Altering Rules

Overview

• Dungeon World portrays one specific fantasy — elves, dwarves, heroes, riches, glory,
  danger. Your different idea (a blasted desert planet of cannibals and psychics;
  human-only clans as distinct as gnome and dwarf) is possible and encouraged with
  a little effort. This chapter explains how to turn this Dungeon World into your
  Dungeon World.

Making Moves

• Moves are the best starting point — fronts, dangers, and other elements already
  contain custom moves. You might write moves for a particular threat ("When you go
  alone into the Unhallowed Halls…"), for setting-critical things ("When you swim in
  the dark waters…"), and — with experience — to expand a class or create your own.

Where Moves Come From

• Start with the trigger — most common; an action feels different enough from
  existing moves to need its own rules.
• Start with the effect — useful for class moves: casting is what the wizard does,
  so what triggers it?
• Start with the mechanics — rarely; be wary of ideas that are entirely mechanical.
  Moves start and end with the fiction, so a mechanical idea is the least important bit.
• Borrow from other games — many use moves; modifying one is often not difficult.

Types of Moves

• Special moves (environment/world): usually the GM's domain, making parts of the
  world stand out. Write or print them where everyone can see — unless the PCs
  wouldn't know about them.
• Class moves: special competency or power. Tied to one class → add it to that
  class. Tied to a concept multiple classes might access (e.g. those who've seen beyond
  Death's Black Gates) → a compendium class (a mini-class of moves around a
  fictional theme).
• Basic or special moves: players do it, no class or theme — often = basic, rarely
  = special.
• Monster-associated player moves: rare — players responding to a monster (disease
  effects, pressing on despite an air elemental's blast). Most player/monster
  interaction is covered by basic and class moves.
• Monster moves are not player moves — simple statements of what the monster does.
  Making every monster move a player move will seriously hamper your creativity.

World Moves

• Fantastic things in your world may deserve custom moves. Example (Chris Bennet):
  opening a sewer hatch, roll+Str — 10+ choose 2, 7–9 choose 1: avoid the filth, avoid
  the gelatinous cube, find the secret back entrance to the merchant's daughter.
• Strong because it's tied to a particular place at a particular time — written for a
  specific game's horrible sewers.
• Why not just defy danger? Sometimes that's right — but a custom move sets up the
  tough choices ahead of time, saving thinking in the moment, and the specific
  trigger ("when you open a sewer hatch") calls the sewers out as always dangerous.

Class Moves

• Adding moves to a class shows how your Dungeon World looks (example: a cleric move
  that peacebonds a room — no one within it can cause physical harm).
• Don't infringe on other classes' niches — if the thief casts as well as the
  wizard, the wizard is marginalized. This is why multiclass moves act one level lower.
• Avoid moves duplicating existing benefits, even with different triggers. Damage
  and armor increases especially: the classes already have amounts reflecting the
  game's overall danger — more can negate potential threats.

New Classes

• A class is just a collection of themed moves working together to create a unique
  feel. First consideration: how it relates to existing classes — no character
  exists in isolation.

• Start with fictional inspirations — don't slavishly recreate what the character
  could do; take the style of what's cool about them (Discworld's pompous wizards
  inspired the wizard's manner, but its casting is Vance's Dying Earth).

• Beyond moves, the new elements to decide:

• HP: base + Con. Base is almost always 4, 6, 8, or 10. More than
  fighter/paladin steals their spotlight; less than the wizard is character suicide.

  • 4 — deliberately fragile; needs help when swords come out.
  • 6 — not ready to fight, but can take a hit.
  • 8 — can take some hits and get into combat a little.
  • 10 — skilled warriors, no fear of battle.

• Damage: choose from d4, d6, d8, d10 (all book classes use a single die, no static
  bonus, but 2d4 or 1d6+2 are fair experiments). High HP and damage tend to go together
  — but a pacifist brick wall or glass cannon works too.

• Alignments: the class's starting outlook. Most include Neutral — only the most
  dedicated classes put an ideal above the self. A good alignment move happens with
  some regularity and guides a type of action the player might not otherwise consider.
  "When you gain treasure…" happens in the normal course of play and says nothing about
  ideals; "When you gain treasure through lies and deceit…" makes the character prize
  the con. Alignment is also a telling fact about the class in the world — everyone
  knows paladins are paragons of Good and Law.

• Bonds: where the class's outlook shines — your clearest interaction with the
  player at creation. Write four bonds by default; +1 if very social, -1 if cloistered.
  Avoid dictating moral stances; think about how the class interacts with allies
  (thief steals but guards against traps; fighter defends and kills threats; wizard
  knows and shares or hoards secrets). Avoid proper names in starting bonds.

• Look: largely imagination — a good spot for your inspiration. At least one
  clothes choice establishes style without making players think about buying clothes.

• Equipment: at least one weapon and one armor option unless the class clearly
  lacks fighting skill. Dungeon rations are pretty much required — a starting
  character without food going into danger borders on stupid.

Compendium Classes

• Available only to higher-level characters who meet specific requirements; ideal
  for concepts that can be layered onto multiple classes.
• Structure: a starting move available only after a certain experience (the
  Divine Bond example — entered a god's presence, then take it at your next level).
  Best when they rely on what the character has done — not stat prerequisites or
  anything the player didn't act for. Available to anyone who just hit 5th level = not
  worth much; available only to those who've been to Death's Black Gates and lived =
  interesting.
• Usually 2–3 more moves taken only if the starting move was taken — normal class
  moves with that requirement.
• If you can't picture the class's look or HP, or it overlaps existing classes, it's
  probably better as a compendium class.

Adventure Moves

• Deal directly with the adventure underway: move the action along, change rewards,
  transition between adventures.
• Con/short games: front-load with a "the adventure so far" move (the Stalwart
  Fighter example — roll+Cha to bank favors owed by party members, cashed in at a
  moment of need to redirect one action once). The most important part is the
  information and tone — it sets the stage and gives the player a starting point;
  hand one to each player with their playbook for a great con game.
• Adapt End of Session to the adventure's XP goals (e.g. questions about the Cult
  of the Scaled God). Show players the new move — the goal is tying XP to this
  adventure, not keeping them in the dark.

Move Structure

• Every move: a trigger ("when…") and an effect ("then…").

Triggers

• Usually fictional actions by the PCs; sometimes part of creation or session start/end.
• Triggers never use precise units of time. No "when you start a round adjacent to
  a dragon" — there are no rounds, and time in Dungeon World is fluid like movie pacing.
• Broad types:
  • When a character takes action (Discern Realities, Arcane Art, Command)
  • When a character takes action under specific circumstances (Hack and Slash,
    Seeing Red, Backstab)
  • When circumstances dictate, no character action (Order Hirelings, End of Session)
  • When a character uses a thing (Magic items, Heirloom)
  • From now on (Serenity, Poisoner)

Effects

• Limitless — don't feel constrained to rolls, +1s, and stat swaps. A fictional effect
  ("they treat you as a friend") is as powerful as +1 forward — maybe more.
• Broad types (any move may use several): Roll · Substitute stats · Negate damage ·
  Bonus/penalty, forward or ongoing · Deal or heal damage · Choose options ·
  Hold & spend · Ask & answer · Change circumstances · Mark experience · Call for more
  information · Add options.

Changing the Basics

• Moves can change fundamentals (e.g. replace damage dice with fixed numbers: d4→2,
  d6→3, d8→4, d10→5, d12→6). Be very careful with moves that muck with the
  fundamentals — never contradict the GM's principles or agenda, or break "take the
  action to gain the effect."
• XP: easily tuned — make leveling rarer or more common, or change what earns XP by
  rewriting End of Session to match your game's focus. Share it with players first.
• Making monsters harder (e.g. a dragon): the best answer is fictional — stabbing a
  dragon with a normal blade isn't hack and slash because the blade can't hurt it. The
  Vincent Baker-style difficulty modifier (-1 if the GM judges it especially difficult,
  -2 if clearly beyond them) works but is a prompt for judgment calls with no framework
  — if you're writing it, consider what difficulty you're really trying to capture and
  write a custom move for that instead.

Development of a Move

• Hack and slash's evolution shows the process (original by Tony Dowler):
  1. v1: wade into combat, take the enemy's damage, roll+Str, 10+ choose 2 of four
     options. Problem: "prevent one ally from taking damage" was far less useful than
     outright killing an enemy. Dropped that option — three options with 10+ pick 2
     means you always forgo exactly one, and all remaining are clearly useful.
  2. Remaining problem: the fictional action didn't tightly relate to the outcome
     — one overhead chop at an eagle lord shouldn't also divide damage onto the treant
     behind him. Scoped down the effects to what could follow from a single attack
     (trigger became "attack an enemy who can defend themselves").
  3. Double damage proved too much → changed to +2 damage; then +2 was reduced to
     taking damage, which flattened monsters into mere HP drains. Monsters hurl you
     about and destroy the ground you stand on.
  4. Final version: "the enemy makes an attack" instead of flat damage — opening up
     the whole host of interesting monster moves.
• Lesson: iterate on the fiction-effect link and on what the outcomes let the world do.

The GM

• GM moves are the easy part — a GM move is just a statement of something that
  fictionally happens; write new ones freely (most are specific cases of existing
  moves). Mind the hard/soft spectrum, your principles, your agenda.
• Changing agenda or principles is one of the biggest changes you can make — expect
  changes throughout the game plus playtesting.
  • Play to find out what happens — the least changeable. "Play towards your set
    plot" or "play to challenge the players' skills" will be resisted strongly by the
    other rules; you'd have to resist or rewrite the moves at every step.
  • Fill the characters' lives with adventure — hard to really change; removing it
    requires major rework, since miss effects and soft moves all exist to create adventure.
  • Portray a fantastic world — the easiest to change, but still considerable
    rewriting of class moves: a historical world needs magic/equipment nearly
    rewritten or removed; a grim world survives only if moves come with darker costs;
    a utopian world needs few of the moves as written.
• Principles are more mutable than the agenda, but small changes can seriously
  alter the game:
  • Most important (break down play without them): address the characters, not the
    players; never speak the name of your move; begin and end with the fiction; be a
    fan of the characters.
  • Spirit of Dungeon World (changing one may mean changing them all): embrace the
    fantastic; give every monster life; name every person; think dangerous.
  • Portable to other games (the game is diminished without them, but play
    continues): leave blanks; ask questions and use the answers.
  • Optional additions: test their bonds — compatible with everything, shifts the
    game's focus; fronts need rethinking and new moves to support it.

Monsters

• The easiest place to modify monsters is the creation questions — simplest change:
  adjust lethality or randomness.
• More interesting: change the questions to present a different view of monsters. The
  default questions imply monsters are like other creatures — many alignments, not
  always opposed. For a game about hunting evil monsters, add questions like:
  • Intrusion of the Old Ones Beyond the Walls: Planar, +5 damage
  • Product of the Old Wizards of the Red Tower: Construct, +5 HP
  • From The Time Before Man: Primordial, +5 damage, +5 HP
• Apply new questions by re-answering them for existing monsters, or use them only for
  new monsters: if they're key to your vision, redo all the monsters you use; if they
  only suit a specific kind of monster, new ones suffice.