If I wanted to introduce some players to Dungeon World should I stick with the flawed original or go for one of the newer hacks?
I’ve heard good things about how World of Adventure could eventually be the unofficial 2ed, but that’s stalled. Stonetop isn’t quite finished. How about Unlimited?
The original is pretty damn good; what hacks were you debating? Flags? Death moves? Wises for hirelings?
I’ve played a variety of *World games but never GMed Dungeon. I researched it extensively in 2017 and I got the feeling that the community wanted an update and there were several contenders for a potential successors. It’s been a while, and I want it to be my solution but wanted to check on updates.
There’s a lot of good hacks and additions. You might pick up Class Warfare if you want more playbook options, and check out some of the cool extended moves and custom moves written by Jason Cordova and the crew at The Gauntlet. I believe the zine Codex is up on Drivethru RPG. The Labyrinth move and extended Undertake a Perilous Journey moves are especially good.
(That said I think a significant feature of DW is that you can run the whole thing with one book)
Thanks but I’m lazy/scared. I’m after a comprehensive hack that includes a variety of minor hacks to run as written, such as the One Shot, Homebrew, or Unlimited hacks.
Just run it as written before you hack it then.
“the flawed original”? Man, what?
The original isn’t “flawed”; it does what it does. As an example, many hacks replace bonds because they want that space in the game to do something different. Bonds do what they do well, but what they do might not be what you want. (If you are doing small numbers of sessions, bonds are awesome. They become less interesting if you get into really long campaigns. That only make them “flawed” if you assume they are designed to support long campaigns. They aren’t.)
Anyway, play the game as written first. Decide if it does the things you want done. Hack the parts that don’t.
Or, you know, switch to Fourth World once 1.5 is out.
One Shot World. Look for it online. I don’t have the link handy, or I’d post it here.
I mean no offence. Just reading up on World of Adventure and others gave me the impression people were now considering the original as great but flawed.
I too believe that DW should have a second edition for several reasons, but even with it warts it is still one of the most accessible games for beginner GMs and players
Tom Pleasant I think you’re looking for a specific answer you already have in mind.
My two cents would be to sub in some of the newer classes. There are some great caster classes that use a more freeform and easy to use magic. There’s also a really great artificer class floating around that functions as a wizard but plays like the stereotypical crazy gnomish inventer. Fighter still remains one of my favorites for what it does.
Yochai Gal’s One Shot World is the perfect introduction. For campaign play I prefer Freebooters over OG DW. I haven’t ran any of the other hacks but I’ve read the major ones and imo I don’t actually want to DW to be more PbtA/less D&D, I want it to do them both better, which Freebooters does for me. I don’t think there’s any reason not to run stock DW, though. I get why people feel it’s “flawed”–I guess I ultimately do too, but I still very much enjoy running it and haven’t run into any problems with it that make me feel like it’s not worth playing. I’d say if you want gritty OSR-style play, go for Freebooters 2E; if you want epic heroic fantasy, DW is where it’s at.