I am just getting into AW / DW and I am loss with advancement  how do players get better so they want to play…

I am just getting into AW / DW and I am loss with advancement  how do players get better so they want to play…

I am just getting into AW / DW and I am loss with advancement  how do players get better so they want to play longer campaigns?

12 thoughts on “I am just getting into AW / DW and I am loss with advancement  how do players get better so they want to play…”

  1. I’m not sure how it works in Dungeon World, but in Apocalypse World you get experience from three things: rolling a highlighted stat, resetting your Hx stat from +4 to +1, and some moves give experience. After you get 5 dots of experience you can take an Improvement and these range from stat bonuses to new moves to new options for your character. Eventually you run out of Improvements though (there are only 26 improvements if you use them all), so you can “max” a character out and they simply can’t improve anymore. Personally, I don’t think this is a bad thing.

  3. In DW you get experience by resolving your bonds (a hack of the Hx stat) acting in alignment, rolling 6 or less, and 3 automatically at the end of the session if the session does what a DW session is supposed to do. You go up levels for every 7+current level experience. 

  4. To further Patrick Henry Downs’s comment, you’ll notice that in AW the option to “start a new character” and “retire your character” are in the end-game advance list — so the concept of a character arc is kind of built right into the game. Your characters start competent, end awesome, and bow out when they leave their mark.

  5. In our group we’ve also said that once you get the Improvement for retiring your character that just means you can retire your character at any time, you don’t have to do it at the same time you take the improvement for it. I like that house rule, because it means I can keep playing my Chopper/Hardholder after she’s technically been maxed out.

  6. I’ve only ever had one character nab that advance, and it was coincidentally when we were winding the game down, but I think that’s an interesting way to interpret the rule. 

  7. There is also a mechanic where you can chose to change playbooks (like classes).  This represents a fundamental change in your character, but it does open up new opportunities (I think PHD was including these in his estimate, though with new playbooks that should expand). 

  8. David Rothfeder I was, yes. Hence, Chopper/Hardholder. But the ‘advanced’ improvements can only be selected once, thus your character can only change playbooks once. The ‘basic’ 10 improvements of your first playbook could, in theory, all be taken before you switch playbooks, which is why the maximum number of improvements you could take would be 26.

  9. Plus, don’t forget, advancements are prescriptive and descriptive. Like, you claim a hardhold by force or popular election or whatever, you don’t need to wait for the XP and hope a new hardhold is on your list of advancements. You’ve got a hardhold!

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