Friday 5 August 2016

[meta] Introduction

This is just a brief introductory post to explain a little about the game, before I get into the gameplay posts.

The Game

This is the write-up of a series of solo RPG sessions that I am playing. Each post represents one "session" of play; though I pick and choose the break points sometimes rather than line up with my actual play sessions, if it would make more sense to the reader.

I am using Dungeon World as the game system, with a bunch of other systems thrown in. Let's list them out.

  • Dungeon World: core RPG mechanics, core character classes, GMing rules.
  • Funnel World: character creation mechanics.
  • Perilous Wilds: travel, hireling, wilderness & random dungeon rules, compendium classes.
  • Eberron supplement for Dungeon world: I am setting this campaign in the Eberron setting, which gives some useful background while leaving plenty of space for the campaign to develop its own story. The supplement provides adjustments to racial moves, new classes and compendium classes appropriate to the setting.
  • Mythic GM Emulator: GM, and sometimes player character, guidance.

The main reason for starting this campaign was the Mythic GM Emulator. I have heard a lot about this on the G+ Lone Wolf roleplaying group, and wanted to give it a try. Rather than introduce it into an existing campaign, I decided to get the feel of it in a new campaign instead.

I am expecting that using Mythic GME means that I'll do less thinking ahead on the GM side of things for this game, and instead see where the GME (and the Perilous Wilds systems for exploration) take us.


I talked about Dungeon World and the Eberron supplement in my post for the other solo campaign that I have ongoing, Shadows of the Flame; I have found them effective and satisfying so far. That campaign has turned out to be a fairly ambitious story with roots in the largest background struggle in the setting; I wanted to try out something that was on a smaller scale for this game.

That led me to Funnel World. This is a supplement where you start with a large party of 10+ villagers, who are level 0 characters with almost no powers and random, average-citizen stats. It is a "funnel", where characters are expected to die and the ones that survive get to level up into the normal Dungeon World classes.

Understanding Play

Dungeon World provides a narrative RPG to the players (players describe what the character does; when actions trigger moves, the mechanics come in), and a structured approach to GMing (the GM makes moves to introduce world elements and react to and trigger character actions). I write out all of these mechanics as part of my write-ups on the blog here.

As this is a solo game, there are no other players, so I'm playing all the player characters. So I'm making both PC moves and GM moves.

Indented sans-font text in the write-up is the game mechanics, and my train of thought in interpreting those mechanics. The main, serif, text is the story that unfolds as a result.

Player character move names are shown in GREEN in mechanics (and I put the whole move in a yellow box, to keep the dice and the resolution together); GM moves are in RED; Mythic GME consultations and GM principles are in BLUE.


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