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Summary
After consulting with the Queen of Argus, the players decided that instead of just using one method to defeat the Shadow Worm, they would pursue as many as possible.
- They sent a detachment of their fleet with Trinellonde and Draigas Vong to a land called "The Great Cog," to see if they could get them to manufacture multiple Swords for them to use against the Shadow Worm.
- They went to the land known as Sollifex Aether, where new Sols are born. There, they were attacked by a pirate fleet. The Black Worm Pirates made a last ditch effort to wipe them out. Despite a close battle, they ultimately defeated the leader of the pirates and scattered the fleet.
- They went to the land of Siderinth to see if an unbreakable adamantium chain could be forged. They ventured deep inside of Siderinth and successfully parleyed with the adamantite elementals there to aid them in defeating the Shadow Wyrm. The elementals gave parts of their body to forge a mile long, unbreakable chain.
- They collected several barrels of deadly poison from the Poisoner's Tower to use on the Worm.
- Finally, they opened a portal to their homeworld, and the Worm emerged to fight them.
- They struck it with a barrage of light rays from their Swords, lassoed it with the unbreakable chain, injected it with the deadly poison, and continued to bombard it with light rays until they were sure it was dead.
- As they inspected the corpse, they found that the true identity of the Worm was actually the Archmage Thamberlon all along, that same ancient wizard who had traveled the multiverse trying to find a way to stop him in the first place. The ghost of Thamberlon explained that he had been corrupted by the primordial chaos at the beginning of time and turned into the Shadow Worm. He thanked them for breaking the prophecy and freeing him, and he passed on.
- The heroes used Lord Gonren's telepathy to speak to the young Sols of Sollifex Aether and convinced them to come back to their world, which they happily agreed to do.
- A swarm of Sols lit up the sky anew on their world. They found that Princess Claire had placed the citizens (at least some of them) in a magical slumber beneath the castle. They were awakened, and thus began to rebuild their world.
Concluding Thoughts
So, this was my first full Dungeon World campaign. I'd say it was very successful on the whole, although I definitely felt I was losing interest towards the end. In any case, it seemed the players were satisfied with the ending. All that remains is to consider the question: what did I learn?
- If you're going to have pitched naval battles, have a clear idea of what rules you're going to use to have pitched naval battles. I had to improvise how to handle mass naval combat.
- Simplify, simplify, simplify. Skycrawl has a lot of interesting ideas and rules procedures, but it is definitely not necessary to use all of them. The travel procedure, and the exploration of a location procedure, were more complex than I think I needed them to be.
- Nobody ever took any interest in the orcery rules. I wonder if this would have been different in an OSR style game, where resources were more scarce, and the players could use every advantage they can get?
- I wonder if I'm too easy on my players? I have observed that Dungeon World is either extremely harrowing or completely trivial, with little middle ground. I wonder what part of this is a skill issue on my part, and what part of it is the result of the mechanics? I know 5E is notoriously low-mortality, so the mechanics playing a role is not inconceivable.
What Now?
After the conclusion of this campaign, I held a vote with my players to decide on what kind of campaign we would play next. The options I offered were, Fabula Ultima, Worlds Without Number, an Underdark/Downcrawl campaign, and an Ultraviolet Grasslands campaign.
Ultraviolet Grasslands won. But the interesting part is, we're running it with Dungeon World. More on that, coming soon.
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