7 thoughts on “#BladesAgainstDarkness”

  1. I like the flavor of the Warden, worldly knowledge and 1 on 1 deadly skill.

    It would be cool to have a playback advancement choice for each of the hungers, like there is for vengeful.

    typo- Feral : Pick one*

  2. Updated Warden? Did I miss it the first time?

    I see a lot of influence from the Dungeon World bard in Over the Hills and Immigrant Song, which is cool. Maybe even a little bit of DW barbarian in Ravenous?

    Speaking of Ravenous, the trigger seems a little bit vague to me. If I’m delving a dungeon I could say I’m pretty much always pursuing my hunger. The perception of recklessness can vary widely from person to person, and I’m not sure what to do with the bet hedging part. Is it too mechanical to just say you get +1d and +1 effect when you roll a desperate move?  Either way, I think the language needs tightening.

    I think the trigger for Over the Hills could also use a change. The first time you encounter any person, creature, place or thing? That’s a lot of questions every session. The similar move from the Bard playbook has one crucial difference in its trigger, “When you first encounter an IMPORTANT creature…” Just because your Warden is well traveled doesn’t mean he knows anything about Steve the town guard, or some dinky local tavern. The Bard playbook specifies that it’s the players call what’s important, but just putting that word in there tells the player that this is really for people and places of note.

    One of the triggers for marking XP is executing an ambush, so I wish they had an ability that made them specifically good at ambushing.

    Overall I like the idea of a tough but knowledgeable wanderer, but I think this playbook lacks the wow-factor of the Chimera or Widowmaker. I’d like to see a hallmark move that makes him capable of doing something unique and awesome in the fiction. Monsterhearts and Live by the Sword are the hallmark moves of their respective playbooks for me, and I’m not seeing something similar here. I think Ravenous is supposed to be the hallmark move, but I don’t think it lives up to the very high bar of the other books.

  6. Mark Griffin Thanks for the close read. Those are all good catches. Also, yeah, the DW “inspiration” is pretty obvious here. I love the DW Barbarian so hard…

    As for older versions of this. If you click on the hash tag you can see one from long ago… If you do a little digging you can find even older stuff…

    As for Ravenous it’s not supposed to be as simple as you get +1d and +1 effect on desperate. It’s supposed to be when you could hold back and play it safe  _but_ instead you risk it all in pursuit of that which makes you Other. So… maybe just say that.

    “Something about your time in the wild has given you a hunger that makes you unfit for civilization (what is it?). When your position is Dominant or Risky say how your reckless pursuit of your hunger makes it Desperate and take +1d and +1 effect.

    I’ll re-add “Important” to “Over the Hills and Far Away”

  7. Dan Hall Long ago this class had a move called Black Dog which let you summon spectral hounds from the corpses of slain enemies. After that it was a challenge to see how many Zeppelin jokes I could fit in… 

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