First off, what this is not: this is not designing my own version of D&D (though I am doing that). This is taking a stab at designing the game that fits the goals WotC has stated and the approaches they’ve made public. Let’s call those our Axioms and Theorems (axioms being the goals WotC has, theorems being the elements of design we already know from those goals).

Axioms and Theorems

1. D&D as a brand must grow
2. There are growth opportunities within the tabletop RPG market
1. From 1 & 2 it follows that a new tabletop RPG edition of D&D is important.
3. D&D is many things to many people (not just in minutiae, but in what the game is about)
4. Each previous edition of D&D has catered to a different audience
1. From 2, 3, & 4 it follows that a new version of D&D could succeed by bringing back in lapsed customers
5. D&D must be one game (or at least one tabletop RPG)
1. From 4.1 & 5, the one true D&D must also cater to people with very different tastes
2. From 5.1 it follows that D&D should be a modular game that can be what each group wants it to be

This is at a high level what we know from WotC’s current statements. Before I start wildly designing from them, let’s look at a few ways to axioms could be different (this is the non-euclidean geometry section, essentially).

Axiom 2 is weak at the least. While there are plenty of people hating on 4E, I don’t know how much that effected sales, at least of the core books. Are those growth opportunities really big enough to be compatible with Axiom 1?

2. To grow the tabletop RPG market we need flagship games of a different type

This doesn’t make a difference to any of the theorems, interestingly enough. Of course this hasn’t been their public statement, but it seems like a valid tack: if D&D could do more, would more people buy it? It actually subsumes part of axiom 3, in that it assumes there are other audiences than the current tabletop audience that can be reached by the right game.

Since this isn’t truly rigorous logic I’ve allowed myself some jumps here, but I’m not entirely sure 5.2 follows from 5.1. Couldn’t there be a new game that still caters to all people with different tastes, a non-modular one? To strengthen 5.2 I’ll introduce Axiom 6, which is entirely supposition on my part, and for which there are two candidates:

6. Different types of play are better served by different rules (i.e. rules matter)

6. More systems mean more opportunities for additional content

Both of these suggest why a modular system instead of one monolithic system. Which one is true for WotC (or if they’re even needed for 5.2) depends on your opinion of the company and the designers. Both may even have been used to different audiences. I’m a rules matter person, so I choose to think of this as a nod to the fact that GM, rules, and players are all responsible for the game produced.

The Design

Enough of that. Given those design goals, how would I make D&D? (I’m so glad you asked…)

First I’d look at what modules need to be able to do (i.e. what bits need to be completely changeable from group to group):

• Some modules need to make small adjustments to specific areas, like lethality
• Some modules need to add detail to certain types of play, like social situations or kingdom management
• Some modules need to define setting-related stuff, like which races and classes are playable
• Some modules need to set the playstyle, like action-adventure test-your-mettle, or character-driven story
• Some modules need to define advancement

Given that list I can look at what doesn’t need to be modular and make that the “core game.” There’s not much left except for the very bones of a system for how to resolve an action or event, so that’ll be our “core.” (Note that to my mind just a resolution system doesn’t make a game, but that’s just semantics. The fact that everyone’s rolling the same dice in vaguely the same way may be enough for the marketing angle of “one game.”)

The actual details here don’t matter much, but I’ll throw them out anyway. The core game is:

Your character is six stats, each of which has a modifier associated with it. When the GM tells you to test your abilities they will tell you what number you need to roll, then you roll a d20 and add whatever modifier the GM says applies. If you meet or beat the target number you succeed, the GM will tell you how. Otherwise you fail, the GM will tell you how.

This is a ridiculously simple core, and one that says nothing about the actual important parts of play: when are your abilities tested? What does failure mean?

So far we have the most boring dice rolls ever (I refuse to even call it a game). This is the most I can see in common across the vast playstyles of D&D, mostly because something along these lines is common to the majority of RPGs. Look past the exact dice and modifiers, and remember that we don’t have the real meat yet, and this is 1st Edition to Primetime Adventures and everything in between.

Now the modules. The first and most important module would be the playstyle one. Of course playstyle is a term that probably wouldn’t fly with a broad audience, so I might call it the Focus, Adventure, or Advancement module.

Each playstyle module contains:

• rules for what earns rewards (but not how to spend them)
• rules for the GM’s basic responsibilities
• rules for what success and failure mean

For example, the Sandbox playstyle sets rewards based on gaining knowledge about the world and the events going on, and sets the GM’s basic responsibilities as creating a living world and presenting it authentically. The Challenge playstyle sets rewards for beating enemies, the tougher the better, and gives the GM the responsibility to create challenging encounters that may not be winnable.

At this point, with core+module, this is more or less an actual game. The broad categories of  ”GM responsibilities” and “success and failure” are actually huge deals. They fill in some of the key pieces from the core. In particular the GM’s responsibilities and the meaning of success and failure should establish what counts as a “test of abilities.”

The interesting bit here is that if groups were actually willing to do this kind of pick-and-choose playstyle they’ve basically been given a way to talk about creative agenda without sounding like navel-gazing theory snobs. If it could gain traction with actual players that’d be kinda cool.

At this point the group, the GM, the setting designer, or whoever is making the calls on which modules to use has said what the game’s about, now they need to choose what the players do (or at least what’s important for them to do).

This is where the detail modules come in. The detail modules would have sub-systems the give mechanical detail to certain situations while still allowing the call on which of those situations matter to be made by the playstyle module.

For example, the combat detail module describes combat a lot like modern D&D: attacks, HP, etc. The decision of when a combat matters is still down to the playstyle. The playstyle might establish that it’s only a test of ability if the character’s beliefs are on the line, which isn’t overidden by the detail module. Instead, if a test of ability would represent a combat, you use the combat detail system.

Anything not covered by a detail system is covered by the core game (+ playstyle). If we don’t use the combat detail module and our characters end up testing their ability in a fight, we just make one roll, success or failure, as the core game describes.

With core + playstyle + detail we now know what the game’s about and what the characters do. The next module choice describes the types of characters and the world around them: the setting module.

Setting modules define classic stuff like class and race, how many of each a character gets, etc. Of course how those are actually represented depends on the detail modules in place. The core of each character, as described in the core game, would need to be just stats. Based on the detail modules in play, different parts of the classes come into play, but the way they come into play still must be general.

As an example, let’s use arcane magic. In a game where there’s no arcane magic there should be no classes that primarily grant arcane magic and classes that grant arcane magic as a secondary ability should ignore it. If arcane magic exists but isn’t using a detail module, then it’s just like a stat: some modifier used when testing an ability. If there is a detail module that detail module has to describe how to translate that arcane magic stat into the right level of detail. Maybe for each point of arcane magic you know one spell castable once per day, or something like that.

Of course there can be different detail modules that use that some information. One detail module for arcane magic is vancian, another is skill-based (so your arcane magic stat turns into a set of points to spend on more specific skills), etc.

With core + playstyle + detail + setting we have enough to start playing, but how characters grow is down to the advancement module.

The advancement module takes the rewards allocated by the playstyle module and turns them into concrete additions to the characters. Of course the advancement module can’t know what detail or setting modules are in use, so it has to be generic. The advancement module would have to hand over information to the character in a standardized form: levels, new abilities, and advancing abilities.

Levels set a power cap in terms of what any individual ability can do. In the core game setting modules this means a cap to modifier, which can filter out into detail modules in different ways (no 2nd level spells until you’re level X, for example). New abilities are how many new abilities you can unlock, advancing abilities is how much you can increase any ability you currently have. There might even be catch-all for other bonuses, call them boons. This would account for feats and such.

The idea being that the advancement module you choose sets what advancing a character means. Does it mean a dramatic increase in power? Or is it a slow broadening of ability? Or do you just pick up specific new tricks?

Core + playstyle + detail + setting + advancement is everything D&D usually has. The last type of module, modifiers, are like the optional rules that get scattered through most editions of D&D.

Modifiers tie to one or more specific modules and just tweak them a bit. Combat modifiers might make certain combat detail modules more lethal. Magic modifiers might change up the schools of magic. Modifiers allow the design of two modules that are mostly the same, but with a few differences, without rewriting the whole thing. Instead of grid-based combat and deadly grid-based combat being two entirely different modules one is just a modifier to the other.

That’s it. Every group chooses 1 playstyle module, 0+ detail modules, 1+ setting modules, 1 advancement module, and 0+ modifier modules, and they’ve effectively made their own D&D, but under the umbrella of The One True D&D. No more edition wars, we’re all buying the same product. We may war over modules (“Grid-based non-deadly combat? Why?”) but at least we’re all still buying WotC products.

The Products

What would a product look like in this modular world?

Each product would need to be heavily themed. Since what mechanics get used is down to which systems are used you can’t sell people a book based on the fact that all the rules will be useful for their game, you have to sell it based on the interest in the theme of the book.

So, a Martial Power style book might have:

• A new combat detail system
• Modifiers for certain classes (or types of classes) based on martial options
• An advancement system that prioritizes combat prowess
• Modifiers for deadlier or more lenient combat
• One or more settings, where a setting is a list of what modules to use together for a certain game
• For example, a mercenary setting, made up of the challenge playstyle, combat-ready setting modules (fighty-y classes), details for combat and negotiation, modifier for deadly combat, etc.

The book really has to appeal based on “ooh, I want to play that, no matter the rule” than “oh, this has a useful rules update.” It might lead to the option of smaller books, since a setting could easily be established using a specific combination of existing modules with maybe some custom modifiers.

WotC could then open up the system, much like 3E, but with a clearer back-and-forth. The modular system gives other companies a clearer way to position their books as complimentary to WotC’s, and even an entirely new game would still be providing more modules that are then part of the overall ecosystem.

3E OGL products could only go so far before they’re not compatible with D&D and that line wasn’t always clear. The system wasn’t modularized so an alternate skill system would entirely break the skill-based magic of another book. So long as each designer abides by the division of modules inconsistencies can at least cleanly be recognized (“oh, this setting module requires this detail module” for example).

Mutants and Masterminds is an example here. In the 3E ecosystem M&M’s contribution was mostly to mindshare: I know I was excited by the idea of playing superheroes with a system I already “knew.” The problem being that in truth M&M shares only a few concepts with d20 at the lowest level (d20+something vs. DC, a few others) so none of that cool content is really part of the larger ecosystem; Mutants and Masterminds didn’t give anything back to the overall design except for the marketing power of  ”d20 can do superheroes!”

With a modular system M&M could be a larger part of the design. Powers as ranked skills would be a detail module that converts the basic ranks defined by setting (class) modules into specific powers. The book would also contain playstyles for supers, setting modules for supers, and so on. It might even have other detail modules that depend on the powers detail module. Now all those have greater compatibility with the world at large: I can choose to describe my fantasy adventurer’s abilities using superpowers, or use a superhero playstyle with my wild west rough riders.

Adventures would be largely presented in the fiction. Most modern adventures devote huge swaths to stats and encounters which would now be largely dependent on the modules in play. Instead adventures would be mostly about the in-game situations. Specific modules can only be leveraged within an adventure if the adventure says clearly that it depends on them.

That means that an adventure that doesn’t say “requires one of these detail modules” has to assume that all combat can and will be resolved with the core system (i.e. one dice roll). That’s a challenge to designers certainly, but I think it’s a good one. Adventure design really has to be about what the adventure means within the world, not about what rules it invokes.

Of course most adventures would only work well with certain playstyles. This makes playstyles the least-extensible point, which is probably just as it should be. There are many ways to pursue the same creative agenda (which playstyle basically is) while focusing on different details, but only so many entirely different playstyles will gain enough traction to make sense to a company like WotC.

The Links Between Modules

How modules work together is important, something that I’ve slightly glossed over. If you’re a software person, this may all seem like a flashback to a design class (if you had one) or spec review. Sorry.

As I’ve mentioned above each module links with other modules of other types in certain ways. The playstyle module has to describe rewards, which the advancement module has to be able to consume. In fact the rewards produced by any playstyle module need to be consumable by any  advancement module.

Of course there can be declared incompatibilities, or declared synergies. Maybe each advancement module has a “best with” section listing other modules it works well with, to guide the GM. Maybe there are even some edge case combinations that just flat don’t work (the more of these there are, the less the system is modular).

The entire design, being modular, comes down to the designers’ ability to smartly design the interfaces between modules. In my design above I went into some detail on the interface between advancement and setting: each class element of the setting has to be able to consume the output of any advancement, which means the output of advancement has to be standardized. I did this with Level, new ability, increased ability, and boon, but there are any number of workable solutions.

How interfaces are defined becomes the most important part of the design.

Versioning interfaces is a software problem as well, but I think with D&D there’s a way around it: series of modules.

What it’d actually be is a way of marking which “version” of an interface the module supports. Maybe advancement modules don’t start with a good way of communicating feat-style advancement to a class (and classes don’t have feat-like improvements), but later WotC wants to add that. They simply start a new series (S series, let’s call them) where all the classes have feat-like advancement options and all the advancement modules describe how to gain feats. They could even update the old A series basic advancement options with modifiers to make them S-compatible. Now each module can mark compatibility within a series, or with everything but a certain series. It’s not perfect, but it does allow the kind of versioning that’s needed.

Using the Mutants and Masterminds example, M&M would have some modules that fit existing interfaces and then maybe have some that depend on those. For example, a powers detail module that does M&M-style powers, then detail and modifier modules that do superpowered chase scenes or adapt the core combat module for powers.

I also love the idea that, in D&D Next, “series of modules” would be completely relevant but completely different from the old adventures. Nice nod to the past.

The Last Edition

This entire system of versioned interfaces means that nothing ever really has to be abandoned. Instead of a dramatic shift to a new edition, publishers can define a new set of interfaces and slowly shift support to them.

Example time: we have our A series playstyles, the 2 or 3 from the core book. WotC eventually decides that playstyles need to also set difficulties, which had been part of detail modules. This changes the interface between playstyle and detail modules, which means a new series, let’s call it B series. Instead of doing a whole-hog edition swap they can start with this new B series in a large expansion book, self-contained. Then some later small expansions support both A and B series to some degree. Finally B series becomes the default, integrated into a new printing of the core, and A series doesn’t get much if any new support.

This is more or less what WotC does with Magic to great effect. Instead of saying that this new edition of Magic entirely supplants the old one, they maintain official “formats” that include only selected sets but casual play usually includes whatever sets and editions the players care to bring.

Similarly each setting could be defined by a set of modules which can slowly change over time, maybe with the evolution of the setting, or with a focus on different areas. Forgotten Realms: Wild Areas uses the A series and focuses on combat. Forgotten Realms: Lords and Ladies uses B series and focuses on intrigue.

Since series are not games (again this is kind of a trick of semantics) there’s no edition wars or all-together stop of support. Each series would (hopefully) not completely redefine every interface so even though A and B series playstyles and details are incompatible, their setting and advancement aren’t. This way groups can slowly migrate as they see fit and get long term support in some areas (but not all). My A series game can make use of selected parts of B-series books, and of course by buying B-series books I’m acumulating B-series content, so eventually shifting over to being a B-series group is fairly painless.

Complexity

Of course as presented here this seems wildly complex, but hopefully part of that is because I’m presenting this to you as a game designer, no as a potential player. (We’re all game designers, of course, but more on that in a later post.) The way this is presented in a core book would be much simpler. Instead of this huge number of combinations there would be different levels of brew-your-own.

At the top are 3 or 4 ready-to-play combinations reflecting broad kinds of D&D play. These are presented as canonical game styles, and are heavily encouraged. None of the 3E-style “the first thing to do is completely customize this game.” Instead these core combinations are what are assumed by most adventures, and most adventures support all of them.

Below that are the recommended combinations. Instead of all the choices being made for you, most of the choices are made for you. They might even be presented as variants of the ready-to-play combinations. “To customize the Exploration play-set, you can choose from these options.” This is for the group that wants something just a bit different, or the group that feels like it’s not play without customization.

Finally there’s the free-for-all, choose whatever modules you like. This is presented as an advanced option, with the statement that you should play one of the pre-configs first to see what you like. There’s no guarantee that they’ll have any real synergy, but they will at least work on the basic level of handing off the right information between modules.

Enough Already

That’s my vision of D&D next based on the comments made: a modular “game” where the modules can actually swap out huge swaths of what the game is about, what the players do, and so on.

This is radically different from 3E where, sure, you could swap out a fair bit of how things work (details), all of the fiction (setting), and there were plenty of house rules (modifiers). First off 3E had no standard way of separating these concepts: a new class might be entirely dependent on the existing combat system, but not make that clear. 3E also had no clear way of swapping out what the game was about. It was certainly possible, but it required massive rewrites, taking d20 basically down to the core mechanic.

It’s not the simplest of ideas. In fact it’s a pretty complex systems design problem. But it’s a way of both saying “this one game is for everyone” and giving everyone a different game. I’m interested to see if my ideas are anywhere close to what WotC’s doing.

Not that this is the one true way, but if WotC hasn’t bought in to some of my proposed axioms, up top there, they may be saying that this is one game for everyone but not actually making a game that does that. It could be like GURPS: a system that claims universality but only supports one mode of play. With a different choice of axiom 6 the entire modular system could be about choosing between miniature combat and  zone combat and freeform combat, not about actually changing what the game can do.

A little background: my development process for Dungeon World and Powers for Good has been to write into XML plaintext, then map that plaintext to layout using InDesign’s xml import features (I’ve posted about this before, in fact). I can import that plaintext into multiple documents meaning that I update the text of a move one place and it’s immediately updated both in the book and on the character sheets. It has its restrictions, but so far it’s worked wonderfully.

That’s just to give an idea of the work flow. The real topic here is the apps, so let’s dig into that.

Prerequisites

To make sense of this guide you’ll need:

• A basic knowledge of HTML (nothing fancy: basic tags, hyperlinks, that kind of stuff)
• Some basic CSS reading skills (design not needed)

To compile for iOS (more on other platforms later) you’ll need:

• A Mac
• xCode

The Basics

The goal here is to make making an app as easy as possible. That means you may not get some of the bells and whistles of a custom solution, but in exchange you won’t have to reinvent the wheel.

The key to the Dungeon World and Powers for Good apps is a framework called Baker. More specifically, both of those apps use a package on top of Baker called Laker. This guide currently refers to versions of both from August 2011. They both have newer versions that I’ll update for once I’ve used them more.

The core concept of Baker is dossiers. A dossier is like a chapter (in fact, in Dungeon World they map closely to the chapters of the book), it’s a single HTML page of content. Dossiers are placed in a developer-specified order; the user swipes between them side-to-side. As a developer all you have to do is provide those HTML pages, no knowledge of platform-specific code is needed.

To add interactivity in those pages you can use Javascript. Note that I didn’t list any knowledge of Javascript as a prereq. That’s because a) you don’t have to do any of that and b) even if you do you’ll get pretty far by copying snippets from around the web. The audio in Dungeon World and the commentary in Powers for Good are examples of Javascript re-used with minimal changes.

In particular, both the audio player and flip card are part of Laker, the framework built on top of Baker. Laker isn’t absolutely necessary, but it does give you a huge head start in the design of your app. It’s basically a set of sample pages, CSS styles, and javascript that gives you some design right off the bat instead of going all “hello world.”

The Process

The first step in making your game app is to have the game written, which is where my preference for writing in XML comes in. Dungeon World Basic and Powers for Good were written with descriptive but non-standard XML tags: stuff like <NoIndent> and <MonsterDescription>. That made mapping to the app a manual process (I messed with some python scripts, but there were too many special cases). For Dungeon World (the full game) we’re in the process of standardizing on html-compatible tags.

There are two keys to making the XML copy-and-past-able. First, InDesign ignores tags that you don’t map to styles. This means you can have all your <div>s or whatever and InDesign won’t bat an eye. The other key is the InDesign markup extensions. By using xmlns:aid=”http://ns.adobe.com/AdobeInDesign/4.0/” you can specify styles on a tag that override the mapping of a tag. For example, the <p> tag is currently mapped to the Body paragraph style of Dungeon World. I’m a huge stickler for not indenting the first paragraph, so I want the first paragraph of text to have a no indent style in InDesign, but still have valid HTML. To do this I just tag it <p aid:pstyle=”NoIndent”> and we’re in business. (Note that there are some other solutions, since most browsers will allow non-strict HTML, but this one is the cleanest.)

Assuming you’ve got your game written and an idea of how you want to tag it, it’s time to start making your app. I prefer to start with the Laker sample, since it gives me the most off the ground, but if you’re actually an HTML designer you can easily start from scratch. Simply add the HTML for each chapter to an HTML file. The framework finds your files based on the book.json file. There’s a full guide to it on the Baker site, but for now all you need to know is that it contains a list of all your dossiers in order. Baker then finds those files, makes UI for them (virtualizing as appropriate) and does all the real work.

Laker provides some CSS that’s very useful and worth mentioning at this point. In particular it provides div styles that place divs on different sides of the page, across the full page, or taking up half the page. You’ll notice that all the text in Dungeon World and Powers for Good alternates sides. This is to give a sense of place and memory within the page. A single full column of text would be easy to get lost in, using sides of the screen leverages the same visual memory as facing pages of a book. It also gives you space for images and other content in the ‘margin.’

I won’t repeat all the information in the Laker and Baker tutorials. If you’re really building an app, go check those out.

Advanced Topics

Links to anchors can be interesting. By default Baker scrolls by scrolling the UI piece that contains the HTML, unfortunately this is subject to some offset problems with Laker’s CSS. I changed it to instead scroll the root element from javscript which gives the nice scrolling you see. This isn’t the best answer so it probably won’t be patched into main, but hopefully a better fix will come together.

Andriod has it’s own version of Baker, called Friar, but it’s not quite baked yet. As of earlier this week it didn’t compile without changes against the latest Andriod builds. I’ve gotten it to compile and do some basic display, but I can’t recommend it yet.

Whitespace is of course ignored in HTML, but not when InDesign imports from XML. If you plan on doing both, don’t indent like you should, InDesign will layout all those tabs/spaces.

Buying Dungeon World

After a year of PDFs and incremental releases, Sage Kobold Productions will proudly have the Dungeon World Basic Game on sale at GenCon through Indie Press Revolution (IPR, booth 413) for $20. It’s a striking red book featuring four classes playable to level 5, all the rules, equipment, and an included adventure. The cover is by Edwin Huang, artist of the wonderful Skullkickers comic. The included adventure is really something special. It’s the first time we’ve tried to write a module for DW and it’s pretty great. It features a wonderful new map by Tony Dowler and an awesome contribution from none other than Jason Morningstar, designer of Fiasco and many other great games. When you buy the Dungeon World Basic Game you also get a full set of playbooks and a Dungeon World GM pin. Wear it proudly. If you need another adventure to play, Tony’s Purple Worm Graveyard will also be on sale at IPR. While not technically a DW adventure, I think of it as a DW adventure. You’ll even find some things that look oddly like move inside.

Playing Dungeon World

Playing Dungeon World is the best thing about Dungeon World, hands down. If you want to play DW at GenCon your best bet is to head to Games on Demand. I know of several people, including myself and Adam, who will be there ready to run DW at various times. Adam and I will also be hanging around the IPR booth at various times, playing other people’s games, or attending panels. If we have the time, we’d be happy to run a game for you. Even better, find someone who just bought the book and play with them. Remember the GM pin that comes with the book? Well, since anyone who has that has bought the book, they might be a good person to ask about playing.

The Pins

What’s a con without pins? For GenCon we’ve put together some rocking 1″ pins. The full set is 5 pins: GM, Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Wizard. You get the GM pin for buying the game. We’ll be handing out the other pins to anyone playing Dungeon World. We’d like to give you the pin for the class you’re playing, so you can show off your achievements, but we’re also pushovers. These pins are also a kind of low-tech Looking For Group channel. Put your GM pin on your badge and everyone knows you’ve bought the game and might be up for running it some time. Put your class pin on and everyone knows you’ve got some experience.

Just Hanging Out

As much as we might want to, we probably won’t be constantly playing games. If you want to grab a meal, have a beer, or just sit around and talk, twitter is probably the way to go: @olde_fortran or @skinnyghost. We’ll also be around the Embassy Suites after hours. There might even be Sagefighting.

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.

Concept: Stories of fame and what it does to people

Influences: The Wrestler, The Stage Names, Black Swan, The Stand-Ins, Behind the Music, Spinal Tap

Challenges: Living In The Future, Unlonely Your Fun, ARG! RPGS!, Scheherazade, Sharing

Requirements: You’ll need some time, creativity, and a blog with the ability to track number of visits. Setting up a new WordPress blog on wordpress.com is probably your best bet, but you can also use an established blog.

If you’re using an established blog, you probably want to put all your gameplay posts in one category.

Overview: Each game of Stage Names follows the career of a performer. Twice a week you’ll write blog posts from the perspectives of many people involved in the performer’s life. Based on the choices the performer makes and their success, you’ll find out what’ll happen in your next post. The game ends when the performer’s career ends.

Setup: You need a character sheet for your performer. This is just for your reference, not for sharing with others. On your character sheet:

Name the performer.

Choose a town of 100,000 or fewer that your performer is from.

One person in the performer’s immediate family believes in them. One person in the performer’s immediate family doesn’t. Who are they? Why do they feel that way?

One person outside of the performer’s family is their biggest fan. Who is it? Why other than the performer’s talent do they care?

List the voices you’ve unlocked. You start with only the performer’s voice.

Leave space for all the other benefits you’ll unlock.

Setup your blog. Test post as needed. Make sure you can track the number of views a post gets.

Posting: All of your posts will be made from the point of view of one of your fictional characters. Imagine why the person your posting as would post something: to spread news, gain fans, defend a friend, dispel rumors, make a comeback.

Each time you go to post you have a set of constraints for that post. Constraints for a post are made up of:

Location: Where the performer currently is.

Voice: Who you’re posting as. Your entire post must be written as this person.

Media: The media you can embed in your post as if it was created by the performer. In each post you can use something you find online as if it was created by the performer, part of the fictional world. Don’t be a dick: respect fair use, don’t hotlink, and credit the actual creator somewhere in your post.

Events: Things that have happened since the last post. You must mention all of these events in one way or another.

Promotion: What you can do to let other people on the internet know about the new post. The number of people reading your story corresponds to the fans the performer has, so the tools you can use to gain views/fans are constrained by the rules. (Ideally, there would be a custom blog software/WP addon to manage all this. What if you could lose your RSS feed as a gameplay option?)

You’ll post twice a week, the exact days are up to you.

For your first post, use these – Location: Hometown, Voice: Performer, Performace: Any one homemade YouTube video (no professional performers or bootleg concert footage) or non-professional photo, Events: Graduation Day before first tour, Promotion: unlimited direct communication (you can tell people you personally know through any medium, but no linking from public sites, tweeting, etc.)

For each post after that, the constraints depend on how the post before it did as well as your choices. If you have more than one Voice, you always cycle through voices with each post. Your new constraints are always based on the constraints from the previous post.

If the previous post had 10 or fewer views, choose one:

• Esoteric – Event: +rambling thoughts on something strange

If the previous post had more than 10 but less than 21 views, choose one:

If the previous post had more than 20 but less than 30 views, choose one:

If the previous post had more than 30 views, choose one:

If the previous post had more views than the post before it, choose one:

If the previous post had less views than the post before it, choose one:

For each comment your previous post had, choose one:

You also get points. For each view on the previous post, you get one point. These points roll over: if you don’t spend them on one post, you can spend them on the next. Track them on your character sheet.

The choices you can make all cost points. To use that choice, you must spend the required points and include whatever the choices says in the content of your post.

For example, to use the Significant Other choice you have to do what it says for that choice (mention them, but not by name; media must be love song but can be by any artist) and spend the required points (5).

Choices:

• Significant Other
  • Cost: 5
  • Requirements: Mention the person, but not by name; Media must be a love song but can be b y any artist
  • Benefit: Can choose Make it Official or Breakup for a later post
• Make It Official
  • Cost: 7
  • Requirements: Name the person; Explain how they make the performer feel
  • Benefit: Can choose Breakup or Engaged for a later post
• Engaged
  • Cost: 9
  • Requirements: Instead of any other events, post can only be about proposal; No Media
  • Benefit: Can choose Messy Breakup or Marriage for a later post
• Marriage
  • Cost: 11
  • Requirements: Instead of any other events, post can only be about wedding; Media can only be wedding pictures or video
  • Benefit: Can choose Divorce for a later post, add Spouse to Voices
• Breakup
  • Cost: 4
  • Requirements: Significant Other or Make It Official and either:
    • Events: +Public apology; Media must be sad
    • Events: +Public insults; Media must be angry
  • Benefit: Promotion: +Facebook for this post only
• Messy Breakup
  • Cost: 4
  • Requirements: Engaged and either:
    • Events: +inconvenient facts; no Media
    • Events: +the other man/woman; no Media
  • Benefit: Promotion: +Facebook
• Divorce
  • Cost: 4
  • Requirements: Married and either:
    • Events: +damaging facts +public outcry
    • Events: +cheating +confrontation
  • Benefit: Remove Spouse from Voices, change blog skin/style/layout

This is a great honor, there were many amazing submissions. Since none of my games have yet made it to print, I’ll have a lot to learn along the way, and I’m grateful for the chance.

Now it’s time to make this happen. I’m going to start a regular development diary on this site, to track the process and share what I learn. My first priorities are:

• Create a schedule
• Plan a budget
• Get my existing text cleaned up and setup in Subversion (just like Dungeon World is)

So, 364 days or less to Powers for Good being done.

Below I’ve compared all the principles I’ve drawn from Moldvay, 3E, and 4E. Principles are listed in the order I originally posted them (more or less the first time they are mentioned in the book), no effort has been made to correlate them. The only significance of the ordering is where in the text they are presented.

Moldvay to 3E

I know this comparison is a bit skewed, since the comparison ignores the several versions that fell between Moldvay and 3E, but the differences are astounding.

Both editions share a strong, central GM role with explicit power over everything that happens. From there, they diverge pretty sharply. Moldvay assumes that most rules issues, like balance, knowledge, style, and pacing, are all already resolved. 3E tries to be a toolkit, to be all things to all people, which in turn requires GM advice about tone, pacing, modifying the rules, and all kinds of other junk.

Sure, Moldvay is more restrictive, but it’s also a more practical guide to actually playing the game. I ran 3E for years, and if I had actually read the GM section thoroughly (which I didn’t) I might have been too intimidated to even start.

Moldvay to 4E

I love this comparison, since it essentially shows how far D&D has come, from (nearly) oldest to newest.

First, the most obvious thing: 4E has more to say about how to run it. 4E aims for a broader game type, but in my experience only excels closer to the traditional Moldvay mold, so at first I was skeptical of the longer list. Looking closer, the things 4E adds to the Moldvay list are actually pretty great, “Yes, and …” being the standout, as well as notes about collaboration and the DM as an equal in the creation of story.

I think it’ll surprise no one that 4E doesn’t keep Moldvay’s admonition to make adventures seem real. Real was probably too loaded a word to use; sure adventures should seem concrete but they should be fantastical, not real.

4E and Moldvay also share a similar confidence in the rules. Moldvay suggest making up minor rules when needed, 4E says that you can make a call and just move on if you don’t know the rule (but doesn’t suggest that a rule may not exist). I’m actually glad to see 4E drop the idea that you should override the rules whenever.

3E to 4E

I’ll admit, my entire interest in comparing this lists boiled down to comparing what 3E and 4E have to say about running the game. At least in some of the gamer groups I frequent, 3E (Pathfinder) vs. 4E is still a hotly debated topic, so I wanted to see what changed on the DM side of things.

So, what changed?

First of all, the 4E rules place much more trust in the assumption that the rules are solid, complete, and balanced. 3E dedicates a significant part of an early section of the DMG to how and when to make up new rules (classes, spells, monsters, or something bigger). I guess you could read that as 4E taking away your ability to be creative, replacing it with premade monsters and spells and classes so you don’t have to think about making your own, but that’s a pretty shallow way to read it. I think 4E’s lack of need for rules based advice points to how the game is structured, the mindset that the game will provide you tools and you can use those creatively. 3E assumes that to be creative you have to change the rules, that the rules are just another target for you to change with your creative instinct, 4E assumes that you want the rules to help you be creative, not just to be an outlet for your creativity.

The other clear shift is in the DM role. 4E says nothing about DM primacy, instead talking about shared collaboration, freely given information, and a game that everyone contributes to. 3E clearly places the “onus” of fun on one person. I think at this point in the development of RPGs it’s been pretty clearly resolved that the strength of the medium is in collaboration, not the ability of one person to entertain a group, and 4E reflects that.

Of course this is a pretty narrow comparison of 3E and 4E, but based on what they tell the Gm to do, I’m clearly in favor of 4E. 3E expects me, when DMing, to know everything, resolve everything, make sure the rules work, add my own rules, and create everyone’s fun. 4E expects me to work with other people, within a solid ruleset, to prepare and improvise communal fun, which for me is certain progress from the 3E model.

Now I just need to find the Pathfinder GM section and add that to the matrix…

Getting Started

For the purposes of this walkthrough, I’m going to assume you already have some text in layout that you’re more or less happy with. This process makes it a lot easier to do repeated releases, but if you’re just doing layout on a final text, I wouldn’t bother.

For me, the process was something like this: take Tony’s Apocalypse D&D, start putting it into layout, then start adding stuff until it became clear this wasn’t just a new layout of an existing text, this was something new. So I had a complete InDesign document that I wanted to take the text out of, but be able to resync the text easily.

Documents and Pages

I recommend breaking down your text into multiple documents to make syncing easier. A new sync will replace all the synced text, so you really want to be smart about splitting your book into documents.

I also haven’t experimented with multiple xmls to a document yet, so think about each document as being mapped to exactly one xml file.

Tagging

So you’ve got a document ready to go, now what? The first step is to figure out what the basic sections of the document are and tag them. Each style and text area should probably get it’s own tag.

Open the Tag window (it probably won’t be shown by default, but you can open it from the Window menu). By default there’s only one tag, Root (Fig 1). Keep this tag, it will enclose all the other tags in your xml.

Add more tags by clicking the new button at the bottom of the tag window. You’ll then be able to fill in the name for the tag, no spaces allowed.

Fig 1, Root Tag

Now’s when you have to figure out what tags you’re going to use. For the Cleric sheet, I created tags for each text area that changes per sheet: class name, hit dice, moves, look, alignment, bonds and gear. I also created tags for styles that are used within each text area: basic move names, move names, and instructions.

I also created a move body tag. This is trick I discovered to deal with tables. You don’t want to have to tag every move body, but tables can act a little weird if they’re not in a tag. So the move body tag is just to make tables happy when they occur.

Don’t both tagging anything that you don’t want synced to xml, like stat names and the word ‘Name.’ If it’s not going to change much, just don’t bother.

Fig 2, Final Tags

That gives the final list of tags shown in Fig 2. The tag colors don’t print or anything, but if you want to change the color mappings you can. Names are also changeable, but I wouldn’t mess with them after your first export/import, so settle on them early.

Now’s the time to start tagging. Start by tagging each text frame. Just double click on the text area, then select your tag. You can tag text within an area, so just use your highest level tags for the text areas.

Once you’ve got the text frames tagged, now you can worry about tagging styles within the text. Just select text and click the style.

To be able to see your tagging in action you have to show Tag Markers and Tagged Frames. You can find those options in the View->Structure menu. Text frames that are tagged will be filled with the color, text selections that are tagged with have colored brackets around them. I tend to keep them on, even if the finished effect looks like clown vomit.

Fig 3, Tagged Doc

Once I’ve gone through and tagged everything, my page looks like Fig 3. You can see the tagged frames colored in, with colored brackets around text selections that I’ve tagged.

Exporting

At this point, you’r ready to try exporting to xml for the first time. Show the structure pane by pressing option-command-1. Here you’ll be able to see the structure to your entire document. From the structure menu in the upper right had corner of the structure pane, choose Export XML, like in Fig 4. In the popup window leave all the defaults and save the file somewhere.

Fig 4, Export XML

Now’s the time to edit your xml. Open up your plaintext editor of choice (I like TextMate for Mac). You can now edit the xml as much as you want. A few things to keep in mind:

White space is kept. If you’re a coder like me you probably want to indent each level of tags, that will only get you in trouble. The one place you can afford some white space is between text frame tags. Since that text isn’t mapped anywhere, it doesn’t matter.

Header and footer tags aren’t generated by default. If you want your table to have header and footer rows, you’ll need to move around the <tbody> tags and add <thead> and <tfoot> tags.

I think InDesign exports Windows newlines by default, which may just show up as blank space in a Mac editor. Mac newlines are imported fine, so feel free to replace Windows newlines with Mac newlines.

Making the Link

Now you’ve got xml you’re happy with it’s time to clear the text out of your original document. Just edit each text frame, select all, and then delete. Just don’t delete the text frames themselves.

In the structure pane menu, choose Import XML and choose your xml file. In the popup window, check the Create Link box, leave everything else alone.

If everything worked out alright, the text should appear in the right text areas. Any text area that had a paragraph style associated with it will apply that style to all the text in that area, but otherwise your text will be unformatted. Time to map those tags to styles.

Fig 5, Map Tags to Styles

In the tag window menu, choose Map Tags To Styles. In the popup window, choose a style for each tag. Inner tags will override outer tags, so I can map my Moves tag to my Body style, but map BasicMoveName and MoveName to their respective styles, like in Fig 5.

A lot of how well this works will come down to how much formatting you can put into your styles. If your text relies on a lot of style overrides, you’ll be in a lot of pain.

At this point, your text is pretty much set. The one thing that’s missing is table styles. So far I haven’t found a great way to export and import tables while maintaining style. At this point, I still have to reapply table styles after each import.

The Workflow From Here On Out

Now you’ve got a real link! Try editing your xml file, then going back to InDesign. The xml doc will show up in the Links window, with out of date notifications just like an image that got updated. Click resync and the entire text will be updated.

Just repeat this process for all your documents and you’ve got a book based on xml that will stay in sync with the layout.

Of course this isn’t a magic bullet. A lot depends on your ability to make your styles do the work, with stuff like keep and paragraph spacing. It’s still a work in progress for Dungeon World, but hopefully it’ll be something useful to you.

This isn’t a call for patronage or anything like that, PYS is going to keep on going no matter what. Let’s face it, I’m going to be thinking and blogging about games and superheroes and comics for fun, I don’t expect to get anything for it. But if you have been turned on to something new from my posts, I’d really appreciate it if you used these links to buy it (or buy yourself a kayak, I think I’d still get a bit as long as you started from my link). You don’t pay anything extra, and I get a few bucks to help keep me reading comics and developing games. Plus, these really are some great comics, and I haven’t spoiled them too much.

I’ve spent about twice as much time as most people would want, and half as much time as I could, on Morrison’s definitive JLA run. So, what’s the first option for playing something like this series at the table? DC Adventures RPG, of course.

DC Adventures is the official game of the DCU that just came out recently. It’s based on Mutants and Masterminds, an RPG system that really grabbed my imagination when I first read it years ago. It’s probably the highest profile superhero game out right now, and likely the first thing someone wanting to play Morrison’s JLA would pick up.

The problem is, it’s a superhero combat system, not a game about superheros.

Let’s take a look at Batman for a second. In the JLA issues we’ve looked at so far, we can say a few things about Batman: he’s brilliant, he’s a world-class combatant, he thinks beyond what anyone else would consider, he’s got Bruce Wayne’s business knowledge, he’s driven, and he always has the right device handy.

So what does Batman’s writeup on pages 212-213 of DC Adventures tell us? Well, about half the space is taken up by a recap of Batman’s origin, which can just as easily be told in a paragraph, tops. At this point, any retelling of Batman or Superman’s origin that takes more than one comic page is redundant.

We also now know his exact height (6’2″, 3 inches taller than Barry Allen) and weight (210 lbs, 25 pounds under Superman). It’s good to know Batman would fight as a Heavyweight in the UFC and wouldn’t make a good astronaut.

But all that is ‘fluff’ with no mechanical impact. What about the mechanics, the stuff with ‘teeth’ that you can’t ignore? Well, it’s mostly complex ways of telling us more stuff we don’t need to know. Batman can lift 800 lbs (without any special effort), he can attack at any point during his move, he gets +2 to Dodge checks to avoid area effects, his punches do Damage 4 (about as much as a holdout pistol). When it comes time to be the Dark Knight Detective, Batman has a 55% chance of breaking into a secure computer system, and a 5% chance of bluffing his way past alert guards, but at least he’s always guaranteed to find evidence at a crime scene. I’m not arguing that any of these are wrong (though some do seem a little weird), I’m saying that we don’t need to know this kind of stuff at all.

His equipment gets even worse. Whoever created Batman as a character had to spend character creation points on a flashlight (1 pt), grapple gun (2 pts), and mini-tracers (1 pt). We now know that when Batman disappears in a cloud of smoke, he’s actually in a Cloud Area Visual Concealment Attack 4 (1 pt).

Nowhere on the list is the one ‘gadget’ that actually makes the biggest difference in JLA: matches. Matches seem about as important and common as a flashlight to me, it seems weird for one to require points and the other not, so by the rules Batman would have to spend a hero point to have matches on hand, if the GM says it’s okay. Whereas in the comics the entire point of the utility belt is that Batman always has the right device, in DC Adventures he has to spend a hero point or extra effort on the privilege.

Luckily, the GM section does give some guidelines on this stuff. There’s a quarter page dedicated to “Saying No To Your Players” along with half a page about “Saying Yes To Your Players.” So, when Batman says he has matches and wants to take down four pale martians, the rules tell me I can:

• Say No. It’s the first section I read, before saying yes, and it tells me if it “suits the needs of the game” I can just say no to something, no matter what the rules say. If the GM can override any rule, why are there rules?
• Say Yes, but either give him a modifier to the roll, or just count it as the modifier to a different roll.
• Say Yes, but require Batman to spend resources (hero points or extra effort) to do it.

The GM section as a whole doesn’t help me much, particularly since it keeps talking about all the different tones the game supports, but doesn’t tell me how to support them. I’m pretty well aimed at epic superhero world saving in the Morrison JLA style right now, but the rules give only a few suggestions on what that means, both to character creation and to running the game.

The most damning thing I have to say about the game comes from the text itself, page 182: “some die rolls result in anticlimactic or just plain dumb outcomes.” With nearly 300 pages of rules, I’d like a game that doesn’t require the GM to figure out when it’s wrong. I don’t expect a game to perfectly model reality, but I do expect it to be fun as written, to not require me to know what would make the rules better.

DC Adventures is nearly 300 pages mostly about the parts of superhero stories that get covered in a few panels. The longest single combat I could find in JLA was about 3 attacks and counter attacks, something DC Adventures would turn into a multi-round combat. The stuff that actually makes the series tick – the epic scale, the flashy battles, the quick pace, the team dynamics – is nowhere to be found in DC Adventures.