I’ve had the basic outline of a fantasy knocking around on my computer for a while now. The idea was a West Marches style Dungeon World game.
I prefer the character creation style of UW though, I think it lends itself to more flexibility and diverse and interesting characters.
That said, I’m fairly sure that Sean Gomes has said in the past that he doesn’t want to do a complete fantasy version of UW precisely because of the possibility of stepping on DW’s toes. (And correct me if I’m wrong on that, Sean.)
So my questions are: has anyone here used UW for fantasy? Did you add in home-brewed rules or did you just re-skin what was already there? How did you find it and what did your players think?
Someone was working on a similar idea. There was a blog and everything. I can’t remember who…
Something like Spelljammer with UW would be cool as well. The setting had some quirks, but the general idea of space fantasy with the balance tilted to the fantasy side is pretty fun.
Funny timing this. I was supposed to DM a 5e campaign for a second group of players but just don’t have the motivation. This morning I was thinking of just trying to convince them to give UW a chance. I had thought about using DW but UW is just so awesome and more simple. (Not bad mouthing DW. It’s just that UW is so much more streamlined). Going to keep an eye on this post to see what folks come up with.
Was it Graham Spearing ?
Well, nearly all D&D kindreds would be Humanoids.
Jesse R UW is “simple” and “streamlined” – to me at my first glanced it just looked more “flexible” and “diverse”, which on the other hand would make it more “complex” and “crunchy”.
May I ask for examples ?
Tell me more 📌
I feel like you just need the Class Warfare book for DW, if the only thing you don’t like is character creation.
My beef with DW is that it’s hyper-focused on the style of play it wants. I am not hyper-focused on that particular style.
There’s a sizable (and entirely understandable) number (if not outright majority) of PbtA fans who really like their systems hyper-focused on specific play experiences and tightly-unified in terms of mechanics. You see this quite a bit in the negative reviews of UW that come from PbtA hands: why isn’t Debt totally integrated into all of the game’s systems? Why aren’t Factions quantified and explicitly made the objects of moves? And so on.
I suspect this is more from the AW end of the scene than the DW end, to be fair.
Adam Rouse #classwarefare actually does that – breaking down the classes into thirds and build them back again to a more individual character as UW does it.
Markus Raab Hmm. I can see what you mean. Maybe I wasn’t using the right words? For me I see “flexible” and “diverse” as equating to “simple” but only because of how great of a job Sean Gomes did in creating the game. If I want to make it complicated and more crunchy those options are there. When I GM’d I made sure I was comfortable with the various moves, presented the jump point to the players and then let it unfold organically. I really prefer when the session is really player led. So the flexibility it provides (and the diverse scenarios/missions/whatever) means I can pretty much step back and let the game almost play itself (I’m lucky – I’ve got players with hyperactive imaginations :)). I get the feeling I haven’t really answered your question and I apologize. 🙁
Found it! http://adventuresinkalland.blogspot.com/
adventuresinkalland.blogspot.com – Adventures in Kalland
Thanks everyone. And I completely forgot Class Warfare exists since I don’t have it. I’ll have to look into it.