The GM

GMing Dungeon World: A Framework

• Dungeon World is built for a specific style: a world of elves, orcs, dragons, and magic
  where dark dangers mix with lighthearted adventure.
• The GM has rules too — this chapter is procedures and rules, not advice or tips.
• Running the game rests on three pillars:
  • Agenda — what you set out to do.
  • Principles — the guides that keep you focused on the agenda.
  • Moves — the concrete, moment-to-moment actions that move the game forward.
• Make moves when players miss rolls, when the rules call for it, and whenever players
  look to you to see what happens. These are rules just like damage, stats, and HP —
  alter or ignore them with the same care.

How to GM

• When you sit down as GM you do four things: describe the situation, follow the
  rules, make moves, exploit your prep.
• Describe the situation: always in concrete, sensory terms — not "an orc charging
  you" but "an orc painted in blood swinging a hammer and yelling bloody murder."
  Leverage missing information too (clattering armor, shuffling feet). Give them
  something to react to, and end with "What do you do?"
• Follow the rules: yours and theirs. It's your responsibility too to watch for
  triggered moves — stop players and ask if they mean to trigger one.
• Make moves: your moves change the flow of the game.
• Exploit your prep: use what you know that the players don't — the "unwanted
  attention" a wizard draws may be the gaze of the demon you know waits two levels below.

Agenda

Your three goals, at all times, and nothing else:

• Portray a fantastic world — show the wonders and encourage reaction.
• Fill the characters' lives with adventure — foster world-threatening action.
• Play to find out what happens — don't plan too hard; the rules will fight you.

What you are NOT doing: beating the players, testing them with complex traps, showing
off a finely crafted setting, killing the players (monsters might be), or telling a
planned-out story. An adventure never presumes player actions — it portrays a setting
in motion with creatures pursuing their own goals; conflict with that setting makes
action inevitable, and you honestly portray the repercussions.

Principles

• Draw maps, leave blanks — maps keep everyone on the page; never make them
  complete. Leave room for the unknown; let maps expand and change.
• Address the characters, not the players — "Dunwick, what are you doing about the
  wight?" Keeps play in the fiction; moves are based on characters' actions.
• Embrace the fantastic — at every scale: floating cities and god-corpses, village
  wise-men and luck-idols. The world should be as engaging as the characters.
• Make a move that follows — a move takes an element of the fiction and brings it to
  bear against the characters. It must follow from the fiction.
• Never speak the name of your move — moves are prompts to you, not things you say.
  Show them as straightforward outcomes of the characters' actions.
• Give every monster life — smells, sights, sounds, motivations — enough to feel
  real. Don't cry when they get beaten down; that's what PCs do.
• Name every person — anyone the players speak with has a name; personality and
  goals flow from there.
• Ask questions and use the answers — part of playing to find out. "What do you
  do?" after every move; you needn't ask the character the move hit — shift focus
  elsewhere. Ask about before, now, and future; ask the Cleric about gods, the Wizard
  about magic — then ask the Thief about the gods.
• Be a fan of the characters — cheer their victories, lament their defeats; don't
  push them in any direction.
• Think dangerous — nothing you create is protected. Everything can be endangered,
  destroyed, or crumble. Without the characters, the world changes for the worse.
• Begin and end with the fiction — everything comes from fictional events and leads
  back to them.
• Think offscreen too — not everything happens in front of the characters. Make
  your move in the next room, across the dungeon, or back in town; show the effects
  when they surface.

Moves

Choose a move whenever everyone looks to you to see what happens. They're real events
in the fiction, not code words. Never name the move; always follow with "What do you do?"

The GM's moves:

• Use a monster, danger, or location move — every monster, location, and overarching
  danger has moves. When a player move says a monster attacks, make an aggressive move
  with it.
• Reveal an unwelcome truth — a fact they wish weren't true: the room's trapped, the
  helpful goblin is a spy.
• Show signs of an approaching threat — your most versatile move: something bad is
  coming unless they act.
• Deal damage — apply a fictionally threatening source (the lizard man stabs, the
  rocks fall). The source sets the amount; tell the player what to roll — you never need
  to touch the dice.
• Use up their resources — expend weapons, armor, healing, ongoing spells — not
  always permanently; a sword can be flung across the room, not shattered.
• Turn their move back on them — reverse a move's benefit against them, or grant the
  same advantage to someone who has it out for them (the scout spotted her too).
• Separate them — pushed apart in battle or teleported across the dungeon. Bound to
  cause problems.
• Give an opportunity that fits a class's abilities — play to what a class shines at.
  No thief in sight and a locked door? An invitation to invention and bargaining.
• Show a downside to their class, race, or equipment — orcs thirst for elven blood;
  the cleric's magic disturbs dangerous forces; the torch draws eyes in the dark.
• Offer an opportunity, with or without cost — show them something they want. Lead
  with the fiction, not rules talk.
• Put someone in a spot — a place demanding tough choices; put them, or something
  they care about, in the path of destruction. The harder the choice, the tougher the spot.
• Tell them the requirements or consequences and ask — for wants not covered by a
  move or after failure: yes, but at a price, or yes, with consequences — and the
  characters themselves must perceive this clearly.

When to Make a Move

• When everyone looks to you to find out what happens.

• When players give you a golden opportunity.

• When they roll a 6-.

• Soft moves (usually when players look to you): no immediate, irrevocable
  consequences — an opportunity with cost, or arrows loosed with time to dodge.

• Hard moves (otherwise): immediate consequences — dealing damage is almost always hard.

• A soft move ignored becomes a golden opportunity for a hard move.

• You may opt for a soft move where a hard one fits, if it suits the situation.

Choosing and Making Your Move

• Start with the obvious consequences of the triggering action; check it against your
  agenda and principles; then do it.
• Let your moves snowball — build on the characters' successes and failures and on
  your own previous moves.
• If it won't bite them now but will later, note it and reveal it at the right time
  (think offscreen too).
• Moves are concrete events happening to characters, not mechanical actions around the
  table. Deal damage is a move, but other moves may include damage too.

Dungeon Moves

A special subset for building or altering a dungeon on the fly — use when players
explore a hostile area you haven't fully planned. Map the area as you go; most add a new
room or element. Make them whenever players look to you, present an opportunity, or miss
a roll — especially when entering a new room or hallway.

• Change the environment — shift the general feel: carved tunnels turn natural, trees
  turn dead and strange, trails are lost. Varies the areas and creatures they face.
• Point to a looming threat — signs and clues of something lurking: dragon
  footprints, a gelatinous cube's slime trail.
• Introduce a new faction or type of creature — a type is a broad grouping (orcs,
  undead); a faction is creatures united by a goal. Give clear sensory evidence or
  substantiated information — don't be coy, though you can be subtle. A hard
  application snowballs into combat or ambush.
• Use a threat from an existing faction or type of creature — once introduced, use
  their monsters' moves. Think broadly: orcs bring hunting worgs; cults keep undead
  servants and abyssal beasts. Often made subconsciously.
• Make them backtrack — add obstacles only an earlier room can overcome; show what
  time has changed behind them — new threats, unfinished business. The dungeon is a
  living place: no stasis in the characters' wake.
• Present riches at a price — put what they want just out of reach, and make it
  available only by giving up something they're short on: time, HP, gear.
• Present a challenge to one of the characters — challenge what they're good at
  (a lock for the thief, enemy god-servants for the cleric, skulls for the fighter) or
  what they're bad at or leave unresolved (the bard's lie, the wizard's demon summonings).
  Gives the spotlight — spread it around from session to session.

Dealing With Common Situations

Fights

• Think beyond damage exchange: what is the fight about? What does each side want?
  Monsters might capture characters or protect something.
• No self-respecting monster stands still for its beating — combat is dynamic: moving in
  and out of range, cover, retreat, shifting battlefields.
• Have monsters take action players react to; use moves beyond deal damage even in fights.
• Ensure everyone gets a chance to act, and know where each character is in the chaos.
  Map complex battle locations.

Traps

• From your prep or improvised on the fly — if nothing has established a location is
  safe, traps are always an option.
• If a described action would discover a trap even without triggering a move, don't hide
  it. Traps aren't allowed to break the rules.

People

• NPCs aren't mindless stooges, but they're not what we play to find out about either.
  They're people with goals and the tools to pursue them — use them to illustrate the
  world. Whole adventures can happen in peopled environments.
• People change over time: the characters' passage inspires or enrages them, and they
  remember. Roll back through a town you mistreated — show how they're different now:
  more cautious, a new religion, hungry for revenge.
• Bonds represent relationships between characters; NPC relationships are tenuous.
  Real, lasting connections require action — "What do you do?" is as valid facing a
  potential ally's hopes and fears as a swordpoint.