Dungeon World: Is PBP possible?

  • 3 Replies
  • 4626 Views
Dungeon World: Is PBP possible?
« on: April 21, 2014, 06:08:38 AM »
Hi All,

I've been reading through the Dungeon World book lately, and become inspired to run something in the style of D&D, but without D20 mechanics, which DW seems ideally suited for. My problem is that I don't seem to have regular face to face group time, nor even Skype/Google Hangout/whatever. So, I'm wondering how difficult Dungeon World would be to run in a PBP format?

My instinct says it probably won't work too well, but then again there seem to be large descriptive passages punctuated by occasional dice rolls, so it isn't impossible. Has anybody tried this? Did it work, and if so were there any tricks to make the PBP format flow a little more smoothly?

Thanks

*

noclue

  • 609
Re: Dungeon World: Is PBP possible?
« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2014, 03:28:04 AM »
Should I even check? Okay...oh, look this was posted on RPG.net last August
James R.

    "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
     --HERBERT SPENCER

Re: Dungeon World: Is PBP possible?
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2014, 10:17:30 AM »
I've never played DW in a PbP format, but I think that it could work very well with a little modification: the GM makes all the rolls. In this way the player is free to write about their characters and the GM doesn't have to wait for the roll. Otherwise the action could slow down a lot when dice rolls are needed.

Example:
-Player: I do A and B
-GM: ok, so (rolls +X and +Y) it happens this and that. What do you do?
-Player: well, now I do blah blah blah
Is better than:
-Player: I do this and that
-GM: ok, roll +X
-Player: I got 9
-GM: Well it happens this, now roll +Y
-Player: I got 11
-GM: good, it happens that. What do you do?
-Player: well, now I do blah blah blah

Re: Dungeon World: Is PBP possible?
« Reply #3 on: June 06, 2014, 11:49:27 AM »
I'm actually playing in a DW PbP at the moment on the Paizo forums, and generally it's working out well (although, as with all PbPs, it's going a little slowly). The way we handle it is: we say what we're doing, and roll dice preemptively when it feels like a move is being made. If one post contains multiple moves, we roll as many times as needed (although obviously we don't want to do this too much, since some bad rolls could put us in a spot where we can't or don't want to do the things we say we wanted to do).

There's also a bit of (un)learning to do for some of the players, since some of them are playing DW for the first time, having mostly played Pathfinder (at least on those forums).