It's been a bit over a month since the DW2 Alpha publicly released, and we've been continuing to playtest the game both internally and alongside the community. We've learned a lot about the game - how it reads and plays at a variety of tables, how it feels after a single session vs several sessions, what works, needs a bit of refinement, or needs a total redesign.

On a side note, if you want to tell us what you think of the game, please tell us at https://dungeon-world.com/dw2feedback

With that in mind, we're ready to change things up for the next update. We've stated several times that this is an alpha, nothing is final. While we will do some refinement with each update, our primary focus right now is experimentation. For the first Alpha, we pushed the "fantasy adventure PbtA" design as far as we felt we could, but in the next update we're pushing a different aspect of the game.

Alpha vRed: "The Redungeoning"

Our goal with the next update is to reintroduce many D&D aesthetics, terms, and mechanics while maintaining the current core of the game. (Internally we're calling this the "how many cakes can we simultaneously have and eat" playtest).

Here are the biggest changes:

• While we are keeping (a refined version of) conditions, hit points are returning with some rules that tie HP loss directly into the narrative
• The six D&D stats are all coming back
• Defy Danger returns with several modifications, the biggest one of which is that you always roll CON instead of choosing your stat
• Many moves and mechanics have been refined, both in general and to account for the focus of this version

We're calling this version Red instead of 2, as it isn't an evolution of v1 so much as it showcases "the other extreme" of what DW2 could look like. The next update after this will likely draw from both versions of the alpha and end up somewhere in the middle. Whether you like or dislike what we've done with the Alpha v1 (which we've started to call "Blue" internally), we would love to know what you think of vRed once it's available, speaking of which…

This update will release on Wednesday September 17, 2025.

This time we're not sending the rules out individually, as we've heard many people had trouble accessing the last version (speaking of which, here's the link). When vRed releases, that same link should be updated to show it, but we'll also post it on this site, plus reddit and discord. The previous version will remain available in a subfolder on the same link.

We've also decided to do a separate feedback form for vRed, as it's so substantially different from the current alpha. Once again, if you want to give us your feedback on the current Alpha v1, visit dungeon-world.com/dw2feedback

This is a big leap, not forward but sideways, and we think the results of these types of testing will show themselves in the final game.

Thanks for sticking with us,

Spencer and Helena