will go.
[I'm also interested in ideas for the campaign, comments, criticism of my choices as DM, whatever!]