Current obsession: World of Dungeons

So I've taken a look at World of Dungeons (WoDu) again, and find myself wanting to hack it. Why? Do I need a reason? Well, to head off a discussion (for another time) of how hacking a game is part of the process of learning about the game etc etc, I'll just give the reason: I want to run it as a potential oneshot where people with different levels of experience with RPGs (my current open table ranging from none to a fair bit) can just pick it up and have fun. More on the barriers to that in a moment. Also, I want to use the opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of both rules-light and Apocalypse World-style storygames to friends I think would enjoy playing/running such systems. For that, I want a 1-page version, where we can roll up characters and get playing immediately, no rules questions needed. So I'm proposing a minor rules hack (quantum encumbrance) whose implementation might actually do even more than speed up the game - it might make an old-school experience accessible to those who otherwise wouldn't have fun or wouldn't get it. And all of this with one simple tweak to encumbrance/equipment!

This is just a ramble while I figure this out. But if it works, I'll probably adapt it for use in other quickstart games, to help accelerate the story and give the players some versatility.

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For those not in the know, World of Dungeons is a tiny spoof game made by John Harper. Except it's not just a tongue-in-cheek spoof, it's a functional, playable spoof, one that actually has closer ties to what it's spoofing than a lot of the descendants of the actual spoof-subject-matter. Clear? No?

WoDu takes the Powered by the Apocalype (PbtA) storygame Dungeon World and reimagines it for a world where DW, not D&D, was the game created four or five decades ago, that subsequently became the world's favourite roleplaying gameTM. WoDu is, then, the first edition of this fictional game for this fictional world, where storygaming is trad gaming.

But here's the interesting thing: WoDu is more Arnesonian, in a lot of ways, than Gygax and Arneson's little brown/white box (the first edition of D&D). By many accounts (e.g. the documentary "Secrets of Blackmoor"), Dave Arneson, co-creator of D&D, had more to do with engineering the concept of the roleplaying game, and extracting that from roleplay-heavy wargaming, than Gary Gygax did. And Arneson's games featured several things that WoDu features that either don't appear in D&D or didn't for a long time, such as a unified resolution mechanic (using 2d6 rolls), the concept of an intermediate state between action succeeds/action fails hard-coded into the rules, and freeform character/class creation. If Arneson had had more (and Gygax and his wargame Chainmail less) to do with making the actual rules of D&D, the resulting document, a codification and complexifying of Arneson's Blackmoor houserules, could conceivably have looked a lot like WoDu.

Am I going to houserule WoDu into something even more Arnesonian? Almost certainly - at some point. For now, I want something that relatively inexperienced players, with no knowledge of Dungeon World, can pick up, make a character for, and play.

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What I want to do is make the already streamlined game into a bitesized affair, about a page in length. And for that, and for a quick, interesting start, I'm going to need to get rid of the shopping phase.

I know it's old-school to start your game with a shopping phase, and it's good to spend that hard-earned loot somehow, but it a) starts the game off with analysis-paralysis, where players dither over items whose use-value has no context or meaning yet, and b) takes up loads of room in the rules. But even better, hacking it offers the opportunity for more storygaming fun.

Blades in the Dark is a PbtA game (by John Harper again) where you play criminals performing (mainly) heists and con-jobs. One of its top-billed features is its innovative encumbrance system. Characters detail how heavily laden they are, but not what they're actually carrying. If you're heavily encumbered, you can carry more items, but might appear conspicuous, as if "ready for a fight". Lightly encumbered means you appear dressed normally, but can carry less. You only determine what you're carrying when you spend one point of "Load" to take out an item. This folds into Blades' "Oceans' Eleven"-like feel - turns out you came prepared after all; cue flashback to prepping for this exact eventuality.

Using this mechanic, we can condense and improve (sort of) on WoDu's shopping fetish. Each character class gets to choose from a variety of packs - the Burglary Kit, the Dungeoneering Knapsack, the Survivalist's Pack, the Wizard's Satchel. This has a flavour of 5e D&D - it's simple and quick to pick your character's starting equipment, since it comes in bunches. But each pack works like Blades' Load system: At any point, you can spend a use of the pack to take out one item that falls within its remit. If the GM is unsure whether the item is appropriate for your pack, or it seems a little too convenient ("Really? You were expecting to need suncream in the dungeon?"), they can always refuse.

Or, since this is PbtA, make a moment of it. Ask the player to explain their character's thought process behind bringing bat-shark-repellent spray (maybe they have a phobia of bat-sharks). Or make them roll Wisdom for the foresight to bring such a convenient item - now Wisdom has a function, where previously (as in a lot of games that appropriate/inherit the D&D statblock) it was looking a bit vestigial. We can make the same true for Constitution: Your CON bonus (from +0 to +3) is the number of additional items you can carry. Now we have something like Knave, where it pays to be a tough wizard, because you can carry more materials for spells (or alternatively, find an apprentice to do it for you).

At the moment I'm thinking each pack has three "charges", plus your CON bonus, and you can carry as much as fits in your pack, either using slots emptied out as you've used the charges, or spending a charge to declare a slot empty, so you can fit something else in there. (You can of course still carry things in your hands.) So most people will start with four items TBD, since most have a +1 CON bonus.

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The benefits of this system are manifold. First, it speeds up getting started: You get a weapon, a trinket or heirloom, and the choice of armour or a pack. This speed is not to be underestimated. But second, it does what every OSR game seems to have as one of its core goals, albeit one of the less glamorous ones: It makes encumbrance gameable (and fun) without requiring a pocket calculator.

Okay, a criticism, and a defence: So isn't WoDu going for an old-school feel? And isn't part of the old-school vibe testing the players for being prepared? Hence the shopping channel phase at character creation - you need to decide if you're going to need that ten foot pole or those iron spikes (there will be a pop quiz later, the prize being continued living). Doesn't this refinement go against that?

Well, yes, that is a thing. I'm not going to pretend the shopping channel bit of OSR or genuine old-school games is some sort of legacy rule that doesn't play a key part in the fun. My first game was Tunnels & Trolls, a big part of which was rolling up your gold and trying to get enough for the Greek fire and the knee-high alligator skin boots (actually mentioned in the rulebook), and still have enough for a shield and some rations. It's a genuine part of the game.

But a counterpoint: The way I'm modifying the system, I'm aiming to translate the old-school experience into something my novitiate, new-school players can get their heads round, and have immediate fun with. Note that's "translate", not "abandon". The players/characters aren't necessarily going to know what they're going to need in the dungeon ahead of time. So this system allows us to key into the thing that all old-school, dungeon-crawling RPGs emphasize as at least one of their main mechanics: Rationing.

Need a ten foot pole to feel out that hallway? But you're on your last charge of your dungeoneering pack - what happens if your last lit torch goes out? Do you feel out the room safely, and risk plunging into darkness later (oh that sweet sweet "take away resource" move from Dungeon World), or do you take your chances with the traps to have a spare torch to get back to the surface? Decisions, decisions. Now we can create this feeling of claustrophobic stress, of difficult choices, of rationing sparse resources without the need for a twenty minute preamble where the players try to cross-reference how long a torch lasts with how long they plan to stay in the dungeon with how much gold they have with how much they can carry with what else they want to buy. At least half of that will be guesswork anyway, and uninformed guesswork doth not a fun game make. Deciding between a cool, useful item and a potentially necessary one, knowing the GM has ways to make your life complicated with either choice, that doth make for a fun game.

And the one remaining potential quibble is easily solved too. It could be argued (and usually is for this sort of system) that "quantum inventory" makes players less inventive, less likely to repurpose their existing items to strange uses, because they will have the perfect item for the job each time. That doesn't strike me as a problem. First, once players have an item solidified, and taken out of the quantum knapsack, they can still experiment with and adapt it. And second, given how valuable those charges are - how versatile they are, and the fact that necessities like torches and rations are wrapped up in there as well - the players will be pushed harder than ever to try to avoid expending them wherever possible. I predict that there will be many attempts to scrounge up makeshift torches rather than spending valuable dungeoneer's pack charges on them, when those could also be copper wire, fine powders, iron spikes, rope, ten foot poles and so on.

A final note on the ten foot pole: The Ref's veto power extends to things you can't plausibly have on your person. So it is possible that you could have had a giant length of wood strapped to your back the whole time - unless you've gone through any tight crawlspaces, made any particularly athletic leaps, infiltrated a fancy dinner party etc. In just the same way, you could almost always have, say, iron spikes on you, unless you recently passed through the room of intensely powerful magnetism - that would create a contradiction in the fiction.

It's worth bearing in mind for when encumbrance would be an issue, but you don't actually know what people have on them, e.g.: when leaping into deep water, and wondering how heavy someone's pack is. You don't need to engage with the vagaries of Blades' heavy vs light load system; just make clear to the players that they're fine to try to swim without shedding their pack, but that they can't rely on having that block and tackle or sandbag (or delicate, dry manuscript) later on. Again, this creates a good choice that wasn't there before: Take the pack and make do with light, waterproof items, or leave it and come back for it later, allowing for more versatility of equipment? I can just see the consternation now.