I had heard things about it for a long time. Good things. Things that piqued my interests. Things that made me think, "I've gotta give this a shot!" So I did it. I bit the bullet after missing the tremendously successful Kickstarter months and months back; I purchased Dungeon World.
I didn't only buy it. I got consumed by it. So much so that I devoured the rule book in a handful of sittings. So much so that I sought out clarifications for things that confused me and even more rules, more options. I was hooked, I am hooked. This is the dungeon crawling system I've been waiting for and wanting.
That isn't meant for me to come across as cocky. I'm not the best DM in the world, far from it, I'm always learning. I'm always striving to perfect my style and my games. Basically, DM burn out hit me hard after wrapping up my DORX Heroic Tier campaign but for my group, I needed to press on. They all had legitimate real life commitments, and that comes first over gaming. So I toughed it out, together we created a fun pirate-themed campaign that thrived in the world of player buy-in and collaboration. They created gods, lands, cultures, and more. We had just scratched the surface of this world that we were discovering together. They had fought pirate-Batman and navy officer Superman, or at least their in-game equivalents; we were having fun.
Then I killed their characters.
If you've been reading Legend4ry D&D for awhile, you know I live and breath deadly games with hard choices. I love it. But I don't love it all of the time. Sometimes I want a campaign where we tell a heroic tale of derring-do. This was the intent here. I didn't intend to kill them, the math was right, the encounter was perfectly balanced, but things happened and the Fates intervened. The original crew of the Scurvy Bloom perished to the mad goddess Kekekuala.
We jumped the world forward a year, with the actual fates of these characters unknown but likely dead. New characters were rolled up, ones that the players enjoyed. The repercussions of not stopping Kekekuala were felt in the world now. This is the stuff campaigns live and die on, feelings alive, and it was something we captured well.
But I also hit a wall. All of that DM burnout built up and coalesced around their character deaths. I took it harder than they did. I felt bad and beat myself up about it. It caused some serious writer's block with no idea of where to go next. So in the need of an adventure while Tax season loomed on my accountant players, I thought I'd test them morally, make them make hard choices with a completely over-the-top ridiculous theme: VAMPIRATES. Vampire Pirates. Yes, you read that right.
The concept is awesome. But in execution.. Oh Orcus, it failed so badly. It was a railroad from point A to point B to point C with morally grey "options" scattered throughout. I set them up to fail without real choice on these morally trying things, I made them be monsters to survive. Where is the fun in that?
I had failed as a DM and when I got home I sat down, reviewed the adventure and thought about things. They had enjoyed themselves in spite of my railroad. They had fun. But it wasn't them, was it? Nah, it was me. It was the DM burnout hitting me in full force.
So I talked to my group and we decided to take a break from 4e for awhile. At least for DMing for me. I'd like to play for a bit, stretch my feet. Or even run another game. I have been promising them for ages that I'd introduce them to other editions of D&D. We did an AD&D 2e quick-start adventure that was a lot of fun. They had a blast, despite it being super short and rail-roady.
I'm considering running them through some Swords & Wizardry (either Core or Complete or a mixture of both) to give them a good sense of OD&D. I might even run a Swords & Wizardry White Box game just to show them D&D's actual roots. And of course, I want to run some Dungeon World for them, but I'm still a bit wary that I've not grok'd it all. I am strange in that I need to play a system first, no matter how knowledgeable about the rules I am, to really "get it." This is the case here, too.
So folks, if you have any good Swords and Wizardry low-level adventure suggestions or some good Dungeon World actual play podcasts or videos, I'd greatly appreciate it.
For the interim, I'll likely be using this blog to talk about those games, as well as Barbarians of Lemuria, until I feel up to the task of running 4e some more. Just a heads up.
Until next time,
-blob
You can follow me on Twitter @Sorcerer_Blob or via the hash-tag #legend4ry. You can also find my blog and others at the Fourthcore Hub and at the RPG Blog Alliance.
No comments:
Post a Comment