World of Dungeons

Or My First RPG! 

My copy of Dungeon World arrived on the mail today.

Which reminds me of...

World of Dungeons, my introduction to Role Playing Games

I still remember the first time I played World of Dungeons. It was my introduction to gaming. My friend’s belligerent cousin was my first Game Master.
Back in the day, before my friends and I got into gaming (that’s before we were introduced to World of Dungeons), we used to throw 24 hour long LAN Parties. For whatever reason, my friend’s 30 yr old cousin happen to have been present during one of them. It was our first year of college so we had all the time in the world; I have to idea why he was there. He spend most of the party drinking Medalla and making fun of us for playing computer games. The insults grew more and more frequent as the day went on. At some point someone asked what was it that he used to do for fun back in his back in the day.
I used to play World of Dungeons he said.
We didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He finished his beer in one gulp and went to his car. He came back a couple of minutes later with a crummy looking pamphlet with the words World of Dungeons displayed on top next to a decades old cheese stain. He tried to explain that World of Dungeons was like board game without the board. We didn’t understand. He ran our very first RPG session to explain the concept.
I don’t remember much of that first game. I think I played a human fighter called Yton. (Who has had many incarnations across many multiverses, just like Moorcock's Eternal Champion.) I also have vague recollections of naked scimitar wielding witches wearing masks made out of goat heads and zombies. All in all it was a shitty session. We declined his offer to run more games for us. A couple of weeks later my buddy bought a copy of Rifts and we’ve been playing RPGs ever since. And, to quote Tom O'Bedlam from the Invisibles, "What a long strange dream it's been."

The Post-Apocalyptic Prometheus

or I finally got a chance to play D&D Gamma World! 

Instagrammed Picture!

Ohhh wow, I forgot all about this entry. It has been sitting on my blogger queue for more than a year. 

I wrote it a couple of days after I finally had a chance to play D&D Gamma World.  Mike, a buddy of mine from the Atlanta Gamers Guild Meetup, volunteered to run "Steading of the Iron King" at Manuels Tavern. 

I rolled up a reanimated hawkoid man-creature called Howard Phillips. I figured that Howard once belonged to Herbert West, a mad scientist with a penchant for trying to challenge the dominance of death over life. West scooped up Howard off the street (the hawk had been run over by a car) and used it as a test subject. West's reanimating liquid worked a bit too well, for the roadkill came back as a man sized Hawk thing with an attitude. After destroying his creator, Howard Phillips wandered out into the post apocalyptic world of Gamma World in search for meaning. That and fat l00t. 

Some spoilers will follow...

Steading of the Iron King 

In Steading of the Iron King, the adventurers are hired by the people of some nameless town to look into the roving robots that are driving into town to blow up. Our adventuring party captured one of the little robots before it selfdestructed and re-wired it to return to base. We followed it to a castle of sorts were we met by mutant pigs and rodents.  The group fought their way inside until we got to a basement level were we were overpowered by the defenders. Two of the adventurers managed to escape. Howard Phillips and Steve, the Altered Woman were knocked unconscious during the firefight. Their fate is probably too terrible for me to want to imagine!

My Take on D&D Gamma World

I loved D&D Gamma World!

It's a fun game from beginning to end. Character creation is lightning fast and creative. Baker and Cordell did an amazing job simplifying the 4e system in order to make it work within a highly lethal and chaotic post-apocalyptic world of Gamma World. Powers and tech are constantly changing for the characters, so it's hard to get tired of your character.  

I have two minor gripes with the game. They are both related to Hit Points and are both totally subjective:

Death & Dying: In GW a character dies when his negative hit points equal his bloodied value or after failing three saving throws. I've never been a big fan of the negative hit points. I think that a character should perish once he gets to 0 hit points. This is a totally subjective thing, I'm sure a lot of people out there dig the system as is. 

Hit Point Refresh: Characters have the opportunity to get back all their hit points after each encounter. I don't know, doesn't this kind of go against the whole "highly lethal" thing? (Then again, 2 of the characters died in our session, so maybe I'm just being blood thirsty here.) 

These two minor quibbles are nothing that simple house ruling can't fix.  

I really want to play more D&D Gamma World. Not only that, I also want to keep my three boxes ( the core book and expansions) around in order to run it as a pick up game from time to time. 

Advanced Goblins & Pleghm Giants

or Dungeon World: Screams in the Darkness Session 1

Intro

Six days in this stinking hole with the rest of these filthy, uncultured adventurers. Climbing down, down, down for six days! And then being lost! How anyone could lose the map is beyond me. Should have killed... never, mind. Doesn't matter, because here we are, in the final resting place of the Blood Emperor, Choteok IV. For someone legends say massacred a million peasants to feed his god, he doesn't look so frightening now. And more importantly his preserved body is still wearing the crown, ring, amulet and orb. The whole thing is making me nervous. I don't think we're alone in here.

- +Michael Bay  's intro posted on the Meetup Boards

Instagramed Pic of my character sheet

After an amazing Apocalypse World game, a group of us from the Atlanta Gamers Guild Meetup decided to play Dungeon World. Eight of us showed up for the inaugural session.  

Kind of like Apocalypse World, you start out a Dungeon World game by creating the characters and their world. I created a Wizard named Titus who kind of looks like Owen Wilson in Zoolander and whose mannerisms and form of speech mirror those of the Laughing Magician.*
The details of the world are still vague. I hinted that Titus comes from a place called Old City, which is the first city ever built in Dungeon World. Also, some nasty rumors about the Blood Emperor were spread around the table. (It is said that the sick bastard used to bathe in human blood!) 

Here's a list of the characters: 

1. Titus the Wizard
2. Regulus the Templar
3. Nathan the Bard
4. Dryson the Ranger
5. Brellin the Artificer
6. April the Druid
7. Marblang the Shaman
8. Hawthorn the Cleric. (Who's played by +Paul McBride **, btw) 

Like Apocalypse World, Dungeon World is all about relationships. Here's a diagram of Titus' relationships at the beginning of the game:

Quick Session Recap

Duke Montard, the Lord of the Black Mesa, commissioned the group to loot the Blood Emperor's tomb. Screams in the Darkness started out in media res with characters in mid-dungeon-crawl. As we worked our way into the dungeon complex we had to deal with goblins and tentacled horrors hiding in bone piles and slow witted giants made out of phlegm.
By the end of the session, two of the adventures had crossed into an alternate dimension, my character was stuck in a pit surrounded by panicked goblins, and the rest of the party were wondering what the fuck was going on. 

Needless to say that I can't wait for the next Dungeon World game!

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* From Cugel the Clever, by Jack Vance
** You can read Paul's take on session on his gameblog.