Journeys and Perils in Dungeon World 2

"Travel and Exploration" in fantasy games can mean so many different things. Following a road toward a known destination is different from scouting a vast region to find places of interest, which is also different from creeping through a deadly dungeon room-by-room. These variances go deeper than just what you're doing and where you're doing them, they also often differ in pacing as well.

Helena spoke last Friday about how pacing is so important in RPG sessions. In a typical scene (conversational, combat, or otherwise), the pacing is usually immediate and beat-by-beat, with one thing happening right after the next. During travel and exploration, however, pacing is much more fluid. 

The most common type of travel pacing is to skip ahead to the next interesting thing, handle that as a beat-by-beat scene, then skip ahead again, and keep doing this until you reach your destination or otherwise stop traveling. This works quite well for obvious reasons; people want to skip over the parts where "nothing happens." It works so well, in fact, that the next move I want to talk about basically just spells out this type of pacing without getting in its way.

Undertake a Journey
When you gather your party and venture forth together on a significant journey, say what your destination is. If it’s very distant, obscure, or protected then the GM may split your journey into smaller ‘legs’, each with its own destination, and then tell you the destination of your leg.

While on a journey, the GM will describe what you see on your path, and you describe what you do in response to that. If you have a clear guide, map, memory, or similar knowledge, then you cannot get lost as long as you have access to that.

A journey is "an act or instance of traveling from one place to another", and is more specific than just general exploration. If the PCs are traveling without any destination at all in mind, then this move doesn't trigger. The journey also has to be significant to trigger this, whether that's due to danger, time pressure, or other reasons. Leisurely travel rarely happens to PCs in the middle of an adventure. If the PCs have a destination in mind but don't know its location, then maybe the first leg is toward something/somewhere that can uncover that. 

In the Alpha text below Undertake a Journey we also talk about what PCs might encounter while traveling, how to manage especially complex journeys, and how to deal with hunger and thirst narratively, as DW2 doesn't currently track rations. This is a lot of GM-facing information in and around a player-triggered move, but we want to make it clear and obvious to players what they should expect when making a journey.

“Skipping ahead” may be the most common pacing tool, but it's not the only one. Sometimes you encounter a series of places, obstacles, or dangers that aren't interesting alone, but create a montage when combined. Or you may encounter something that feels appropriately dangerous or impeding, but not interesting in and of itself, perhaps due to lower stakes or complexity. Travel in fiction is full of these obstacles that aren't high-stakes dangers, but instead moments of brief danger or friction. So we developed our next move to handle these moments quickly and easily.

Navigate Peril
When you attempt to overcome an environmental hazard or small danger, without having a detailed scene (GM’s call), the one leading the effort rolls…

+Forceful if you fight an enemy, escape captivity, move something heavy, etc.
+Slippery if you sneak past something, climb something, or do something covert or illicit
+Astute if you use special knowledge or unusual preparation and tools
+Intuitive if you use gut feelings, magic, or dumb luck
+Compelling if you befriend, persuade, or deceive someone

On a 10+, you overcome it without issue. On a 7-9, you overcome it but one of your companions suffers harm. You choose which companion; they mark a condition. On a 6-, choose one:
- You overcome it, but mark a Burden
- You’ve yet to overcome it, and instead it turns into a dangerous scene

We took some of the bones of the old Defy Danger and used them to build this much more specific move. While only the leader rolls and gains XP, the move itself handles the entire group's efforts. On a 7-9, we hope that choosing who takes a condition could lead to some interesting developments in the group dynamics, but we'll see how it plays during the upcoming wider playtest. On a 6-, we specified what might happen instead of leaving it blank, and let the players choose if they want to take a Burden or escalate this into a bigger deal, in which Navigate Peril can no longer apply.

Burdens work like conditions, except they affect the entire group instead of just one PC, and are a bit more difficult to get rid of. While a condition penalizes rolls with its associated stat, each Burden has its own unique effect. The three Burdens we currently have are:

• Bickering — When you Assist you must spend 2 Kinship (instead of 1) to benefit another PC
• Hopeless — At the End of Session, the GM will reveal one twist to turn the answer to a question from a “yes” into a “no”
• Hunted — The GM may always ask “who keeps watch?”, even when you’re supposedly safe

Finally, there's one more tool of pacing rarely used during travel: the moment where the narrative slows down and focuses on an emotion. This may be the awe of a magical forest, or the sorrow of a destroyed village, or the hope of a sign of survivors. This can already happen naturally in play, but we wanted to add an extra reminder and reward.

Have a Moment
Once per session, when you emotionally engage with a meaningful discovery (beautiful landscape, rare creature, historical landmark, burnt village, familiar grave, etc.), describe what you say or do and choose one:
- If you open up to one or more fellow PCs, add 1 Kinship to the pool
- If you keep your emotions to yourself, mark 1 XP

If the emotion is intense or difficult, you may choose to mark a condition and mark 1 additional XP.

And that's everything for today. Helena will talk about our remaining two Exploration Moves on Friday!