Dungeon World Basics 02 - "Combat"

[@RealMcoy1000]

This is super helpful! Prepping to GM my first dungeon world game in a few weeks, and I’m glad to have this resource. Cheers

[@LandoniusX]

This was an incredibly informative video. Thank you guys for taking the time to make this. I look forward to listening to your other talks as well.

[@N8_mul]

Thanks for making these videos, they’re really helpful for learning DW!

[@LakeVermilionDreams]

Really great explanation of one of the sticky parts of learning DW coming from D&D. Thanks!

[@oKingLexx]

I love DW. My team now isn't on board so I homebrewed the DW partial success mechanic into my DND game.

[@nexoreh9465]

An excellent treatise on combat, which I have found to be quite interesting when coming from D&D 5e. Well done! Just feeding the KZbin Alligator 🐊

[@konzsimo]

Just getting back into DW, this is a really good resource. Cheers!

[@Dahxelb]

I am nowhere near an experienced DW Player or GM, but a few things I feel wasn't mentioned, or problems I feel still persist. One thing that Took me a while to wrap my head around was that player actions was NOT limited to their moves. Moves are rules that facilitates specific types of actions, not a list of possible actions. I rarely hear this walked about enough. An example would be if I would try to pin down an enemy to the ground. It's not Hack&Slash, since I'm not trying to deal damage. I'll probably have to Defy Danger, since the enemy will most likely struggle, but the effect: actually having an enemy subdued and pinned to the ground, open and exposed for any of my fellow players to attack without retaliation, isn't covered in any rules, yet, depending in the fiction, is still an available action. You're NOT limited to the basic moves & your class moves, they're merely guidelines what you're allowed to do, and rules for specific, common circumstances. This bleeds into a problem I've been thinking about, and think might just be my poor understanding over the system, but, how do you make combat not just whatever the GM narrates? Let me try to clarify: I feel combat in DW depends almost entirely on the GM and how the GM narrates. The GM dictates if players are able to trigger certain moves, and if enemies does hard moves or Soft moves against the players, and often which player is being targeted. I feel whether or not the players are faced with a simple or a near impossible enemy encounter is entirely at the GMs discretion. I kinda feel like the tension whether a PC lives or dies a combat encounter almost entirely depends on the GM to decide. So much is left to the fiction, which is great, but since the GM directs the fiction, they're the one's responsible whether the party succeeds or not, more so than any written rules. It's an issue that I've had both while playing and while GMing.

[@davidlafreniere7643]

Hi I'm glad you are enjoying our show! You are not wrong that the GM has significantly more narrative control than the player characters: the GM may decide to introduce enemies that could not be harmed by mundane weapons in a head on attack. The players may still come up with a brilliant plan to try and defeat or escape the monster, but of course the GM could just introduce another creature of the same type. I would suggest that a GM who is doing such things may want to reconsider the GM principle of being a fan of the characters. Is making an impossible situation truly impossible (ie, never giving them the benefit of good ideas in the fiction, or never letting them trigger a move) really being a fan of the characters? To answer your question "is combat not just whatever the GM narrates" I would suggest no. Let me walk you through a combat as I would GM it. I'm not saying my way is the only way or the "right" way, but maybe it will be helpful. GM: you all see a group of three orcs fanning out in front of you on the hill. Two look like they are getting ready to charge while the third is stringing a bow. What do you all do? fighter? Fighter: I get in front of anyone who isn't trying to get in a melee. GM: Ok lets put a pin in that and see what everyone else is doing. Ranger what are you going to try and do? Ranger: I draw my bow and fire an arrow at the one in the back. GM: Nice. druid? Druid: I'm going to try and turn into a wolf. Ranger: Oh awesome! My wolf companion could help you if you are both wolves! GM: I love it! Ok so fighter, it sounds like you are defending while the other two are trying to get off other moves. go ahead and roll. Fighter: Ok I got 7. So I will hold one. GM: Ranger, go ahead and Volley. Ranger: I got a 9. GM: ok go ahead and roll damage and pick one off the list. Ranger: I got 8 damage and I'm choosing to have to put myself in a spot to get the shot. GM: nice! you were aiming for the orc with the bow? 8 is enough to kill it! Describe for me how it goes down. Also, what do you think you had to do to get the shot? Ranger: I think the fighter in front of me with his shield was blocking my shot. I had to step out from behind him first. I draw my bow back and let loose. The shaft of the arrow gets buried to the feathers in the orcs neck and it goes rolling down the hill before it gets a shot off. GM: Nice. One of those two charging orcs is going straight towards you Ranger. Fighter: wait, I'll stop that orc! GM: you want to spend your one hold to redirect the oncoming attack? Fighter: yeah! GM: awesome, what does it look like on screen? Fighter: I spin in front of the Ranger after he gets his shot off and slam my shield into the Orcs face! GM: Sweet! I'm going to have you roll Hack and Slash in a minute, but hold on for a sec. Druid, how is that transform going? Go ahead and roll. Druid: not great. I got a five. shoot. GM: dang thats not good. Mark XP. You can hold one and transform. Druid, what goes really wrong here as the Ranger and Fighter move away from you and the last Orc gets up in your business? Druid: hmmm I'm not sure Ranger: do you think maybe my wolf companion gets tangled up in it and gets hurt? GM: is that ok with both of you? Ranger: Yeah. Druid: how about the Orc pins me down just as I transform but the Rangers wolf jumps on its back. Its dangerous for both of us! GM: sounds great. Ranger, you see the druid is in a spot, pinned by the orc just as he becomes a wolf. Your wolf companion is jumping on the orc, but the orc is going for a dagger to deal with your wolf. The fighter is engaging the second orc. Ranger, what do you do? ... and so it goes. I hope that was helpful. Let me know if you have any further questions! Hope you get to play DW soon!

[@davidjay7116]

I agree with my fellow David. The GM is more reactive than in other games. They set the scene and the stakes of a combat. Then it's up to the players to be active and decide how they deal with the problem at hand--often triggering a move and going to dice. The dice then tell the GM how to handle what's next. 10+, great! Usually you'd let the player (or another player) keep the narration going and make another move as the enemy is on the ropes. 7-9, pretty good, but the GM often gets to escalate or complicate things in some way. A miss? Even better. The GM gets to really ratchet up the tension and challenge the party in new ways (based on a specific list of options available to the GM). What the GM can do in a combat is really tied in to the options available in the monsters' stat blocks and the dice rolled by the players.

[@richardcopperwaite4333]

My response to this would be - isn't this true in any RPG? When it comes to the amount of control the DM has over the outcome, in DW you can vary the intensity of the encounter as it plays out, and in D&D, you (usually) prepare the encounter upfront, and then play out the simulation until you reach an outcome. But even in D&D, the DM still has the power to introduce new monsters in the middle of a fight or save the players with divine intervention if they feel it fits the narrative. RPGs are not fair games that can be won or lost, they are engines for roleplay and storytelling, and I think everybody at the table needs to accept that when they join the game. The group can then collectively choose to try to simulate skirmishes as fairly as possible or they can take more dramatic license, and that can be achieved in either DW or D&D, depending on how closely the DM decides to commit to consistency & realism or how much they take liberties.

[@crowgoblin]

I’d say like in D&D the DM controls 90% of the game, setting scenes, controlling combat, requesting rolls, they are doing all the work... but in DungeonWorld I think it’s more 50/50 with the players or that’s at least how we play it. Both sides narrates the story dependant on the dice roll result.

[@valueforvalue76]

Excellent podcast, thanks for making it. One question, what the hell is G+? :P

[@squarepusher13z]

I want to start GMing DW - this is a great resource thank you ! I can't find your podcast on my podcatcher :-( Do you have a link i could use to subscribe?

[@TheGauntletRPG]

Thanks for listening! It may depend on what podcatcher you're using. If you just need the RSS feed, you can use discernrealities.libsyn.com/rss Hope that helps!

[@gingercore69]

Do you happen to have a video on world of dungeons? I know its kinda different but similar

[@TheGauntletRPG]

Not specifically, but Jason talks about WoDu a lot on the early episodes of his other show, Fear of a Black Dragon.

[@gingercore69]

@@TheGauntletRPG nice! Ill give it a watch... Im trying to learn about it so i can play with my friends

[@robertcook139]

Has anyone ever run into situations where the ammunition option is abused in volley? One could theoretically load up on quivers so that they are never really put in a bad situation on a 7-9. I know this is antithetical to how one should play dungeon world but it just seemed kind of obvious to me. I was playing a character who would make ranged attacks and I didn't do this because it seemed boring but it seemed like an obvious loop hole.

[@john-lenin]

Dungeon world tries to combine a narrative tag and status based system with an abstract Hitpoint and damage system

[@davidjay7116]

What?

[@john-lenin]

David Jay “Hitpoint”! The problem is that Dungeon World is a bastardized combination of two antithetical systems. You don’t need hit points and damage rolls in a true narrative system. But even Apocalypse World can’t fully let go of the concept.

[@john-lenin]

Lots of possibilities and not a single specific example how to actually handle them.

[@davidjay7116]

An example of play starts 34:15. What kind of examples were you looking for?

[@john-lenin]

So you replaced a complicated but highly specific D20 system with a complicated - and ambiguous - Move system.

[@yzfool6639]

Take the needle off the record, please.