Has anyone worked out a World of Dungeons (Carcosa) yet? I’m thinking about introducing ‘Story Games’ to my group this weekend but they’re died in the wool fans of d20 and pulpy dungeoncrawls.
Thanks for any advice, I’m almost totally a noob coming at AW from DW.
Good point Jason.
Between the two, WoDu is really great with a GM who wants to introduce new players to DW, and already knows his moves and principles. It can be tricky if everyone (GM included) goes into it blind — but it can also be easier because you don’t have to walk everyone through moves.
Best case scenario is probably to really study up on DW’s principals, agenda, and moves (all in the GM section of the book) and just use all of those while running World of Dungeons. I’ve had good experiences with doing things this way.
If you want to transition “dyed in the wool” d20 dungoncrawlers into a narrative-based game, simply play a session of straight d20 but integrate some of the agenda, principle and MC moves of AW (or DW) and ask the players at the end of the session if they enjoyed the game. You’ll find that they work regardless of the system, and you’ll be able to get a feel for how your players might react to things like turning their abilities back on them, telling them the possible consequences of actions and asking them to choose, announcing future badness, etc.
I consider myself a grognard, and in truth I was pretty skeptical about AW when I was first introduced to it, but the concepts of partial successes and that on a failure you might suffer a twist of fate instead of something outright bad happening are what I embraced right away.
YMMV