Character Creation - Dungeon World

Now that we have a Bard it is worth having a chat about... well, about having a chat.

The Bard has that Bardic Lore feature. When making a bard it is worth chatting to your GM about which ones are appropriate for this game. If we are never going 'planes wandering' then Planar Spheres might be a bad choice. It would suck for the player to have one of their core features never come up in play. If there are no undead in a game, the GM should warn the player not to pick that one, unless they are interested in the dead and funerary rights or something.
If the player does not bring it up, the GM might want to address this issue when someone announces they are picking the Bard.

Likewise, the Cleric is sometimes seen as the 'healer' but the Bard and the Paladin are also compulsory healers while the Cleric needs to pick Cure as one of their spells to even qualify.
The unique thing the Cleric brings is Turn for dealing with undead. If the GM knows there will be no undead in this game, they should mention that so anyone thinking about Cleric can temper their expectations. (Especially in a game with a Bard and a Paladin already).

The decision to play a spell caster can also be heavily tempered by what levels we can expect to achieve --more so than most other playbooks. It can help for the GM to make their intents in this regard clear at the start.
Presumably leveling up will not be a focus in this sample game?

Similarly, the Thief has a unique ability for dealing with traps. If the GM does not plan to use traps in their game a Thief player may wish to know before picking. The Thief brings more than just traps to the table, though.
Some GMs might not want a thief in the game because they can mess with their ability to use traps. It is common for GMs to present a curated list or playbooks for players to choose from, removing the ones they don't want or that don't fit.

Another thing to chat about is the Paladin's Quest Move. This is a powerful move, but relies a lot on the player and the GM working together to make an interesting story of it. Else it can become a war of intents and avoidances. Make sure you are on the same page.

vagueGM this is great advice. As for the undead, there will be some. I am not quite sure how far we will be getting so leveling up might or might not happen, we will see. And I am willing and interested in working with both our Bard and Paladin on how their abilities will work.

I can whip up a character pretty quickly. Let me know once everyone is onboard (for the start) and the character choices are settled, then I will fill in.

Thanks for the tip, @vagueGM!

re the Bard, currently Edwyn is a charismatic weakling, good at talking his way into and out of things. I'd thought the most useful thing he can do for a party which doesn't otherwise know much about the world is, well, know stuff that's been said about the world in songs and stories. It'll help us deal with what we come up against, and provide tips re where to look for adventures or treasure too, and where hazards might be. So I am leaning towards one of

- Grand Histories of the Known World (past kingdoms and conflicts = places treasure or traps might be)
- Legends of Heroes Past (as above)
- A Bestiary of Creatures Unusual (how to deal with different monsters)


Let me know what you reckon though!

I'd say that the bestiary or legends of past heroes will come in handy during this little adventure.

Thanks!

Also, are we doing Bonds, as per the playbooks? Is that something we discuss, or just keep to ourselves?

Bonds are sorta important to the Bard. Bards have more than anyone else as part of the character design. (A Wizard only has half the number a Bard does.)
Your number of Bonds is a stat that you roll with when Aiding or Interfering with another. The Bard is just better at manipulating their friends.

By RAW they are discussed and everyone has to be happy with them (mainly the two players involved and the GM).
In PbP, this mechanism --Bonds, Hx, Strings, or whatever the game calls them-- can take a long time. They are meant to help get the story going quickly, but that is only true at the table. We can fill in Bonds as we play rather than now.

This is key, and a terrible part of paladin-ing. You're set up the adventure, and so it would be useful to work together on the appropriate move that matches the adventure. Taking your lead, I propose:

I dedicated myself to a mission through prayer and ritual cleansing, to Discover the truth of the MacGuffin of Mysteries.

You don't have to declare your Quest right now, you can do it at any time (though the 'ritual cleansing' might take a while). You can declare it when you know of something worth Questing for.
There is no provision in the rules for giving up a Quest, so choosing the wrong one can be a problem. It can be handled in the fiction, but would have consequences.

Well, Bond might normally be better for a fuller campaign or adventure, I don't see why we can't use them and get a feel for how we can resolve them in PbP.

We could do an End of Session partway through the dungeon, that way we can see the Bond Resolution mechanics in action (and get some XP).
But Resolving Bonds is only one of their uses. They are also a mechanical Stat that we Roll, so they are important.

The book suggest defining at least one at the start, then filling in the others whenever we see an opportunity. In PbP there is lots of these opportunities during play, so we could even start with none and fill them all in as we play.
I have gone so far as to suggest to a player --during End of Session where they had nothing happening-- that one of their Bonds had 'clearly been the constant headbutting you had with Bob, which you have resolved, right?' The more Bonds you have them more likely one of them will be resolved each session.

---

Do we know each other or is that part of our memory also a bit hazy? We know we signed up together, but, since we don't remember our trip down here, we might not recall our Bonds and have to discover them on play.

As always great advice vagueGM, thank you. I'll say that we will definitely have at least one End of Session part way through, maybe two if everything is going well and we want to extend the experience.
Let's go with you all have worked to get her before, so at least one bond should be filled with another of the party members. Leave at least one open for a good opportunity. Maybe establish how each bond has been created between those it includes?

Sounds good.

Are we expecting more players? (Yeah, yeah, I know, who can say:)
The Bard will almost definitely have more than one Bond with some characters, they just count up the total number they have with that character when they roll+bonds.

It seems like this might end up being a significant game. Do we want to make make full characters for this and deal with sheets and submission and 'approval' and such?

I am not sure how that will work out in the long run, nor how many characters a game can handle (we may need to cull them as time goes on), and other people's games may want characters as well (which probably means we will eventually end up adding them anyway).

If any of you want to copy from the playbooks template I used on another site, go for it. TK DW Template. The formatting will be a bit off, this site does not handle lists, and copy-paste does not keep formatting.

If we decide not to go with proper sheets, we could use a 'Character Introduction' thread here for that instead. It will be harder than with a sheet to look up each time, but could work.

I have been so tempted to join because I love DW! But I have stuff going on and cannot accept any further commitment, so will happily just read along.

For what it's worth, here is a sample character sheet I made that you may find useful as a template.

That's a nice looking character sheet.

I am sure there will be more DW 'games' later. It is popular.

Indeed.
Though I do find that, with PbtA Playbooks, it can be useful --mainly for the GM-- to be able to see the options one did not pick to help them understand what the picked options mean:
Cool visuals, but knowing that the eyes are 'Fiery' is less useful that they are 'Fiery as opposed to being Cold or Weary'.
Looks can be a little more than skin deep, but they are still just looks. Having a reminder of which mechanical Moves and Feature the player did not pick or gave up having to get the ones they did pick can be very useful (not that you pick Moves at the start with DW, it is sorta unique that way). Alignment and Rave interpretations can sometimes benefit from the context.

It is much messier to have all the unpicked options on the sheet all the time, so I don't know if it is worth it, but they would be there if using the PDFs. I sometimes maintain my own sheet with them all (in Org Mode).

Can I just check who else will be joining this scenario? Edwyn is not a character I would have designed to survive alone :)