[Dreadful Worlds] Brainstorming & Developement

What happens to your narrative, for instance, when they meet the Mentor only to then kill him before he can impart his wisdom?

And herein lies the rub - it's not your (singular) narrative but your (plural) narrative (i.e. both you and your players). Your agenda as the MC is not to tell a particular story in which the players partake, but rather to play to find out what story unfolds.

I can clearly see your point of critic. I am never intending to enfore the law of a premade narration on the palyers, thats boring railroading and is contradicting the structure of AW. For example, I read the Adventure Servants of the Cinder Queen yesterday (DW Adventure by James Lutes) and liked how the different constructed Characters had a fluent motivation and devellopement curve, while the players could interact with them, or simply not. For me its about making the narration for a character consistant, not static, so the palyers could kill of the Mentor. But that would have more consequences than just missing information but be an important choice that alters the course of the adventure. Its for me about networking and interaction of the PC and NPS, each significant NPC will have some waypoints, which I use the points of the Journey, to flesh that out.

I realised by defending my choice of Campbell`s Work as a base of Designing my Games, which parts are usefull and which not. THanks for the critiques on my notes and sketches so far!

I'm familiar with the basics of Carl Jung's personality theory and the basic idea behind Campbell's monomyth. I agree with the critique of Campbell, but I am still curious about your project enough to follow this thread when I visit this forum.

I really like some of your covers. But, as a former full-time graphic designer, I'd caution against the temptation of making your prototypes for your game polished or pretty in appearance, because that will raise expectations of your play testers, which is not good for an unfinished project that still (if normal) has many flaws to work on. This was advice from a published tabletop game maker that I took to heart.

It also is premature to toy around with the visuals at this stage. Wait until it is done and you know exactly what you have to offer so you can convey it accurately -- or at least don't show off your covers beforehand.

EDIT: Also, on one of your covers it says "and building an civilization underground." That should be "and building a civilization underground."

I disagree. In my experience (of games), people are more willing to check out a playtest that has nice art or layout. And even if they ARE disappointed by the rules, they are more likely to follow it through its development and be willing to help. I would probably even say that no single thing gets more eyes on an rpg product than art does (unless maybe you can say it's D&D).

Agreed.  It may be a sad fact for those of us with little visual arts talent, but it's true that no amount of clever writing can make as immediate an impression as a piece of art.

When I write pitch documents for corporate clients, I always follow 2 art rules:
1. include pictures, especially on the cover.
2. if you can get the client's logo in there, do it.

This is just as true when I write 10 pages as when I write 200 pages.

But that said, don't let artistic idealism stand in the way of the design work.  That's putting the art-before-the-horse. :-) 

Hi, well, I never hide that I am a terrible writer :D I do not even have full language skills in english but that dont prevent me from messing with it, anyway. And I devellope things visually first, thats just the way my brain works.

Here is Characterclass sketch:
The Praetorian

Ok, I am back, actually I was never gone.
Dreadfull World has undergone some important changes. For first, I wanted to reintroduce some more competative skills regarding conflickt solving and combat, as it is something I always liked to be more tactical. This is a bit contradicting to the core rules of moves but lets see what will result.

I think of Campbell's monomyth not as a track to follow, but as a rhythm which good stories flow through, each in their own unique way. 

Instead of "What's the next step?", the question becomes "What does the story need or want right now?" the answer to which is often something from the monomyth.
E.g: The characters are daunted by the obstacles in front of them => push a potential mentor across their path, or have an existing NPC drop some helpful advice into the conversation. 
E.g. The NPCs have been playing it straight for a while => might be time to throw a Trickster into the mix to stir things up.

NB: the answer may also be something much more mundane like giving richer descriptions, making sure everyone is playing the fiction not the rules, or weaving n a story thread that has been lying around.

The other thing that I find helpful sometimes is recognizing which phase of the monomyth the players are in and responding accordingly.

Can you build a game out of this - I'm not sure.  The monomyth is broadbrush meta-game stuff (e.g. Hollywood uses Campbell's work to critique and improve potential scripts, rather than write them from scratch), which makes it better suited to GM tools than player mechanics.

But if you can work out how to weave the monomyth into the character end mechanics of your game in a way that's fun to play...