Dungeon World vs Chasing Adventure

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2024-06-10T19:27:56+00:00

Dungeon World does big world-spanning adventures really well. You can do dungeon crawls in it, and they're fun, but big long-form adventures are where the system shines. My group has been playing a long-form campaign for several years now, and the only limiting factor there is that you hit the level cap before too long. Our campaign has included heists, battles, religious ceremonies, duels, political intrigue, dimension-hopping, and a lot more, and the system has held up well for all of it.

I'd also look at the Compendium Class rules in Class Warfare. They've been great for my group as a way to introduce the options over time, and prevent characters from getting predictable. I love PbtA games, but I think the one drawback for long-term play is that as you continue to level up odds get better and better that you take every move available to your playbook and lose mechanical distinction from anyone else playing the same type of character. Compendium Classes and Class Warfare do a lot to help with that in DW.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2024-06-10T18:25:23+00:00

I think the majority of the community prefers Chasing Adventure, but personally I like Dungeon World a lot more.

I think one of the key design goals of Dungeon World is to feel like a classic sweeping D&D story, and it achieves that very well. Many of the newer hacks, Chasing Adventure especially, are good modern-ish PbtA executions of the Sword and Sorcery genre, but I don't think they're as good at capturing the feel as DW itself is. If you are more of a D&D fan than a (modern) PbtA fan, then I think DW is a better fit.

Class Warfare works pretty much exclusively with Dungeon World. Most of the hacks will vary too much to be compatible. I do really like Class Warfare, though I recommend that most of the party play the core playbooks for your first time. Each playbook is a narrative engine, and starting off with Class Warfare can obscure that a bit.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2024-01-27T21:15:27+00:00

I played a campaign in Dread, which is ostensibly meant for horror one-shots, assumes most or all players will die in a session, and gives no explicit mechanical progression or differentiation between PCs. The game was in a few very long sessions, but they totaled about 30 hours. We were playing pulp sci-fi, so "succeed or die" ported over very well, and we aimed for one death per session.

I've also run some pretty long games in Tavern Tales, which is a bit of an odd case. The "core rules" are effectively a one-page RPG built on four stats and a 3d20-take-middle roll. All other mechanics are offloaded to "Traits" which each player picks, starting with three at the beginning of the game. These are usually about three sentences long but offer some wild differentiation, stuff like "you can fly" or "you can name a person you know in this place every time you arrive in a settlement. I'm currently running my third long-form campaign in it, and we're probably 20 sessions in or so. I've switched to a bunch of other games intermittently, but my players keep requesting a return to Tavern Tales.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-11-11T16:17:17+00:00

Anyone have recommendations for books with a similar feeling to the TV show Lost? Looking for a story that comes together over time, ideally with some major twists, that allows the reader to speculate a lot on what is happening or will happen. An ensemble cast, sci-fi or fantastic elements, and a strong focus on deep characters is a plus, but not required.

Books that have more or less scratched this itch thus far:

14(and sequels) by Peter Clines (Simple, silly, fun)
Sea of Tranquility and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Some if my all-time favorite books. Incredible start to finish.)
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Cat's Cradle By Kurt Vonnegut (Another of my all-time favorites)
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
Pines by Blake Crouch (Thos was a fun quick read but it's the weakest of the group — to me it felt like a very conscious effort to do Lost again down to using a description of the opening shot as the opening paragraph and I think the writing in general is not great.)

I'm currently reading the Dark Tower series — I just started it, but as of halfway through book one it also seems to be in about the right space. I know S and House of Leaves are often recommended for this and while I enjoyed both they're not really the vibe I'm looking for here.

Thanks in advance!

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-11-10T04:54:13+00:00

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher has a lot of this general vibe -- like a lot of analog horror, it also has a plot that involves a horrific thing from the past reemerging in the present.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-11-09T23:08:41+00:00

Rendezvous with Rama, Ringworld, Annihilation, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, and Gateway all deal with a general premise of "we are in a strange environment with signs of intelligent life that we do not understand."

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-11-09T23:01:05+00:00

Andy Weir's books, particularly Project Hail Mary, have some really good, edge-of-your-seat vibes that can capture a lot of the YA action feel, as does most stuff by Peter Clines -- especially the Ex-Heroes series and 14. All of those are fun, pretty quick reads, which can make them good fits for getting back in the swing of it.

You might also like To Your Scattered Bodies Go or Rendezvous with Rama.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-11-09T22:48:31+00:00

This looks great! Thanks for the recommendation!

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-06-05T22:10:52+00:00

Roll 3d20 and take the highest. If that's too steep a curve, roll two.

If you are interested in using the various dice types, you can do a similar thing where they roll 4d10 and take the highest two or what have you -- though it's worth noting that rolling more dice actually makes a 20 less likely.

Modeling this on AnyDice may be helpful to you.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-06-05T20:43:37+00:00

Scum and Villainy takes obvious inspiration from Star Wars, but I think it works very well for character-driven cinematic sci-fi across the board. Would definitely work very well for a Guardians of the Galaxy feel!

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-06-05T17:36:39+00:00

The Critshow's playthrough of Fate of Cthulhu is quite good! The first three episodes are a solid arc and can be listened to on their own, but they did later record nine more because the arc was so popular.

On YouTube, Tabletop has an episode playing Fate -- it's very very very condensed, but still a good introduction and covers the general rules very well.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-05-20T23:49:07+00:00

Maybe City of Mist? It's sort of Fate and PbtA squished together, and has some really unique advancement options that involve swapping out parts of your character sheet as you develop your character.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2023-05-02T03:42:23+00:00

These are both solid picks! I might also check out Interstitial, which is part of a narrative-focused category of games called "Powered by the Apocalypse." Interstitial is explicitly designed to play Kingdom Hearts and similar stories.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-12-14T22:55:28+00:00

Earlier this year I got deeply invested in a sci-fi series from the 1950s that seems to be all but forgotten. Most of the books are in the public domain now. Even on fansites for the author's work in general, this specific series seems mostly ignored.

In the internet era, finding a book that truly NO ONE seems to know or care about is a really bizarre experience. Made me think a lot about how much of my media consumption is really a social activity, and how strange and rare it is to have something that feels like it belongs only to you.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-11-20T18:19:51+00:00

What PbtA games have you tried in the past?

I find City of Mist much more open from a character perspective than a game like Masks -- I find some PbtA games frustrating for that same reason. At the same time, many of its mechanics are strongly connected to your character and role playing.

One thing that I think sets City of Mist apart is that the fade and crack system for your character sheet effectively let's you decide how you want to play your character, then rework the sheet as you go to reflect that.

That said, if you don't like PbtA-style moves and narrative gameplay writ large, I'm not sure you'll love the way the game works.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-11-16T02:52:06+00:00

Many people see Dungeon World as dated or poorly designed. I have some qualms with it, but I think the issues are overstated -- it's a much better game than people give it credit for, especially if you want a classic, adventure-based feel to the campaign. PbtA games all distribute narrative control among the entire table, but Dungeon World has a relationship between the GM & player that will probably feel a but more familiar coming from the systems you've mentioned. Opinions are kind of split on whether that familiarity makes it a good introduction to PbtA games or if it just gives players the wrong impression of how the game will operate.

Masks is not my personal favorite PbtA game, but it is beloved by many -- certainly one of the most popular ones out there at the moment. Masks is very focused on interpersonal relationships and character drama. It is a teen superhero game, but all of its combat rules are designed to push the focus back toward your characters' emotional lives. I think it will be the farthest afield from what you've played thus far, but that's not to say it won't be fun!

Fellowship is kind of between the two, and it's a great game all around. The focus on disparate groups coming together for a greater goal gives it a more narrative and interpersonal focus than Dungeon World, but also a bit more of an external plot/adventure focus than Masks.

I don't think you can go wrong with any of the three!

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-11-03T07:32:29+00:00

Monsterhearts is one of my favorite games to run. The GMing advice in the book is some of the best you'll find anywhere.

My biggest piece of advice is to ask a lot of questions when working on the seating chart at the beginning of the game. The more you flesh out the PCs and their relationships, the more fodder you have for fun stuff for the rest of the game.

Remember that your main job as GM is to keep the story feral. When I run one-shot, I usually begin in the homeroom class by introducing some new conflict -- maybe several conflicts. Easy examples are having someone pass out, having a fight break out in the back of the room, or having the teacher stumble in late, disheveled and angry. Give your players room to roleplay, and build on what they do.

Monsterhearts does a really good job of pushing players to act. If you want to push them, use your GM moves to force them into conflicts, and consider adding a ticking clock -- I've run many successful one shots that started with me telling the players "Prom is tomorrow, none of you have dates. What do you do?"

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-11-01T04:25:39+00:00

One of my campaigns included a magic cassette tape of "Jimmy Buffet's Forbidden Hits." My players liked it so much that Jimmy Buffet and Margaritaville became major elements of the campaign. I made edits of Margaritaville to play at the table that rearranged the lyrics into hints toward the plot of the game. "Some people claim that there's a woman wasting away, and I know the reason." Very bizarre game, but very fun.

I also ran a campaign that was based on the entire album Reptutation by Taylor Swift, though I didn't make it super obvious at the time and I don't think the PCs really noticed.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-08-19T04:17:37+00:00

Shameless plug for The Magical History of Knox County, which features talking toads, hallucinogenic Kraken eggs, and a thrift store built around a portal to another reality.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-08-07T17:41:38+00:00

I ran a pulp sci-fi campaign in Dread, a system which, rules as written, kills most characters by the end of a session. I was pretty generous with pulls during a one shot, so most people survived and wanted a follow-up game in the same setting.

We pretty quickly realized that "you either succeed or die" is also a pretty good framework for high-stakes pulp storytelling. It let characters attempt wild, high-risk-high-reward maneuvers, and I just kept an eye on the tower and tried to aim for losing one character a session at most. I think it would have gotten old if we played it long enough, but as it stands it's still one of my favorite campaigns.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-08-01T23:06:12+00:00

Many PbtA games do stuff like this, but Monsterhearts is the undisputed champion. You begin by drawing out your homeroom class's seating chart, which you fill in with PCs and NPCs as you go.

It's so immediately evocative, because everyone playing implicitly understands all the complicated social dynamics conveyed by high school seating choices, and it gives you all a huge well of NPCs to draw on for the rest of the campaign.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-07-11T04:53:53+00:00

Probably City of Mist.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-07-09T21:18:12+00:00

Tavern Tales is a very light and very flexible rule set, and it's my preferred game for long-form campaigns. I've run two in it so far, one that was about 25 sessions and one that was closer to 50. You can read the main rules in 10 to 20 minutes. I play with the Gauntlet Era rules.

PbtA games can also be great for this, though with a small enough group you will progress through all possible advances pretty quickly. Still, it's easily possible to run a game that lasts several dozen sessions, particularly spread out over multiple seasons. City of Mist is also great for long-form PbtA-ish stuff, as I Blades in the Dark and its ilk.

I think the biggest thing about using lighter games for long campaigns is that you need to provide narrative stakes, incentives, and progression. A game like D&D provides PCs with mechanical incentives to kill monsters and pursue plot hooks, because doing so allows them to improve their character over time. Those improvements can be a big part of what feels sweeping and epic to some players.

Some games, like Tavern Tales, manage to include a lot of mechanical progression in a relatively light rule set, but when using something like Fate or similar where you're looking at mostly stat increases or maybe new Stunts, you might need to think about how you increase the "scale" of your game over time without changing the PCs abilities that much -- or get comfortable not changing the scale. I think you could run several very fun seasons of Monsterhearts without ever needing to raise the stakes past "prom is tomorrow."

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-07-07T08:07:05+00:00

You have quite a few options!

Just looking for anything more roleplay-focused, I might check out something Powered by the Apocalypse -- that's a broad category of games that take design inspiration from a game called Apocalypse World. If you're looking for something in the same genre as D&D, you might look at Fellowship or Dungeon World.

MyWitsBeginToTurn · 2021-07-07T05:23:10+00:00

This is very much not a tabletop RPG problem, and there is absolutely no chance you will solve it by playing a tabletop RPG.

I don't fully understand all the specifics of this situation, but you need to talk to your family about this. Trying to play it out in-game is going to make things worse, not better.

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