I visited my sister in Missouri this weekend for her wedding. In addition to some knitting, a library book, and some board games, I brought my Nook, loaded up with books and RPGs.
Thursday night, my niece (age 11) wanted to “play D&D.” Well, I didn’t have D&D with me, but Niece doesn’t really know the difference between D&D, KidsRPG (the first RPG I introduced her to, when she was about 7), and Dungeon World. Fortunately, I had Dungeon World on my Nook.
My new brother-in-law is a Warhammer player and all-around geeky gamer as well. He’s been wanting to get into D&D, but “the books are so expensive!” In fact, “D&D books” were item #3 on their wedding registry, right after a microwave and blender.
I pointed out Dungeon World and suggested he play with Sis and Niece and me. So, there we were on a Thursday night, getting out the game dice and printing out the DW playbooks. Pencils were scrounged up. I pulled up the Giant’s Dollhouse from the 1-Page Dungeons, which I’ve run for DW before and found it works pretty well. Niece played “Gem, the Bard.” Sis played “Elrosine, the Ranger.” Bro-in-law played “Reltuc, the Wizard.” They were all elves, which was kind of cool. The Giant’s Dollhouse is a good little adventure, and I like to start the PCs in an underground pool of water surrounded by fire eels, with one PC able to act and the rest petrified. It helps to start with the PC who is most likely to be a lone wolf/wildcard character in that role, because they quickly decide to be more of a team player, when they realize they need the rest of the PCs if they’re to survive the adventure! Starting out in imminent danger is also fun because it gets people immediately engaged in the story.
My dad (also known as “My First Dungeon Master” and “the guy who didn’t realize a 4 year old would walk right up to a dragon” and “ran a D&D game with a child before anyone realized that it’s a good idea not to destroy them with a breath weapon in the first round of the adventure”) came into town on Friday.
We added him, Lizzy’s best friend, and Michael’s work buddy. Dad played “Piotr,” the human cleric of Medicus (god of healing). BFF played Sparrow, the halfling thief, and Work-Buddy played Hawke, the human fighter.
I pulled up the 5-Room Dungeon archive and found a likely candidate, and the heroes were off on an adventure to find 6 abducted children in a haunted house! It was much more challenging to run with 6 players, but I managed. I later advised both of my fledgling GMs to run with no more than 4 to start out.
The 5-room dungeon archive is about 200 pages of awesome, by the way, and it works really well for Dungeon World. The timing is just about perfect for a 4-hour game, even with about an hour of character setup and “how to play.”
The heroes were mostly victorious in the haunted house, and the only really troubling thing was that Piotr had flubbed a few rolls pretty badly when confronting a demon… and nothing outwardly had happened to him. I explained that I was writing down a note for his character: “has attracted unwelcome attention from demons” and left it at that.
Bro-in-Law now wants to learn how to GM. The Work-Buddy was excited about the game, and he envisions playing in the wee hours after work. I’ve given him resources, including the game book, to use to his heart’s content, and he has my email address for when he gets stuck or needs help.
Saturday was the wedding, we welcome Bro-in-law to the family, and he and my Sis head off to have some marital bliss on their wedding night.
That night, I was kid-sitting for Niece, who was eager to play Dungeon World and also learn how to GM (yes, that will make 3 generations of DMs in my family!) I had Dad come over as a player, and I ran a third session of Dungeon World with just the two of them. This time, I ran it as a tutorial– whenever I made a GM move, I told my niece which move I was making, and why I was making it. I wanted to instill in her the importance of using Dungeon World to tell a story that highlights the player characters as heroes, much more than “I’m going to kill your character!” kind of combative gaming.
In this session, Piotr found himself the recipient of a quest to go shut down a plague demon who was escaping. I told him that, due to the demonic influence he had attracted, he was seeing vision of this demon trying to escape. When he prayed for divine guidance, the god did not give him any new information, but instead gave him a boon– he was immune to disease for the purpose of the quest! (Very handy, and he ended up using the bard as a canary, watching to see when she got sick in the demon’s prison). Because I had 2 PCs, a cleric and a bard, I picked a 5-room dungeon that was all puzzles to be solved, rather than big monsters to fight. They were even able (thanks to the bard) to talk their way past the one creature who is more scripted to be fought.
In all, it was an exhilarating weekend of Dungeon World, but I was a bit glad to have a night off on Sunday before I had to board the plane to head home Monday afternoon!