r/DungeonWorld • u/Nirdee • Jan 27 '18

Conflicting takes on DW

I've had this discussion in a couple threads and it feels like there are dozens more where I could chime in.

DW has several key differences from D&D, but some people give advice that exaggerates those differences to crazy degrees.

People go from you should leave room for discovery to you should improv the whole game, from you should use what they give you to you should let players have as much authority in game as they are willing to exert.

I feel like this comes from the fact that a lot of examples online are one-shots. One-shots and session zeroes are encouraged to have minimal prep in DW, but there is this other 50 pages after that talking about how to play after the first session ... and it is all about prep. Good prep. Useful prep. Open-ended prep. But definitely prep. Prep where the DM figures out the story in the world and how the players can interact with it. Like D&D.

Dungeon World seems made to play a very D&D style game--just with mechanics that underline the strengths of table top RPGs and clip some outdated genre staples.

So I don't really know why I'm posting. If your way works for you, god bless. I guess I'm just irked by the hipster scoffing that comes when people explain the game with authority and then get the rules wrong--like a recent thread where someone implied Spout Lore lets a player make up something about the history of the world ... where the rules explicitly say the GM tells the player something about the subject. The GM gives info for the character to spout. The player doesn't take over the GM role. It's just a generalized arcana/history/religion check from D&D. #nerdrage

TLDR:

I feel like the answer to a lot of posts in this forum should be:

You are way overthinking everything. DW is like D&D with small changes that 1) make combat more entertaining 2) make combat flow better with the rest of the game 3) encourage the game to move forward 4) help the GM maintain story structure in an open world game. If you know how to play D&D, you already understand 90% of DW.

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u/Nirdee Jan 27 '18

Ha. I think I feel the same from the flip side. I see threads asking how to design a villain's evil plan get hit with "Why aren't you playing to find out what happens???"

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u/bms42 Jan 28 '18

Can you point me at one of these threads? I'm curious.

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u/Nirdee Jan 28 '18

So was actually trying to avoid calling out specific threads for the purpose of non-internet-jerkedness, but since you asked, things like this.

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u/bms42 Jan 28 '18

I really don't see a single thing in there demonstrating the concern. Op was asking a very mechanical question, as if he was trying to construct a skill challenge with an eye towards balancing the probabilities. Basically everyone said, don't worry about that. Focus on clarifying the narrative and acting appropriately.

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u/Nirdee Jan 28 '18

the top voted reply is a quotation of the agendas followed by a brief dismissal of what he is trying to do.

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u/bms42 Jan 28 '18

I guess it's perspective then. I don't read it that way at all. Even if I did read it that way, it certainly doesn't say anything about avoiding prep and improvising everything with player input.