Dungeon World - New Planes

Yesterday I played in the second part of a "Dungeon World" campaign run by Michael Bay.This was only my second time playing the game itself and I'm more in tune with the rules now, along with the rest of the group.

The storyline picked up roughly where we left off last time, though at the start of the session not all players were present. This actually set things up beautifully and freed the smaller group to pursue another direction.Two of the players did join the session later on with almost spooky timing in terms of the storyline and narrative.

What had started as a standard dungeon crawl last time progressed through woodland ceremonies, abandoned altars, dissolving planes of existence,the "world tree" and finally an old ruined city in the desert.This was all in a single five hour session, and all the settings really added to the story and sense of adventure.

This being the second session, we were all more familiar with the rules, our characters and the relationships between us.This game gives experience rewards for playing true to bonds that you've made with other characters in the creation session,and also your alignment.This is a really nice way to give you a personal character "compass" for how to handle situations. In my case,as a cleric, I made several decisions in the game that put the group,and world,at risk, almost costing my life at the end. This was all part of staying true to the cleric's faith, and my last action was to turn away hordes of undead skeletons...having let the genie out of the bottle I saved the group.

The game finished with a character encounter that was unexpected yet managed to tie everything together with the core story.This was the first game I've played in a long time where we were so engaged in the game that we'd ran over time without realizing it...credit to Michael's storytelling and a great group who managed to really keep the game flowing. I've absolutely no idea what twists and turns the next one will take, but this was a truly excellent gaming session. If you like "Apocalypse World" and classic fantasy, I highly recommend checking this one out.