Dungeon World: The Witch-Keep of Drakenmoor

Christopher B

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Dungeon World: The Witch-Keep of Drakenmoor

In this installment of the free Dungeon World setting, we visit a little fixer-upper of a place that may or may not be ruled by a possessed Queen.

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aarontg

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It may not be a final fantasy or world of warcraft but its still alot of fun. Theirs something that these kind of games create that computer games cant create, being only provided with text makes it much more engaging because you can imagine everything and create your own experience.I would like to see more of these
 

Archon

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A further note: I've had the pleasure of running several other dungeons by Chris B. during the weekly campaign we run here at The Escapist, including his "Skavenloft" and "Grey Goblin Warrens." I highly recommend them to any dungeonmaster, 1e-4e.
 

Woem

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I read through the adventure a couple of times and it still leaves me confused. First of all it reads more like a HeroQuest adventure than a full-fledged role-playing adventure ("no treasure in this room", "wandering monster"). Overall it feels weird that mechanics such as monster level, the scrying technique or the "you need 5 or 6 on a d6 to hit the monster" are used without actually referring to any rule system, and without adding up to a stand-alone system.

Even so, I was expecting more information to be used from what we already know about the Dungeon World setting. All that we learn is that Califrax' favorite color is red, and perhaps that the Dead Gods aren't listening to the prayers of the common folk (or that they are actually dead, e.g. Dragonlance).

Please note that I'm a Dungeon World fan and enthusiast, that's exactly why I started the compendium [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.148691]. I just want to express my opinion that I don't think this felt like a Dungeon World article and that adding the before mentioned mechanical bits to the adventure were a bit confusing. I hope to see a new short story like that of the Clan of the White Bear, or some more history or background information, or the description of a complete town. The maps in the adventure are amazing and I think that style would serve great for this.

As a small side-note: the Dungeon World tag is missing from the article.
 

Christopher B

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Woem: Thanks for the feedback! In reply to your specific comments:

Woem said:
I read through the adventure a couple of times and it still leaves me confused. First of all it reads more like a HeroQuest adventure than a full-fledged role-playing adventure ("no treasure in this room", "wandering monster").
This is not a story-based adventure, with a start and an end pre-designed for the characters. It's a location-based adventure, the goings on of which are basically independent of the characters. It's really up to the GM, as I mentioned in "The Hook," to determine how the characters will get involved. Their interaction with the location from that point on is entirely up to them - there's no story arc for them to follow. It is what it is, as they say.

Woem said:
Overall it feels weird that mechanics such as monster level, the scrying technique or the "you need 5 or 6 on a d6 to hit the monster" are used without actually referring to any rule system, and without adding up to a stand-alone system.
In terms of game system details, I was asked to contribute system-independent resources to the Days of High Adventure column, so the dungeons I'm contributing will be necessarily vague in those terms. (Even if I were told to add stats for D&D, that's such a moving target that there's no way I could do so in a way that would encompass all of the editions.)


Woem said:
Even so, I was expecting more information to be used from what we already know about the Dungeon World setting. All that we learn is that Califrax' favorite color is red, and perhaps that the Dead Gods aren't listening to the prayers of the common folk (or that they are actually dead, e.g. Dragonlance).
I think there's a clarification on what these articles are supposed to be about in the comments of the first Dungeon World article. That clarification would probably answer some of these concerns. To recap: the Dungeon World setting really evolved as a means to connect the resources (dungeons, magic items, spells, etc.) that I was engaged by The Escapist to contribute to this column. It wasn't intended to be the feature, but rather a means of adding cohesion to the feature, if that makes sense. As such, these articles are going to contribute varying levels of detail to the setting (since they weren't ever originally intended to be anything more than stand-alone elements). In the case of this week's feature, that level of detail is, as you noted, extremely low.

Woem said:
I hope to see a new short story like that of the Clan of the White Bear, or some more history or background information, or the description of a complete town. The maps in the adventure are amazing and I think that style would serve great for this.
I will certainly bear this in mind for future installments.

Woem said:
As a small side-note: the Dungeon World tag is missing from the article.
Hmmm... maybe, if the Powers That Be are reading this, they'll see that this is corrected.

Thanks again for the great feedback!

Chris
 

Woem

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Thanks a lot Chris. After my initial confusion (and before posting the comment) I did read your first article again. It does indeed state this:

Dungeon World, a free source for RPG maps and dungeons, part of our rotating High Adventure column series. [..] Things like: dungeons (here meaning adventure locations), spells, monsters, artifacts and the like.
Because your first two articles focused a lot on the campaign setting, I thought that was what Dungeon World was all about. But I'm glad that you clarified the "core business" of Dungeon World again. I also understand that articles dedicated to the history of Dungeon World, for instance in the form of short stories, are not in this line. And I'm definitely looking forward to your next dungeon, in the DND meaning of the word :)

I do believe that the Dungeon World setting is already a very rich and premising one. So I will continue to gather tidbits for the campaign setting, and I will most likely start an RP on this board using the DW setting with the HeroQuest rules (the HeroQuest RPG [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroQuest_%28role-playing_game%29] this time, not the board game).
 

Archon

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Interesting dialogue here. As Chris notes, Dungeon World was designed as a means to provide content for GMs. The "rules-light" feel with which the dungeons are being provided was inspired by the "one page dungeons" movement that has circulated through the classic D&D gaming blogosphere recently.

Essentially, the goal is for the dungeons to be playable with any 0ed or 1ed D&D rules set (Swords & Wizardry, Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, B/X, BECMI, AD&D, Osric).
 

BlueInkAlchemist

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I definitely want to get a weekly D&D game going where I can run content like this. Thanks for sharing it with us!
 

Woem

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Archon said:
Interesting dialogue here. As Chris notes, Dungeon World was designed as a means to provide content for GMs. The "rules-light" feel with which the dungeons are being provided was inspired by the "one page dungeons" movement that has circulated through the classic D&D gaming blogosphere recently.

Essentially, the goal is for the dungeons to be playable with any 0ed or 1ed D&D rules set (Swords & Wizardry, Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, B/X, BECMI, AD&D, Osric).
Thanks for specifying this. Thanks to days of high adventure and the people commenting on those articles I've been getting into older systems such as Pendragon, Storytelling and Over The Edge. Since ADND2E was my very first system it seems fitting to go to its roots as well.

For people who are interested: Swords & Wizardry [http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/?page_id=4] is available for download, completely free. Other links can be found in the first two DOHA articles.