Dungeon World 2e: A Tale of Two Editions

I once posed the question of Would You Rather:

A. Design a critically-acclaimed game that is praised for its excellent design but largely sits unopened on bookshelves?

or

B. Design a game that is wildly popular and beloved by the community despite critics panning its mechanical foibles?

It's a question that draws forth the designer's priorities. I might even call it the D&D Dilemma: do you want to design something that's masterfully crafted or do you want something popular but slipshod?

Dungeon World 1e is a game that chose B. Dungeon World 2e isn't sure where it stands.

A Brief Historical Interlude

Dungeon World was one of the first and most popular PbtA hacks, marrying the Apocalypse World engine to Dungeons & Dragons tropes. It brought to prominence Vincent Baker's innovative system by translating it into a fantastical world reminiscent of The Dragon Game. It was quite successful despite its mechanics being "bad."

The rules explained themselves poorly, making sense only if you were familiar with Apocalypse World, and the various tropes that make D&D work (levels with vertical advancement, dungeon crawling and resource attrition, challenge-oriented design) don't function well within "proper" PbtA design. PbtA is first and foremost privileges characters and narrative arcs above these aspects that are the fuel for D&D's engine.

Dungeon World 1e was the first PbtA heartbreaker.

Its success might seem to clash with its status as a "heartbreaker," but it wasn't the hearts of the developers it broke--it was the hearts of PbtA players. Dungeon wasn't PbtA and it wasn't D&D: the moves were task resolution mechanics that might have you testing the same move in repetition (acceptable in D&D, not so much in PbtA); the advancement system escalated character power in a system that poorly-equipped to handle it; monster design was mediocre and resulted in that abysmal "16 HP Dragon" article that boiled down to the GM's bullshitting the system to generate fake tension; the rules for treasure/magic items were underbaked; etc. etc. etc.

Yet it was popular. Why? Because The Dragon Game is Good, Actually, and it has wide appeal, so it drew in an audience who wanted a high-fantasy action-adventure game without D&D's mechanical excesses.

It broke the hearts of game designers, not the authors.

Enter Dungeon World 2e

Years later, Luke Crane scooped up Dungeon World 1e into his arms and, sans one of the original designers, lead the project to revise, revamp, and redesign the beloved game.

The development team were (and are) determined to make Dungeon World 2e a "good" PbtA game, which naturally means shedding its D&D heritage. (It turns out that most fantasy stories don't follow a 6-8 encounter schedule followed by a rest to replenish spell slots!)

As part of this undertaking, the developers reworked the six ability scores from D&D into a more narrative/descriptive framework (good-bye, Dexterity, hello, Sly!), have eliminated Hit Points in favor of mechanics known as Defiance and Conditions, and turned away from familiar lists of equipment into a more abstract "gear" system.

While these innovations serve to elevate the narrative elements in Dungeon World, they have received a mixed response: a split of enthusiasm and disappointment. Much of the fanbase doesn't want to remove the "Dungeon" part of "Dungeon World" from the game. Instead of PbtA with a side of D&D, they want D&D with a side of PbtA. This has put the developers into a bit of a bind: for whom shall we design this game?

Red & Blue

"Why not both?" appears to be the answer. To mollify their audience, the DW2e developers have packaged two iterations of the game: DW2e Blue and DW2e Red. (Your noble writer is resisting the low-hanging Pokémon joke.) The Blue edition is "PbtA-ified" Dungeon World while the Red edition is Dungeon World, Revised.

The stark contrast between the two is evidenced in their "combat" moves.

In DW2e Blue, the "combat" move can be seen below. (My commentary is in brackets.)

Engage a Threat

When you exchange blows with a threat, up close or at a distance, roll+Forceful. [Note that being Forceful represents your character's capacity to engage in violence.]

On a 7-9, choose one:

• You exhaust, distract, or intimidate them; add 1 Affinity to the pool [Affinity is a shared resource between all PCs.]

• You hurt them; they mark a condition and then Escalate [Instead of traditional Hit Points, monsters have conditions.]

• You take something from them, [sic] (if it makes sense in the fiction)

On a 10+, add the following options and choose two instead:

• You avoid their retaliation

• If you’ve already hurt them above, you inflict terrible harm; they mark another condition but don’t Escalate again

On a 6- the exchange goes poorly,

The move emphasizes teamwork (Affinity) and the descriptive state of the monster within the fiction via Conditions. Ever D&D player has experienced the tedium of whittling down chunks of Hit Points, something unfit for a "proper" PbtA game.

But compare this to DW2e Red's version of the same move.

Engage a Threat

When you exchange blows with a threat, up close or at a distance, roll+STR (or +DEX if your weapon is precise) then inflict and receive damage based on the result.

On a 10+, choose one from below:

• You do ᴍᴀx damage [Maximize the damage die you're rolling.]

• You suffer ᴍɪɴ damage [Reduce the monster's damage dice to their minimum value.]

• You take something from the threat

✶On a 7-9, choose one of the following instead:

• The threat causes you to mark a condition

• The threat gain [sic] an advantage or opportunity

• You lose something in the exchange. Choose one item; the GM may ask for more

On a 6-, you do ᴍɪɴ damage or the threat does ᴍᴀx damage (your call); mark 1 XP and the GM makes a Move.

DW2e Red has a much more "traditional" combat structure implemented with the PbtA framework. Rolling Strength or Dexterity to attack, then rolling dice to determine damage, which is then subtracted from Hit Points should be a familiar stranger for D&D players.

These differences offer a very different gameplay experience for very different audiences, and the DW2e crew is in a bit of a pickle with regards to this: do they cater to the PbtA crowd seeking a fantasy game or the Dungeon World crowd who want a revision of their beloved game?

The Lessons Learned

There's a lesson in the design pains of Dungeon World 2e: your player base is your game. Don't innovate yourself into alienating your players. This mistake was repeated with numerous games; the RPG sphere is marked by the transition from D&D 2e to D&D 3e, and then again from D&D 3e to 4e. The former birthed the OSR; the latter birthed Pathfinder 1e.

Let's return to the question I posed at the beginning of this article:

Would you rather...

A. Design a critically-acclaimed game that is praised for its excellent design but largely sits unopened on bookshelves?

or

B. Design a game that is wildly popular and beloved by the community despite critics panning its mechanical foibles?

DW2e is in a position to answer this question--and perhaps the developers will juggle the swords well enough to garner a little from Column A and a little from Column B.