Author: Edward Hickcox

Hey, gang! I am starting a kind of sprawling West Marches campaign using Dungeon World. I am planning to have all the characters take the last leg of their trip to the Marches together, and I’m thinking of kicking things off with love letters to the characters. Complications: I don’t know what people are going to play, and I don’t know anything about their characters at all because they don’t even exist yet! I want to do this to create a sense that the campaign has already begun when we start, that there’s already history there.

So, my question is this: would you (or did you ever) write love letters to your characters for the first session? How did you or would you accomplish this?

Thanks!

Hugs and kisses,

Your GM

I’m currently thinking about House Rules for a DW Western Marches campaign. What are your favorite house rules and custom moves you’ve run into?

My current ideas involve loot abstraction, and encumbrance. I’m also considering using Advantage/Disadvantage though it seems a little OP.

Whatcha got?

So, I dropped Phillip Wessels Pack of Strays on my gaming group last night and got a few takers (we’re a large group, usually split into two games. There were three of us, so we decided to try kind of a collab/GM-less thing. That worked pretty well. The issues I had, and maybe we were playing it wrong (?) is that we started introducing other groups who had territories in the city — gangs, faeries, a death cult… and suddenly it wasn’t wolf against wolf anymore. It turned from a game of interpersonal conflict and power struggles to, essentially, Urban Shadows.

The main thing I noticed is that there’s not a mechanic for the GM to make any kind of move against the players, which was especially important in last nights run. Being new to PBTA type games, and having never played Lasers & Feelings or Monsterhearts before, I’m still getting used to the concept of just assigning harm in a conflict.

So, to sum up, my group really enjoyed the game, particularly having a populated city with lists of names and places and smells. I just found that if the conflict extends beyond the pack that things kind of break down. I think this could be really important, because with a pack in tension like this outside pressure could really up the ante.

Just my (and Chuck’s and Marc’s) two cents. So, six cents total. Thanks for the game, we had fun! Also, it’s got me wanting to write an PBTA werewolf hack now, so look for that in the future, I guess.

I’m starting a new DW game with my wife and a couple of friends next week, so I’m working on a dungeon for them. I’ve got a move for the steep and winding stairs leading to the Archive (a mystical place where all writing is recorded), and I’m using Jason Cordova’s excellent Labyrinth move for the maze in front of the Archive, and I have a list of riddles that the Guardian of the Archive requires before permitting entry. I’m at a loss, though, as to how to set up the Archive itself. Is it a vast and infinite place filled with floor upon floor of bookshelves, or is it a quaint little library that magically has the book you’re looking for at hand? What kind of custom moves should the Archive have? I’m thinking something that the user would roll on to see if they can find the work they’re looking for. Any thoughts?

So, my wife and I are talking the other day and she says, “I feel like I want to be someone else.” I say okay, and let it slide, because that’s kind of weird, but later she comes to me and says she’s figured out what that means. She wants to play an RPG. She’s played with me before, so that’s not unusual, and she hasn’t gotten to play since we moved eight months ago. She then goes spiraling out of control and, in collusion with one of her friends, decides that I’m going to be running this game. That’s fine, I’ve GMed for her and our friends before.

So, now I’ve got a few players who want to play unconventional D&D type characters (a Gnome medical student and a half-orc/half-ogre to start, I’m not sure what the third player is going to want to do) and a setting that popped into my head involving industrial steam-age technology (trains, dirigibles, radio) as well as magic. My question for you good people is what system do I run this in?

I’m comfortable running in D&D, Fate, DW, other PBTA games, and will try pretty much anything. I know that my wife prefers system-lite systems. Any thoughts?