Of Children, Dungeon World, and Playing Fair

This blog has been fairly quiet of late, because for the last month and a half or so the only RPG-related stuff I’ve been doing has been at work (or working on a game for an upcoming convention, but I'll talk about that later). 

And I always feel weird posting about my work, for several reasons.

It feels too much like boasting, for one – I’m sure there’s any number of amazing designers and GMs who would kill to have a job that’s RPG-adjacent. Then there’s always the imposter syndrome, the fear that talking about my work is either boring to everyone else or that I’m not qualified to draw anything out of my experiences at work.

And always, of course, is there’s the privacy concern: for me, and more importantly for the kids.

But after thinking (and blogging) for a while I think I’ve found a line I’m comfortable with in terms of privacy. And the last frantic fortnight of GMing 10-hour days has spawned all kinds of thoughts I think are interesting enough to share.

While I work on the more theory-heavy stuff (including the next installments of my series on GMing for Children), there’s a quick story I want to tell.

***

So, for the last fortnight the kids and I spent our lunchtimes playing Dungeon World.

The actual programs we run are played using a custom system that combines LARP combat, improvisational theatre, and tabletop gaming, but starting in the first week I found the kids begging me to run freeform Dungeon World instead of taking a break from gaming.

No dice, no character sheets, nothing but our imaginations and my best memory of the mechanics.

And even though these kids are doing a lot of roleplaying, both within each day and over the course of the fortnight for those who are regulars, they were still hungry and keen for it every day.

And so, we played Dungeon World.

It started with one of the older kids, who’s most invested in systems and the mechanics of RPGs. We’ve been chatting about Powered by the Apocalypse games for a while, and he’s even tried writing his own.

He was telling me about a recent failure running Dungeon World for his friends as I diagnosed his issues (he was running just with the free sheets from the website, without reading the GMing chapter of DW or Apocalypse World), and to prove a point I started GMing it for him.

Incredibly free, incredibly casual: making decisions about stats and equipment as they became relevant and just having a conversation in the most Powered by the Apocalypse way possible.

It took us five minutes before a single move was even made (which served to prove my initial point).

By then, though, we’d attracted a crowd. Other kids were piping in with their desire to play, and soon where we’d had a single character we had a party. Over the course of the fortnight, numbers swelled until I had to limit the numbers of characters in the party and kids had to work together to play people.

The point of this story, though, the part of it that’s interesting, is the mechanics.

As I mentioned above, we were playing freeform. We only had the mechanics and sheets in my memory, and so we ended up playing in some ways the purest form of DW: players simply describing actions, with me activating moves when their triggers came up.

But we didn’t have any dice.

Whenever a roll needed to be made, I simply told the kids their modifiers and asked the player/s to tell me what they rolled. It was the usual 2d6 + MOD, but all the randomization and math was going on in their heads.

One might expect that there was a string of 10+s, that failures vanished as they learned the thresholds.

I’ll be honest: at first, I had the same fear. When we talk about children and RPGs, the discussion is always framed by unstated assumptions about maturity and fairness: the belief that children will have issues with consequences, or with failures, or with randomness giving rise to differences in reward and difficulty.

And yet the failures never disappeared. The partial successes never disappeared.

From start to finish, the statistical probability was pretty much the same as on a set of dice (perhaps slightly skewed towards success, but then I was more generous with bonuses). In fact, if anything there was an increase over time in their willingness to embrace danger or failure.

All of this surprised me.

I’ve been GMing for children for a decade now, seven of those years professionally, and still, I was surprised: by their ability to play fair without an external arbiter; by their willingness to embrace failure and consequence; by their openness to pushing towards difficulty as an interesting and desirable outcome.

And I think, as I work on more articles on GMing for children, that all this is very important to remember both for me and for my readers.

Playing fair and embracing failure aren’t limited to adults.

And children are often far more capable than you give them credit for.

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog?

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff and get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make).

West Marches PbtA Hack + Bonus DW Content

(For those just looking for the homebrew Dungeon World bonus content, skip to the bottom of this post).

Next week will mark almost 8 months since I started running All Things Under Heaven, my East-Asia-inspired West Marches campaign. 

Over the course of that time (and the preceding few years, when I avidly watched Steven Lumpkin run Rollplay's epic West Marches show) I've come to a realisation: Dungeons & Dragons just can't handle the kind of West Marches game that I want.

This isn't a slight on the system or designers, just a comment on the fundamental difference in genres.

For the West Marches I want magic that feels inexplicable and wondrous rather than systematised, and operates in discrete unique units each with their own underlying logic. I want characters to grow outwards rather than upwards, to become more broadly-empowered rather than straightforwardly powerful, and to be able to lose things through their own choices and through the hardships the game throws at them.

I want a world that is dynamic and has systems that encourage that dynamism, I want unique regions that all feel definitely and meaningfully distinct, I want to plan broad strokes and fill out the details in play based on what makes sense, what comes before, and what my players suggest and achieve.

I want, I've realised, a Powered by the Apocalypse game.

Spells and items and rituals as individual moves; character growth/loss fluid in the style of the "change playbook" option; a GMing structure that replaces Threats and Fronts with the individual regions of the Wastes.

And so I've begun working on the skeleton of a system, a (very) loose hack that draws equally from Dungeon World and Apocalyse World.

Since there was no session of the Twitch ATUH campaign yesterday and thus nothing that needed to be done with my usual hour of streaming GM Prep, I started to actually put some flesh on those bones: designing the initial very-rough draft of what the Basic Moves might look like.

They're still in early stages, but I'm liking how this system is coming together.

It feels cohesive, and like it should deliver the experience that I want (of course, playtesting will undoubtedly demonstrate otherwise).

So, here's a couple of the draft moves. Feedback and commentary very welcome!

(For an insight into my thought process as I put some of these together, check out the video here.)

*****

When you go into battle, roll +Force. On a hit, you do harm to your opposition and they do harm back to you. On a 10+, choose 3. On a 7-9, choose 2:

• You strike especially hard, inflicting extra harm on your target/s.
• You defend especially well, taking less harm from your target/s.
• You are a flurry of motion, engaging multiple foes.
• You push forward, gaining ground or momentum
• You drive the enemy back, creating an advantage or an opening

On a miss, you take a nasty hit. You may still do your harm, GM's choice.

When you push through danger, ask the GM to name the danger/s you risk and roll +Force. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7-9, you still do it but choose 1: you survive but some equipment doesn't, you charge right into something worse, you falter and lose the initiative. On a miss, prepare for the worst.

When you read the lay of the land, roll +Insight. On a hit, you can ask the GM questions. Take +1 when acting on the answers. On a 10+, ask 3. On a 7-9, ask 1:

• What happened here recently?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is useful or valuable to me?
• What, if anything, appears out of place (or is not what it seems)?
• What is the safest position I can take?
• What is my best way out / way in / way past?

On a miss, you overlook something important but ask 1 anyway.

When you notice something unusual, roll +Insight. On a 10+, ask 2. On a 7-9, ask 1:

• Is this a thing of the civilised world, or of the wild magic?
• Is this thing created, caused, or naturally occurring?
• Is this something that might have value or use to me?
• Is this something that might be dangerous or helpful to me?
• What, from what I know and sense, might happen next?

On a miss, ask 1 anyway and it is older and stranger than you thought. 

*****

BONUS CONTENT! Supplementary Special Moves for Dungeon World

When you ask around for information before a journey, roll +CHA. *On a 10+, hold 3. *On a 7-9, hold 2. Spend your hold 1 for 1, now or during the expedition, to gain the following information about your destination:

• Directions to a significant or interesting location
• General information about the region, its terrain, and inhabitants
• Names of a few powerful local figures, and a little more about them
• Information about dangerous predators or creatures in the region
• Warnings against a common threat or danger to travellers
• Rumours of a great treasure or magical artefact

On a miss, hold 2 anyway but the GM will answer one falsely (their choice).

(Plus, for those wanting something a little more specific than Defy Danger)

When you steel yourself against magic or outside influence, roll +WIS. *On a 10+, you do it and gain an impression of the motive behind the attempt. *On a 7-9, you do it but choose 1: some lesser trace of it lingers, your resolve is shaken by the effort, your resistance or refusal is obvious. *On a miss, prepare for the worst.

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog?

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff and get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make).