Dungeon World 2

Calibrating Dungeon World 2

"Let's push the game as hard and as far as we can. Whatever parts don't work out, we can always pull back later."

From the very start, this has been one of our core philosophies for the early stages of Dungeon World 2. While the core identity of DW2 has remained (and will remain) consistent, each alpha is a true test of the mechanical expression of that identity, throwing everything at a new wall to see what sticks.

Blue - Pushing the Bounds of Fantasy PbtA

Our first Alpha was released in late July 2025, and its main focus was the narrative conversational aspects of the game. It featured conditions instead of hp, Defiance (which was spent to resist consequences), and many group mechanics, conditions, and resources. Here is a quote from one playtester who submitted feedback.

"Blue gave me a glimpse of a new kind of approach to dw style play altogether. Not just a dw 1.5. Not apocalypse-world-but-fantasy. Not combat fantasy ttrpg but in pbta. It truly felt like its own thing by focusing the play and conversation on the fiction and fictional positioning without having to drop half the mechanics to do it"

This person was excited to see where a game built on Blue's framework would go, and we were very happy with that. However, as positive as the feedback was, it also told us that even the people who love it don't feel like it resembles D&D much, they just didn't mind that (or outright liked it).

What Else Did We Learn From Blue?

As we continued private playtesting and monitoring feedback and discussion, here were our big takeaways on the Blue Alpha.

Too many Moves. While most moves were solid, a few needed refinement and there were a bit too many of them. In the next alpha, we'd try reducing the number of moves and simplifying a few of them.
Too Complicated. There was a lot of extra stuff in Blue that felt unnecessarily complex, such as starting choices, the three stages of conditions, Burdens, and a few moves. In Red we'd try removing some of those peripheral mechanics, and in the upcoming alpha we'll try simplifying early choices even further.
Defiances Were Hard to Grasp. That's not to say that they didn't work, but by far the #1 question in the community was "how do I use Defiances properly?". While they focus the game extremely on the fiction when used, it felt unintuitive, almost alien, coming from most other roleplaying games. We already had several other takes on Defy Danger, so we'd try out other ones in each Alpha.
Drives Require Effort. Exploring and resolving backstories is a classic part of any roleplaying game, and while Drives are solid during character creation, and there are rewards for after they're mentioned, there wasn't anything that steered the conversation towards Drives in the first place. In future versions we'd try naturally weaving drives into the current narrative without requiring the group to manually push the conversation there.
The GM Chapter Has a Solid Core. People especially loved NPC escalations, so we'd keep a version of them in all future iterations of the game.
People Like Loot. As much as modern D&D is about you being powerful, not your stuff, players really like acquiring loot and want to be rewarded for doing so. Blue keeps items in the fiction and otherwise out of the way, but it doesn't reward finding a powerful sword. Let's see if we can change this in future alphas.
Affinity Was…Fine. It worked well in a "set it and forget it" way, but wasn't inspiring. Players also tended to have way more than they needed. We decided to cut it from Red, which was a good idea in hindsight.
What Group Playbook? Like affinity above, the group playbook worked, but it didn't feel very important to some players and tended to get ignored in the game.

In summary, the game was a proper first alpha. It was rough in several places, and needed obvious polishing, but the core gameplay worked really well. Instead of directly polishing what we had, we decided to focus the next alpha on feeling as much like D&D as possible, while not only preserving the core gameplay, but polishing and refining it.

Red - Everything but the d20

DW2's Red Alpha released in September 2025, and it featured all six classic D&D stats, hp, and rolled damage dice. We also tried new options and advanced moves for the Classes.

We've been paying close attention to feedback and conversations around the alpha. Feedback on the biggest changes between Red and Blue have been mixed, with roughly an even amount of people expressing strong preferences for one or the other. Generally speaking, most of the people who wanted "more D&D" in DW2 expressed satisfaction with what they saw in red, and those who were happy to get away from D&D weren't happy with it.

When observing the conversations and feedback from both perspectives, we saw that the two "types" of DW fans seemed to speak past each other to a point. Those on the "D&D side" focused on language, terms, and mechanics that emphasized familiarity, while the people on the "PbtA side" focused on gameplay mechanics that emphasized meaningful fiction, such as hard choices, dramatic moments, or powerful emotions.

This was especially insightful for us, as it may mean that the "feeling of D&D" to many people isn't about who you are or what you do, but rather about familiar language and terminology. We can use this in future updates, dressing up PbtA concepts and gameplay in D&D language and aesthetics, resulting in less conflict between the two goals. If this is accurate and we use it well, it might let DW2 feel both more D&D and more PbtA than its predecessor, rather than just one or the other.

What Else Did We Learn From Red?

Most Changes Were Positive. The many smaller refinements we made to many moves and mechanics worked well. This includes Conditions being simplified and coming alongside HP as a replacement for Affinity
Fights Were Desperate. In Red NPCs are very dangerous, and any time you deal damage to them you can't avoid their blows, only reduce their impact in the best case scenarios. I was skeptical about this change beforehand, but in play I loved how desperate it made fights feel. However, during those moments of desperation where players are looking for anything—rules or fiction—to help them overcome their challenges, I found that there could be a few more tools and options for them, so that's one thing we'll be trying in the next Alpha.
Ambitions Were Messy. Ambitions were meant to weave drives into the narrative, as mentioned above, but this way to do it was too structured and each ambition had too much text. Additionally, because you could only advance your ambition by maxing out conditions, many players tended to avoid it ever happening.
Infrequent Defy Danger. With moves like Sense Motive and Sneak Past taking up space that Defy Danger might have in DW1, now the move feels like it's meant for special occasions rather than semi-frequently. It felt odd to be rolling it with CON though.

Overall, Red was a great success as a next experiment, and we learned a lot about what aspects of DW2 should stay mostly the same, and which aspects we should keep changing.

The Final Alpha

This will be the last round of experimental changes before we move to beta and stabilize things. In this final alpha we want to:

To test new mechanics, language, structure and layout, especially how they fulfill both the D&D and PbtA aspects of the game simultaneously
To increase excitement and anticipation when reading the game text, making people more likely to organize sessions after playing.
To make it easier to jump right into a game with little-to-no experience with TTRPGs, requiring fewer choices during character creation at the start.

In short, we want to make the game read better, play more easily, look like D&D, and play like PbtA, all at once.

Incorporating "Purple"

While this alpha is more than just a middle ground between Blue and Red, so calling it "Purple" didn't feel quite right, it does still try to find that middle ground:

HP and Damage remain as mechanics, but at much lower numbers that aren't rolled. Kind of similar to Harm from Apocalypse World.
Five of the classic stats will be present (STR, DEX, WIS, INT, CHA.), but CON will not be present.
Conditions will act much like they do in Red, with one present for each stat.
Defy Danger can use any stat, based on your description like DW1, but even on a 10+ you aren't getting off completely scott-free without some specific advancements.

Treading New Ground

In addition to the "Purple" changes, the Final Alpha will have a bunch of experimental features including:

Paths - a new structure for class advancements that combines the strong identities of playbooks with the modularity of Class Warfare.
Bonds - replacing the group playbook in this alpha, imagine if Hx from Apocalypse World could unlock new shared moves when it maxes out and resets
Conflicts - Another take on backstories that are simpler than Ambitions, and unlocked later in play, but each with its own move or mechanic.
Battle Moves - Fighting is a big part of D&D. Rather than one move to represent it, these four moves should reflect dramatic moments and cooperative goals within a battle.
New Classes - The Druid, Paladin, and Ranger will be joining DW2, putting our total number of classes up to 9 (so far)!

Each of these above will get their own post in the next few weeks, detailing what it'll look like and why we are trying this out.

Alpha Feedback

After the Final Alpha releases, there will be a deadline by which to get all feedback (for all three alphas) to us. We'll announce it well in advance multiple times, and it likely won't be for 6-8 weeks after the Final Alpha's release.

Thanks for reading! Another post will be out in just a few days to showcase what Classes will look like (and what Paths are).

Spencer