Knowledge Is Power, Part 1: Recall

As I hinted last Friday, today I get to talk to you about one half of our approach to knowledge and information gathering in our version of Dungeon World—AKA Dungeon World 2 (DW2)! Before we can start, let’s take a look at what the original game (OG DW) had to offer in this sense.

The first basic move we encounter is Spout Lore, which reads:

When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+INT. *On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. *On a 7-9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful. The GM might ask you “How do you know this?” Tell them the truth, now.

The first problem we had with this move was how much it puts the onus on the GM to come up with stuff. It has to be interesting and useful, about a subject the player mentions/poses to them and, to make matters worse, it has to be relevant to the current situation. That’s a lot of pressure for one poor GM to handle! On a basic move, that’s supposed to be triggered a lot during normal gameplay, no less. 

I think it’s no exaggeration to say that Spout Lore is one of the most controversial basic moves in OG DW, one that caused countless headaches to many an enterprising GM—Spencer and I included! As such, we knew we needed to alter it at least enough to make it way easier to use in play.

Another problem we had with this move from the get go is that it relies on a specific stat (in this case, Intelligence). That makes it limited in a way we don't like, mainly because many characters in fantasy fiction we wouldn’t probably describe as having a high Intelligence often come up with clever solutions or can at least hint/point at them. 

The classic example is Frodo outside of the Doors of Moria. I don’t think anybody would say that a Hobbit—even a well-educated one like Frodo—has more INT (whatever that means) than Gandalf, basically an incarnated angel with 3000+ mortal years of experience and learning. And yet: the one who finds the clue that opens the gates is Frodo, not Gandalf. So, how do we allow for those instances to happen naturally in DW2? How do we incentivize everyone at the table to have information they can share with the rest of the group?

Our solution: to not use a Stat for our version of the move and, instead, take inspiration from the amazing Pasión de las Pasiones and write a move with questions instead. What does that look like? Well, here it is!

Recall

When you search your memory for important information about a subject, ask the GM one question about it, answer the questions below, then roll. For each “yes”—saying how if necessary—add +1 to the roll.

• Is this the first time you've encountered this subject during your adventures?
• Did you learn about this subject before your adventures began? (your call)
• Do you have access to a book or similar record about this subject?

*On a 10+, the GM will answer your question and related followup questions. *On a 7-9, the GM will answer your question, but without greater context.

Some examples questions include:

• Where is _______ located?
• What could have caused _______ ?
• What might be the best way to accomplish _______?
• What have I heard or read about _______?
• How might I gain access to _______?

As you can see the main changes in Recall, when compared to Spout Lore, have to do with (hopefully) making the new move easier to use. First, we wanted to make it more open by allowing the player to ask any one question and, depending on the circumstances, getting either just a context-less answer or an answer with context—and follow-up questions to boot!

Once that was taken care of, we focused on presenting questions that we think should be relatively easy to get a “yes” out of, so anybody has a decent chance of pulling it off. Of course, even with 3 “yeses” you still can miss or even not get a full success, so it's never certain—which we like a lot!

Finally, we also included some example questions in the text of the move itself, so players can have some guidance about possible questions to ask if they’re new to the game or simply can’t think of anything to ask.

And that's it! On Friday Spencer will tell you all about the other information-gathering move we came up with.

Until then, happy gaming!

Helena