Hi everybody

Hi everybody

Hi everybody,

So I have been playtestig Uncharted Worlds and Adventure World. While both are very entertaining and diverse they have one thing in common: a narrative based Damage system.

While I was handling systems with varying complexities in the past already, I am really struggling with those seemingly more than simple systems.

They do feel more inaccurate than even a simple 3-2-1-KO mechanic.

How do you handle those systems?

How do they support your GMing?

14 thoughts on “Hi everybody”

  4. David Jatropulus could you describe the struggles you’ve been having? I haven’t played either, but I’ve been intrigued by how both deal with harm. Curious to hear your concerns.

  5. Well of course both do have some indication of health status.

    Uncharted Worlds has different classes of injuries. Those would stack up during a fight etc. and finally lead to death.

    Adventure World has a wound counter that is used to inflict damage.

    While in theory this sounds straight forward, the fact that a failure in a fighting move or a narrative event can lead to a certain injury of defined severity does feel a little bit arbitrary.

    To me it feels more as if I would simply be assigning damage to characters.

    Don’t take me wrong I am not afraid that my players think I am not treating them right but I am missing the randomness and the fun a little bit.

    Andrea Mognon you should be able to find Uncharted Worlds on the internet.

    About Adventure World I am unsure if you can get it. Colter Hanna was asking for people interested to test it.

  8. Adventure World’s wounds are really just a system that takes Apocalypse World’s harm clock, bumps the numbers around, and gives a mechanical/narrative meaning to each of the four positions on the “clock”. The biggest difference is really that instead of rolling+harm when the players take damage, they roll+armor (via Withstand a Blow) to see if they got lucky and can reduce the severity of the wound.

    But yeah, it does often end up feeling somewhat arbitrary, but this is intentional. Wounds are a good way for the narrator to control the pacing and the sense of danger, which is one your biggest priorities (especially since you don’t have to worry nearly as much about worldbuilding or the direction of the plot, since the players contribute so much to that). In general, I only angle for serious wounding at very dramatic moments in the story, especially because most of the NPCs the players encounter have no intention of becoming murderers

    I’m actually in the process of reworking the wounds/exhaustion/fatigue system in the game, which you can see here:

    https://plus.google.com/103545995066222515975/posts/WHKSyEubFgp

    This version doesn’t require players to constantly remember “Oh I was supposed to mark fatigue because I rolled a 10+ because I’m wounded,” and intstead lets things be even more narrative-based. Would this make things easier for you to manage, or harder? Or am I misunderstanding what your challenges are?

  10. Colter Hanna  thanks for picking this up. We have had 6 sessions of Adventure World already and are quiet happy with it. Indeed my players tend to forget that their wound / fatigue status influence the game. I am considering to use some kind of physical markers or tokens.

    paul wilson I will check it out thanks for the hint.

    I feel that I might want to refine my questions/statements a little as I see the direction of this discussion.

    I am not questioning the mechanics itself. I do see that they work and are applicable. My “problem” is that as the dmg is static (either it’s 1 or categorized by the source) it feels to me like dictating the status of the characters.

    Using a traditional dice-based system like any d20 or Dungeon World there is some randomness in, that might even surprise me as GM.

    So in short you could say that I feel to be in control to much which is boring me a little.

    Now as other GMs seem to enjoy these systems I was wondering, where you see the benefits and how it contributes to your GMing.

  11. I’m excited to hear that people are playing Adventure World! If you ever feel like writing about your experiences, I’d love to hear the story you’re telling.

    As far as wounds go, the way I see it, when you’re going for a more “dungeon crawl” type feel, random damage is a great way to create suspense: it lets the player know that a few unlucky rolls could be the end of them, which goes a long way towards setting the mood.

    In the stories that I’m basing Adventure World on, though, severe wounds are rarely something that comes out of nowhere. Instead, it tends to come at very dramatic moments, and can even serve a symbolic value – think Frodo getting cut by the Ring Wraith blade.

    With that in mind, I feel like it’s important for the Narrator to have a good amount of control over injury, so that I can make sure that when I’m inflicting heavy damage, it’s because there’s a good reason for it. Maybe it’s the dramatic final confrontation, or maybe I’m trying to show the players just how in over their heads they are. When I tell someone “you’re taking 3 damage. Roll+armor,” their eyes get wide and they have a nice “oh shit, things are getting real” moment. 

    I can certainly see how you’d find that boring. Surprises are nice! For me personally, the most delightful surprises for me are the ones introduced by the players, rather than by the dice, like when a “make known a fact” roll completely changes my perception of the world.

    I would suggest you think about what story you’re players are hoping to tell, and then viewing damage and wounds as one of your axes of control for facilitating that story, and in exchange, try to give the players as many options to surprise you. Asking questions, etc., etc.

    However, it could be the case that your story/world lends itself to the suspense of random damage. Maybe you could make some charts, like:

    When a player takes a hit from a heavy attack, roll 2d6. On a 6 or less, they lose something important. On a 7-9, they take 2 damage. On a 10-11, they take 3 damage, on a 12, they take 4 damage.

    It’s not really my style, but I don’t necessarily see a problem with it, as long as it fits the tone you’re setting.

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