Get Ready! Relax Together, Equipment & Wealth

On Tuesday, Spencer wrote at length about the Group Playbook, focusing on the default example in the current version of the Dungeon World 2 (DW2) Alpha ruleset: The Adventuring Party. In that extensive post he revealed four starting moves, but there was one missing, one that’s at the center of our intended gameplay loop. So, before I reveal Relax Together, I’d like to talk a bit about that core gameplay loop.

Our Vision For DW2

Back in early November, during our first design meetings with Spencer, one of the first things we discussed was how we wanted to approach the core of the game. For us, part of creating a sequel to DW1 had to do with updating and streamlining the game’s underlying premise. In short, the resulting core gameplay loop was as follows:

1. The PCs get hooked into an adventure
2. They go on said adventure, facing dangers, obstacles, and exploring a fantastic location(s)
3. PCs will accumulate one form or another of exhaustion while adventuring. These include conditions, spending resistances, and Class-specific ways (which will start revealing next week!)
4. At some point the PCs will get some rest in a safe place before they can continue. When this happens, they’ll trigger the Relax Together move.
5. Once they’ve completed their rest, the PCs are ready to continue adventuring. They then repeat 2-5 until the session’s over.
6. At which point, the End of Session happens.

So, the way we see it, the “rest part” of the core gameplay loop is as fundamental as the “action part”, as it is in these moments that the PCs get to deepen their intraparty relationships, reveal more about their character’s backstory, and recover before they continue adventuring. 

As we’ve discussed—and revealed—so far, we’ve developed moves for all the other instances of the core gameplay loop, and the “rest part” is no different. And that’s how we arrived at Relax Together:

Relax Together
When you spend some time together as a group, work together to describe what you are all doing and what each PC is specifically up to. During this detailed scene, the PCs are free to discuss situations, issues, and/or feelings about current or past events they’ve experienced together. Not all conversations have to be in a group; one person can go off on their own or pull an ally aside for a 1-on-1.

When all these activities are completed, you Relax Together successfully. Then do the following in order:

1. Refresh each of your individual Supplies up to 5+Wealth
2. Spend Kinship, 1-for-1, to clear any crossed Burdens
3. Everybody refreshes all Resistances
4. Everybody clears all crossed Conditions. If your Wealth is -2, clear only one crossed condition each
5. If your Wealth is +2, everyone marks 1 XP and you decrease your Wealth by 1; explain how you spend that money to improve your individual abilities, knowledge, skills, etc.
6. Decrease your Wealth by 1

So this is how Relax Together works: everyone gets a spotlight moment during the scene to roleplay their character—which can lead to triggering other moves, such as Comfort or Support—and, once everyone agrees that these activities have been completed, the players update the Group Playbook and their individual character sheets according to the procedure detailed above.

To fully understand those steps, though, there's a few concepts and mechanics we haven't revealed… Until now.

So, let's start by talking about Equipment in DW2.

Tools of the Trade

Equipment in DW2 is divided among four large categories: gear, supplies, magic items, and artifacts.

Gear includes the tools and implements that PCs need to function. As such, we don't think you should have to invest resources or time to procure them. You just have them. The Fighter has a sword, shield, and armor if they want them, and they aren't supposed to lose them. If they do lose them, that’s supposed to be only a temporary setback, and easy to repair/reacquire if necessary. Also, gear is purely fictional positioning, and doesn’t have any mechanical weight.

Supplies are the things you could have as a PC but, most importantly, it's dramatically interesting to know whether the PC has it with them or not. Because of that, we track it on a Supply Track on each Class character sheet. 

Moreover, each Class gets access to one specific type of supplies by default and they get to choose another one during character creation.

For example, The Bard starts with artistic supplies (related to their chosen performance art) and then chooses between academic supplies or thieving supplies. Each type of supplies lists several items they might contain, but the PCs are encouraged to be imaginative when using them. Also, new supply types can be unlocked when you Level Up.

As you can probably already tell, Supplies is another way to keep track of the general expenditure of resources on the part of the PCs.

Then we have magic items which, as expected, are all the implements that give the PCs new capabilities. They do so by having either 1 Quality or 2 Qualities and 1 Cost. They aren't supposed to modify your Stats or give you specific bonuses or penalties (apart from extra Resistances and/or Supplies) but, instead, mostly allow you to do things you couldn't do before.

Finally, artifacts are objects imbued with particularly powerful magic, so much so that their initial powers are just that: a starting point. These are supposed to grow and change alongside your character, to have proper names, and to present PCs with a new array of options.

Now that equipment's out of the way, there's only one more mechanic you need in order to understand Relax Together completely.

And that is Wealth.

Here Comes the Money

The way we envision it, wealth is the main practical reason why PCs risk their lives to go on adventures, at least at first and/or if they don't have any altruistic motivation to their adventuring. Because of that, we wanted it to make it an important part of DW2.

However, keeping track of types and amounts of coins is simply undramatic. So, we had to come up with something that was easier to keep track of and, moreover, that was a group endeavor and not an individual thing.

So, that's how we arrived to our current version of Wealth:

Wealth
Wealth represents your group's shared spendable money. It starts at 0, and has a minimum value of -2 and a maximum of +2. You increase your Wealth at the end of a session depending on whatever payment you received:

- a decent reward (such as just a few coins; quality art piece; or handful of tradable goods), increases your Wealth by 1

- a significant treasure (such as a bulging sack of coins; crate of tradable goods; or a glittering gemstone), increases your Wealth by 2

- a veritable hoard (such as an overflowing chest of coins; an artistic masterpiece; or a wagon of tradable goods), increases your Wealth by 3

Your Wealth decreases when you Relax Together successfully (usually -1 Wealth).

Wealth starts at 0 because that indicates the status quo: having barely enough to live by, day by day. As soon as the group's Wealth becomes positive, it represents having more than you need to, and even presenting the ability to gain extra XP.

At the same time, the act of adventuring is costly (in actuality, it's the act of resting; i.e. when you Relax Together to recover from the adventuring), so your Wealth is never assured to remain stable.

If Wealth goes below 0, that means a significant lack of resources that, if sustained in time, may end up with you not being able to recover effectively, as you can see in the Relax Together move.

We hope that in this manner we have found a way to incorporate Wealth that is interesting, easy to use, and at least more dramatic than counting coins.

As with everything else we've previewed so far, all of this is highly subject to change during the upcoming Alpha (and later Beta) playtest! We expect that your feedback will help us detect areas that need improvement and some that may need complete rewrites.

Next week, we'll start previewing the 5 Classes that will be released with the Alpha playtest rules—starting with The Bard!

Until then, happy gaming!

Helena