As you all disappear into the byzantine alleyways and passageways that make up the rest of the docks quarter, you hear the sounds of a window breaking, and a short, stifled scream, as if - for example - someone had just been flung, rather unkindly, out a window.
Thus ends Episode One. Let's do some quick housekeeping and then I want to talk OOC about how you guys feel the game is going so far.
- Everyone gains +1 XP for having learned something new and important about the world (pretty much everything)
- Take a look at your bonds. If you feel like a bond has changed or been resolved in some fashion, post about it, delete the bond, and gain +1XP. (Max 1 bond)
- If you feel like your character has learned something about another character, you may write 1 new bond. (Includes characters you already have a bond with so long as it doesn't overlap on the previous bond).
- If you feel like you've taken a step towards your character's Drive in some way, post about it and gain +1 XP.
- If you haven't already, gain +1XP for each 6 or less you've rolled (I think that's Deker only).
If you level up, shout it out and I'll walk you through the procedures. Oh, and Ein, you've left your sitar behind.
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We're going to break for a little bit as I figure out what exactly to do next with all the story threads you guys have given me, but now's the time for input. What's good? What's bad? How are you feeling about the game so far? What would you like to see or follow up next?
So I think we're doing okay from my perspective but I made a few mistakes setting up which could've led to a tighter game. To be perfectly frank, I probably should've started you guys playing Dungeon World in an actual Dungeon; it's kind of what the setting is built for, and it would've let you get more utility out of your powers and whatnot since you wouldn't have to worry so much about collateral damage or secondary goals or whatever to start off with; we could've built from there into larger things. I should also have been probably more straightforwardly adversarial and perhaps given you a larger goal from the outset to direct your energies more, but it seemed to work out okay.
I'm very happy with your creativity and willingness to do interesting things with the world. Vaces' Herb and the merchant Bareth in particular I think will probably come up again later, and the idea that Xingchu has a weirdly acidic bay is this really cool idea I wouldn't have thought up myself. I realise I'm probably going slightly overboard with the asian flavour but, to be frank, it's the kind of fantasy world I'm more interested in right now so I hope you'll roll with me on this one.
In terms of playing the game, it sounds like you've all got the hang of things pretty well. I do want to point out a few things in the service of getting a smoother running game:
- Ask forgiveness, not permission. Because of the time difference between our postings, it's going to be easier if you just "Do the thing" rather than asking "Is there X and Y? I'd like to Do The Thing". I'll pick you up if I have any issues with it. For instance, there was a lot of asking me about room layouts, whether or not things were possible to see, etc. My policy here is that it's too slow to worry about these things if you have to ask me for permission or clarification each time. Just do the thing and let me worry about the rest. If you need clarification, make assumptions and I'll tell you if the assumptions are wrong or not later.
- When you wait for me to make a move, I'm going to make a move. In a real-time environment, the GM doesn't only make moves whenever you fail a roll, but also when the conversation naturally flows to let the GM 'speak' so to say. If your character doesn't do anything in PbP or waits or prepares (without doing an Aid roll) or whatever, it's roughly the same as - if this were a more clear-cut turn based game - letting me make whatever move I want. To put it another way: you should always be doing something interesting, instead of setting yourself up for me to do something. Because if you give me the onus, I can make it as easy or as hard for you as I want, and I'm not always going to pull my punches.
Finally, I think I'm going to take some time and transfer your character sheets into a googledocs format that you guys and I can edit, so I can mod your character sheets as we go, because keeping track of HP / inventory is tiring on my end without direct access.
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By the way, conversations are proving exceedingly irritating to do PbP, especially with multiple participants. So it may be that for things that aren't explicitly part of a scene (Waymore handing in the ring, Ein getting back his sitar/obtaining a new instrument, whatever) we can just do a general outline or montage of things so we can get back to proper gameplay more quickly.