I thought it would be nice to get a list of places you can hear/watch Dungeon World in action - there are a lot of shows around, but these are the ones I have listened to or watched enough to vouch for them. It would be great to hear everyone else’s recommendations.
Apparently I can only post two links as a new user, so here are my first two podcasts:
Crudely Drawn Swords - a long-term campaign, takes a couple of episodes to get fully into the swing of the game, but funny and epic by turns. First on the list because I make it, so it feels like my prerogative
Friends at the Table Seasons 1, 3 and 5 add up to a long Dungeon World campaign, 2 and 4 being more cyberpunk. The sound is very bad at the start of Season 1 and you can safely jump in around the point they split the party or at the start of Season 3. Worth listening to because Austin is an amazing GM and everyone involved is pretty great.
Spout Lore is a funny campaign which gives an excellent example of using the rules as written - the GM is consistently asking questions of the players and using the answers to create the world as they go.
Roll Dice and Cry is a Dungeon World campaign with a cast from around the world and magical mechs.
The Co-Creator of Dungeon World, Adam Koebel (AKA @SkinnyGhost), has a youtube channel on which he has a couple. One of which was played at GenCon last year (2018). He’s also been a player with his friends like BlueJay who was a first time GM along with a pre-game discussion and a post-mortem
If I recall he has said, that if how to play wasn’t clear enough in the book, that’s on him and Sage for not writing it clearly because it’s the designer’s job to write in a way that makes sense and allows you to play the game as they meant. It’s not your job to interpret the arcane writings.
The thing I would caution about the one-shots Adam and Bluejay have run is that they are all very zany. I think it has lent to the idea that that’s what Dungeon World is. While it can lend itself to such, I personally don’t much care for zany, gonzo RPGs and have run several campaigns that didn’t have this tone or aspect at all with great success.
That’s a fair point. I think that’s because it served two purposes, both to entertain the players as well as to entertain the audience. The latter I’d presume would distinctly change the way it’s played by almost everyone involved.
That’s fair. I’m not saying it’s a bad style. I just want to head off any perception that gonzo tone is baked in to the ruleset. I’ve talked to a number of people at my former FLGS with that perception.
I think it also comes up slightly more with one-shots. If you’re not expecting to revisit a place you don’t worry about throwing in some silly stuff. If you think you might come back it encourages you to curate the world a little more because otherwise you might be spending the next three years trying to rationalise that nonsense that seemed funny in session one before everyone got really invested in their characters.
Jason Cordova, head of The Guantlet, also has an ongoing Dungeon World campaign actual play called We Hunt The Keepers (though this may drift more towards World of Dungeons). https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/we-hunt-the-keepers
The Chimaeracast is another more serious Dungeon World actual play podcast that you might find interesting. I have only just started listening to this one. https://www.thechimaera.com/chimaeracast/
