Dungeon World for Sword & Sorcery. Or maybe better Apocalypse World?

[Yora]

When you look at Dungeon World, I think it really is Dungeons & Dragons World with it's ability scores, classes, hit points, spells, and so on. It's obviously a very different approach to action resolution, but it looks to me like it's still trying to recreate very AD&D style adventures. Which of course is a good goal in itself.

But I was thinking of campaigns based more on the Sword & Sorcery style of Conan, Elric, Kull, and so on, and even with it's different setting Apocalypse World kind of feels like a more suitable approach. It's a more narrative style that relies less on room by room exploration and handwaves specific monster abilities.

I've been looking for Sword &Sorcery Apocalypse World and didn't find anything. Are there any other Fantasy versions of Apocalypse Engine than Dungeon World that would be worth looking into, or would the best approach be to create a new set of character archetypes for Apocalypse World?

[Blymurkla]

I know there was a hack called Apocalypse World: Dark Ages. Don't know how to get a hold of it, but it might be what you want.

[Actana]

Despite the popularity of fantasy, there are relatively few dedicated fantasy hacks for Apocalypse World. I guess most don't really want to compete with Dungeon World, despite DW doing a very particular style of fantasy.

But for a hack, there are a few ways to go about it. The aforementioned Dark Ages hack for Apocalypse World is a good place to start. Due to the popularity of Dungeon World there are also numerous hacks for it as well. The Grim World book has playbooks and some tools for creating a darker setting, and is quite good (playbooks are a lot better than the default ones too, IMO).

There's one other prominent and primarily fantasy PbtA game (that I know of), but it's very much not for Sword & Sorcery. It's called Fellowship, and deals with a very sort of classical LOTR style of adventure where members of different races band together to fight an Evil Overlord.


For other "not what you're looking for but perhaps might catch your interest" games, there are:

There's a Kickstarter out for Legacy: Life Among the Ruins's 2nd edition, which has unlocked a fantasy hack for it, about the departure of an empire and the lands it leaves behind to rebuild. Legacy is originally another style of post apocalyptic, but focusing more on rebuilding society and civilization in a macro scale, with families and generational play alongside individual adventures.

For a not really fantasy but still fantasy, there's Adventures on Dungeon Planet, which is all about... What's the term? Planetary Romance? Basically doing John Carter -esque games, mixtures of magic and technology in a pulpy fashion.

World of Dungeons is a minimalist DW, fitting into only a few pages.

Finally, for one of the many quick and dirty fanmade hacks that are freely available, there's the somewhat hard to find (but 100% free) A Storm Eternal. It's about taking the role of important people during a time of great upheaval, to shape and change the world according to your ideals - or be shaped by it.

[Yora]

Any idea where I might get hold of Dark Ages? I did find Fallen Empires, but that one seems to be a straight up reskin without any noticable changes to the rules of AW.

[Actana]

The AW forums seems to be the place where it's been developed, but it's been pretty silent on the front of Dark Ages for a while, unfortunately. It's worth checking out the other areas of the forum as well, since there's a fair bit of work put into all sorts of hacks.

[Yora]

I think the main thing that is missing from Apocalypse World to work as Sword & Sorcery straight out of the box is magic. Could sorcerers, shamans, and witches be presented in the same way as Angels, Brainers, and Hocuses? If you really look at the sources, there's not a lot of spell slinging going on and it's usually quite difficult to point out specific spells.

The basic Stats should all work just fine, with a slight rephrasing to make them more evocative of the setting: Might (Hard), Appeal (Hot), Cunning (Sharp), and Weird would be just the same, with Daring being more setting appropriate than Cool. Sword & Sorcery heroes are not coldly calculating and calmly disciplined. The closest to that is being bold, unflinching, and having massive balls.
Cool is used in AW almost exclusively to Do Something Under Fire or by the various moves of Operrators. I think in both cases audacity and boldness can work just as well as discipline, but it would be more fitting to the style of Sword & Sorcery.
Not sure if there's a better word than Appeal. "Allure" doesn't sound right for a Conan type character to me as a non-native speaker.

[Actana]

Gravitas, perhaps? It might be a bit harder in tone than Appeal, but it's certainly a type of forceful presence you see often in Sword & Sorcery. Other words could be Decorum, or just simply Charm. Grace might also fit, but has its own connotations that venture beyond personality.

Daring is nice though, I like it.


Can't comment on the spellcasting unfortunately, as I'm not nearly familiar enough with Apocalypse World as to comment on precise mechanics of playbooks.

As a thought experiment, I do wonder if one might be able to fit a stat called "Steel" into it somewhere. It seems like a natural fit for the genre. Likewise for "Guts", though it could also go for Daring.

[Yora]

Hot actually only has four uses: Seduce or Manipulate, Dangerous & Sexy (Battlebabe), and Artful & Gracious and Hypnotic (Skinner). Charm works just as well as a stat for these cases and this term has a somewhat swashbucklery ring to it, which I think is quite appropriate. Much better than Appeal or Hot.
And in a situation where a character intimidates someone it's a Seize By Force move rolled with Hard/Might. Charm can have a purely positive conotation, unlike a more broad and generic Charisma. Or Gravitas, which is also a nice word but feels a bit too fancy for Sword & Sorcery to me. Charm is great.

I think Guts is basically the same as Daring from its implied meaning. Steel would be either Daring or Might, or a combination of both. Keeping with the five applications of Stats from AW and just rephrasing them has the benefit of being able to straight up reuse all the moves without accidentally creating overlapping dupicates.

I think I'll give it a try to put together some playbooks based on moves that are in AW. I think that could get pretty far. Unlike Dungeon World, I would go more with archetypes than classes for characters. Sword & Sorcery tends to be little concerned with specific abilities and more fluid in that regard, even than multiclassing. But there are certain models of personalities that appear all over the genre.
The ideas I have so far are Berserker, Hunter, Mercenary, Rake, Templar, Thief, Sorcerer, and Witch.

[Actana]

To me, the word gravitas has always been first and foremost a Roman thing. Not sure where the connotations came from (probably the Total War series), but that's what I connect the word with. And Romans and Roman-like civilizations tend to be a cornerstone of Sword & Sorcery settings, the bastions of civilization. Hence why I thought it might be appropriate or at least worth considering.

When going for archetypes as playbooks, which is very typical, the best way to go about it is to gather your sources of inspiration, find all the major characters and assign them to your playbooks. If a character (or rather, a character's portrayal within the confines of an individual work) fits in two, that's usually fine. If you find many fitting into two or even more than two playbooks, there might need to be some form of condensing that needs to happen. If a character doesn't really fit into any of the available playbooks, it's usually a sign that you need a new one.

A few questions about the playbooks presented. Most are fairly self explanatory as far as names go, but what is a Rake supposed to be and where does the name come from? And how are you separating the Mercenary playbook from, well, regular people who work as mercenaries?

[Yora]

A rake is a sleazy leach who lives for fun and lacks any morals, or in his own perception a charming rogue. A Tony Stark without the suit. I got that idea from the Temprtess class from the Conan d20 game, but think Rake is a bit less loaded and has a broader scope. The best example in fiction I can think of is Dandelion from The Witcher, who is actually not useless at all, even though he's not a fighter or a sorcerer. And a number of Conan women, I believe, but I don't remember those very well.
Not an archetype that is a perfect fit for every Sword & Sorcery campaign, but I think one that has its point in being an available option.

I see it as basically an adaptation of the Skinner in AW.

[Blymurkla]

By entering an email adress here, you can get a hold of AW: Dark Ages. It's not a complete game, so you'll have to be familiar with AW when you read it. But that you already seem to be.

[Aran nu tasar]

I'll point out that there seem to be a few sword and sorcery PbtA games out there. Of that list, I've only read Wolfspell, which is a neat game but not what you are after. (Unless what you are after is a game about humans who have been turned into wolves dealing with their dual nature, in which case Wolfspell has you covered.)

[Actana]

I'll point out that there seem to be a few sword and sorcery PbtA games out there. Of that list, I've only read Wolfspell, which is a neat game but not what you are after. (Unless what you are after is a game about humans who have been turned into wolves dealing with their dual nature, in which case Wolfspell has you covered.)

Most of those are, however, one-page games, and one of them is a Dungeon World supplement. While I have nothing against one-page games and find them fascinating from a design standpoint in how brevity can enhance a focus on what's important, they're not what I'd really recommend overall.

That does remind me, however: another dark and low fantasy game to be on the lookout for perhaps is City of Judas, taking place in a quite fictional account of Jerusalem where the players play as part of a brutal mercenary company. It's likely best not discussed in great detail due to the forum rules, but it's certainly a thing.

[Yora]

I am starting to think that there's actually a real opportunity in not having a regular RPG magic system and instead expanding the Open Your Brain and Augury moves from AW.

Augury has the following results by default:

• Reach through the world’s psychic maelstrom to something or someone connected to it.
• Isolate and protect a person or thing from the world’s psychic maelstrom.
• Isolate and contain a fragment of the world’s psychic maelstrom itself.
• Insert information into the world’s psychic maelstrom.
• Open a window into the world’s psychic maelstrom.

If you simply rename the psychic maelstrom to The Spirits or The Outer Dark, this could be pretty close to the magic of Elric. "Something or someone connected to it" would include all spirits and demons, which you can then interact with as regular NPCs. "Insert information" could be placing a magical lure to attract the attention of otherworldly beings to a target, and "open a window" would be a basic divination.
The only case I remember of anyone using magical as a straight attack in classic S&S tales is the death touch of the Stygian priests from Conan. Limiting the effects of magic to these types should lead to a quite different fiction than what you usually get from RPGs, even those that label themselves Sword & Sorcery games.

[Actana]

I agree, with some caveats and precautions. The more freeform a magic system gets the more everyone needs to agree on what magic means and how it works. It's no good having a list of effects if nobody can agree on how those things are achieved in-universe. Knowing the whats and whys of magic is important for the metagame aspects of a game. The characters might be unaware, but players and GM definitely need to have a degree of awareness of the inner workings of magic, even if it is only through fluff and the underlying metaphysical nature of magic in the setting.

[Yora]

Though this goes against the seeming intentions of the psychic maelstrom in AW. But I do agree that it's probably a better idea to have at least have the GM have a consistent image of what magic can do and can't do. And this would also have to be available to players playing sorcerers or witches. The specific details can be very vague, but I'd cover at the very least such important questions like the posibility of teleportation, travelling to other worlds, and changing time, and how common and easy resurrection of the dead is.

[Actana]

In case of the psychic maelstrom, its explanation is "things are weird and freaky, don't expect everything to be entirely consistent". Which is an explanation of how the magic system works. It tells the players to not expect things to be consistent. Knowing that you don't know how a thing works is just as valid an option as knowing that you know how it works. As long as you have at least some frame of mind to work with.

It's of course a case by case thing, and in some cases you can even weave the expanded mythology of the setting while playing (heck, Monster of the Week has that as one of the GM principles). But it often helps to lay down the very basics of magic, be it "there be spirits" or "it's strange and unknowable but it just kinda works at times?" or even "magic users pull from ectoplasm from another dimension and shape that to their will using arcane rituals that disappear from their minds after being spent". As long as there's something to use it will reduce the confusion. If none of the PCs use magic it's easy for the GM to keep things to themselves, but if the players use magic it's worthwhile to know at least the basics and fill in from there.

Players being willing to ask on magical things before they execute their careful plans which rely on specific interpretations or uses of magic also goes a long way to eliminating confusion. Of course, a GM can just say "yes" regardless of whether or not they planned on something being possible. Or, perhaps more appropriately "yes, but..."

[daniel_ream]

The basic Stats should all work just fine, with a slight rephrasing to make them more evocative of the setting: Might (Hard), Appeal (Hot), Cunning (Sharp), and Weird would be just the same, with Daring being more setting appropriate than Cool. Sword & Sorcery heroes are not coldly calculating and calmly disciplined. The closest to that is being bold, unflinching, and having massive balls.
Cool is used in AW almost exclusively to Do Something Under Fire or by the various moves of Operrators. I think in both cases audacity and boldness can work just as well as discipline, but it would be more fitting to the style of Sword & Sorcery.

Congratulations! You have just written your first AW hack. Welcome to the club. :)

Seriously, in less time than it takes you to Google for somebody else's hack, you can write your own S&S hack for AW. Go to. I'm liking what you've got already.