Clarence (Mechanic), Gary (Templar), and Ovid (Mage) woke up with no memory and a collapsing shadow tunnel – to flee to the green or white light. With a bit of floundering, and a time spell, they were able to flee the tunnels.

Clarence, Gary, and Ovid appeared in a small cavern with a young coupled going at it hot and heavy. Gary insisted that he march them to their parents and they reluctantly came along – the father chastised the girl and the boy slinked away; the PCs learned a bit more about the city and headed to the Guild district.

There we encountered another mechanic, Harold (name?), who wanted to collect on Gary’s debt but first was going to beat Gary a little. Ovid interceded, offering to cast a spell to improve Harold’s ability to work. Harold was willing to listen but demanded that Ovid promise to pay back the 200 coin in a month.

Ovid agreed, and Harold was willing to accept the casting of the spell as well. Ovid opted to cast a different spell, such that one month for Harold would in fact be 6 months. The spell failed, and Harold was frozen in place with ample attention drawn.

Gary demanded it be corrected and Ovid attempted to undo his spell via another spell…it worked, but would only last for a little bit. So Ovid, Gary, and Clarence bid a hasty farewell.

The characters made it to another shop and met Justin – a talkative mechanic – who was trying to capitalize on Clarence’s failed memory; Justin obviously wanted to get to Clarence’s shop first. Justin also made mention of a tomb that could be looted. Clarence insisted that he trapped his shop. The GM called for a roll to see if there truly was a set trap – Clarence rolled a 9. So Ovid decided to give aid by casting a spell to let past-Clarence know to set a trap.

The spell failed! And the GM pocketed that failure.

Eventually Gary convinced Justin to take them to Clarence’s shop. At the shop doors, Clarence went to open the front door and it exploded. Again Ovid cast a spell to slow the explosion down…and it work, but people were noticing. Clarence’s armor was still intact.

Now to get some help looting a tomb. A call was sent out to plunder the tomb and offering a share of the treasure, and the character’s hired Laureck and Walt, an elf guide and human warrior respectively.

And back to Justin’s for working out details of getting to the tomb. It turns out its 2 weeks away but fortunately Justin was going to front the cost of the expedition.

We cut the session short as Matt was suffering from a rather nasty sinus infection induced headache.

Player Characters

Since the characters were on laminated sheets, I’m recording them here.

Clarence (Mechanic)

Curious Eyes, Jumpsuit, Grease-stained Skin, Lanky Body; Strength 8, Dexterity 13, Constitutino 12, Intelligence 16, Wisdom 15, Charisma 9; Armor 3; Drive: Unfettered Mayhem; Specialization: Research & Development; Suit: Wallflower – Energy Cannon, Arachnoid, Jumper, Covered Cockpit; Bonds: I let Gary pilot my suit once. Never again. Gary keeps dinging up my paint job. Ovid helped me put my suit back together. Ovid is my personal assistant; Equipment: Adventuring gear, Bandages, Head of a shovel. XP: 5.

Gary (Templar)

Harsh eyes, Helmet, Worn holy symbol (a Square), Bulky body; Strength 15, Dexterity 8, Constitution 16, Intelligence 9, Wisdom 12, Charisma 13; Armor 3; Alignment: Good; Race: Dwarf; Bonds: Ovid’s misguided behavior could be a problem. I want to take Clarence under my wing. I won’t take any flak from Clarence. They need to know their place. (Needs 2 bonds). Equipment: Longsword and shield, Templar’s armor, Dungeon rations, Spare pistol, Antitoxin from mother. XP: 5

+1 Forward with Justin (a rambling mechanic)

Ovid (Mage)

Wild hair, worn robes, thin body, and impossibly old (180 or so); Strength 8, Dexterity 9, Constitution 12, Intelligence 16, Wisdom 13, Charisma 15; Alignment: Good; Race: Human;  Bonds: I have shown Clarence the power of the arcane arts. I suspect Gary fears what they do not understand. Clarence knows the secret to my powers. Spell Focus: the Clock, Aligned: Flow of time and stoping aging and movement, erode to dust; Counterspell. Equipment: leather armor, bronze torque , staff, one healing potion, large bone key. XP: 5

So I began work on a Dungeon World Campaign Playbook – a printable, ready to saddle stitch booklet. To create your own, make sure you can do 2-sided printing. For my cover page, I grabbed some super heavy paper stock.

Scribus layout of Dungeon World Campaign Playbook

Considerations

As I see it, there are five prime real estate pages:

• Front Cover
• Inner front cover and first page
• The middle of the book, where the saddle stitching occurs
• Inner back cover and last page
• Back Cover

Another thing that I considered is that the inner pages of a saddle stitched book can easily be removed without adversely affecting the book. In the current iteration, I have Fronts occupying this position, but you could just as easily add blank sheets of paper in the middle.

Go ahead and download Dungeon World Campaign Playbook.

They most certainly would have a place in a Dark Heart of the Dreamer campaign, a Dungeon World love letter to Planescape.

Dungeon World by Adam Koebel and Sage LaTorra

The core classes, except for the Barbarian are presently available at dungeon-world.com/character-sheets. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

• Barbarian
• Bard
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Thief
• Wizard

Adventures on Dungeon Planet by Johnstone Metzger

Included in this retro-sci-fi sourcebook are four playbooks. Available at Lulu. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

• Earthling - an adventurer out of time and space
• Engine of Destruction – a robotic destroyer wreaking havoc upon its enemies and tearing cities down around it.
• Mutant – a physically unstable shapeshifter
• Technician – influencer of both man and machine through the power of science

Inverse World by Jacob Randolph

Presently fully only available via the Inverse World kickstarter. Though there is a partially redacted PDF preview available.

• Captain – a high-flying airship owner
• Lantern – a warrior-diplomat of the sun
• Mechanic – an inventive sort with a technological wonder; Think Tony Stark/Ironman
• Sky Dancer – able to swim through the sky
• Survivor – scarred from the aftermath of their cataclysm
• Walker – a master of parkour and acrobatics

Alternate Dungeon World Playbooks by Jacob Randolph

Available at RPGNow as a bundle of four classes. The Mage, Priest, and Templar are inspired by the Wizard, Cleric, and Paladin but remove the last vestiges of D&D magic.

• Artificer – a tinkerer, inspired by the Eberron Artificer class.
• Mage – power derived from spell foci
• Priest – power from the gods; you are a leader of your flock
• Templar – smite the heretics and drive your allies to push even harder for your cause

Individual Playbooks at RPGNow

I believe all of these playbooks are under some Creative Commons License, which means they are yours to tweak and modified and even redistribute. Though some may come with RPGNow watermarks.

You’ll also want to checkout what bundles are available.

• Cultist by Jacob Randolph -  your words have more power than those of lesser beings.
• Dashing Hero by Jacob Randolph - you outshine all other adventurers, at least in style
• Fae by Adrian Theon - trick and beguile your enemies
• Fool by Adrian Theon – bumble through adventures
• Giant by Adrian Theon - tower over others
• Initiate by Josh Krutt – Master of unarmed combat.
• Medic by Jacob Randolph - a healer that could be a pacifist or a mad doctor 
• Mountebank by Jeremy Friesen - Everyone wants to believe something, and you capitalize on that.
• Namer by Fünhaver Industries – command true names to control the world around you
• Shaman by Fünhaver Industries – followers of the old path of blood and sacrifice
• Spellslinger by Adrian Theon - a combination of fast and deadly wand combat, and wild west lone gunman antics.
• Warlock by Fünhaver Industries - powered by dark pacts, you’ve sold your soul for something great
• Witch by Jacob Randolph - a potion brewing spellcaster with dark and forbidden magicks at her command

Compiled Freely Available Playbooks by James Myers

Compiled by James Myers, these are various available playbooks. The attribution is a work in progress, and some are possibly earlier versions of those that are available at RPGNow.com.

• Artificer
• Assistant
• Barbarian
• Charlatan
• Drider
• Gladiator
• Grave Knight
• Fortune Teller
• Leader
• Initiate
• Namer
• Noble
• Psion
• Shaman
• True Friend

• True Knight

• Warlock

And last but not least, nerdwerd’s Dungeon World resources.

What follows is my use of Inverse World playbooks, but does not necessarily reflect the Inverse World campaign setting.

Tonight, I ran a quick one-shot scenario for four players. And for one of the players, I believe it was their first table top RPG session.

We had:

• Malakhai – a Survivor that had endured the wrath of an angry Sola.
• Jordan – a Priest of Veldrun, God of luck, travel, and earth; tasked with requisitioning art (the Priest is from the Dungeon World Alternate Playbooks by Jacob Randolph).
• Feng – a Walker, master of physical movement.
• Tyrell – a Lantern, a now owner of a piece of Sola

As the game began, I had little clue where it was going to go. But slowly, as the sheets filled out, ideas were popping.

Feng had a drive to “drop someone from a great height” so I figured why not have this center around an airship. (In Inverse World, Drive replaces Alignment and is what you can use to mark XP at the end. It was also determined that he was a secret member of a cult of walkers.

Jordan was a priest of a religion proscribed by the monotheistic Alliance (the Alliance worshipped Sola). Jordan’s god required him to liberate art.

Malakhai and Tyrell were comrades in a failed rebellion against the Alliance (quick borrow stuff from Firefly). Malakhai had the blaster of his former mentor, whom they had learned was being held on Widdershins, an Alliance dreadnought.

Tyrell had stolen a piece of Sola, and as such could claim authority amongst the Alliance, even though he had no backing.

So it was going to turn into a caper. And sure enough, it did.

So it Began

Jordan, Malakhai, and Tyrell had secured an air skiff to fly up to the Widdershins and attempt to break out Malakhai’s mentor Burk – a high-ranking political prisoner. Jordan was primarily in it for the “liberating of fine art.” Feng was the air skiff pilot’s assistance and had gleefully volunteered for the position.

They were going to dock at the Widdershins – it had a hull inspired by the Battlestar Galactica – and attempt to blend in with the coming and goings of the various support craft that were also coming for the Gala.

What ensued was absolute chaos. It began as expected, with Tyrell escorting Malakhai as a prisoner – after all he the telltale burning eyes of someone who had committed horrific crimes and Sola had marked – and Jordan acting as the man servant.

Feng, unloading baggage from the skiff, seized the first chance to throw someone off of the makeshift peers attached to the Widdershins. And rolled snake eyes. He failed and things quickly escalated with Feng taking a few blaster shots to the shoulder, raising an alarm all the while with Tyrell, Malakhai, and Jordan bluffing and conning their way deeper into the belly of the dreadnought.

The remander of the session was split between the two groups.

While Feng was evading detection, he stumbled upon a massive set of explosives hidden on the hull of the Widdershins. He proceeded to run a line of oil along the hull and then ignite the bomb.

Meanwhile, the others had begun working their way to the brig; Always pulling rank on guards, even managing to get one of the guards to escort them to the brig. Until eventually they made it to where the brig. And KABLOOM! The Widdershins had lost one of its two cargo bays. And rolled 90 degrees.

Malakhai used this opportunity to kill their escort, and they began their attempt to take the brig. It was a messy firefight that quickly shifted to a knife fight, and we had to wrap up so one of the players could leave.

Observations

I really need to ditch the idea of having everyone take turns during a combat. There was a point where it simply made sense, after a bumrush by the player, to ask them what they were doing. I recognized this after another player had went, but momentum of the moment had been lost.

The four playbooks were an interesting combination, with the Walker being predisposed to a lone-wolf character – especially since my 15 year old son was playing it. I also liked the dichotomy of the religious undertones of the Lantern, and the very religiously focused Priest.

We are all getting more used to helping intertwine our characters, especially to figure out how the hell things are going to get started. On that note, I still haven’t started a session En Media Res; It is something that is perhaps a bit more challenging when you say “Here choose from these 26 or so playbooks.” But let me reiterate that I really like having everyone choose the playbook they want to use and meshing the tables desire into a cohesive unit.

Playbooks

Walker: If you are interested in a ninja, thief-acrobat, Spider Man, or Nightcrawler, this class is where it is at. The selected Drive – “Drop someone from a high height because you can” – defined the session. The moves are all about mobility and taking advantage of superior mobility. Look for future derivative classes.

Survivor: The name sums it up; They are a tough nut to crack and have plenty of moves to make sure you know about their suffering. If you are interested in the grizzled war veteran with a story to tell, this class would suit you well.

Lantern: I really like this class. You have control over light, and control over the masses, but not with the religious overtones. And they have quite possibly the most fictionally awesome move of any class – Twilight Reckoning

Twilight Reckoning

Requires: Twilight Blade

When you deal damage to a surprised, defenseless, or damaged enemy with your Twilight Blade, you may sever anything from the target – their life, their limb, their relationship with someone, their most prized possession, their thoughts on a topic, anything. If you do, deal no damage.

Priest: Somewhat of an alternate Cleric with the need for explicit spells and levels stripped out. You build your god’s domain by defining what it controls, represents, its worshippers, enemies, and demands. Your invocations, that you craft on the fly, can interact with those concerns. Quite clever, and extremely flavorful.

Bracers of the Bound

This set of gold bracers and necklace are adorned with finely cut obsidian. It appears as though a small flame is held within the obsidian. Or maybe the life fire of its previous owner.

When you command someone of a lower station, Roll+CHA. 10+, it will heed your command without question and to the best of its ability. 7-9, that and the GM will make you an offer. If you accept, increment a 5 segment countdown. If you decline, for a few moments your mind is preoccupied with visions of fire and thralldom. The GM will tell you more.

Bracers of the Bound by Jeremy Friesen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://takeonrules.com/2013/04/28/bracers-of-the-bound-a-dungeon-world-item/.

This massive frog-like creature has massive dull milky white eyes. Its skin, while strong as mail, is loose and flappy, enabling it to glide for brief distances. Not from this world, the hydrodæmon may be conjured here by powerful magic. It has also been known to rip through to this plane so that it may bear witness to the final moments of the water filled gasps of a large number of people drowning. Instinct: To drown the living

• Spit inky black sleep toxin at someone nearby
• Control or befoul nearby water
• Summon other hydrodæmons to this plane…if only for a short while
• Hear the final prayers of the drowned

As magic incarnate, the mageiadæmon assumes any functional physical form as it hungrily seeks out offerings of vassalage and places or people of power. Once magic fills the air, the mageiadæmon revels in its debaucherous feast, stripping naked to reveal a maelstrom of arcane energy barely contained.

Mercifully, the mageiadæmon is not of this world, instead vigilantly dwelling amongst the platonic representations of arcane sigils, rituals, and eldritch power, waiting for a time when too much power is drawn from the arcane ether. And in that moment, it travels the arcane conduits to this world. So be wary of a spell gone awry with seemingly little consequence…for you may have open the door to a mageiadæmon. Instinct: To unleash all of the magic

• Overload a mortal coil with raw arcana
• Assume a mundane physical form
• Seize absolute control of nearby magic
• Call in the bargain that all warlocks make
• Reveal the true nature of magic

Dungeon World

The PDF is $10 over at RPGNow. It’s fantastic. But you can legally get the rules for free (no art, alternate layout) at book.dwgazetteer.com.

Additional resources

• Dungeon-World.com (free)
• The source text available for your tinkering (free)
• Plain-text web pages version (free, as above)
• Character sheets for the base classes (free)
• Fan created Dungeon World Guide (free)
• RPGNow’s burgeoning Dungeon World category (pay)
• Google+ “Dungeon World Tavern” (free)
• Apocalypse World forums where it all started out (free)

World of Dungeons

For those of you looking for this game, be patient. I’ve heard that it will be released under Creative Commons. I don’t recall the exact timing, but John Harper does have an excellent track record of releasing cool games to the Creative Commons.

While you are at it take a look at Ghost Lines, it is the rules John Harper has crafted for playing out events 1000 years in the future of his World of Dungeons campaign.

A Work in Progress

I’ve been kicking around a conversion of Wolfgang Baur’s “Kingdom of Ghouls” from Dungeon #70. It is a fantastic 2nd edition adventure that I’ve thought about running on occasion. Instead of True Ghoul, I’ve opted for Ghöl as it simply looks better.

I’ve created some of the monsters (i.e. the Ghöls, Drider, and Ichtha-Gogs (a deep one type race with fish heads)) but haven’t given them much of a spin. Coordinating a game day and travel work against me actually playing games.

Legend

• d❖ – Roll Adventure Dice
• d☮ – Roll Adventure Dice and consult Refugees/”Allies” table
• d☯ – Roll Adventure Dice (Larger die ≥ smaller then unfavorable result; Otherwise favorable)

Adventure Dice Advancement

• d4 – (begin here)
• d6
• d4+d6
• d4+d8
• d6+d8
• d6+d10
• d8+d10
• d8+d12
• d10+d12

Are they “pressing on”; Step up Adventure Dice (d4 → d6)
Are they “retreating”; Step down Adventure Dice (d6+d8 → d4+d8)

In the final game of the night, Aidan and I switched our base decks. And things got interesting. I was playing a Corporation that expanded with greater ease (after all they utilized cloning). Aidan was playing the Anarchists, who made ample use of Virus software.

During this game, I was always struggling to find more $ as I was brining assets, agenda, and ice into play, but unable to quite Rez them (make them active); Whereas Aidan was burning through his deck by drawing 2 cards per turn by paying one action point (instead of the customary 1 card per 1 action point).

Things were looking grim for Aidan, and he even commented that it looked impossible for him to beat some of my ICE. But he soldiered on. Steadily I was picking up victory points, while Aidan was skirting around and building the best runner he could. But then the attacks came, and they were furious; Parasites were eroding my big ICE – all the while as installed viruses were chipping away at my R&D opportunities.

The Runner breach corporate HQ on a few occasions, netting a single Agenda. And then I pounced…gathering a tremendous amount of coin so I could being advancing my final agenda, while protecting it behind some serious defenses.

In one run, Aidan played a fantastic card that gave him tremendous resources at the cost of taking one point of Brain damage – discard a card at random and reduce your maximum hand size by one. A risky move, but with his regular drawing of 2 cards per turn, that disadvantage was almost entirely mitigated.

Aidan, seeing he had one last turn before the Corporation would advance their final agenda, made a risky gamble. With 2 actions, he began his run on a weakened R&D. And came up empty. But his viruses were spreading, and R&D’s servers were more porous for his second run, which netted him two agendas with enough points to steal and win the game.

At one point, I was wondering if Aidan was going to attempt to deck the Corporation by running them out of cards to draw. I wonder how valid of a tactic it would’ve been?

The next step was very organic.

Getting GMs to Run Games

Remember, my initial focus was to create a role-playing game day. So I needed GMs. But how many? I had no idea. My first estimate was that I could stretch and get 25 RPG gamers; I also knew that I could get boardgame gamers, but boardgames are a bit more self-organizing that role-playing games (more on that in another post).

I began writing a list of potential GMs – and according to my handwritten notebook, I started the speculation on or before September 2nd. With names in hand, I began reaching out. Slowly getting commitments, until I felt as though I had enough GMs.

Many thanks to Derek Stoelting, Steve Sigety, Sean O’Shea, Nick Garcia, Joe Ingold, Jacob Kemery, David Morford, and Matt Boersma. Everyone has spoken very highly of the games you ran and facilitated.

Have a Back-up Plan

But I didn’t stop there. I began securing a few alternate GMs. After all, someone may end up sick or stuck in Columbus during an epic snow storm. For each time slot, I had at least one alternate person ready to run something at the drop of a hat (i.e. Dungeon World, Hollowpoint, Fiasco, and Microscope were some of the backups).

Now Find the Players

And with many GMs set, I began recruiting players for those games. And slowly the games took form. I used Facebook as my main event page but kept the information on this blog. I also kept a Google Docs spreadsheet of events as well as a separate sheet for tracking all the other details (i.e. what needed doing, what to bring, etc.).

Ultimately, I relied on my long time face to face friends to be the base for the gameday, and then engaged several Facebook groups. And by engage, I mean taking to heart what I had learned in my years in University Communications at Notre Dame. I needed to communicate details, and engage with my audience, and educate as needed. (Don, I was listening to all of that stuff, even though I was also keeping Conductor afloat.)

I also made extensive use of Google+ as a sounding board for some things. After all it is my goto location for interacting with table top gamers. If you are a pen and paper gamer, I cannot encourage you enough to join Google+; there are lots of things going on there.

And as Gameday approached I made one audible play that made all of the difference, but more on that in my next post.