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Dungeon World $10.00
Average Rating:4.6 / 5
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Dungeon World
Publisher: Burning Wheel
by Whitney M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/04/2013 12:45:42

Dungeon World Review Gygaxian Goodness or Mazes and Monsters?

Read the original review here: http://agameofwhits.blogspot.com/2012/12/dungeon-world-review.html

Summary

The newest foray into the fantasy dungeon crawler is Dungeon World, a game which emphasizes narrative flow and player participation for fast action and old-fashioned fun. It is based on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, and Dungeon World carries on the design aesthetic and accessibility that its source provided. It has a few bumps and minor issues in the rules, but these are dwarfed by the originality and loyalty to the feel of the original Dungeons and Dragons.

In-depth Read-through

In terms of the overall structure, Dungeon World has a nice artful introduction. The opening text immediately impresses the aesthetics of the game and a notable focus on the unique character each class in Dungeons and Dragons. A simple one-column design and legible fonts provide a clean look, if a little sparing. We can see the influence of the role-playing game as party game style, reminiscent of titles like Fiasco, in the accessibility and brevity of the what is role-playing section. This continues in the basic play section, which outlines the mechanics of what makes Dungeon World work. This is a nicely written section, but is badly in need of the basic moves cheat sheet being moved right to the start, so that we have a depiction of the moves before laying out mechanics that depend on them strongly.

Dungeon World, like Apocalypse World before it, runs on a core mechanic of player-facing, player-guided rolls, with a GM painting the landscape, foes, and supporting characters just ahead of the players, as well as pasting together any gaps in the narrative. Moves are the basic unit in this rule system, a set of bins into which an action is categorized before dice start rolling. This is not unlike many other games, but the mechanic is player-facing, actions in the game are focused on the player characters rather than round-based with a lot of NPC actions.

Further, a player essentially knows what the roll result means, based on the move they took. This shifts a lot of the work off the GM once you have players used to the system. It also gives the players a lot more freedom to shape the narrative.

On this core framework Dungeon World layers on the flavor and combat mechanics needed to evoke the flavor of dungeon-crawling without a huge rules infrastructure to support it. Almost all of these add interesting flavor to the game, like the awesome henchman mechanic which can help with player absence, a fun camping move, or the flavor of classic spell-casting differences between classes. A few fall a little flat and seem to clash with the simple flavor, like Alignment or Encumbrance. I see that the idea with alignment was to emulate the source material, but it feels like the moral restriction clashes with the free choice aesthetic in the game, and allowing Evil PCs is perhaps more problematic as they can earn XP by clashing with other players. Encumbrance, similarly, seems out of place. Why are we tracking every piece of equipment when most of us house-ruled it away in most D&D editions? These could be easily fixed with some house rules, and perhaps this is just my personal taste, but a few rules seem like odd additions. Overall the flavor added by these secondary mechanics are evocative and fun.

On the GM side we have a ton of advice on how to run the game. This is quite helpful if you are not used to running as more of an improvisational GM. The GM section guides you on what to worry about and what to not sweat. There is also a nice list which tells the GM what their moves should be. In practice you might not need this at all, as many GMs do these things naturally, but it can be helpful if you are lost or hit a writer's block in the middle of a scene.

A nice structuring tool called Fronts is also described. A front builds up multiple tracks of unfolding events which come to a dramatic conclusion. Its a good solution for a GM if their players have a tendency to meander when given a lot of plot control. This is further supported with advice on campaign design and some neat rules for populating a campaign world as the players move to a larger and larger scale. Similarly, monster building is given a thorough treatment with an eye toward challenging the party. There is also a beefy section describing all the beasties, followed by the loot you might "liberate" from their corpses.

Finally, we close out with a few forward-thinking sections that really make this product. The first covers how to hack the system to do different things, everything from how to make a special set-piece to an adventure with unique moves to make on it, to creating brand new moves and even classes from scratch. It's neat to see the authors taking time to explain their ideas and design philosophy, and its a cool nod to its progenitor, Apocalypse World.
We also have several appendices to aid play, but I'll focus on adventure conversion. What long-time gamer doesn't have a favorite dungeon delving quest they'd love to scrabble through one more time? It's great to have a very explicit guide on what to use from the Dungeon World book, what to convert wholesale, and what to recast or omit. I think this is a good example of a small amount of extra work giving exactly what the fans want.

Overall, I recommend Dungeon World for a new take on a well-worn genre, good for a quick night of fun or a full-fledged revisiting of a classic dungeon adventure.

Note that this review reflects the full 410 page book, rather than the open license or demo versions.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Dungeon World
Publisher: Burning Wheel
by Thomas P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/03/2013 20:13:29

Dungeon World is the RPG I've been looking for. I, personally, can't stand metagaming, number crunching, and rules lawyering. I have felt that a lot of RPG groups I've known have fallen into the "mechanics abyss" of their games and end up taking way too long to look up or dispute a rule. Certain games I play suffer this: Pathfinder, Shadowrun, D&D (only sometimes). I love those games. I love the atmosphere and fluff provided by them but I hate numbers. My group hates numbers. Halfway through most character creations they will give up and use a stock character and let's not mention creating a campaign and the all consuming time sink that can be. We just want to play the game. Enter Dungeon World.

Dungeon World can be set up and ready to go in about a half hour with a competent enough GM. You don't have to look through pages and pages of a character creation book, you don't have to bloody your palms climbing over the mountain of spells, there are no build points to count, and there are few numbers. This game gets right to the heart of what RPG's should be about. You know...the ROLE PLAYING! I am so happy with this system that I plan on using it for any game I pick up: Pathfinder, Shadowrun, D&D (only sometimes), because it's incredibly easy to take something from any other ruleset and apply it to Dungeon World or to take Dungeon World and apply it's rule system to any RPG. It might take some jimmy-ing and lateral thinking, but if you're already a role-player, then this should be easy, shouldn't it?

This book has a ton of potential within it. It even explains how to GM in a way that is excellent for beginner GM's. In fact, I think I learned the most on GM-ing through this book. It does have instances of confusing language and some parts I wish were more descriptive or had more detail. The character creation seems a little limited as well but these are easy fixes.

This rulebook alone could allow for some GM-less gameplay as well. Combine this with something like the Hyper Halflings Book of Lists and you have yourself a mini GM-less campaign.

Overall, it's simple and I like simple. Some of the most elegant things are simple things. The best 10 dollars I have ever spent on gaming.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Dungeon World
Publisher: Burning Wheel
by Justin S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/18/2012 12:38:45

I had a chance to try out the game with three players, one of whom really has very little gaming experience and the other two with a great deal of experience.

I made the decision not to distribute the list of "moves" to the players and instead just gave them their character sheets, and as we played, asked what they did in given circumstances. Depending on their character and the situation, I figured out which move applied, and simply asked them to make a roll. I then conveyed what happened using the appropriate move and we carried on that way. It was so freeing not to have players agonize over which "move" or "action" to take and instead imagine what was happening and react freely to it. This is the way role-playing games should work.

Interestingly enough, that freedom was a little overwhelming at first for players who are so used to being boxed in to 4e or most other RPGs, but as the game moved on, we managed to have a far more realistic fight scenes with the heroes in a knock down drag 'em out fight that would be painful to simulate in most other game systems.

I really enjoyed this rule set and I think if it seems incomplete that is only true in the most minor of senses. I have added "step down" damage dice for unarmed fighting (unless fists are your weapon as in the case of the fighter) and that's really the only other rule I've needed to add. Otherwise it's really up to your imagination.

For a fantasy role-playing game, Dungeon World is my new go-to game and I'm going to be hacking it to suit other settings as well.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Dungeon World
Publisher: Burning Wheel
by Anders N. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/03/2012 03:05:43

This is a good product - I do think the presentation is rather shaky, and some of the rules are "game changey" more in a show-off sort of way than in a really useful sense, but overall I think it was a good read for me.

I would recommend this if you are an experienced role player, especially a GM, as I think the book has a lot of good ideas and a thought experiments that might improve your way of GM:ing and playing. If you'll do it with this system or not doesn't really matter, in my opinion.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Dungeon World
Publisher: Burning Wheel
by Buck P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/30/2012 15:45:16

This game feels a little like it's unfinished and was rushed to publication, but because the rules are Creative Commons I love this. It leaves a lot of room for people to modify and create their own rules for the system which they can then publish. The writers sound like they know what they are doing and the artwork is professional. I don't think this game would be good for newbies since the rules are pretty vague in parts which will surely trip them up. While reading the monsters all I could imagine were new GM's using the descriptions to wipe out party after party. The loose free flowing form of this game absolutely screams out to be used with the GM less system in Mythic and they would be a perfect marriage. I would recommend this game for experienced role players and for people looking for a system to build their own game/campaign/system off of because it has the best licence yet for something of this caliber.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Dungeon World
Publisher: Burning Wheel
by Bruce B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/30/2012 14:00:09

What an amazing, delightful game this is. It really captures the feeling of the best parts of dungeon crawling as I remember it from being an enthusiastic teen new to everything in rolegaming, and so much that introductions promised me but games never quite delivered. It's one of the most satisfying action adventure-oriented games I've played in ages, providing enough emotional foundation to make the characters interesting, engaging people without losing the feel of bold competent people doing exciting things well.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Dungeon World
Publisher: Burning Wheel
by Emanuel M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/30/2012 12:34:08

This is a game changer in the very truest sense of the word. A great game with one of the most elegant rules systems I've ever played. The rules get out of the way of telling a great story and allows players to become the heroic characters that they have always wanted. It is a little hard at first to really 'unlearn' the habits picked up by playing tabletop rpgs for years. The Apocalypse World engine games are all amazing but I had some reservations if a storytelling game could handle battle heavy settings like fantasy. It does, and it does it well. The limitations are literally the players imaginations. If you or your players just want to say 'I attack' then role dice, this game will not be very satisfying as the rules are not mechanics for actions so much as a way of resolving story. However if your players want to say things like "my thief grabs the arm of the goblin as he tries to stab me and I spin him around in a choke hold with MY dagger on his neck and tell the other goblins to stop" well then this is the game for you. It is not only possible, but this kind of gaming is made easy by the rules. (my 10yr old girl did this exact move and rolled a success.)

ALSO: Sage Kobold Productions has taken a brilliant move in including an epub version of this book. I now have the rule book on my Android phone. This is how games should be made, in pdf for tablets or laptops AND epub for mobile devices or e-readers. Imagine a world where everyone has dice, character sheets and rule books in there pockets. Well we are one step closer with this.

I not only recommend buying this, I highly recommend buying a gift copy for someone. It's that good.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Dungeon World
Publisher: Burning Wheel
by David J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/30/2012 12:33:09

Love it!

It takes all that rules-lawyering and throws it out the window. No more worries about initiative and rounds. It steps back to days before D&D 3e and Pathfinder and digs into the story of the game. Put your d20s away because they're just not used.

Definitely not for everyone but it is a role playing system, not a rules system. Been interested in Dungeon World since the end of the Kickstarter when a good friend told me that he KS'd it. Picked up my copy as soon as it was available here. It's a fun system. Takes a little bit to get used to not playing like Pathfinder (our standard system). But it was well worth the time and we really enjoyed it. Can't wait for our next "off" session to try it again.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Dungeon World
Publisher: Burning Wheel
by Jeremy S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/17/2012 19:36:38

This is my favorite iteration of the Apocalypse Rules so far, it is a great Resource of gm advice for any system or setting. the rules of the game support exciting in game story telling and let you focus on sharing a living breathing campaign full of danger and excitement with your players.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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