Gone Adventurin'

Last night myself and three of my friends tried out Dungeon World. Normally Wednesday night is either Dresden Files (FATE) or Firefly (Cinematic Unisystem); on alternating weeks. This week our very,very busy DFRP GM wasn't available, he's all artsy and has a killer job, and our Firefly GM didn't have prep done, so a quick couple of texts and a late bus journey from work later we were sitting around my kitchen table looking at the character sheets, everyone deciding what they were going to play and me starting to take some notes of things people were saying, just idle chat; and draw the start of our simple map.

Three and half hours later and we were finishing up, what for me at least, has been one of the most satisfying high fantasy GM'ing experiences of my gaming life. The whole night was whirlwind of ideas coming from all corners, during character creation we established some fantastic stuff about the world, a list of some of these ideas is below:

• There is a kingdom ruled by the coastal city of Rivenhold
• Rivenhold has an army that employs assassins and spies in it's ranks
• Ironhill is a keep which provides protection to the village of Harren
• A river runs by both Harren and the town of Mayhill on the way to Rivenhold
• Mayhill has cornered the market on a root called Goldenroot, used in medicines and poisons alike
• Mayhill is situated on the edge of the marsh where this root grows in abundance
• There is a swarm of shark toothed, fungus infected, psychotic elves moving from the hills in the northeast to the southwest, following the river
• These elves eat anything living, humans, trees, roots, animals
• They sometimes drag prey away, to some unknown fate
• There is a Rite that can control the currents of the sea to some extent

These facts all came out of questions I asked the players, just their answers created all of these lovely details. This is the result of my friend's boundless creativity married with the Apocalypse Engine, which Dungeon World runs on. I've run both this and Apocalypse World and in both cases a vivid living world of moving ideals, people and environments just pops out, it's really very satisfying.

In our party we have Selena The Thief (possibly Catwoman inspired), Loughlan The Ranger and Aziz The Druid. They have already through play established some very cool facts about themselves and behaviours, Selena is adept at hit and run tactics, poison and fighting the enemy unseen; Loughlan is very protective of his do Thorn, he put himself in danger to save the dog rather than running, he's also something of a marksman with his bow and a little bit of a conman; Aziz is almost nature incarnate, he took the form of a Gorilla, an Albatross, a Turtle and a Milksnake, flitting from one form to the next as naturally as one breathes, he also has a deep hatred of the unnatural.

This all came so naturally, flowing from questions and moves, with mechanics rarely actually breaking the flow of play. Two of our group had already played Apocalypse World, so were pretty familiar, Aziz's player took to the game like a duck to water despite not having played the style before. I found that with no prep per se and little control over the direction of the game I was free to focus on the immediate and play to the themes presented naturally. In giving up control I got to enjoy it more.

What new myth will we create?

Rules of the Game

I've said before that I'm a big fan of games, pen and paper roleplaying games are my game of choice, though boardgames run a very close second. I've run through my gaming history before so I won't do it again here, I'll get sick of hearing myself speak on the same things. Recently I've made a somewhat seismic shift in how I play roleplaying games in terms of being a PC and a GM.

It started about 18 months ago when I started listening to two podcasts, the first is The Walking Eye and the second is The Jank Cast. Up until I started listening to these casts I had played in an almost completely mechanical sort of way, nothing wrong with this per se but it wasn't what I nor what my regular group of friends and gamers were looking for. We were playing all sort of different games, mostly of the non-indie and non-story driven variety, but we were always looking for a good story. Now I have to say that two of the regular GMs in our gaming group are masters of the epic yarn, very good with prep and great a weaving our characters into the narrative of the prep they've done. They're really great at working with the awful wrenches PCs tend to throw into plans as well. A third GM I've only had the pleasure of playing in a couple of her games but she's exceptional at building atmosphere into her scenarios through lots of research and prep beforehand.

Despite my relatively academic nature I suck at prep for roleplaying games, I've always found that the more I prep the more stilted a session will feel, I also suck at weaving big stories for people to inhabit. My strength has usually been in dealing with unexpected ideas and letting players take the lead, introducing and reintroducing vague overarching antagonists for my group. I've always felt more comfortable with this sort of GM style, I also used to love simulationist-ish games as well or gamist games with lots of balance. My need for emergent story and my love for these sorts of rulesets didn't gel overly well. I GM'ed my share of 3.x D&D and 4e, I liked the combat in 4e quite a lot in fact, but I couldn't do the prep necessary for these games to float. I GM'ed a Planescape game using Mutants and Masterminds 2e with the Warriors and Warlocks content, it worked sort of but I ended up letting it slide away, much to the chagrin of the people playing in it (sorry by the way).

Then through the above mentioned podcasts I found two pretty awesome games, the first being The Dresden  Files game using FATE, where your background and history inform the themes of the game, the group work together on world building and your traits as a character can be compelled in game to affect them. I thought this was awesome! The whole game works toward weaving a narrative inside the themes that you as a group build. Neat stuff this, but the prep side brought me down again, I love playing this game but running it doesn't really fall in my skillset as a GM, one of the other regular GMs has it down though, his game is great!

The other game and indeed system I suppose is Apocalypse World and the attached engine, basically zero prep beyond a few between game notes, pickup in an evening and begin playing inside an hour and importantly the rules and role of the GM are defined in such a way as to be an engine of creation for emergent story. The shift for me has been from trying to balance and simulate to simply pushing and prodding players into making the story for themselves. This game has already produced what have been some of the most memorable moments of GM'ing for me. I'll probably do a post on those moments later this week in fact. 

I've run over word count by quite a bit...