Dungeon World Forever
Today we’re releasing a new version of Dungeon World. But that’s not all that’s happening.
As of today, we’re splitting Dungeon World into two games: Dungeon World and Dungeon World Hack.
Dungeon World Hack is what you’re used to so far: an Apocalypse World hack. You still need Apocalypse World to play, it’s not a self-contained game.
Dungeon World is now a complete game, with all the rules you need to play (or at least most of them – Adam and I are still writing away). Classes, DM moves, Fronts, monsters, everything. Dungeon World Hack is a subset of Dungeon World, it’s just selected parts of the full game.
Why the split? We want to change up the way these games are distributed. Dungeon World Hack will still be a free PDF, just like it is now. Dungeon World is going to be a pay product in print and PDF. We’ve put a lot of work into Dungeon World, and we also don’t want to undermine Apocalypse World by giving away too many of its ideas for free, so we decided to take this route.
The plain text xml of the full game will still be free and open. If you can put up with reading the raw xml, it’s all free. What you’ll be paying for is the full product, with layout, character sheets, and all the rest.
Starting right now, you can get Dungeon World Hack and keep playing the game. We’re also launching the Dungeon World Adventurer’s Guild, an email list that gets the full PDF of Dungeon World, along with early access to bonus material like new classes, monsters, and adventures. All of the bonus material will eventually be posted here, but the Adventurer’s Guild gets it early.
How do you join the Adventurer’s Guild? Simple: just play Dungeon World, including Dungeon World Hack, and tell us about it. Post it to your blog, write about it on a forum, or just send us an email directly (gm@dungeon-world.com). Do that, and you’re an Adventurer. Welcome to the guild.
So that’s it. Keep on playing Dungeon World Hack. Tell us about it, and get the full Dungeon World now. Look for a print version down the road.
Great, thanks Sage, now I have this stuck in my head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcjlhFVTY50
I do what I can.
I love the new version of DW hack, are the DM, exp and monster rules no longer part of the hack version or are they coming later?
The DM section will be in the full PDF only. Monsters will eventually appear in both, with the full PDF having more. I’m not sure what you mean by exp, everything related to leveling should still be there (I think).
Our thinking here is that, if you have Apocalypse World and know some D&D, you can use Hack no problem. If you don’t have DW, or you want some of the stuff that moves further away from AW (like Moves and Fronts), you check out the full PDF.
Yeah I have me some AW, looking over the older version of DW it looks like I may have been misremembering that there were more exp rules then there were so that is all good. Awesome that the Monsters will be added to the hack version as I really dug their moves, not that I wont be picking up the full version when it comes out and all
Ah, I see what you mean now. I think that stuff might have actually got lost in some of the behind the scenes changes for layout and such, I’ll make sure they’re in the next version.
Dangit, my original reply was supposed to go elsewhere. What I meant to say was:
Yeah, we had to figure out what to do with monsters. The bigger issue is that was probably the least developed area of the game. So Our real task is to make monsters better, then we can worry about which file they go in.
Regarding the Hack version (which is all I can see, right?):
Is it supposed to include rules for generating stats?
Carouse can give you “+1 forward to
your next Adventure Hook roll” which sounds like a Move, but I see it nowhere.
Do you want little editing errors like a missing “you” from the Bard’s Reputation move?
It IS supposed to have those rules, and I forgot to include them. There’s a new version available now that has them.
Carouse needs to be updated, thanks! We’ve been making so many changes in the basic moves, sometimes we miss the dependencies.
Editing stuff is always welcome, but maybe over email is a better way to do it.
Thanks for the careful reading.
Great. Now add the leveling stuff.
In the section you just added, you explain how to highlight stats, but never describe what highlighting is or why you do it (maybe that falls under the ‘you need AW to play’ caveat?
On the character sheets, under alignment you talk about marking xp, but there is nowhere to do so and no discussion of what xp does for you.
On the back of the character sheets, it tells you what to do when you gain level 2-n (where n = 5 or 10 — is that correct?) but there’s nothing telling you how you gain a level.
Ah, I see what you mean now. I think that stuff might have actually got lost in some of the behind the scenes changes for layout and such, I’ll make sure they’re in the next version.
Cool! It’s not really holding me back; I have a print-out of a previous version that had all that stuff and it’s easy enough to hack something together anyway, knowing AW. But it seemed like you might have thought it was more complete than it really was.
So, I can have access to the full PDF by playing the game and mailing you about my experience. However, how am I supposed to play the game without the full rules? In the Hack there’s nothing about monsters, loot, dungeons, what the DM is supposed to do… How can I play without those?
With some creativity and the AW rules! People have done it and had a great time. Monsters are pretty easy to figure out (and will be coming back to the PDF), give em a level, some HP, damage, and a move or two. Loot is not as big a deal in DW. Make up something appropriate. Dungeons work however you want them to, though I will recommend Tony Dowler’s Microdungeons for maps.
That said, if trying it out yourself doesn’t sound like fun, just hang tight for a few months, and we’ll have a full version for sale.
Oh wow. I read the Hack all through yesterday, and I’d be damned if I didn’t like it! Seriously need to try it out asap.
A thing puzzles me though:
There are references to moves Pull a Stunt and Make a Stand, but I find no such moves in there, so are they missing intentionally?
Oh and that Adventure Hook thing seems to be missing (again?) too…
Ok, two more things I forgot.
Wizard’s Ritual gets more expensive with leveling up, but there seems to be no other reason for this than keeping the cost proportional, regardless of what level the character is. Is this correct?
And the other is, what’s up with the tags(Invocation, Summoning et al.) on wizard spells?
Sorry about the spam, I promise this was the last one.
Nice catches all around. The longer I look at it, the more I think we might have rushed this particular iteration a bit. But hey, people are catching this stuff, next version will be better!